(Side Story) Zombie.
(Side Story) Zombie.
Unaware of what was unfolding below, the sergeant scanning the area dropped his binoculars from his trembling hands.
"...?"
"Wh... what the hell is that...?"
The corporal snatched up the binoculars and swept them across the field.
The sectors the Hyenas had already cleared and withdrawn from—at the farthest edge, barely visible buildings were crawling with something.
".....Fucking insane."
Captain Kim Hyeok-jin burst in mid-meal.
When Im Jeong-hyeok looked up, Captain Kim got the words out, still panting.
"Major Im, outside... a tsunami... haah... it's a tsunami-class wave..."
The meal table ran cold all over again.
Im Jeong-hyeok clasped his hands, rested his chin on them, and shut his eyes.
"Do we think we can hold?"
Captain Kim Hyeok-jin steadied his breathing and pressed on with his report.
"Hyena scouts visually confirmed more than fifty Screamers... Sergeant Han Seong-hoon says every building in his line of sight is completely covered."
Kwak In-gu, who had been listening grimly, spoke up.
"Ga-in kept saying Screamers were turning up more and more lately... so that was the sign of a wave."
When Im Jeong-hyeok looked at Kwak In-gu, Kwak In-gu nodded and said,
"Granny, Mister Ji... looks like I'll be seeing you sooner than expected."
The soldiers were using military vehicles to haul every survivor in the vicinity back to the Uijeongbu Department Store.
The moment Ga-in saw the soldiers, killing intent radiated from her. Myeong-cheol held her back.
"Ga-in, this isn't the time for that..."
The soldiers were already sealing off every usable entrance ahead of the fight.
Im Jeong-hyeok, who had moved to the rooftop, keyed his radio.
"Eagles, if you want to live, kill as many as you can before you come back..."
Through his binoculars, Im Jeong-hyeok saw the Eagles driving in the distance while a gunner behind them swept zombies with a heavy machine gun.
Elsewhere, teams were drawing the zombies' attention, bunching them into one place, then blasting the mass with shells.
But as the zombies pressed in relentlessly, everyone's movements grew more and more frantic.
-"Primary engagement zone ready for combat!"
-"Secondary engagement zone ready for combat!"
Once the reports were in, Im Jeong-hyeok spoke.
"Every weapon and every round we've hoarded—dump it all today."
It was an overwhelming disaster beyond the limits of human ability. Everyone in the Meadow except the children held a gun.
BOOM!
Beside the shooter who had just fired the sniper rifle, the spotter called out.
"One Screamer, eliminated."
BOOM!
Flame spat from the K14s in the hands of all seven snipers.
Kwak In-gu pointed to the underground shelter where the children had been evacuated and spoke to Ga-in.
"You're a protected person too. You're supposed to go in there."
"Are you joking?"
Kwak In-gu looked at Ga-in, mussed her hair, and said,
"Given the situation, don't act recklessly."
"That's obvious."
Kwak In-gu handed Ga-in a Glock fitted with a suppressor.
"I want a rifle too."
"You only need to deal with zombies if they get inside..."
"....."
Before anyone even realized it, the zombies had closed in directly in front of them.
With most of their vehicles already pulled outside, Im Jeong-hyeok, still observing from the rooftop, keyed the radio.
"Primary defense, open fire. Recon teams, draw the zombies' attention. Over."
The people who had been struck speechless by the overwhelming numbers snapped back to their senses through the radio chatter. The moment they lit the prepared fuses, the area outside the building turned into a sea of flame.
The zombies' screams evoked hell itself and seemed ready to tear their eardrums apart.
But nobody had the presence of mind to care; everyone was desperately hosing machine-gun fire into the zombies flooding in.
Zombies began scaling the building and dropping to the ground inside.
"Fucking insane..."
Just then, two soldiers behind them deployed the monstrously heavy M134 and fed in an ammunition belt.
A Minigun, capable of exceeding six thousand rounds per minute.
Zombies began to gush out from the narrowing gaps between the buildings.
A Staff Sergeant had the Minigun trained on the spot where zombies were squeezing through the building gaps, and next to him, a Corporal acting as his assistant was managing the ammo belt.
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!!
The electric motor whined to life, and the Minigun began spewing fire.
"This is American firepower, you sons of bitches!!! Die, all of you!!! Fuck!!!"
Zombies were literally bursting apart.
As the fire tore into the lower ranks of zombies surging over the six-meter-high building like a tsunami, the zombies above them also began tumbling down.
The falling zombies were torn to shreds by the merciless Minigun before they could even reach the ground.
The staggering volume of ammunition hit empty in an instant, and the Corporal beside him spun up another Minigun.
"Die, all of you!!!!! You fucking dogs!!"
The staff sergeant reloaded after exhausting his ammunition, and the two Miniguns began alternating fire.
The heavy machine guns and M60s manned by the soldiers beside them also started blazing.
Even though they were burning through more than ten thousand rounds per minute, the number of zombies pressing in from every direction remained overwhelming.
As a mound of zombie corpses began piling up at the base of the building, those pushed back from the primary defensive line grabbed their machine guns, pulled back inside the building, and began regrouping.
To buy them that time, the fifty soldiers armed with rifles reloaded.
Yoo Min-seong and Ga-in watched the battle from their assigned position outside the building.
"Whoa... this is batshit..."
The two-soldier heavy-machine-gun team deployed beside them waited until enough zombies had accumulated, then opened fire for maximum effect.
Ga-in watched the scene with her ears covered against the noise, while Yoo Min-seong picked them off one by one with his issued K2 rifle.
To keep the flames spreading, oil drums were thrown from the rooftop toward the fire.
Yoo Min-seong shot them in midair so the fuel would spread as widely as possible before they hit the ground.
Im Jeong-hyeok stared straight ahead, his expression grim.
"...Their numbers are just too much..."
Kwak In-gu, who had been peering through binoculars, spoke up.
"What, are you thinking we should've abandoned the place and run?"
Im Jeong-hyeok didn't deny it.
But the old men who had been watching him just laughed as they fired away.
These were the men who had once been called the Field Mice.
"Damn brat gives up far too easily, I swear."
Still scanning the area through his binoculars, Kwak In-gu answered old man Ji.
"Mister Ji, focus on the Screamers. You're the only one among us who can hit them inside that horde."
The snipers weren't wasting time trying to pinpoint Screamers inside the horde; instead, they were busy blowing apart the overwhelmingly massive Goliaths.
"Whoa... somebody must have had a bottomless ammunition stockpile. The machine guns haven't stopped once, while they gave us only two hundred forty-eight rounds."
"....."
By now, the corpses had begun to form a mountain on the ground, and still-active zombies were cresting over it.
Kwak In-gu hefted an oil drum and hurled it toward the mountain of corpses, and a sniper shot it, setting it ablaze.
"Min-seong must be busy. He didn't shoot it."
The machine-gun roar drew the zombies toward the main forward defensive line, where the greatest number of fighters poured out tremendous firepower. The other sectors were not so fortunate.
"Sector B, fall back to the secondary defensive line. Over."
Listening to Kwak In-gu's words, Im Jeong-hyeok kept issuing commands.
In the distance, figures could be seen triggering sirens to lure the zombies and lead them away.
"Looks like we might actually finish them off. Don't you think?"
"....."
Im Jeong-hyeok stayed silent, his gaze fixed on one spot, even at Kwak In-gu's question.
Following Im Jeong-hyeok's line of sight, Kwak In-gu's face crumpled as he looked in the same direction.
"Fuck... I should've kept my mouth shut."
Ga-in descended the steel-frame stairs deployed along the outside of the building.
Below, zombies were piling up because of the machine-gun fire.
She put a bullet through each one's head with her pistol.
BANG!
Ga-in burned through her magazine and reloaded.
Yoo Min-seong, his injuries from the torture apparently still unhealed, limped down from above. He flipped his rifle's selector to full-auto and opened fire downward.
BRRRRRT!
Ga-in spoke, her expression dissatisfied.
"If you make that much noise down here... look."
Unlike before, the zombies were now surging in at double the rate.
"...Huh?"
"You thought it was safe because of the machine guns above...?"
"....."
"Go back up and pick them off one at a time."
Yoo Min-seong had wanted to talk with Ga-in, but he nodded, acknowledging this was not the time, and climbed back up.
Ga-in watched the approaching zombies, climbed back to the upper floor, sat down again, and resumed firing one shot at a time.
Just then, a thunderous roar echoed out.
KABOOM!!!
The vibration resonated through the building's interior, and Ga-in leaned over the railing to look down toward the source of the sound.
A soldier who had been hosing the area with a machine gun stopped firing and stared straight ahead.
The spotter followed the gunner's gaze. An arm as large as a zombie burst through the gap between the buildings.
"It's a Giant..."
A bloated, corpulent body swollen with fat.
Four times larger than a Goliath—which was already twice the size of a normal zombie—the Giant squeezed through the gap and immediately charged.
"Get clear!!!"
CRAAAAAASH!!!
The Giant smashed straight through the first-floor wall.
Five people were wounded by the flying debris.
The Giant appeared riddled with bullets, with hardly an intact patch remaining. One soldier who had failed to evacuate poured machine-gun fire into its head.
BRRRRRRRRT!!
The machine gun brought the Giant down quickly, but the zombies charging behind it gave the primary line no time to regroup. The defenders fired desperately, yet most were buried beneath the swarm before they could escape.
Then the Elephants—their ivory tattoos marking them—who had been waiting at the rear, rammed a truck into the entrance to block it.
"Fall back to the third defensive line!!! Now!!!"
As the vehicle was pushed in, the zombies flooded upward at a terrifying speed.
The soldiers abandoned the machine guns and fell back all the way to the tertiary line.
Hearing the report that even the secondary defensive line had been breached, Im Jeong-hyeok rapidly issued evacuation orders to the other squads.
Kwak In-gu, who had been watching Im Jeong-hyeok, spoke.
"I'm heading down. Take care of Ga-in."
Im Jeong-hyeok nodded silently, his eyes fixed on the situation below.
Only three machine guns were still operational, but the number of zombies remaining was still far too vast.
Im Jeong-hyeok began to sweep the area through his binoculars.
Just then, Captain Kim's voice crackled through the radio.
-"The zombies have packed the area all the way to the secondary defensive line!"
"Hold out. If the third defensive line is about to fall, don't wait for orders—blow it. I'm leaving the decision to you. Over."
-"...Yes, sir!!!"