Cornered by Zombies, the Landlady Throws Off Her See-Through Cardigan to Help Me
"!!!!!!!!!!"
I shot to my feet.
It was the way an animal senses danger—the scream that tore through the air was nothing like the women's screams I'd heard a few times before. The very quality of it was different, and my eyes snapped open like a predator's.
The scream had come from the three-way intersection on the four-lane road, near the corner that bent off to the right.
"Aaaaaaaaaah!! Kyaaaaaaah!! What the hell is wrong with these people!!! They're biting people!! Somebody stop them!!! Kyaaaaaaah!!!"
Right after the woman's scream came a man's shriek, closer to pure agony. And inside that scream were enough clues to paint a picture of the situation around the corner that my eyes still couldn't reach.
Something's coming!!!
People biting people—the moment that keyword hit my ears, lightning flashed through my skull. But I hadn't seen it with my own eyes yet. For now, my rational mind settled for sounding an alarm at the level of "something seriously wrong is approaching."
"Auntie! Get behind me—behind me!"
"O-okay, Tae-yang..."
I dropped into a slight crouch and kept my eyes locked on the right-hand corner of the intersection, then moved Auntie Min-jung behind my back. She looked just as startled by the sudden screams as anyone would be. The second my order landed, she followed it without hesitation.
"Waaaaaah!!! Zombies!!! Zombies!!! Fuck, those are zombies!!!"
—Thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud!!!
Then a man came tearing around the corner, screaming his head off as he fled—middle-aged, some older guy. And the word that came out of his mouth was the shock I'd already been bracing for.
Monsters that bite people. Zombies.
Murmur murmur! Murmur murmur! Murmur murmur!
His appearance set the people around me—who'd been standing around looking blank—into a sudden buzz of chatter. But it was less that they believed the fleeing man and more that they just wanted to know what the hell was going on.
If it was just that one guy showing up out of nowhere, there'd be room for doubt—but two screams already went off...
So if those really are zombies, I need to move first. That's the way to get home safe.
I decided to take the fleeing man's word at face value for now. Everything leading up to this was already enough grounds for that call. But more than anything, what cinched my trust was how sharp and decisive the guy's posture had been as he ran, screaming about zombies. He looked like the kind of person who could survive just about any crisis thrown at him.
On top of that, I'd already gotten word that closed-off zones had formed in other regions. Putting all that information together, treating the threat that had just come barreling in as a zombie outbreak and moving accordingly seemed like the right play.
"Auntie, grab my left hand and stick with me. Stay as close to the wall as you can. Just drop all that stuff. We need to get out of here fast."
People were still murmuring around us. I whispered low to Auntie Min-jung behind me, ready to turn my judgment into action. If zombies started pouring out in droves, cutting into a narrow alley would be the right call. But if only a few had just appeared, sprinting down the main road with a clear line of sight made more sense.
"O-okay, Tae-yang..."
Thud...!
Squeeze...!
From my expression and tone, Auntie Min-jung seemed to have confirmed for herself that something was seriously wrong. She didn't ask why. She just set down the bags in her hands and followed my request right away.
—Thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud!!!
After that, Auntie and I pushed through the hesitant crowd and ran toward the left corner of the intersection. That was the direction of our house.
"If I end up needing my left hand too, stick even tighter to the wall. Got it?"
"Got it... Auntie'll do whatever you say..."
Nod...! Nod...! Nod...!
As we ran, I spoke to Auntie Min-jung, preparing her for a full emergency—letting her know combat might break out. She kept pace with my strides as best she could, and she nodded the whole time.
Just as Auntie Min-jung and I were about to round the left corner—
"—Kraaaaaaaaaaah!!!!"
"—Kieeeeeeeeeeh!!!"
"—Kreeeeeeeeeeeh!!!"
"W-what's wrong with these people!! Hey, calm down!!!!"
On the opposite side, three figures that looked like zombies piled onto a man who'd gotten too close. The woman who'd screamed first, the man who'd screamed second, and the one who'd bitten them both and turned them—three zombies.
Fuck!! Yeah, those are definitely zombies!!
The second I rounded the corner, I whipped my head around to check the other side. My eyes and pupils blew wide open. The things making the mess kept thrashing out twisted, broken movements, and from bodies chewed up all over they poured out animal howls. Zombies, no question.
This is gonna multiply fast, isn't it???
I didn't let my gaze get stuck on just the three zombies up ahead. I checked behind them too. There were more zombies back there as well—latecomers from other alleys joining up, by the look of it. About four of them clustered together, tearing into a single corpse.
"What are those people doing, Tae-yang??? They're all twisted up and just... just ripping into each other..."
—Thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud!
When I glanced sideways, Auntie Min-jung must have seen them too. But she didn't seem to know the concept of zombies well—even recognizing that people were being eaten, she still looked bewildered.
"Not really the time for a full explanation, Auntie. They're zombies—monsters that eat people. Just think of it as a virus that did that to them. If we get tangled up with them, you have to punch through or smash the side with the brain. Of course I'll protect you so it doesn't come to that if I can help it."
"I'm starting to think that simultaneous civil unrest the emergency disaster text warned about might be connected to this."
Glance! Glance! Glance!
—Thudthudthudthudthudthudthud!!!
I whipped my head around in every direction, rattling off zombie info like a machine gun.
"Z-zombies... so that's what zombies are... infected by a virus... have to damage the brain..."
I'd been spitting it out so fast it was practically a dialect dump, hard to follow. But this was Auntie Min-jung—the woman who'd given birth to Park A-young, who was sharp as a tack and quick on the uptake. She somehow managed to snatch only the core keywords out of everything I'd said and fire them right back.
This is exactly why I can't help loving Auntie Min-jung. She's the kind of person who'd believe me even if I insisted black was white. Honestly, zombies had to be a completely foreign concept to her—and yet she was taking my word for it without a shred of doubt or curiosity getting in the way.
Looks like the outbreak's only really going on back that way for now???
I scanned every block as we ran down the main road. At least along the stretch Auntie and I were sprinting down, it didn't look like zombies were about to come flooding in from every direction at once. With a little room to think, I landed on—
Okay. Hardware store!
I needed a weapon.
"What's going on... something happen up there...?"
The hardware store owner was standing out in front of his shop, staring toward the noisy scene up ahead.
"Excuse me, mister—how much for this steel pipe?"
I went straight past him into the hardware store. I grabbed a decent steel pipe, walked back out, and asked the owner the price.
"That one's thirty thousand won apiece?"
He looked me up and down as he spoke. A hundred-eighty-nine-centimeter, hundred-five-kilogram frame of practical compressed muscle in training pants and a tank top, dripping sweat after a five-hundred-meter sprint on an early summer day and holding a steel pipe—he must have been wondering what the hell was going on.
"Here's fifty thousand. Keep the change."
To that shop owner, I pulled out a line I would never have used under normal circumstances: keep the change.
"Auntie checked her phone for a second? Just like you said, Tae-yang—the articles about the unrest are talking about zombies."
"So I searched zombie-related stuff separately, and it came up with things like viral infection and having to smash the head."
I came back over to Auntie Min-jung, ready to head home again. Auntie Min-jung was incredible enough to make me want to whistle. While I'd been picking out a steel pipe, she'd been checking the online situation.
Damn, she's cute... and so reliable...
The face she made as she told me that—eyes round with pure wonder—was something else. Learning about the concept of zombies had sparked her curiosity, and the fact that I'd filled her in so fast in the middle of this chaos only made her more interested. It was an urgent situation, but Auntie Min-jung's ridiculous charm had just exploded out of her, and a smile rose to my lips on its own.
"Yeah, Auntie. Those zombies are going to multiply exponentially from here. So let's get home."
Squeeze!
—Thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud!!!
Leaving that adorable look of hers behind, I took Auntie's hand again and started running toward the landlord's house—the one with the bunker.
"..."
—Thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud!!!
Auntie Min-jung, who'd been doing her best to match my pace, stared straight at me again.
"What is it, Auntie?"
The heat in her eyes was so intense I had no choice but to react immediately.
"I'm just amazed... how can you stay so calm and handle things like this in a situation like this?"
While everyone else was just murmuring and milling around, I was the only one moving with total coordination—it must have looked pretty strange to her.
"Ahem, well, that's..."
But hearing her say it, I found it pretty amazing myself. Sure, when I watched zombie movies I'd always go, fuck, of course those are zombies! and trash the people panicking on screen. But honestly, I'd always figured I couldn't guarantee how I'd react if it actually happened right in front of me. And yet here I was, reading the situation without hesitation—like I'd already lived through a regression or something.
"Maybe it's because I'm with you, Auntie? I think it's because I have to protect you..."
The best hypothesis I could come up with was that Auntie Min-jung Protection Mode had kicked in. Looking back, it seemed like it'd been running ever since I left the house to pick her up after the second disaster text.
"And the way I see it, if I were the kid and you were the one protecting me, you'd do the same thing."
"Even now you're checking online in the middle of all this and feeding me information."
That kind of instinct was something Auntie Min-jung would understand better than anyone.
"Well... of course... There's nothing Auntie wouldn't do for our Tae-yang..."
A flush of pink...
For Auntie Min-jung, overflowing with maternal instinct, that had to be the perfect explanation. When I recognized that side of her, she seemed a little shy—her face went faintly red.
Ah, fuck...
I'd just declared that I could stay calm anytime if it meant protecting Auntie Min-jung—Geum Tae-yang, proving it right away.
Crunch...! Crunch..!
Chomp...! Crack...! Crunch-crack...!
Crunch... Crack...!
On the two-lane residential road where the alley straight home was just coming into view, four zombies were tearing into the corpse of a big man right in the middle of the street.
If I were alone I'd just bolt past them, but with Auntie here...
I edged my face around the corner and sized up their situation. My hundred-meter time is 11.6. I still didn't know the zombies' exact speed, but judging from how they'd moved when they attacked people, I figured I could outrun them easily enough. But with Auntie Min-jung here, that option was off the table.
"Oh my... A-young sent a text..."
Just then, Auntie Min-jung whispered beside me. Once we'd gotten off the chaotic main road, she'd said she needed to text Park A-young. It was a stretch where I needed to check the surroundings anyway, so I'd agreed. But Park A-young, already reading the situation, had texted Auntie first.
"A-young's saying it sounds like zombies too, Tae-yang... So she told me not to come pick her up—just stay home... She said I'm fine anyway since I'm with you..."
That was Park A-young for you. Judging by the text, she didn't seem to have gone outside and seen zombies herself. But the second things started looking off, her ridiculous instincts had kicked in.
"There are three zombies up ahead right now, Auntie... But this isn't a situation we can just slip past. I think I need to take them out."
Once I had the picture, I explained the next move to Auntie Min-jung.
"Three of them, and you're going alone...? Should Auntie help...? You saw me today, Tae-yang—Auntie's got good stamina... When I was younger I was a great runner, and I was good at other sports too..."
Swoosh!
Hearing there were three zombies, Auntie Min-jung must have gotten worried about me. She even threw off her see-through cardigan and started pitching her killer physique, saying she wanted to fight alongside me.