So Sweet!
The Sheriff released the transmit button on the walkie-talkie and whispered to Jinwoo in a conspiratorial tone.
“Yeah, I lied because I knew that bastard YB would throw a fit.”
“Mm. Good call.”
Jinwoo nodded, his face slightly tense. He, too, had been afraid of getting an earful from the worrywart Yubin. Saying they’d just grabbed a regular car battery probably wouldn’t have caused any trouble, but a Genesis Coupe… somehow it felt like they were doing something wrong. A subtle pang of guilt gnawed at him.
— That super? Chiiiik…! You mean the one in the basement of the building where the Konkuk University people were hiding, right? Chiiik—!
Yubin asked again. The Sheriff quickly pressed the transmit button and answered.
“Yeah, that’s the one! Why?”
Chiiik! Just wanted to warn you to be careful! Chiiiik…! A huge swarm of zombies just headed that way a little while ago. Looked like close to a thousand of them. They’ll probably reach the area in… chiiik—! about twenty minutes. They might turn before they reach the supermarket, but just in case… chiiik— stay put and keep an eye out. Wait until they’ve passed before you move out! Chiiik—!
“Twenty minutes? Got it!”
The Sheriff checked his watch and spoke quickly.
“But Yubin, you don’t have to worry too much. We got insanely lucky and found a car right in front of the supermarket. We can just drive it straight to the theater…”
Chiiiik…! Really? That’s great! Well done! Drive carefully and get back safe! Chiiik—!
They could hear Yubin letting out a sigh of relief over the radio.
“Hell yeah!”
The Sheriff ended the transmission, clenched his fist, and threw an uppercut into the empty air.
“Woo-hoo!”
Jinwoo puffed out his chest and let out a joyful shout. Now they could drive their dream car without any guilty conscience.
“Eul—! Eul—!”
Seeing Jinwoo so happy, Samsuk-i barked loudly even though he had no idea what was going on and spun in circles around him.
“Let’s hurry! We only have twenty minutes!”
The Sheriff laughed brightly and took the lead, running ahead. Even though he was carrying his heavy sledgehammer, two massive batteries, and a bag stuffed with tools, his butt bounced along like it was made of feathers. The pure, childlike joy radiating from him was so infectious that a smile spread across Jinwoo’s face as well.
The battery swap took less than ten minutes. They’d done it so many times before, and honestly, it was one of the easiest parts of car maintenance.
“Give it a try!”
After connecting the negative terminal of the new battery, the Sheriff tossed the car key to Jinwoo.
Vroooom—!
The moment Jinwoo pressed the ignition, a powerful engine roar filled the air and the dashboard lights flickered to life. The fuel gauge needle shot up to three-fifths of a tank.
“Gracias!”
Jinwoo expressed his joy by grabbing the thick cheeks of Samsuk-i, who had been waiting right beside him, and shaking them playfully.
Chiiiiiiiik—!
The preset radio only spat out loud static, but even that sounded welcoming right now.
“Let’s grab some food and get out of here fast! Put Samsuk-i in the back, open the trunk and load the spare battery! Oh, and wipe down the windows… Ah! And check the side mirrors too!”
The Sheriff slammed the hood shut with a loud thud and dashed into the supermarket, rattling off a long list of instructions. They had to finish shopping and leave within ten minutes.
Squiiish—! Swish-swish—! Swish-swish—!
After spraying washer fluid and running the wipers, the windshield—which had been clouded with four months of dirt—became clear enough to see through.
“Samsuk-i! Get in here! We’re going for a drive!”
After loading the tools and battery into the trunk, Jinwoo opened the passenger door and folded the seat forward.
“Eul!”
It was his first time, but Samsuk-i didn’t hesitate at all. He leaped over the passenger seat and jumped straight into the back of the Genesis Coupe.
“Now we’re driving this thing.”
Jinwoo winked at Samsuk-i, then used a damp towel to clean the dust-covered side mirrors and rear window.
“Wasn’t I crazy fast? How many minutes has it been?”
A short while later, the Sheriff came barreling back with a shopping cart overflowing with goods, panting as he asked. He looked like he’d put more passion into shopping than he did when fighting zombies.
“Five minutes… twenty seconds.”
When Jinwoo checked his watch and answered, the Sheriff nodded with a smug expression.
“See? I’m damn fast.”
Even while bragging, the Sheriff quickly started tossing food and water into the car. Although the trunk wasn’t huge, it was more than enough to hold everything that had been in the cart.
“What the hell is all this coffee mix? Dude, we’re only going to be there for four days. Why did you grab so much?”
Jinwoo let out a dry laugh but still helped the Sheriff load everything. Now that they had a car, they could afford to be a little greedy. They could park at the end of a blocked road and ferry food up bit by bit whenever the coast was clear. It wouldn’t be too difficult.
“Time to roll out for real!”
The Sheriff even tossed his sledgehammer into the trunk, dusted off his hands, and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Weren’t you going to drive?”
When Jinwoo asked, the Sheriff wrinkled his nose and waved his hand dismissively.
“Nah, forget it. You drive first. It’s been forever since you last drove, right? Go enjoy yourself.”
“It hasn’t been that long…”
Jinwoo muttered quietly as he closed the driver’s door and gripped the steering wheel. The last time he had driven was on that stormy night, when he’d escaped Samcheok Power Plant with a deathly pale lieutenant in the passenger seat. Thinking back on it now, he couldn’t clearly remember what kind of car it had been or how fast he’d been going. All that remained was the heavy, suffocating feeling that had pressed down on his chest.
“Let’s go, Driver Park! The zombies are about to show up.”
The Sheriff fastened his seatbelt, tapped the dashboard, and leaned back like a boss in the back seat of a luxury car.
“Pfft!”
Jinwoo burst out laughing at the relaxed pose. Zombies were everywhere, and in a few minutes a swarm of over a thousand might be heading their way, yet this guy didn’t seem the least bit nervous. Then again… even back at the Konkuk University shelter when they’d been surrounded by zombies, the Sheriff had been overflowing with confidence.
“Hold on tight, Sheriff! I’m gonna floor it!”
Jinwoo warned as he shifted into drive.
Vrrrrrr—! Vrrrrrrrrrr—!
The moment he stepped on the accelerator, the car shot forward with an exhaust note befitting a sports car.
Thud—! Screeeech—!
The Genesis Coupe smoothly cleared a low speed bump and made a right turn, covering dozens of meters in the blink of an eye. When they reached a wide-open stretch of road, the Sheriff pointed to the right.
“Zombies coming from that way! Looks like the ones Yubin mentioned.”
Just as he said, a massive horde of zombies was shambling toward them from about three hundred meters away. Of course, to the two of them riding in a car, the creatures posed no threat whatsoever. Jinwoo turned the wheel left and stomped hard on the accelerator.
Brrrrrrrrrrrr—!
The Genesis Coupe’s speedometer needle climbed higher and higher. Buildings that had seemed far away now rushed right up to them. In inverse proportion, the zombies in the rearview mirror shrank rapidly until they became tiny dots and then vanished entirely.
“Not bad at all.”
Jinwoo gripped the wheel tightly, savoring the speed. The road surface vibrations transmitted through the bucket seat and the engine’s rumble only heightened his excitement. This dirty car gave him an entirely different kind of thrill than flying in a helicopter. The fact that they had escaped from a massive swarm of zombies in an instant made his heart race.
Screeeech—! Vroooooom—!
Jinwoo repeatedly accelerated and decelerated, cruising along the cleared roads around the Konkuk University shelter. The rotten stench of corpses wafted in strongly through the fully open passenger window, but after his nose adjusted a bit, it became bearable.
“How’s the car? Does it pull hard?”
The Sheriff asked with clear curiosity. Jinwoo nodded.
“Yeah, the acceleration is actually… pretty decent. And the cornering grip is insane!”
“Then try drifting or a 180-degree turn. We’ve got some time to kill anyway.”
The Sheriff said after checking his watch. Until the horde they had reduced to tiny specks disappeared into the distance, they had to spend at least another fifteen minutes here with the car.
“Are you crazy? If we flip this thing, we’re all dead, you idiot. Heh heh.”
Jinwoo shook his head with a light laugh, then suddenly muttered in a lonely voice.
“There used to be a senior who loved doing stuff like that and was really good at it…”
Sitting in a sports car like this, enjoying the speed, naturally brought Corporal Kim to mind—the self-proclaimed “mad dog of the freeway.” That night when he had pulled off all kinds of stunts in a mediocre military Retona and saved so many comrades.
When they had lived together in uniform, Jinwoo had only seen him as an older brother figure. But Corporal Kim and Sergeant Lee had probably been around the same age as Hyeju.
When those young men realized they had been bitten and could no longer stay with the group… when they understood they only had a few minutes left to live… what must they have felt? How heartbreaking and infuriating must it have been?
Yet until the very end, they had smiled like the cool hyungs they were, offering words of encouragement as they sent him away. That bold spirit was so grateful and painful that Jinwoo’s chest sometimes ached. Even though he had saved hundreds trapped at Konkuk University and helped save tens of thousands in Chungju by continuously sending ammunition, he could never fully repay the debt he owed his squadmates. He probably never would.
“This bastard starts talking about his senior and then gets all depressed again. Hey! Since we’re driving anyway, step on it and enjoy yourself, you idiot! I even gave up the wheel for you…”
The Sheriff waved his hand in front of Jinwoo’s face and scolded him. As expected, he couldn’t hide anything from his old friend. Jinwoo smiled sheepishly and sped up.
“Alright, alright. Look, I’m smiling now.”
“If it’s hard, just think about seeing Jenny and Terra again in four days! Just picturing their pretty faces will make you smile automatically!”
“Sheriff, you’ve been sneakily throwing Terra into the mix a lot lately, haven’t you? I openly said I like both of them from the start, so it’s fine, but you were the one who kept insisting you were ride-or-die for Jenny only. Now you’re losing all your principles…”
While making a right turn along the open road, Jinwoo shot the Sheriff a sharp glare. The Sheriff scratched his chin awkwardly and mumbled.
“Nah, I mean… there’s no need to lie and say someone pretty isn’t pretty… And, I don’t know, when Terra sits like this and quietly stares out at the ocean, it just hits me right here… Ugh, fuck! What the hell is that…?”
The Sheriff, who had been imitating Terra’s posture and expression with his massive bear-like frame while staring out the passenger window, suddenly cursed in shock.
“Whoa…”
Jinwoo turned his head to follow the Sheriff’s gaze and let out a sigh as well.
Screeech—!
To get a better look, Jinwoo stepped on the brake. The Genesis Coupe, which had been speeding along, stopped with surprisingly agile responsiveness.
“…This is no joke.”
The Sheriff kept his eyes fixed outside the window and let out a long, disgusted sigh. The playful glint had vanished from his face, and Jinwoo’s smile had been completely wiped away. The sight before them was simply too gruesome and bleak.
Beyond the rusty chain-link fence on the right side of the road, corpses… horribly decayed corpses stretched across nearly an entire city block. They were piled high, filling the elevated roadway. Every single one had a crushed skull or was missing its head. These were all… dead zombies.
“My god…”
Jinwoo exhaled the breath he had been holding and blinked. He had passed dozens of zombie corpses on the way here, so the sight itself wasn’t unfamiliar. The problem was the scale. The long, towering mountain range of bodies could only be described as absolutely, overwhelmingly enormous.
The few hundred they had neatly stacked inside the on-ramp at Ttukseom Park seemed laughably small compared to this mountain of corpses.
“Did we… kill all of these? Did we really kill this many?”
The Sheriff’s eyes widened as he stared at the countless piles of bodies that were impossible to count.
“No… We never came this way.”
Jinwoo shook his head after dry-heaving a few times. As far as he remembered, they had never carried zombie corpses this far to stack them.
“Then what is this?”
“It must be all the zombies the soldiers defending the Konkuk University shelter killed throughout last summer. After they took care of every wave that came at them, they had to put the bodies somewhere…”
Even if they had only killed two hundred a day, that would be over six thousand corpses a month. Since they had to defend every side of the shelter, the actual number was probably even higher. At least six thousand… That was far more than a normal incinerator could handle even if run twenty-four hours a day. So they had no choice but to pile them up far from the shelter like this, recreating a horrific scene straight out of the Holocaust.
Clatter—! Thud—!
The heavy sound of bones rolling and falling somewhere within the corpse pile echoed.
“There was a place like this… We didn’t see it last time we came…”
The Sheriff frowned. Jinwoo, who still couldn’t tear his eyes away from the mountain of bodies, answered quietly.
“It was a rainy night back then… and we were already overwhelmed just clearing out the zombies inside the shelter.”
“Then… that means there’s another huge pile like this inside the shelter too. Ugh…”
The Sheriff shook his head as he looked toward the shelter two blocks away. Just thinking about the thousand-plus zombies they and the soldiers had killed together now rotting away inside that building sent chills down his spine. And that wasn’t all. There were surely similar—perhaps even larger—mountains of corpses around Jamsil and the other shelters as well.
“Hng—! Hng—!”
Samsuk-i, sitting in the back seat, shook his head and sneezed. The Sheriff quickly rolled up the window.
“Ah, yeah. Sorry. Fuck, that stench is brutal.”
Winter was almost here, yet swarms of flies buzzed over the corpses like they were under a summer streetlamp. The unbearable stench carried even this far. Four months of decay had only made the odor stronger and more toxic…
“Cough! This is no joke. Next summer’s gonna be even worse… Is the air even safe to breathe like this?”
The Sheriff muttered, covering his nose with his jacket sleeve. Jinwoo let out a dazed sigh.
“Doesn’t seem like it…”
The air was bad enough, but what looked even more horrifying were the countless rats scurrying busily between the corpses as if attending a feast. Every one of them was plump and dark gray. How far would those disease-ridden paws, mouths, and tails travel…?
“Did your unit stack zombie corpses like this too? Back in Samcheok?”
“We… just buried them. We’d dig with excavators and push them in with bulldozers… Of course, the ones we killed in town we just left where they were…”
Jinwoo answered. While talking in front of this absurd mountain of corpses, the two friends realized that there weren’t many days left where they could breathe freely in Seoul. If these bodies were left to rot until winter passed and the weather warmed again, a horrific plague like the Black Death would descend on them like an overdue loan.
“Let’s get out of here. No need to get depressed ahead of time. Isn’t there any music or something to lift the mood? What the hell? Why is there no Pink Punch CD in this car and nothing but trot music…? Was this some old man’s car…?”
The Sheriff had just turned on the CD changer and was checking the playlist when the walkie-talkie crackled again.
Chiiik…! Sheriff! Did you manage to avoid that swarm earlier? Chiiijik—!
It was Yubin. The Sheriff pressed the transmit button and deliberately spoke in a cheerful voice.
“Yeah! Of course! We jumped in the car and got out fast. We’re safe! Don’t worry! We’ll head over soon!”
Chiiiik…! Another big group just passed by here, so don’t come onto this road for about… ten minutes. And those bastards chiiik—! dropped quite a few in front of us. So when you walk over… be extra careful. Chiiiik…!
True to his worrywart nature, Yubin gave them detailed and meticulous information. The Sheriff asked,
“Are there a lot of zombies? How many?”
Chiiik…! They’re hidden between cars and the angle makes it hard to count exactly, but it looks like at least… thirty or more. Chiiiik…! Want me to radio again once they move somewhere else? Or should I throw a cigarette far away to lure them? Chiiiik…!
“No, no.”
Jinwoo leaned toward the passenger side, grabbed the walkie-talkie, and replied.
“That much is fine. Don’t worry, Yubin.”
Click—!
After ending the transmission, Jinwoo grabbed his K-2 rifle, got out of the car, and said,
“Switch seats, Sheriff. You drive now.”