Welcome to Zombie World
The roars crashed over them from every direction. Gwaaaak—! Grwaaaaa—!
Zombies in ragged packs came sprinting forward, their grotesque forms flooding the entire field of vision.
Three beside the bridge pillar, two more wallowing in the filthy swimming pool, four on the promenade, three inside the park. There wasn’t a single safe angle. Every zombie in sight had its jaws stretched wide open, charging like rabid animals.
Any ordinary person would have collapsed on the spot, legs turned to jelly. Jinwoo and Chris, however, lowered their stance and advanced straight into the horde.
Thut-tut—! Tut-tut-tut—!
Chris, crouched low and sweeping left, was the first to open fire. Flame spat from his muzzle.
Thwack—! Thwack-thwack—!
Zombies that had been rushing forward with terrifying momentum toppled, skulls punched clean through. After dropping the two in the lead, Chris pivoted instantly and poured rounds into the next cluster.
Tut-tut-tuk—! Tut-tut-tuk—! Tut-tut-tut-tut-tut—!
His HK416 never stopped spitting 5.56mm NATO rounds. Each burst sent zombies crashing down, brains scattering across the ground.
Tang—! Tang-tang—! Ta-ta-ta—! Tang-tang—!
Jinwoo, responsible for the right flank, advanced at a measured pace, putting a single bullet through every oncoming skull. Just like always—one shot, one kill. He never missed.
Tang—! Tang—! Tut-tut-tu—! Tut-tut-tuk—!
While the two men pushed forward on opposite sides, triggers working without pause, the plaza rapidly filled with corpses. Chris’s marksmanship couldn’t match Jinwoo’s, but the former Delta operator’s accuracy and speed were still exceptional.
Tang—! Tang-tang—! Tang—!
Once Jinwoo had cleared his sector, he swung toward Chris’s left side and began providing covering fire. The helicopter’s rotor noise drowned out the wet sound of heads exploding, but the gruesome spray of green brain matter was impossible to miss.
“Clear!”
“This side’s clear too!”
Chris and Jinwoo had each sprinted roughly fifty meters in opposite directions. They signaled that their sectors were secure. Dozens of zombie bodies littered the tiled plaza where weeds had pushed up between the cracks. A few kilometers west, thousands more zombies were on the march, but the immediate area around the helicopter was now safe.
“I’ll take the rear,” Mingu said. He picked up the bag holding his machete and started down the stairs toward the Han River promenade. Five zombies that had been wandering the walkway charged him from both sides, yet his expression never changed.
Srrrng—!
While Mingu drew his blade to greet them, Sheriff and Yubin focused solely on hauling the gear out of the helicopter.
Thud—!
Sheriff set the heavy generator down with a grunt and called out in a half-hearted warning.
“Hey, old man! Don’t push it too hard! If you get hurt, we’re the ones who’ll have to deal with it!”
“Worry about yourself,” Mingu answered coldly. He raised the machete high overhead.
“That guy… always showing off,” Sheriff muttered, shaking his head as he dragged out another duffel. In truth, he wasn’t all that concerned. The swordsman handled threats like these without breaking a sweat. Besides, he carried the Philaxis Gene. Even if a zombie bit him, there was no risk of infection. He couldn’t pass on antibodies to others, but that was a separate issue.
Grwaaaaaak—!
Two zombies leaped at Mingu from opposite sides, trying to sandwich him. He regarded them with eyes colder than ice and twisted at the waist like lightning.
Crack—!
The moment the machete buried itself in the right-hand zombie’s skull and snapped its head backward, Mingu’s left arm was already reaching behind him. He drew the kukri from its sheath in one smooth motion.
Slice—!
His left hand carved a silver arc. The left-hand zombie’s throat opened wide and its head lolled sideways. Mingu ripped the machete free, spun, and finished severing the dangling head from the first corpse.
Thump—!
The two headless bodies crumpled and rolled down the stairs. Three more zombies immediately took their place, leaping upward.
Crack—! Crack—! Crunch—!
Mingu danced through them with quick footwork, both blades flashing. While he carved through their skulls, Yubin and Sheriff hurried to unload the rest of the supplies—construction tools, the small generator, the icebox. There was a lot of gear, and most of it was bulky.
“We’re good! Thanks, Paul!”
After dragging out the final duffel with Sheriff, Yubin gave the old man a quick hug, then snatched up the Growler and dashed away. They were deeply grateful to the white-haired foreigner; without him, moving this freely would have been impossible.
Weeeeeng—! Weeeeeng—!
Once far enough from the helicopter, Yubin raised the Growler overhead and swung it in a wide arc. The high-performance microphone, designed solely to collect and analyze zombie roars, calculated the probable size and direction of nearby hordes.
“Ninety-six percent chance of more than a thousand concentrated at nine o’clock,” Yubin read from the monitor.
Jinwoo, still aiming forward, gave a small nod. “That’s what Sheriff was worried about earlier.”
“And seventy percent at twelve o’clock. That group’s under a hundred. No need to double-check the three hundred at two o’clock we saw before!”
The closer and larger the group, the higher the probability reading. A seventy-percent reading on a horde of only a hundred meant they were fairly near.
“They seem to be gathering around that oval building… In that case, we might as well clear it out today. What about the floating café?”
Jinwoo murmured, pointing behind them at the ship-shaped floating structure anchored on the river. The third floor, once home to a restaurant and tearoom, would serve as the negotiation site for the upcoming trade.
“The reading isn’t very high. Looks like ten at most,” Yubin answered after checking the monitor. That was a number they could handle easily. Jinwoo turned to Chris and pointed at the floating café with his left index finger.
“Chris, light bridge! C4!”
It was a request to blow the right-hand bridge connecting the café to the riverbank. After saying only a few words and miming an explosion with his hands, Jinwoo saw that Chris had already understood. The American was already sprinting down the stairs.
“I’ll cover!”
Jinwoo followed to provide overwatch. The steps were littered with the decapitated corpses Mingu had left behind. Mingu himself had traded places with them, heading back up to cover the helicopter. Chris pulled plastic explosive from his pack and began attaching it to the bridge’s connection points with the concrete. He looked up with a serious expression.
“Are you sure it’s the right place, bro? That building doesn’t look like a solid fortress!”
He jerked his chin toward the floating café. His face asked whether the structure was truly safe enough to stay in for a full week while fighting off countless zombies.
“Ah…”
Jinwoo opened his mouth halfway and lifted a hand, then stopped.
It’s fine, Chris. Don’t worry. If we block the two bridges leading to the entrance, zombies can’t rush in. Since it floats on the water, we barely have to watch the other directions. There’s a convenience store inside, so food won’t be a problem. And if things really go south, we can escape onto the Han River using one of the tethered duck boats. Yubin chose this place for a reason.
He wanted to say all of that. But the explanation was too complicated. Instead, Jinwoo pointed at the café’s remaining bridge and the river behind it, then gave a thumbs-up.
“Yes! Okay! Good! Good! Safe!”
When Jinwoo responded with such confidence, Chris stopped arguing. He finished connecting the detonator and stepped back.
Boom—! Boom-boom—!
The instant the detonator was triggered, the end of the temporary pontoon fixed to the riverbank shattered. The right-hand bridge of the floating café lifted into the air for a brief moment before plunging into the Han River.
Splash—! Glug-glug-glug—!
The wreckage sank slowly, releasing streams of bubbles. Now the only remaining connection between the café and the shore was the left-hand pontoon.
“Good! Good!”
Jinwoo patted Chris on the shoulder in praise. The demolition had been clean, with surprisingly little noise and exactly the amount of destruction they needed. Former Delta operators really were on another level.
Gwaaaaa—!
Zombies that had been wandering inside the café sensed the explosion’s heat and came rushing out, roaring madly.
Crash—!
The first to appear was a zombie that smashed through a third-floor window and leaped out.
Bang—!
Jinwoo put a single round through its head before its feet even touched the ground, then swung his muzzle toward the café entrance. Thinly dressed summer zombies were pouring out of both doors at full sprint.
Tang—! Tang-tang—! Tang—! Tang—!
Jinwoo shifted his aim rapidly, pulling the trigger without pause. Every time his K-2 roared, another corpse collapsed onto the café’s deck, brains splattered across the planks.
Bang—!
The final shot drilled through the forehead of a zombie bursting from the convenience store. Phase one of securing the floating café was complete. It had been so clean that Chris’s covering fire hadn’t even been necessary.
“They’re coming from two o’clock! The helicopter has to lift off! Chris! Leave now!” Yubin shouted from lookout.
A splinter group had broken off from the main zombie column marching in the opposite direction and was now sprinting toward them. There were only about twenty, but engaging them would draw the attention of the thousand-strong horde behind them. They needed to disappear before the larger force arrived.
“Good luck, bro! See you next Friday!”
Having completed his mission, Chris bumped fists with Jinwoo, gave him a quick hug, and said his goodbyes.
“Roger that! See you, bro!”
Jinwoo nodded in return. After repeating the exchange for three months, the short English phrases now rolled off his tongue as naturally as if he had grown up in California.
Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump—!
The helicopter that had been waiting behind them loaded Chris and lifted off once more with a thunderous roar.
“Wow, our Jinwoo’s turned into a full-blown American. Got brothers everywhere…” Sheriff walked over, clapped Jinwoo on the shoulder, and grinned.
“Let’s move too, bro!”
Whiiiish—!
A cold late-autumn wind, thick with the stench of zombies, swept across their faces.
“Hup!”
Carrying a massive duffel and his sledgehammer in one hand, Sheriff hoisted the eighty-kilogram generator onto his shoulder without so much as a wobble.
“Hey! Let’s carry that together, Sheriff! It’s too heavy!”
“Nah, I’m good! You just grab the ice machine.”
Sheriff hurried down the stairs toward the riverbank as if the weight were nothing. Mingu spoke to a worried-looking Yubin.
“No need to worry. Just look at those shoulders.”
He jerked his chin toward Sheriff’s broad, inverted-triangle back, then picked up two large duffels himself to lighten Yubin’s load.
Tat-tat-tat—!
They sprinted forward, each carrying heavy gear, with Jinwoo providing cover.
Srrrng—!
Mingu set his bags down on the café deck, drew his machete, and strode across the remaining pontoon.
“Where are you going, Mingu hyung?” Yubin asked.
Mingu stopped on the deck and pointed inside the building.
“You’ve worked hard. I’ll take a look around first. Catch your breath.”
Though the words sounded arrogant, he was volunteering to handle the dangerous interior sweep himself. Closed rooms, storage closets, bathrooms—despite Jinwoo having cleared out one group moments ago, the chance of hidden zombies was still high.
“Fuck, haven’t seen them in a while and they look even more disgusting,” Sheriff grumbled, dragging zombie corpses to one side of the deck. Yubin silently agreed.
No matter how many Kevlar gloves they wore, handling corpses—especially ones that had been rotting in bizarre shapes for months—was never pleasant. And having dozens of them to deal with made it even worse.
Still, if they didn’t clear the bodies, they would be living among them for the next several days. At the very least, they needed to move the corpses so no one would trip over them.
“Yubin, should we just… throw these into the Han River? Doesn’t feel right, though. They’ll just float around nearby, won’t they?”
Sheriff asked with a troubled expression as he dragged a zombie by the leg toward the edge of the deck. The purpose of clearing the corpses was to erase traces of their movement. A pile of bodies floating nearby would only draw unwanted attention.
“Maybe they’ll drift all the way to the sea off Incheon?”
Yubin set down the corpse he was carrying, wiped sweat from his forehead with his forearm, and gazed west along the river. The Han was a massive waterway that ultimately emptied into the West Sea. In theory, anything dumped here should flow smoothly out to Incheon. And once the bodies reached the ocean, dozens of corpses would vanish like dust in an instant.
“Seeing that one still floating here, I doubt it’ll be that easy,” Jinwoo said. He pointed with his chin at the jet ski bobbing near the duck-boat dock. It was the same broken watercraft he had ridden on the day he found his friends being beaten at Jabeolle.
Thud—!
Each time the jet ski bumped against the duck boat in the current, it made a small noise. The mooring line must have gotten tangled somewhere.
Crash—! Crunch—!
The sound of a violent struggle erupted from the second floor inside the café building. Yet none of them showed any concern for Mingu. They all knew exactly how strong and fast he was in close quarters.
“Then maybe we should tie something heavy to them and sink the whole bunch at once…”
Yubin glanced toward the noise, then turned back to the pile of corpses and muttered something that sounded like it belonged to a yakuza. He used to be such an innocent kid, too…