Chapter 72: As Cold as Ice

September 20, 2024, 7:40 p.m., Kangho Resort, Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do.

“Manager Park Cheolwoo says they’ve finished clearing out Spa Land too, sir.”

“Oh, really? Wow, they seriously worked hard. Tell Manager Park to come over quick. Ah—did anybody get hurt?”

“No. Other than the youngest one taking a fall and scraping his knee, everyone’s fine.”

“Come on, they should’ve been more careful... Anyway, tell them they all did a great job. No, scratch that. I’ll tell them myself when they get here. By the way...”

Kang Baekho, rough stubble covering his jaw from going several days without shaving, rose from his seat and walked over to the full resort map.

“So does that mean we’re done clearing everything now? No, wait. Parking Lots 6 and 7 are still left, right? And the futsal field?”

“Yes. Tomorrow Assistant Manager Kim and I will take the KW Cops employees and clear those.”

“Haa...”

Kang Baekho let out a long sigh.

After a little over a month, they had finally managed to clear almost the entire resort.

A lot of people had died.

And since they had killed everyone who turned into zombies too, what, several hundred?

No—maybe more than a thousand.

Just counting the dead.

That was what happened when the resort got flooded with guests over the Liberation Day holiday weekend, with the substitute holiday tacked on.

And yet Kang Baekho had survived.

In the end, he had pulled it off.

Of course, that was only because Park Cheolwoo and Yoon Seolhee—along with the other six secretaries-slash-bodyguards and the rest of the staff—had thrown everything they had into it.

“Leaving just the futsal field would feel unfinished, so we should clear it too, right? Anyway, how are the KW Cops guys doing? Are they listening?”

“After the assistant manager crushed their section chief and manager, they’ve been very obedient. In that sense, they’re straightforward people, so there’s nothing for you to worry about, sir.”

“Yeah. Still, if they start any bullshit, tell me. With the world like this, those bastards better know what time it is.”

“Yes, sir.”

Looking at Yoon Seolhee, whose face was worn out but whose eyes were more alive than ever, Kang Baekho spoke with sudden concern.

“By the way, Manager Seolhee, have you eaten? And how many hours did you sleep last night?”

“I ate this morning. I slept four hours.”

“No, come on, people need at least five or six hours minimum. Aren’t you tired? Go get some rest.”

“I’m fine. Compared to my active-duty days, this is nothing.”

“Ah, seriously... Hey, Youngmi.”

“Hm?”

Kim Youngmi, Kang Baekho’s girlfriend and a former member of a famous second-generation girl group, looked up.

“When you go check on the singer kids, take Manager Seolhee with you. If any of them start whining, Manager Seolhee will handle it. And while you’re there, Manager, take some time to rest with Youngmi.”

“No, I—”

“Perfect! If Manager Seolhee goes with me, all the rude ones will shut right up. Manager, there’s this junior called LD who talks way too much and acts weird, okay? I’ll tell you who he is, so please make him shut up.”

“I know him too. Rap Dragon.”

Why a rapper whose whole job was rap had picked a stage name that sounded like a research lab, she had no idea.

“Ah, right, he blew up on NewTube. Anyway, you’ll do it, right?”

“Yes.”

“Yes!”

Kim Youngmi grinned.

Even barefaced in the middle of the apocalypse, her beauty had barely dimmed.

Just before the apocalypse broke out, on Liberation Day, she had come to work a Kangho Resort garden party event, along with the singers, idol groups, and related staff. Then she ended up surviving while staying in one of the resort’s premium rooms as part vacation, part work.

Or rather, instead of “managing” them, what she was really doing was coaxing and handling the celebrity survivors on behalf of Kang Baekho—the owner of the resort and her boyfriend—so they would not start any stupid trouble.

“All right, then let’s do that. From now on, we’ll let the KW Cops staff use this building, and we’ll move to the main building management office.”

“Yes. That would be ideal, since it sits right in the middle between E Building, W Building, and S Building.”

“Yeah. Man... seriously, what the hell would we have done if we hadn’t installed solar panels on the resort roof? We’d have been completely fucked, right?”

“Yes. Even if we’d stretched the emergency generators as far as possible, we would only have lasted one or two months.”

“Seriously, thank God. And all of that too...”

“Was thanks to Lee Junho.”

It was true.

The one who had aggressively recommended the large-scale solar power system for Kangho Resort starting last year was Lee Junho.

The one who had suggested the resort install an indoor archery range and an air-rifle shooting range—saying bow and crossbow hands-on lessons were getting popular these days—was also Lee Junho.

And a few months before the world turned into this, the one who had suddenly drawn up a list of long-shelf-life foods like canned goods and dried pasta and suggested they do a massive bulk purchase together was, again, Lee Junho.

If they had not listened to him back then, Kangho Resort would definitely have ended up in serious trouble.

Of course, it was a large resort with three hundred rooms, so they always kept some amount of food, fuel, and other supplies on hand.

But if they had tried to take care of all hundred-plus survivors with just that, they would not have lasted even two months.

Because of Lee Junho, though, that window had stretched to well over half a year.

And with the bows from the archery range and the air rifles from the shooting range, killing zombies had also become far easier.

So not only Kang Baekho, but even Yoon Seolhee and Park Cheolwoo were about halfway convinced that Junho had helped them on purpose.

How he had known about something like this in advance and prepared for it was still a mystery.

But the important thing was simple: whatever the reason, Lee Junho had directly and indirectly helped them survive.

“Damn... my rude little brother Juno-Juno. While your big brother’s out here suffering like this, where the hell are you and what are you doing? Probably living way better than we are after preparing twice as hard, right?”

“Yes. If it’s Mr. Lee Junho, then probably so. He really was an unusual... no, a special person. I’m sure he’s doing well.”

“He better be. Your big brother’s out here busting his ass, huh? So at the very least, the little brother should be warm, fed, and living easy. Anyway, Juno-Juno, just wait until I see you. I’m seriously gonna... spoil the hell out of you.”

With a crooked grin, Kang Baekho sincerely prayed that Junho—the best choice he had ever made, even among all the instincts that had proven right for him so far—

was living comfortably and peacefully somewhere.

***

Slice.

“......!”

The punk whose neck had been pinned in the crook of an arm as thick as most women’s calves could not make a sound, even as the blade punched through his heart.

After quietly taking care of the three guys smoking behind the mansion and the one guarding the entrance,

Junho said, “I’m going in. From this point on, free fire. Anybody who comes out—kill them all.”

—Roger.

—Still nothing unusual around the perimeter. Hard to tell on the first and second floors because the lights are off, but there’s some light leaking through the curtain in the unit on the right side of the third floor. That’s probably where the punk boss is.

“......”

Most likely.

In a gang of school-thug punks like this, the only people who got to enjoy the perks of civilization would obviously be the ones at the very top.

Junho slipped silently into the first floor of the mansion.

It was an old-style building with two units per floor, six units in total.

Assuming each apartment had three rooms, there were probably at least five or six people in each one, maybe as many as ten.

Which meant, counting the ones who had joined today—

‘Forty to fifty. Maybe sixty...’

The third-floor unit where the top dogs lived probably did not have that many.

After all, if they were supposed to be the elite at the top of the alliance, there was no way ten of them were crammed into one place. That would kill the image.

Junho turned the round doorknob of the first-floor left unit, where faint music was leaking out.

As expected, it was unlocked.

He turned the knob soundlessly and pulled the door open.

“Huh...?”

The moment his eyes met the bastard who had apparently just stepped out of the bathroom right beside the entryway—

Thwack!

Junho split the man’s head in half with the machete.

Thud!

The punk, one eyeball burst open, collapsed to the floor, but with the music covering the sound, nobody inside seemed to react.

Starting with the bathroom, Junho began hunting his way through the small room first, then the middle room.

***

“Is he really doing this right? It’s way too quiet...”

Still aiming at the mansion with the modified air rifle fitted with a six-power thermal scope and laser rangefinding, Junhyeok muttered under his breath.

Beside the tripod-mounted rifle, the dim green glow of the HUD’s backlit display—linked to the shelter AI and feeding it range, wind, temperature, humidity, and elevation data for fire control—flickered faintly.

—Please adjust the shooter’s camera by five degrees. At the current angle, hit probability cannot exceed ninety percent.

“Yeah, yeah. Got it.”

At AI Akina’s matter-of-fact voice, Junhyeok lowered the camera mounted to his tactical helmet ever so slightly.

—Good. Fire control will continue.

“Right... huh?”

The moment the AI’s voice ended, a bright flash suddenly burst from one of the windows of the second-floor left unit.

Junhyeok immediately put the scope back on the mansion.

The window lit up for several seconds, then went dark again.

After maybe ten seconds, the window right next to it flashed five or six times in rapid bursts like a nightclub strobe.

Judging by the size of the window, it was probably the living room.

‘If it looks that bright even from here, then the guys inside...’

Sure enough, thanks to the tactical flashlight strobing five times a second,

Junhyeok could see the situation in the living room through the scope exactly as it was—his brother Junho and the men inside.

And in the span of barely ten seconds, he watched four people die in real time, their necks cut open or heads split apart.

“......”

Even watching it happen, it was hard to believe—a massacre so fast, so cold, and so brutally efficient that Junhyeok swallowed dryly without meaning to.

With the flashlight strobing nonstop, Junho’s attacks and the punks’ deaths looked even more grotesque and terrifying, like a sequence of still photographs being flipped through too fast.

—Kids are coming out of the other second-floor unit now. I think Unit 301 on the third floor picked up that something’s wrong too.

At Yoon Youngsu’s voice, watching the situation through the drone’s thermal camera hovering a hundred-plus meters above the mansion—

—Roger.

—Got it.

The brothers answered almost at the same time.

Junhyeok aimed through the stairwell window at the punks sprinting down from the third floor to the second.

—Wind and drop compensation. One click left. Raise aim three clicks. You are clear to fire.

The instant AI Akina finished speaking, Junhyeok pulled the trigger on the guy with the brown perm just as he rounded the middle of the stairs.

Pang...!

The report was sharply different from the air rifle he had used before—loud enough that anyone within a hundred meters would immediately notice it.

In about seven-tenths of a second, the round flew to the mansion, passed through the half-open window, and shattered the back of the brown-permed punk’s head.

Pang! Pang! Pang!

Junhyeok kept firing.

One round was slightly off and hit some bastard in the shoulder, but the other two struck face and lower neck. Those two were probably dead on the spot.

Only then did the punks on the third floor, men and women alike, realize bullets were coming through the windows, and panic exploded through them as they scrambled to hide.

But by then,

the black grim reaper who had already finished clearing the second floor had come up the stairs.

The ones crouching beneath the stairwell window died one after another to the machete and Commando dagger he swung and drove into them.

—There are five left in Unit 301, but it looks like they locked themselves in. Ignore them and go to 302.

At last, after killing all three of the ones who burst out of 301 and survived Junhyeok’s sniping, the black grim reaper stopped in front of Unit 302.

—302’s top dogs are running from the living room to lock the door right now! Go, go! Move it!

The moment Yoon Youngsu’s urgent voice ended, the reaper—drenched head to toe in blood over his black tactical combat gear—pulled Unit 302’s front door halfway open.

And the instant he came face-to-face with four EoktenZ leaders armed with kitchen knives, hatchets, and chains, the reaper casually dropped the flashbang in his left hand at their feet.

Pahng! Pahng! Pahng!

Junhyeok could not hear the sound from this distance, but through the scope, he saw bursts of light mixed with sparks and smoke explode three times in a row through the gap in the half-open front door.

Then, one second later, firing the tactical flashlight mounted in the center of his vest like a beam, Junho—black grim reaper incarnate—charged into Unit 302.

—Mr. Junhyeok, others are trying to come out.

—Roger that.

Absolutely certain that the EoktenZ leadership had been completely neutralized by the flashbang and tactical flashlight combo—

and that even if they had not, his brother, protected by stab-resistant armor and reinforced protective gear, could erase punks like that in seconds—

Junhyeok fixed his thermal scope on the apocalypse’s human refuse, not even worth calling human anymore, as they came stumbling out of the mansion one by one in terror, and pulled the trigger with the coldness of ice.