Chapter 78: Farm Idol, Survival Idol (1)

“Most of the survivors in Peach Valley are elderly, right?”

“Th-that’s right. There are about thirty of us. Half are old folks over seventy, and in the other half, it’s mostly women and kids...”

“You idiot, Seokho...”

One of the men beside him ground the words out under his breath at the only one in the group who looked to be in his forties, the man called Seokho.

Apparently he did not like Seokho casually giving an outsider information about the Peach Valley survivors.

“Ah...”

Looking over the flustered Seokho and the other men from the youth association, Junho said,

“I already know what kind of place Peach Valley is. I’m not planning to raid it, so relax or don’t, that’s up to you. Anyway, if you head the opposite direction from where you came from, over there, you’ll find some water deer.”

“...What?”

The youth association men stared at him in confusion, and Junho went on evenly.

“This area gets large wild boars pretty often, the kind you can’t bring down with your air rifle. It’s dangerous.”

“Ah...”

“And you see that mountain over there?”

“That rocky one? If you go over that, it leads to Gahyeon-ri.”

From this side, the mountain behind the shelter apparently got called Rocky Mountain because of how unusually full of exposed stone it was.

“Yes. Never go over there. Gahyeon-ri is crawling with gangsters and delinquent punks right now. If you wander over the mountain and get caught, Yeongho 2-ri and Peach Valley could both end up in danger.”

“Y-you serious?”

“What would I gain by lying to you? That’s why my people and I never cross that mountain either. We only hunt around this area. If those bastards catch you, you’ll die. Men, women, kids, they kill first and ask questions never. And they take the women.”

Hearing that even this man—who looked like some kind of special-operations soldier and had just overwhelmed them—would not even consider crossing that mountain...

“Jesus... if we’d kept going, we really would’ve been screwed.”

“Man, thank you for telling us.”

The men of the Peach Valley Youth Association, who had come out hunting to feed meat to the families and neighbors they had managed to save, nodded with frightened faces.

Good. They won’t be coming into the safe zone anymore.

Putting on a sympathetic look, Junho asked,

“But do you really need meat that badly?”

“Whew... for us, whatever. But we can’t make the old folks and the kids live on greens alone.”

Probably their parents. Or their children.

“In that case, how about I give you some of what I caught? I took down two, but one is enough for us. We’ve already stocked up several over the last few days.”

“......!”

“R-really? You mean that?”

The eyes of the Peach Valley men went wide.

“Yeah. Hauling both of them back is work anyway. I’ll give you one. Come on.”

“Th-thank you! Seriously, thank you.”

“Thank you so much!”

The men who had looked miserable just moments ago scrambled to their feet with bright faces, bowing over and over.

Junho led the Peach Valley Youth Association men to the spot where the shelter turret had killed a water deer early that morning.

For his side, it was nice because it let them get rid of a wild-animal carcass they did not really need without any effort.

For the other men, it was nice because they got free meat.

A win-win.

What was more, the hunting ground Junho had just pointed them toward was along a route that other villagers from northeast of the shelter’s safe zone—including Yeongho 2-ri—might try to approach from.

If these men kept hunting water deer and other wild animals there regularly, and in the process also watched for outsiders or people from other villages and drove them off first—

That’s blowing your nose without lifting a finger.

Just as Gahyeon-ri and Hanaareum Nursing Home formed a layer on the shelter’s southern side, Peach Valley would now serve as one more defensive screen and early-warning device on the north.

***

“So Yangjin New Town turned into a complete disaster too?”

“Yes. A lot of people died. Or turned into zombies. And as you know, that place isn’t like Yeongho 2-ri.”

At Junho’s grave tone, the men all nodded repeatedly.

“That’s right. Tons of apartment complexes, tons of people.”

“And a lot of young people live there too, don’t they? Then the zombies there would all be fast, wouldn’t they?”

“Probably. For us, things were at least slightly better because it started near the village hall, so the elderly got bitten first...”

They said Yeongho 2-ri’s Alpha had been the owner of the old supermarket right next to the village hall.

And the mutation had finished inside the store early in the morning.

The problem was that it had happened during a holiday. The old folks, with nothing much to do, had been heading to the village hall from early morning, and almost every last one of them had stopped by the supermarket out of habit.

That was where the tragedy began.

At a time when they should have been running from zombies, plenty of elderly people had walked into the supermarket of their own accord and ended up dying or turning.

And the old people who worked and lived in the countryside were not frail or sickly.

In rural areas, people were so hearty that even those in their mid-sixties were still considered “young,” so once things started around the village hall and the supermarket, Yeongho 2-ri had been wrecked outright.

But Peach Valley, being in a more remote part of Yeongho 2-ri, had only seen the households near the entrance to the village get swept up in the initial wave.

And thanks to the efforts of youth association president Kim Yongcheol—the man in the green cap—and the other members, more than half the people had survived.

“That’s right. Which makes it even more dangerous.”

While Kim Yongcheol, president of the youth association, and Ju Seokho, the lone man in his forties, happily butchered the water deer by the side of a small stream,

Junho, after hearing about Yeongho 2-ri and Peach Valley, repaid them by passing along information he had observed through the PTZ cameras about Yangjin New Town and other areas as though he had experienced it firsthand.

“I see. Damn...”

“Nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to go.”

“Our village is already a mess, so of course it’d be even worse there. Anyway, thanks for telling us, Mr. Junho.”

“It’s nothing. I’m just telling you what I saw.”

Junho presented himself as someone who had barely survived on the outskirts of Yangjin New Town.

A man who had served somewhere a little unusual in the military, and who had spent years in a survival hobby group, so he knew a great deal about guns and survival even before everything went to hell.

He also said he was not alone—that he was staying with the owner of a local hardware store, the owner of a pharmacy, and a few other members of the same survival group, all of whom had escaped the chaos together.

“Our food situation’s decent enough too, but we were short on meat. And like you know, in times like this, if you don’t keep your protein up, you can’t keep your strength up.”

“That’s right. That’s why we came out too, to catch water deer or rabbits or something.”

“Exactly. So if you just work this area, you should be able to catch water deer pretty often. The roads are dangerous, so don’t travel on them. Just stick to the route I used to come here.”

Junho had brought them through a blind zone—an area difficult for the outpost PTZ cameras to monitor—and made it seem as though it were a route he and his people had blazed themselves.

Which meant the Peach Valley men would now keep moving through it, watching for wild animals like water deer and boars, as well as outside intruders, and dealing with them first.

If there were around thirty survivors in their village, they would have to go hunting at least once a week.

Maybe they would even post one or two men there every day to protect what they started thinking of as

their

territory.

“Thank you, truly. The whole world’s gone to hell, and who would’ve thought we’d meet a decent man like you out here.”

“It’s nothing. We all survived by the skin of our teeth. Even if people can’t help each other, at the very least we shouldn’t be living by killing one another.”

“That’s exactly right!”

“The young man’s right, a hundred times right.”

The Peach Valley men nodded over and over, looking at Junho with open warmth.

He had not killed them.

He had readily given them one whole precious water deer.

He had even told them about a hunting area they could keep using, and shared outside information about places like Yangjin New Town and Gahyeon-ri.

The Peach Valley men had gone beyond simply trusting Junho. At this point, they practically saw him as a benefactor.

“But by any chance, do you all know anything I don’t? I know a little about Yangjin New Town and Gahyeon-ri, but I’ve got no idea what happened anywhere else.”

“Anywhere else? Let’s see...”

After telling Ju Seokho to wrap up the butchered meat, Kim Yongcheol, the youth association president, walked over while shaking the water from his hands. Then he snapped his fingers.

“Ah! We’re not worried about rice, but are you folks short on it?”

“We are, kind of. Why, is there some?”

Even this side had it stacked by the ton in the cold-storage and ultra-cold-storage rooms, but the more food, the better.

“There is. There’s a National Agricultural Cooperative warehouse way over in a corner of Yeongho 1-ri.”

“A National Agricultural Cooperative warehouse?”

“Yep. And it was built earlier this year, so it’s not even on the maps yet. Anyway, there are dozens of tons of white rice and unpolished rice stored there. But we already have enough rice to last us three or four years, and the road over there looks way too dangerous, so we weren’t planning to go at all.”

“......!”

It sounded like he had just hit the jackpot.

Of course the shelter already had rice to spare, but that was for the shelter’s own people.

For Junho, who intended to bring all of Gahyeon-ri under the shelter’s influence,

it was absolutely necessary to secure enough grain to feed a population in the hundreds, maybe over a thousand, for one to two years until serious farming got underway.

That was why he had already identified several National Agricultural Cooperative warehouses around Namyangju that were marked on maps.

The problem was that they were all somewhat far away—twenty to thirty minutes by car.

“How long would it take to get there from here?”

“By car? Four or five minutes, maybe. But obviously nobody can drive now, so you’d have to walk. That’d take about thirty.”

Then if they drove from the shelter to Gahyeon-ri first and took the road in that direction, it would probably be around ten minutes.

Not doable right this second, but...

After cleaning out Gahyeon-ri, he might be able to make use of that newly built agricultural warehouse somehow.

“Thank you. Though it sounds difficult for now.”

“You’ve got time. What was it they called it? Some kind of new construction method or other. Supposed to keep the temperature under sixty-eight degrees even without electricity. It hasn’t been there long, so even people in Yeongho 1-ri don’t know much about it.”

“Got it. Then if you’ve packed up all the meat, should we head back?”

“Let’s do that.”

With faces far brighter than when they had first met him, the Peach Valley men started walking with the cut-up venison in hand.

Thirty minutes later,

they reached the place where they had first run into Junho, and thanked him again.

“Really, thank you for today.”

“It’s nothing. We aren’t exactly overflowing with supplies either, but if either side has something the other needs—or something extra—let’s barter.”

“Ah, that’s a good idea.”

“Not today, though. How about once every two weeks? Or once a month, same time, right here. We can trade things, and if you hear any news from Yeongho 1-ri or any other village, you can pass it on to me.”

“Let’s do that. Then how exactly...?”

“We’ve got a dog too. We send the dogs first to check each other out, then the people come in after.”

“That works. Though this rascal’s a mean one, so when he sees other dogs, he can get a little...”

“Our dog’s kind of like me. That one won’t be a problem.”

“I-is that so.”

Kim Yongcheol nodded as he looked at Ddol, who still could not meet Junho’s eyes properly and was hiding behind his owner.

“Well then, take this too. Call it fate.”

“Oh, come on, you didn’t have to.”

“Whoa? Isn’t this medicine and bandages? There are antibiotics in here too!”

“Thank you, seriously! Thank you.”

When Junho held out the emergency first-aid kit pouch he always carried, Kim Yongcheol and the other Peach Valley men were deeply grateful.

They agreed to meet again there in two weeks, then parted ways.

And just like that, Junho had succeeded in turning what might have become unwelcome intruders—or even hostile neighbors encroaching on the shelter’s safe zone—into friendly allies and unpaid volunteer sentries.

On top of that, he had learned the location of a National Agricultural Cooperative warehouse practically right next door.

With one water deer the shelter did not really need and one emergency kit out of the hundreds they had, he had made an excellent trade.

Wow... same as when you were reeling them in, boss. Honestly, if you’d become a con artist, you probably would’ve made it huge. Which is why even women—oh, shit.“What was that supposed to mean?”

Nothing at all.“You’re ridiculous. Anyway, what about the Park siblings? Still hidden?”

Yep. Those two dug themselves something like a little fighting pit under the rocks and are hiding really well. They seriously do seem like survival idols.“.......”

They did not have any truly extraordinary skills, but Park Deokcheol and Park Sunhee—the idol siblings—definitely seemed above average when it came to stamina, work sense, and sheer survival ability.

***

“Oh, really? Then are you going to keep dealing with those people from now on?”

“Dealing with them?”

Junho tilted his head at Park Deokcheol’s word.

“Ah, business. No, trade.”

“Oh. You mean

interacting

.”

“Yes, yes. That. Interacting.”

“We’ll see. But what does that have to do with you?”

“...N-nothing. Sorry.”

“Enough useless talk. Get the carrying frame on your back. We’ve still got work to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

Feeling awkward, Park Deokcheol quickly hoisted the A-frame pack loaded with concertina wire.

Junho turned his gaze to Park Sunhee.

“......!”

She had been stealing glances at him for a while now, and the second their eyes met, she startled like she had been caught. It made him wonder what that was about.

But Junho let it go and said,

“They say it might rain tomorrow afternoon or evening, so we need to get a lot done today. It’ll be rough. You can handle it, right?”

“Yes! I-I can do it! I’m a farm idol and a survival idol!”

“...Right.”

He had no idea what had gotten into her all of a sudden, but Yoon Youngsu had already passed along the contents of the conversation the Park siblings had had about Junho himself.

So Junho knew that while she was afraid of him, she was simply trying to prove her value by working hard, not trying to gain something from him in some other way.

But.

Junho had absolutely no idea that Yoon Youngsu had left out one

very small part

of that conversation.

I should give them meat for dinner tonight.

Completely unaware that, because of that omission, Park Sunhee now thought he was a Psyche Flare fan—and maybe even

her personal fan

—

Junho shifted the carrying frame onto his back and started walking, thinking that if they finished today’s fence work well, he ought to reward them with a special dinner.

And for some reason, the special meal he picked was marinated pork ribs—the Korean barbecue dish Park Sunhee happened to love most.