Chapter 96: Reconstruction

Meeting each of the five pairs of eyes now fixed squarely on him, Junho kept talking.

“Centered on this elementary school, we need to build a defensive line by linking together the houses and buildings attached to it. Like this.”

At Junho’s glance, Junhyeok pulled out a tablet and set it on the table.

On it was a satellite map of Gahyeon-ri with an area roughly three hundred meters out from Gahyeon Elementary School marked in green.

“Excluding standalone houses, there are twenty-one villa and mansion buildings alone. And inside this area, there’s the National Agricultural Cooperative mart, a pharmacy, an auto shop, a repair garage, a hardware store, factories doing mold injection, furniture manufacturing, and press processing. There are also mechanical-equipment companies, building-equipment contractors, and electrical specialists. A computer shop. Even a gas station.”

“Good lord...”

His remarks made everyone stare with their mouths hanging open. He seemed to know this place as well as they did—if not better—and they had lived in Gahyeon-ri for decades.

“On top of that, there are six vacant lots or fields about the size of this schoolyard. And across the national highway, there’s a tennis court and a soccer field too. Do you understand what that means?”

Stunned and shaken, the survivor representatives could not immediately answer.

But the only woman there—the one who had not taken her eyes off Junho even once since he entered the principal’s office—carefully raised a hand and spoke.

“Um... doesn’t that mean we can make the things people need to actually live ourselves? And farm the empty land too?”

“That’s right. Sorry, but your name?”

“Jeong Seonmi. I’m a teacher at the kindergarten attached to this elementary school.”

“Yes, Ms. Jeong Seonmi. Anyway, what you just said is exactly it. In other words—”

Some were still plainly shocked. Others, like Kim Seokhwan, were looking down at the tablet screen, lost in thought.

Watching the survivor representatives react in their own different ways, Junho said it like a conclusion.

“Starting with the area marked on that map, you need to rebuild Gahyeon-ri.”

“Rebuild...?”

“Yes. First, please look at the map. Junhyeok.”

When Junhyeok set down two more tablets, Kim Seokhwan took one for himself while the other four split the remaining two.

“You’ll see several zones marked with red lines inside the green area.”

“Yeah, I see them. Huh? This is...”

Kim Seokhwan looked up, having caught on to something, and Junho gave him a nod.

“Yes. Those are all roads or alleys that connect back to this elementary school. And each red-marked stretch is about a hundred meters long in real distance.”

“Does that mean something?”

“Yes. It does. That’s roughly the distance at which zombies fail to recognize a person even when they see one.”

“What?”

“W-What do you mean by that...?”

As the survivor representatives reacted with open shock, Junho kept explaining.

“It varies a little from individual to individual, but usually it’s about a hundred to a hundred twenty meters. If someone makes a loud noise, or if the zombie first sees a person moving, that’s different. But if the person stays still and doesn’t move, a zombie won’t identify them first at that distance.”

“That’s really true?”

“Yes. It’s a confirmed fact.”

Even before regression, the fact that zombies would not attack a person first if that person was standing motionless a hundred to a hundred twenty meters away had become known surprisingly late.

Because realistically, in Korea, it was extremely rare for there to be no other people within a hundred-meter radius of where you lived.

Especially in both the Seoul metro area and the provinces, if you were in any place that qualified as even a small city, it was almost impossible.

Of course, survivors in rural areas figured it out relatively quickly, but by then communications had already collapsed and movement had become impossible.

That was why city survivors did not learn this until nearly half a year after the apocalypse began.

So at this point in time, only a tiny number of survivors living in very sparsely populated rural areas would have vaguely noticed it.

“Zombie eyes are grayish white, right? Maybe because of that, their vision is bad. They don’t barely move at night for no reason. Their hearing, on the other hand, is the same as when they were human. So you need to be careful about sound.”

“Ah...”

“Anyway, barriers need to be stacked along the red lines marked on the map. Shipping containers would be best, but realistically that’s hard, so cars or large furniture would work.”

“S-So then after that, you stack another set of barriers at roughly another hundred-meter interval?”

“Yes. Then they won’t be able to see people, and unless you make very loud noise, it’ll be hard for them to hear you too. Naturally, people living inside the double defensive line become safer. Of course...”

Junho’s face hardened a little as he looked over the survivor representatives.

“Alphas are different.”

“Alphas...?”

“Yes. The ones that turned into zombies first without even being bitten.”

“Ah...!”

They knew about that too, from broadcasts and NewTube videos before the power and communications had gone out.

People who turned into zombies after being infected by an airborne virus due to an unexplained genetic factor.

“Overseas they called them NOBIs or something like that, right?”

“Non Organic Bio Infestation. In the U.S., they called them NOBIs from the initials. Anyway, these Alphas are intelligent, and they know how to express emotions. Think of them as cunning predators. They can open doors, and they can climb walls. The most dangerous thing is that these Alphas can give orders to other zombies.”

“What!?”

“T-That’s insane...!”

Junho went on in a calm voice as the others stared in disbelief.

“When you watch animal documentaries, there’s usually a leader in a pack of wolves or lions, right? It’s almost the same idea. But the more people these zombie Alphas eat, the stronger they get, and the more zombies they can control.”

“Ah...”

The survivor representatives went pale.

Only now were they beginning to understand that what they had to fight and overcome to survive was not just some simple monster that ran straight at people and ate them alive.

“But a place like Gahyeon-ri has a small population, so the Alphas here haven’t eaten that many people. So even the number of zombies they control is only in the hundreds at most.”

Of course, Alphas that had survived for a long time in cities were a different story.

Junho had seen and experienced Alphas controlling two to three thousand before regression, though he had no idea what the real upper limit was.

But there was no need to worry about true monsters like that right now.

“Anyway, we killed a lot of those Alphas yesterday too. But you never know. So the barriers should have sharpened metal installed on them too—barbed wire, steel pipes, things like that. And they need to be at least thirteen to sixteen feet high.”

“Th-Then it’ll be safe?”

“Yes. And if you also post armed sentries at the second defensive line with guns or bows, it’ll be even safer. So—”

Tapping one of the red lines on the tablet Kim Seokhwan was looking at, Junho said it decisively.

“I know everyone’s tired, but the most important thing is to start this work immediately. Of course, first you survey who’s capable of working. Then while the defensive-line construction is underway, you go through the houses inside this zone one by one, find any survivors, and deal with the zombies trapped inside.”

“Ah...”

The survivor representatives looked flustered by Junho’s words.

But not one of them said they did not want to do it or that it could not be done.

Anyone who was not an idiot would understand that doing exactly what Junho said was the best—and realistically the only—way for them to survive safely.

“I want you to find out how many people survived in total. How many are capable of labor. And how many could fight zombies or people if they were properly equipped. Please investigate it right now and report it back. Tell Mr. Song Gijun here.”

At Junho’s words, Song Gijun—who had been wearing an open-face motorcycle helmet and a mask—lowered the mask and stepped forward.

“Nice to meet you all. I’m Song Gijun. I live over in The First Apartments, and just like all of you, I survived because Mr. Lee Junho helped me. After that, I went around our apartment complex and this middle section here clearing out a lot of zombies. Yesterday, I fought those country-house gangsters too. I look forward to working with you all.”

Since he was a fellow resident of Gahyeon-ri, and since he even gave them a respectful bow, the expressions on the survivor representatives’ faces brightened at least a little.

“For reference, Mr. Song Gijun is the representative of the survivors from The First Apartments. We’ll be clearing Edutown before long too, and he’ll be the representative there as well. The residents trust him, he’s the only one who’s fought alongside me, and we communicate well.”

At Junho’s words, Kim Seokhwan gave a small nod.

Having served as village head for over ten years, he immediately picked up on what Junho actually meant—that he regarded Song Gijun as the overall representative for all of Gahyeon-ri.

“I’m Kim Seokhwan. Maybe it’s because you’re young, but you’ve got spirit, and plenty of drive too. So then, have you lived here long?”

“Yes. I moved in as soon as the apartments were built, so it’s already been eight years. My kid was born here too.”

“Well then, you’re local. Good to meet you, good to meet you.”

“Did a lot of people survive in The First too? Oh, right—I run a pork-cutlet place in the Sang-dong shopping strip.”

“E-Excuse me.”

At that moment, the quiet Jeong Seonmi spoke up.

“Yes, Ms. Jeong Seonmi, did you want to say something?”

“It’s just... I was wondering whether the children are safe. There are quite a few kids who live in The First Apartments.”

Her words made the room turn solemn.

Partly because of the compassion in worrying about children in the middle of all this chaos, but also because in a world where even adults struggled to survive, it was hard to imagine children making it through.

But Junho and Song Gijun reacted differently.

“A lot of the kids are probably safe.”

“Huh? Yes, that’s right. Kids young enough to be in kindergarten or daycare are in better shape than adults, if anything.”

“What?”

“What do you mean by that...?”

It was the reaction Junho had expected. This was a rural area with an older population and not many children to begin with, and since it was school-break season, they would not have seen many kids around.

Junho immediately added an explanation.

“I didn’t explain that, did I? Zombies don’t see small children with underdeveloped intelligence as prey... or rather, they don’t see them as people.”

“What!?”

“Have you ever seen zombies eating animals like dogs or cats?”

“I don’t think I have.”

“Now that you mention it...”

“I haven’t seen it either.”

The representatives flinched at Junho’s question, then tilted their heads.

“Right. You won’t have. Zombies only attack humans. And among small children who haven’t even reached elementary-school age yet, they don’t recognize kids up to around five or six as human either.”

That was why Choi Jeongwoo—the man who had fled with his daughter Choi Jiwoo before regression—had ended up dying alone inside that tunnel.

“Kids die in large numbers because they don’t have guardians. Small children can’t survive on their own.”

“Ah...”

That was why, even if he could not say the same with certainty for the Kim siblings, Junho was confident Choi Jiwoo had not died on the spot or turned into a zombie there.

Of course, with her father dead, it would have been hard for such a small child to survive alone.

“There are some kids here too, right?”

“Yes! Including elementary schoolers, there are about twenty children here.”

At Jeong Seonmi’s answer, which seemed to carry a little more life now, Junho turned his head.

“What about The First Apartments? There are a fair number of kids like Daewoo there too, aren’t there?”

“That’s right. Just in our building alone, including our Daewoo, there are around five or six. If you count the other buildings too, it’s got to be over twenty.”

“Hm...”

Junho fell into thought for a moment, then quickly made a decision.

“The women and anyone fifty and older will mainly handle construction of the defensive line, while the men go house to house rescuing survivors first. Even if a child’s parents turned into zombies inside the house, if the kid is around five or six, there’s a chance they survived on their own by finding food.”

“Let’s do that. We need to save people first.”

“That’s right. And they’re children...”

Watching the representatives react like that, Junho felt inwardly satisfied.

They had not yet lost their humanity, and more importantly, not one of them was a villain.

Junho knew all too well how big a problem a single selfish villain could become in the apocalypse, and what kind of damage that one person could do to an entire group.

So—

‘Good thing I didn’t have to spill blood.’

Only now did Junho finally relax the hand he had kept resting near the handle of his machete, ready to send at least one person to the grave if things went south.

***

The survivors living at Gahyeon Elementary School and in the nearby villas in the middle section totaled 163 people.

There was a National Agricultural Cooperative mart, and because of the nature of the area, most homes had enough food on hand to last at least a couple of months.

So at least in terms of food, they had been able to survive without major problems.

Out of those 163, around 120 were capable of labor once the sick, the elderly, and the infirm were excluded.

There were quite a few people in their sixties, but most of them were just as sturdy as people in their fifties, and in no especially bad health either.

More than anything, they had tremendous willingness to work, so together with the women, they were assigned to defensive-line construction and to digging a water channel that would draw water from the stream running along the national highway.

And most of the men who were eighteen and older but still young enough to fall within reserve civil-defense age were mobilized into search-and-elimination teams.

Since it was winter, the clothes they wore were already thick, and once they wrapped scarves and torn strips of denim around their faces and armed them with weapons and protective gear made from things gathered at the hardware store, the repair garages, and the various factories inside the defensive perimeter—

then if they moved in five-man teams, they were more than capable of dealing with three or four zombies at a time.

More than anything, drones were constantly overhead keeping watch, and Junho and the people of Our Shelter had already taken out around eighty percent of the zombies in the middle section.

So the odds of being attacked by zombies out on the street had dropped sharply.

That was why, before entering houses or buildings, the search-and-elimination teams would first make loud noises to check whether zombies were inside.

Then they would go in with shields made of wood, reinforced plastic, or aluminum out front and kill the zombies that way.

And just as Junho had promised, based on what he had personally experienced before regression—that this method worked extremely well in rural areas—

in just three days they pulled off the feat of searching every house and building within a hundred-meter radius of the elementary school and rescuing around two hundred more survivors, who would also become laborers in the Gahyeon-ri reconstruction effort.

And during that time, Junho went back and forth between the shelter and Gahyeon Elementary School, occasionally joining in the zombie search-and-elimination work—

and little by little got used to his own body after it had taken that one step further.

Breaking eight seconds over one hundred meters, putting up a total of seven hundred kilograms across the big three lifts,

with grip strength at ninety kilograms and kicking power easily exceeding one ton—

at that point, whether he could still be called human anymore was open to debate.