Chapter 98: Headaches and Villains

The three of them had spent a little over ten minutes lying beneath the parking-lot wall, periodically sending up the mini drone to check the surrounding situation.

Once they finally judged it was safe, they left the spot.

“We seriously haven’t even made it as far as Meolmoe Intersection in almost a month....”

Meolmoe Intersection was about a hundred meters from Sosa Station,

and from the parking lot where the three of them had just been hiding, it was a little over three hundred meters in a straight line.

“At least we made it past the Administrative Welfare Center. Man, if it weren’t for the ones in the cars and out on the road... Why are there so many zombies outside here instead of inside the buildings?”

“I’m guessing they’re outer-zone NOBIs the Alpha sent out.”

At Choi Hyunwoo’s words, Han Areum—walking while constantly scanning the area—rounded her eyes.

“That many of them?”

“Yeah. My guess is it keeps about half in the building where it stays and rotates the other half outside.”

“Jesus Christ... why the hell is a zombie smart?”

“Junho hyung told us, remember? Said they’re like incredibly cunning, intelligent predators from animal documentaries—or worse. If that’s true, this level of thinking is just basic.”

“No, wait, there are actually animals that do stuff like that?”

“Yeah. I saw it in a documentary—wolves or hyenas send out scouts to watch and lure prey. If Alphas are like that, then it makes sense.”

“That’s what I think too. It sends some of them outside the building to watch for people, see if anybody’s moving around. Then if someone enters its territory, it attacks. They’re seriously smart.”

“Ugh....”

Han Areum took off her helmet for a second, roughly scratched at her short-cropped hair, sighed, then put the helmet back on and said,

“That’s probably why the military can’t get anywhere either, right?”

“Probably. They say the Alphas communicate with each other, don’t they? It’s already hard as hell just getting tanks this far. And even if they do make it, if the Alphas deliberately let them advance a few hundred meters and then a few of them mobilize every zombie and swarm them, there’s no answer to that.”

At that, Han Areum remembered the Busan Incident video from the PC in that house.

It was footage shot by someone living in a high-rise officetel along the roadside, showing a military unit passing along a road on the outskirts of Busan in several armored vehicles and military trucks.

It took only five minutes for the person filming to go from quietly cheering at the sight of the soldiers to breaking down in despair.

The unit, forced to move slowly because there were so many abandoned vehicles and wreckage left behind by helicopter strikes, had entered a dense urban zone packed with storefronts, mixed-use apartment towers, and officetels.

They did not even make it five hundred meters before zombies poured in from both sides of the road and wiped them out in five or six minutes.

The wall of fire from rifles and heavy weapons was undeniably devastating at first,

but it was bound to hit its limit against thousands of zombies closing in from every direction.

Eventually, gaps appeared.

And once one point broke, the whole line collapsed like dominoes.

Of course, the soldiers riding in armored vehicles rather than trucks were safe for the time being.

But once the roads were blocked, they were trapped with nowhere to go, and the longest anyone could hold out inside a vehicle was maybe three or four days.

That was how a force of seven to eight hundred men across roughly thirty vehicles had been literally—not figuratively—annihilated by zombies under the control of several Alphas.

“And there’s supposed to be at least one or two of those Alphas per thousand people. Even if a fair number of them have died by now, there’ve still gotta be, what, two to three hundred just in Bucheon? Even if you crank the happy delusions all the way up, it’s still at least a hundred.”

And each of those true monsters controlled at least dozens of zombies, sometimes hundreds.

Which meant that in Bucheon alone, at minimum twenty to thirty thousand zombies—and possibly well over a hundred thousand—were under Alpha control and hunting survivors.

Of course, they were still estimates.

But after reading Junho’s notes, the three of them believed that around ten percent of Bucheon’s population had become zombies under Alpha control.

“Still, thank God the Alphas aren’t always on good terms with each other. Man, Junho was right—they really are exactly like predators.”

Predators did not tolerate others entering their territory, not even their own kind, sometimes not even blood relatives.

Alphas were the same.

They even killed and ate other Alphas, then took over the zombies the loser had {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} controlled.

In other words, like social animals that formed packs,

they sometimes cooperated and fought together, but sometimes battled and killed one another.

That was what zombie Alphas were.

And because of that exact trait—

“So you think the Alphas are fighting a war in the stretch between Sosa Station and Bucheon Station?”

“Yeah. And with the survivors over there mixed into it too, it’s a total shitshow.”

The three of them thought they might actually have stumbled onto an unexpected opportunity.

“Damn. So that Bucheon MZ Family Crew or MZ Household Crew or whatever—those gangsters probably had it easy at Bucheon Station because of that, huh?”

“Probably. Anyway, let’s head home today. Starting tomorrow, let’s move into the building for a few days and keep watching with the drone. My guess is the Alpha bastards are going to make a move in a few days. What do you think, Coach?”

“Hm. I think so too. We should pack about a week’s worth of water and food from home and move into the building. That way we can watch all the way to the area around Sosa Station with the drone.”

The building Choi Hyunwoo and Kim Taeyoung were talking about was the Bucheon Integrated Urban Control Center, across the road from Bucheon Sports Complex.

It was a building at least twice as tall as the ordinary apartment blocks behind it, and at first the three of them had not even considered going there.

A building that size would normally have held at least several hundred zombies.

But while the Integrated Urban Control Center looked intact on the outside, it was actually unfinished.

Completion and occupancy had been scheduled for the second half of 2025, and because it was a government building, it had been empty during the holiday when the apocalypse hit.

After passing by it several times, the three of them had discovered that fact by chance, then entered the control center fully prepared.

After spending nearly an entire day scouting every floor where doors were open or could be opened, they confirmed that there was no one inside—no zombies, no people.

Since then, they had occasionally used the top floor and rooftop as a forward outpost or safe house.

“If it weren’t for the apartment complexes right next to it, honestly it’d be a great place to move into for good.”

“That’s the problem.”

It was the tallest place in the area, and since the building itself was empty, it was decent enough as a residence.

But the fatal flaw was that apartment complexes and houses stood only a few dozen meters away.

“Let’s bring the air rifle and the crossbow too.”

“Yeah.”

The three of them steeled themselves.

Some people might have called them idiots for wandering outside when they could just hunker down in a safe house.

But they desperately wanted to save their families—and the people precious to them, people who were family in all but blood.

Even Junho, someone who in one sense could have been just a passing connection, had left behind such enormous preparations for their survival.

So the three of them believed that doing nothing for their families would make them less than human.

***

“How far has the work gotten?”

“We’ve finished through Defensive Line Five. We’re planning to finish Six and Seven by tomorrow.”

That morning, five days after that discussion, Song Gijun answered Junho when he came to the elementary school.

Then Kim Seokhwan, the former village head of Gahyeon-ri, who had been going around with Song Gijun following Junho, added,

“We’ve finished searching most of the houses and buildings on the national-highway side. We rescued about fifty more people too. Just like you said, there were three kids whose parents were dead and who’d survived on their own.”

“Well done. How are the rescued people doing?”

“Don’t even ask. They hadn’t been eating right, hadn’t been sleeping properly... hell, one of the three was right on the verge of losing it.”

One of the common misconceptions people had from watching apocalypse movies, dramas, or comics was this:

that once the apocalypse began, food and physical health would be the biggest problems.

That was not wrong, exactly. Food, health, and energy really were among the most important things in the apocalypse.

But a problem just as serious—or even worse—was mental stability.

Even someone who normally enjoyed horror movies would start to break if they were forced to watch gore films, or videos and photos of real massacres, twenty-four hours a day for months.

So what if something worse than those videos was happening in real life, inside your house or right outside it?

What if, even when you tried not to look, you could not block out the sounds?

And what if you knew that at any moment, you yourself could end up in the same situation?

People slowly started going mad.

Then most of them simply broke.

There was a reason it was so common for survivors who had managed to stay alive for the first month or two after the apocalypse to end up taking their own lives.

“Take good care of them. Trying too hard to comfort them can backfire. Just make sure they go for a walk once or twice a day. It also helps to give them a calm dog or cat—one that’s used to being around people for a long time.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. And if possible, it’s best to have them take those walks near where the kids are playing or where people are doing things outside. Make it feel like the everyday life from before the zombie outbreak.”

Junho had not told them to rescue children only because of adult responsibility or human compassion.

A normal adult, when they saw children who had survived in a world like this, felt not only responsibility but hope.

Of course, there were still selfish people who did not care about anyone else, child or adult, and cared only about themselves.

But Junho intended to weed those people out one way or another, and nine times out of ten, when people lived around children and animals, the wounds in their minds slowly began to heal.

“Give it a month or two at most, and they’ll start asking first whether there’s something they can do.”

“Right, that’s how it should be. The world may be like this, but the people who are meant to live have to keep living.”

“Yes. Anyway, it’d be best to finish clearing the inside of the defensive lines before the New Year, so let’s hang in there just a little longer.”

“Oh, right. There’s only a few days left in this year too, isn’t there? Damn... it’s already almost 2025.”

“Seriously. Who could’ve imagined 2024 ending like this? The whole world fell apart....”

“Exactly. Whew....”

Song Gijun and Kim Seokhwan exchanged complicated looks.

To the two of them, Junho said calmly,

“Whatever else happens, we should still have rice-cake soup on New Year’s Day.”

“...!?”

“R-Rice-cake soup? Wait, where are we supposed to get rice cakes for that? We’re short on rice already, and where would we even get meat—”

“We have plenty of rice cakes.”

There were hundreds of kilograms of rice cakes vacuum-sealed, packed into airtight containers, and frozen.

“What...?”

“A hundred kilos of rice cakes should cover The First Apartments too, right? I’ll give you about forty kilos of beef as well. Eggs... we’re a little short on those. But I can still spare around two hundred. As for soy sauce and garlic, there should already be plenty here.”

There were already over twenty tons at Our Shelter alone, and once they hit the National Agricultural Cooperative warehouse in Yeongho-ri soon, rice would be overflowing.

Until the Gahyeon-ri survivors properly farmed and brought in a harvest next year, there would be no need to worry.

“W-Wait, you actually have all that?”

“I do.”

“Ha... hah....”

Kim Seokhwan let out an incredulous laugh.

Turning away from him, Junho said to Song Gijun,

“On New Year’s morning, bring the people from The First Apartments to Gahyeon Elementary too. There’s no real point anymore in dividing people into Sang-dong and Jung-dong and all that. And if possible, before spring...”

“You mean have them move over here, right? Leave only the people absolutely needed behind.”

At Song Gijun’s quick grasp of the situation, Junho nodded.

“Yes. Though first we need to clear Edutown.”

When Junho looked toward the direction of The First Apartments and the Edutown apartment complex, the eyes of the other two naturally followed his.

Now the only major group in Gahyeon-ri that did not belong to the community of shared fate Junho had designed was Gahyeon Hanbit Riverview Edutown Apartments.

If they could only absorb—or clean up—that last group, the one with the most headaches and villains—

“Once Edutown is dealt with... Gahyeon-ri will be completely secure.”

And Junho had already drawn up that final plan.

That was why he had built the safe house on the top floor of the Edutown apartment tower in the first place.

***

The New Year of 2025 arrived.

The members of Our Shelter and the people of the Gahyeon-ri community really did eat rice-cake soup with beef in it.

No one had even imagined they would be able to eat proper New Year’s rice-cake soup in a world like this, so the people of the community were deeply moved.

On top of that, Junho handed out clothes and daily necessities he had collected from ownerless houses around Gahyeon-ri, calling them New Year’s gifts.

The clothes had been thoroughly washed and even dry-cleaned in the shelter laundry room, and the everyday supplies still had a decent amount of shelf life left on them, so the residents were overjoyed.

At the same time, Song Gijun and Kim Seokhwan made sure people understood that all of this was thanks to Junho.

It was a kind of propaganda.

He had not only saved them from gangsters and zombies, taught them how to keep surviving, and carried it out together with them—

he had also gone so far as to recreate something like the atmosphere of the peaceful old days.

Most of the people were overwhelmingly grateful to Junho.

But there were irregulars everywhere.

“This land is mine! I’ve been using it as a vegetable patch for thirty years! How does it make sense for you to just take it!?”

“Come on, even if the world’s ended up like this, how can you just swallow up a perfectly good building? You still ought to pay rent!”

“If you want to use factory equipment, then you need to pay for it. Later, when the government—yeah!—or the police or soldiers come back, and the world gets back to normal, are you people going to take responsibility for this?”

Someone claiming ownership over the vacant lot where they were going to build greenhouses.

Someone demanding rent for an old building more than thirty years old.

And someone else saying they had to be paid to use factory machinery, despite not even having fuel to run it.

The apocalypse’s headaches and villains had finally started sticking their heads up.