Chapter 107: The Demon That Slaughters Beasts

“T-this is it. The one in here is the last one.”

“...”

Junho stared for a moment at the Alpha that had been thrown carelessly onto the sofa inside the karaoke room, its body bound in chains.

Grrhk! Kkh!

The moment it saw a living human, it rolled its grayish-white eyes and thrashed violently.

But its arms and legs were wrapped in chains, and blue duct tape had been wound tightly around everything below its nose, so it posed no real threat.

Junho studied the third Alpha the Kookje faction had kept here.

'This one wasn’t starved either.'

They were infected with a virus, but zombies were still living organisms, and living organisms had to eat.

That meant they were not beings exempt from the law of conservation of energy or the law of entropy.

Zombies maintained body heat too, just at a temperature nearly ten degrees lower than a human’s, and to do that they usually stayed still inside buildings or huddled together.

In other words, if they went too long without eating and couldn’t replenish their energy, they weakened too.

“Hey. Gang boss.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

Junho spoke coldly to the cringing Son Jeguk.

“You said the first two were captured about two months ago. Then what about this one?”

“Th-that one... this one’s been here a month.”

“A month? You sure?”

“Y-yes...”

Faced with a human more monstrous than the zombies, Son Jeguk kept nervously nodding, wondering if he had made some mistake.

Swish. Thunk!

Junho drove the commando dagger into the last Alpha’s crown, then turned to glare at Son Jeguk, who flinched in shock.

“Come with me for now.”

“Y-yes! Right away!”

At Junho’s words, Son Jeguk swallowed dryly and hurried after him while Junho wiped the blood off the blade.

When they stepped back outside, the women he had rescued had done exactly as instructed: they had shut the elevator-shaft door, then rolled a car from the parking garage in front of it to block it off.

That way, even if the zombies attacking Cheongsan Building took the eighth floor, they would not be able to get down here.

“If you’re done, let’s go.”

“Oh! Y-yes.”

“B-but where to?”

Junho turned his head toward Son Jeguk.

“You’re guiding me.”

“Yessir.”

Son Jeguk’s hands were still tied behind his back with cable ties, but his legs were free, so he moved quickly.

An Juntae, on the other hand, still had his ankles tied, so Junho detached him from the pipe, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and dragged him along the floor.

“Mmph! Ngh—!”

Even with the heavy backpack slung over him, Junho dragged the fairly large An Juntae one-handed with monstrous strength.

Watching that, Son Jeguk renewed his vow never to cross this man’s temper and led him to the parking-garage machine room.

“Th-this way.”

Inside the dark machine room was another small door marked in glow-in-the-dark paint.

Right before entering, Junho lowered the night-vision goggles attached to his helmet, then suddenly pulled a drawing knife from his tactical belt.

“Hhk—?”

Ignoring Son Jeguk’s startled gasp, Junho threw the knife in the direction he had just pointed.

Thunk!

The drawing knife destroyed the CCTV camera mounted on the ceiling. Then Junho turned back to Son Jeguk.

“Lead.”

Even more terrified by that ghostlike knife throw, Son Jeguk spun around, fumbled the door open, and went into the narrow black concrete passageway.

***

Creak. Whirrr...

A mini drone flew through the slightly opened steel door.

Once he confirmed the outside was safe, Junho stuck the Glock 17 out through the doorway just enough to fire and destroy both CCTV cameras.

That was the reason he hadn’t used this secret passage when entering Cheongsan Building in the first place.

Whether he destroyed them up close or sniped them from a distance, the moment the CCTV went dead, the gangsters would have immediately camped out in the machine room or basement parking garage and waited for the intruder.

Only after that did Junho throw the steel door open all the way and drag An Juntae outside again.

Whoooosh!

The concrete passage had been chilly from the cold air, but outside was far worse, with a cutting wind howling through.

This place was a junkyard at the foot of a low mountain, barely about 120 meters behind Cheongsan Building.

Most likely this junkyard was one of Park Ilho’s businesses too.

If there had ever been a crackdown on the illegal prostitution business inside Cheongsan Building, he had probably used the secret route they had just taken to get customers out through here.

“S-so cold...”

The women came out of the steel door one by one, shivering.

They had thrown on the dead gangsters’ clothes as best they could, but the wind coming off the mountain was brutal.

“Ugh...”

And among them, one woman in particular—barefoot, with only a padded coat on and her legs exposed from mid-thigh down—turned blue almost instantly and started trembling violently.

Creeeak. Clack.

“Hey. Gang boss.”

“Y-yes!”

At Junho’s call, Son Jeguk, who had just shut the steel door, hurried over.

The women recoiled in fear and stepped backward.

For them, after being dragged into Cheongsan Building and forced to spend hellish days as the gangsters’ playthings, Boss Son Jeguk himself was an object of terror.

“Take off your shoes and your pants.”

“...What?”

“Shoes. Pants. Take them off.”

“I-I’m taking them off! I am!”

The moment Junho touched the Glock 17, Son Jeguk nearly jumped out of his skin and hurriedly pulled off his brown boots and undid his belt.

“Ugh...”

Even with black thermal underwear on beneath his pants, Son Jeguk was shaking in the cold.

Junho looked at the woman with the exposed thighs.

“Want the thermals too?”

“E-excuse me?”

“The thermals. They look warm.”

“...!?”

The woman’s eyes widened at Son Jeguk’s horrified stare, but she shook her head.

“N-no. The pants alone should be enough. Thank you.”

After bowing her head, she put on Son Jeguk’s pants and boots.

Then Junho looked at the thug who couldn’t even act his age or size and was twisting his legs like a squid from the cold.

“...!”

Seeing Junho’s icy gaze, Son Jeguk flinched and immediately straightened up.

The cold in Junho’s eyes frightened him more than the cold carried on the mountain wind.

“...Did you know?”

After silently staring at him for a while, Junho spoke in a low voice.

“E-excuse me? Know what?”

Son Jeguk swallowed.

“That zombies lose their strength if they go hungry long enough.”

“Uh... do they?”

“They do. An average grown man needs at least around 1,500 kilocalories a day. Zombies need about half that. Because most of the time they hole up somewhere and don’t move an inch.”

“...”

“They conserve stamina and energy by instinct... for those few minutes, or few dozen minutes, when they discover prey and sprint at full power to attack it. But even so, if they go too long without eating, they can’t use their strength well.”

“Ah...”

“So say a zombie catches prey—meaning one full-grown adult human. Assuming the victim doesn’t turn into one of them, fifty zombies can last three or four days on one human body.”

“I... see.”

Setting aside whether it sounded believable, Son Jeguk had no idea why Junho was telling him any of this, and he nodded awkwardly.

“But that’s for ordinary zombies and things like that. Alpha—meaning the special zombie you people captured—is different.”

“...!?”

Not only Son Jeguk, but An Juntae too, sitting on the ground and glaring up at Junho, opened his eyes wide.

“An Alpha can think on the level of an intelligent predator, and it can issue orders to other zombies. That’s different. It has to eat three or four times as much as an ordinary zombie every day. It might hold out for three or four days, sure, but if it goes hungry for more than a week, it weakens. And when I say it weakens...”

At last Junho’s gaze shifted past Son Jeguk—whose face had gone deathly pale, as if he had finally realized something—and landed on An Juntae, who was staring up at him with bulging eyes.

“It means the number of zombies under its control starts dropping. From three hundred to two hundred. From two hundred to one hundred. And when the Alpha keeps eating people, the number it controls rises instead. From ten to twenty. Twenty to thirty...”

Step. Step. Step.

Walking slowly toward the two gangsters, Junho went on.

“And if that keeps up, it might eventually become strong enough to control the zombies you people stuffed into the first and second floors of that building as living landmines.”

Shhk.

“Hhk!”

The moment the commando dagger appeared in Junho’s hand, Son Jeguk went rigid with terror.

But instead of swinging it at him, Junho turned his head slightly.

“Were any of you brought here with family? Friends? People you knew?”

“...!?”

The women, their faces already pale from the horrifying explanation they had just heard, jolted.

“The people you were brought in with—do you know where they are? Have you seen them?”

The women looked back and forth between Junho’s impassive face as he asked the question and Son Jeguk, who was sweating in the cold.

They understood what he meant immediately.

“Ah... ah...”

“M-my dad. Mom...”

Two of the women’s faces drained of color, and they collapsed where they stood.

They understood.

The people they had loved, the ones captured alongside them by the Kookje faction, had been “provided” as food for the zombies.

While they themselves were spending hellish days as the gangsters’ playthings, the people they loved had been turned into meat and eaten.

“Hhk... hhhk...”

“Ggh... ngh...”

“Stop crying and get up.”

To the two women who were sobbing into their hands to keep from making noise, Junho spoke firmly.

Even while crying, they staggered to their feet just as he said. Watching them, Junho pointed toward one side of the junkyard.

“There’s plenty here you can use as weapons. Grab whatever you want. And then with that—”

His cold gaze turned back to Son Jeguk.

“Deal with this animal yourselves.”

The death sentence had been passed.

“Ugh... ahhh—”

Just as Son Jeguk, whose legs were free, tried to run—

Whish! Thunk!

A drawing knife flew in the blink of an eye and punched through his thigh.

“Aaaaagh!”

Thud!

The knife buried to the hilt in his calf, and Son Jeguk toppled over screaming.

“Gghhh... ngh!”

A filthy rag was shoved into Son Jeguk’s mouth.

With both hands tied behind his back, he could not even pull the knife out, and sprawled on the dirty ground, he started making muffled noises and crawling like an animal.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Toward that animal walked the two women, bloodshot-eyed, their faces twisted into something demonic, carrying a rusted kitchen knife and a shard of broken glass.

***

Junho held out in the back of the junkyard until sunset. Once darkness had fully settled, he headed for Jaeseong Building with the women.

The zombies that had reduced Cheongsan Building to ruins in barely thirty minutes had all returned to where they had originally been.

Wearing night vision, Junho followed Akina’s guidance from drone reconnaissance and brought the women safely to Jaeseong Building.

“Oh my God, what do we do? What do we do?”

“Hey, quit freaking out and get them some clothes and some hot water. Bring medicine too.”

At Lee Wonoh’s words, the women who worked for him hurried into motion and began taking care of the rescued women, whose faces had turned blue from the cold.

“You probably saw it yourselves, but the Kookje faction is gone now.”

“Y-yes. We saw it. Saw it real clear.”

From the rooftop, Lee Wonoh had watched with his own eyes as a horde roughly twice the size of the one that had swarmed his building completely wiped out Cheongsan Building. He swallowed dryly.

“Still, just in case, keep staying here for the time being.”

“Understood. Th-then, Mr. Junho...”

“I still have something to take care of, so I need to go.”

“Ah...”

Lee Wonoh’s expression shifted into something oddly mixed—relieved and disappointed at the same time.

“And the radio.”

“Oh, right. Yes.”

Lee Wonoh hurriedly held out the radio Junho had given him earlier that day.

“Keep it. I’ll probably come around this way from time to time.”

“Oh! Really?”

Junho nodded at the man’s instantly brightening face.

“When I contact you again, it’ll be because I want to make another deal with you and the people here, like today. If you accept my proposal, I’ll give you something in return, just like today. Do you understand?”

“Of course. Just call and I’m there. Hell, not just me—my people are huge Lee Junho fans now. Seyeong especially really wants to have a nice little— ahem!”

“...Yes?”

“S-Seyeong said she really enjoyed what she got earlier. Said the medicine worked great too. Heh...”

Lee Wonoh laughed awkwardly, then quickly changed the subject.

“Anyway, you’re leaving right now?”

“Yes. There’s something urgent I need to deal with.”

Junho thought of his younger brother Junhyeok, still at the Edutown apartment safe house.

The search-and-kill team led by Song Gijun had successfully beaten back the Edutown looters without losing a single person.

But there had been a problem with Junhyeok, who had been planning to take care of the ones fleeing back into Edutown.

More precisely, Junhyeok and the A1 drone supporting him had not eliminated the routed survivors.

An Alpha that had appeared out of nowhere—and the zombies under its command—had taken care of both the Edutown men and the gangsters instead.

Fortunately, it had not spotted Junhyeok on the rooftop.

But more than a thousand zombies, including the Alpha, the ones under its command, and ordinary infected too, had completely occupied the area.

Which meant Junhyeok still could not leave the apartment and was stuck waiting inside the safe house.

“And there’s still one animal left too...”

An Juntae had been trussed up tight with multiple cable ties and dumped deep inside the junkyard.

He was the same kind of animal as Son Jeguk, who had died brutally at the women’s hands—but An Juntae still had immediate use value, so Junho had kept him alive for now.

Of course, both shoulders had been dislocated and his Achilles tendons had been cut, so moving on his own was nearly impossible.

“An animal?”

“It’s nothing. Ah, and take this.”

Junho handed Lee Wonoh several of the weapons and pieces of gear he had recovered from the gangsters.

“The crossbows shouldn’t be too hard to use. They’ve got scopes too, so they’ll be easier to aim. As for the stab vests...”

Lee Wonoh’s mouth fell open after receiving two crossbows, around a hundred bolts, three stab vests, and even a fairly decent pair of binoculars.

The shelter did not particularly need any of it, but for these people, they were valuable items that would drastically improve their odds of survival.

Which was why—

“Thank you. Seriously, thank you, Mr. Junho.”

“It’s nothing.”

Junho had only given them things he had literally “picked up on the way.”

But the way Lee Wonoh looked at him, his eyes shone like those of a fanatic staring at the leader of a cult.