Chapter 110: Finale (3)

Click.

After removing the magazine from the Chinese-made pistol and checking the chamber as well, Junho tossed it to Song Gijun.

“Ugh... ngh!”

Then he walked over to Park Ilho, who was sprawled on the floor, hauled him up by the collar, and dragged him away.

“Aaagh!”

The knife was still buried in his arm, so Park Ilho screamed.

But Junho paid it no mind and kept dragging him until he reached where Song Gijun was standing. Only then did he pull the knife out.

“Gaaah...!”

As Park Ilho squealed like a pig, Junho slapped him across the face.

Smack! Smack-smack! Crack!

“Ghk! Kgh! Ugh....”

Only after his head had snapped back and forth several times and blood and multiple teeth had flown from his mouth did Park Ilho finally go quiet.

Only then did Junho throw him down at Song Gijun’s feet before returning to the corner where he had been standing and folding his arms.

“......”

The Edutown residents fell silent after witnessing Junho’s ruthless, brutal violence from right up close.

The reality of Park Ilho—the object of terror who had oppressed them so cruelly—being treated like a dog or pig overnight was hard for them to believe.

“Look.”

Holding up the Chinese-made pistol Junho had thrown to him, Song Gijun spoke.

“This man conspired with gangsters to attack the First Apartments. And you all went along with it.”

“......!”

Quite a few people flinched.

They probably wanted to deny it.

But the moment they saw Junho’s expressionless face, all they could do was swallow hard and bow their heads.

“I will now deliver judgment. Park Ilho, death.”

“......!!!”

“Eek!?”

Every resident’s eyes went wide, and just as Park Ilho—wriggling on the floor like a bug—let out a shrill groan and lifted his head,

Song Gijun raised the air rifle slung over his shoulder, aimed it at Park Ilho, and pulled the trigger.

Pahng! Thunk!

Struck in the forehead by a tungsten round, Park Ilho snapped backward and fell.

“Aaah...!”

“Hhk!”

At Park Ilho’s death, several people screamed and lurched to their feet.

But those people, who appeared to be members of his family, could not move any farther.

The search-and-kill team had leveled their air rifles at them all at once.

Looking at them, Song Gijun said in a voice laced with suppressed fury,

“What? When you were trying to kill other people and take what they had, you never thought something like this might happen?”

“......!”

“The same goes for the rest of you.”

Song Gijun looked around at the terrified residents and continued.

“You were threatened? You had no choice? Cut the bullshit. Why? Because we from the First Apartments didn’t come storming in here. And the people living in Jung-dong in Gahyeon-ri didn’t come storming into either your place or ours.”

Someone might have felt wronged by that. Someone might even have thought it sophistry.

But this was an apocalypse where law and social order had collapsed.

And however you looked at it, the people standing here now, saving the Edutown residents, were the same ones those residents had attacked, trying to kill and rob.

“But everyone who directly took part in the attack already paid the price. This piece of trash was the last one.”

“......!”

The residents understood what that price meant, and soon a few of them began to sob.

They too had watched family members who had fled here suddenly get attacked by a mass of zombies, bitten and turned, or else torn into rags from head to toe and dragged away.

“Hoo.”

Taking a light breath, Song Gijun continued.

“But there is such a thing as extenuating circumstances. In other words, even if you were accomplices, you were forced to take part, or acted only passively. Accordingly, I pass judgment.”

Looking at the Edutown residents, who were staring up at him in undisguised fear, Song Gijun declared:

“All of you will relocate to Building 8. You’ll have water by drawing it from the stream, and we’ll provide electricity. We’ll also support you with a certain amount of food. However, you may not leave Building 8 without permission.”

Building 8 of Edutown Apartments stood at the edge of the complex, and there was only one way in or out.

In other words, once the access route was blocked, it was effectively a prison.

“And starting tomorrow, we’ll clear the walking path and build greenhouses. You’ll grow your own food there. If you don’t like that, then leave. We’ll send you to Moku-ri.”

The residents, who knew very well thanks to the Kookje faction gangsters what kind of state Moku-ri was in, could not utter a word.

It was, in practical terms, the same as telling them to go die.

Just then, Junho, who had been quietly observing from the corner, walked over to Song Gijun and whispered something to him.

Song Gijun nodded a few times, then addressed the residents again.

“All right. Everyone, go outside.”

They were afraid of what might happen next, but after seeing Park Ilho’s corpse lying face-down in the blood he had spilled, the residents had no choice but to shrink back and obey.

“Ah!?”

“Wh-what is...?”

When they stepped outside the management-office building, their eyes widened.

No one knew when it had arrived, but an electric truck was parked in front of the building.

And when the cargo bed opened and revealed what was inside, the residents’ eyes widened even more.

The bed was packed full of boxes of instant rice, canned food, and medicine.

“We’re going to clean up and organize the apartment complex now. When the work is done, we’ll give these out.”

The whipping had been brutal, but now that a fine carrot had appeared immediately afterward, the eyes of the Edutown residents lit up.

Of course, all of those goods were close to their expiration dates, but nobody knew that—and even if they had, they would not have cared.

***

The work of cleaning up and organizing the zombie corpses, debris, and trash throughout the complex was finished quickly.

As promised, Song Gijun distributed food and medicine and settled the residents into Building 8.

There were still many zombies trapped inside apartments, but the search-and-kill team—already thoroughly seasoned in searching for and killing zombies—dealt with them easily.

Even that, however, looked miraculous in the eyes of the Edutown residents, who had been controlled by Park Ilho’s group and the gangsters and kept in total isolation from the outside world.

So they obeyed every instruction while nervously watching Song Gijun, the members of the search-and-kill team, and above all Junho—the man who had not said a word or even done anything in front of them, yet somehow radiated the most dangerous presence of all.

“Looks like things are mostly cleaned up now.”

“They do. By the way, thank you for keeping your promise, Mr. Junho.”

Song Gijun once again expressed his gratitude to Junho for faithfully honoring the promise he had made on the day they first met.

But Junho shook his head.

“No. I’m not a resident of Gahyeon-ri, after all. This is the sort of thing that should be handled by someone like you, Mr. Song Gijun.”

“That’s true. It’s a pain, and people will curse us for it and resent us... but this is our responsibility. That’s the only way we can face you and your people with any dignity after everything you’ve done to help and support us.”

It was precisely because Song Gijun knew where to draw the line and understood duty that Junho had saved him, so Junho nodded.

“Once the work starting tomorrow is finished, I won’t be getting involved in Gahyeon-ri for a while. Ah, though we’ll still need to go together when it’s time to raid the National Agricultural Cooperative warehouse. We need to secure some of that for ourselves too.”

“Yes. I’ll be counting on you then too.”

“Same here.”

When Song Gijun held out his hand, Junho finally broke into a grin and took it.

With that, Gahyeon-ri had become a complete and powerful ally—and a shield—for our shelter.

But Junho did not know.

Not Song Gijun, who hated coercion more than anyone, nor the members of the search-and-kill team who had fought beside him.

Not even the people of the Gahyeon-ri community, nor the Edutown residents who had seen Junho’s terrifying side for the first time today.

None of them saw him simply as a man.

They all regarded Junho as something like a lord, a guardian deity, or perhaps a judge of terror.

And so Junho brought the finale of Gahyeon-ri’s pacification to a perfect close.

***

Early the next morning.

Choi Jeongwoo arrived from the shelter in an electric truck, using Junhyeok and Baek Suho as assistants, and installed four wireless relays, four amplifiers, four PTZ cameras, and four T1 turrets at Edutown Apartments.

The turrets were meant to kill outside intruders, but they would also fire tungsten rounds if anyone in Building 8 tried anything suspicious.

Meanwhile, the Edutown residents were put to work in earnest.

The elderly and the women were assigned to the cleanup work that had not been finished the day before, while the men were assigned to clearing the walking paths or dismantling the solar panels installed on the apartment rooftops and the batteries from the electric vehicles in the complex.

After finishing the camera and turret installation before lunch, Choi Jeongwoo collected the panels, batteries, electronics, and various facilities the residents had dismantled.

Some of those materials would be used by the Gahyeon-ri community, but most of them were transported to the shelter.

That was because Baek Hail and Yoon Youngsu had judged that somehow, some way, they would prove useful.

And so Song Gijun took charge of organizing Edutown and controlling its residents, while on the Gahyeon-ri community side, former village head Kim Seokhwan and the old man Go Jeongnam stepped forward to handle similar work.

Junho merely watched the three of them lead the Gahyeon-ri community in his place—taking the blame, carrying out all kinds of tasks, mediating the survivors’ conflicts, and dealing with every last irritating problem.

“I’ve said this before, boss, but you seriously would’ve been wildly successful as a con artist. Is this not auto-hunting? This is straight-up one-click auto-hunting....”

Listening to Yoon Youngsu’s voice over comms, Junho loaded equipment into the all-purpose electric cart.

“Quit talking nonsense. Anyway, nothing strange over in Moku-ri, right?”

“Nope. Quiet. Just like expected, Lord Jaeseong Building Owner and the helper ladies are keeping their heads down too.”

“They survived this long, so having that much sense is the bare minimum. Anyway, keep sending drones over to Moku-ri and keep it under surveillance. I’m telling you, those gangster bastards will be here within a few days.”

“Yessir.”

Junho started up the all-purpose electric cart.

Now that Gahyeon-ri had been pacified, it was fine to take vehicles out onto the road.

Of course, whenever he left, he always used the secret route through the industrial road.

The people of Gahyeon-ri still did not know exactly where Junho and his companions were staying.

They only guessed that it was somewhere within a thirty- to forty-minute radius of Gahyeon-ri, but no one even thought of trying to find Junho’s base.

For one thing, everybody was afraid of him.

And they also knew that outside the Gahyeon-ri community “safe zone,” the rest of the world was still hell, swarming with zombies and raiders.

Now that they had finally secured some safety, not a single person was crazy enough to go walking back into hell on their own feet just to defy Junho.

Whiiine....

After parking the electric cart near the Edutown management-office building, Junho entered again through the same route the Kookje faction gangsters had used.

The reason he was heading back to Moku-ri was simple.

“They’ll come from Guri in two, three days at the latest. The plan was to take the zombies we locked up in the basement of Cheongsan Building then....”

That was what An Juntae, a Daeseong syndicate branch chief in title and a gangster by trade, had spilled after Junho had dislocated his shoulders a few times. He had not been able to endure it and had babbled out everything he knew.

“I-I don’t know how they’ll take them. Maybe they’ll move along the light-rail line like I did. But that works for people—zombies are another story....”

That was the problem.

Junho already knew that the Daeseong syndicate gangsters had come to Moku-ri by following the metropolitan light-rail line.

Because before regression, when he had been dragged all the way to Moku-ri and then taken into central Namyangju, they had used that route.

But bringing zombies—especially three Alphas—along that route seemed difficult no matter how he looked at it.

They would have to move on foot no matter what, and carrying things wrapped tightly in heavy chains made no sense.

“Boss! They’re here, they’re here!”

But on the way to Moku-ri, Junho learned something.

“Damn, these bastards must’ve come in by the mountain trail from the Onae-ri side. They came in electric carts too, like you.”

Checking the feed on the tablet from the drone he had sent to Moku-ri, Junho narrowed his eyes slightly.

Just as Yoon Youngsu said, five men who had split up among three electric carts had parked them on a secluded mountainside and were now heading down toward the junkyard that concealed the secret path into Cheongsan Building.

But Junho’s gaze was not on the route the Daeseong syndicate gangsters were taking.

It lingered instead on the route from the Onae-ri direction—the route they were likely to have come from—and on the location at its far end.

“These bastards... they came in via the Han River.”

That place was very close to both Paldang Dam and Paldang Station.