Chapter 146: Limit Release

“A riot? How many are there?”

Gu Jeongmok, the most senior among the combat personnel who had come with Yoon Seolhee, asked.

His eyes, and the eyes of the other two, were shining sharply.

“Twenty-two. Two are armed with crossbows, and the rest have knives, metal pipes, things like that. They also have Molotov cocktails.”

They had probably made them by mixing whiskey, thinner, engine oil, and the like that they had secretly hidden at home.

Junho looked over Yoon Seolhee and the three combat personnel as he spoke.

“If they were only holding knives or clubs, that would be one thing. But the fact that they made Molotov cocktails means they planned and prepared this a long time ago.”

“That certainly sounds right. Then how hard should we go?”

Gu Jeongmok checked his rifle and pistol as he asked, and Junho answered firmly.

“They’ve already seriously injured several people who tried to stop them. Residents from the same apartment. So execute the ringleaders on the spot. As for the rest, whether you kill them or spare them, handle it as you see fit. I’ll leave it to your judgment.”

“......!”

Everyone flinched.

But soon, the three hardened their expressions and nodded.

“Understood.”

Even if this was only a dispatch assignment, it was a chance to score points with their new employer, and their motivation burned high.

***

'They swung blades at neighbors they’d lived with in this fucked-up world? Those sons of bitches.'

'They were guilty, but they still got protected and fed safely, and they were still dissatisfied. As if that weren’t enough, now they started a riot too.'

'Who needs zombies? Bastards like that are zombies. Parasites, eating away at other people’s lives while they leech off them.'

Gu Jeongmok, Kim Jaemun, and Kim Jimin.

Like Yoon Seolhee, the three employees who had worked for more than three years in the security office and KW Cops were exhausted and full of resentment from dealing with all kinds of entitled nuisances and villains at the resort.

For the first month or two, everyone had been grateful to the security office and KW Cops employees who had wiped out all the zombies inside the resort and protected them from the gangsters at the golf course.

On top of that, as they killed zombies—things that had once been human, still wearing human faces—the employees’ expressions had only grown more brutal.

When even two or three of them walked together, few people dared to complain, let alone casually strike up conversation.

But when kindness continues, people start thinking it is their right.

After nearly half a year of living together and growing used to them, people had begun to appear now and then who leaned on their “past” status and packaged abuse of power and entitled behavior as legitimate protest.

It was ridiculous, but in a place where a thousand or more people gathered from all over and lived pressed together, it would have been stranger if there had not been anyone like that.

Of course, every time something like that happened, Kang Baekho stepped in and resolved it reasonably well. But the stress suffered by employees who had to face some kind of nuisance at least once a week was no small thing.

Naturally, Kang Baekho made sure the hardworking employees were treated properly, but there were still people who found dealing with nuisances within the same group harder than dealing with zombies and looters.

And Gu Jeongmok, Kim Jaemun, and Kim Jimin, the three who had most strongly wanted to be dispatched to Junho’s shelter.

By sheer coincidence, all three had the same English initials—KJM—and they were exactly that type.

“I won’t step in. I’ll control the other residents. You handle the rioters.”

“Understood. Everyone ready?”

At Junho’s words, Yoon Seolhee, who had even pulled up her ballistic mask, turned around with a cold light in her eyes behind her ballistic goggles.

“Yes. Manager, since we need to conserve live rounds, I’ll use the air rifle.”

“Good. Then Assistant Manager Gu, you take the ones with bows and Molotov cocktails. Mr. Jaemun and Mr. Jimin will move with me.”

“Understood.”

Except for Gu Jeongmok, the three carried only pistols, leaving their submachine guns and rifles in the utility cart. They took only weapons like Bowie knives and collapsible batons.

“Manager, I’ll take point.”

Kim Jimin, holding a collapsible baton about a meter long—similar in length to a wooden sword—stepped forward.

Needless to say, Kang Baekho’s bodyguards were trained, and most of the KW Cops employees were black belts with at least five combined dan ranks across martial arts.

Kim Jimin in particular was a fifth-dan kendo practitioner, a level extremely rare among ordinary people, and he had trained in kendo for over ten years.

The moment he held a wooden sword or collapsible baton, even Park Cheolwoo or Yoon Seolhee had to give him some respect.

“Deokcheol, you stay here and protect the Blossom members. The drone will stay up, but don’t relax just in case.”

“Yes, sir.”

With the four Blossom members looking anxious, Junho walked down the mountain path with the combat personnel, Yoon Seolhee at the head.

***

Bang! Bang, bang!

“You sons of bitches! Open up! Open it!”

“I’m throwing it, you hear me? Huh? I’m really throwing it! Fuck! You think I can’t?”

More than twenty men in shabby clothes, their faces not even properly shaved, were shouting at the tops of their lungs in front of the barricade wall built to isolate their building from the others.

In their hands were knives, fire axes, metal pipes, and the like. A few of those weapons were stained vividly red with blood.

And nearby, several people struck by those weapons lay collapsed as if dead.

The attackers and the attacked were all neighbors from the same apartment complex. In a way, it was the sort of incident that had become all too common in the apocalypse.

But this place was a “safe zone,” something far from common in the apocalypse.

And if there was a problem, it was that someone who had made this place that way would never tolerate something like this.

The people who had started this in a fit of rage had either forgotten that fact, or were deliberately refusing to remember it.

“Hey! 401! Just throw the Molotov! Fuck.”

“Are you sure it’s okay? What if that thing shoots at us....”

The young man who looked about college age, called 401, glanced at the turret on the rooftop as he spoke.

At that, a large man who looked around forty twisted his face.

“What the fuck are you whining about? 401, are you a coward? You don’t know that thing’s just for show? Have you ever seen it actually work? You haven’t, right? So—”

Pow...! Pow...!

Thud! Thud!

At that moment, tungsten rounds fired from the turret struck the ground near the men.

“Gah!?”

The rioting men were badly startled and hid behind benches and trees.

“It’s shooting. What do we do? What are we supposed to do?”

“Fuck, the accuracy’s still dogshit. Hey, 401! Throw that thing already, and the rest of us just climb over! Put the shields on your backs! Then air-rifle pellets won’t get through. I used to hunt with air rifles, so I know.”

At the words of the big man in his forties—the ringleader—the others began to move.

But neither the ringleader nor the people who had joined his riot properly understood the power of the shelter’s modified air rifles and tungsten rounds.

They could easily pierce shields made from aluminum and plywood. However, the turrets only fired warning shots and did not hit them.

“See! I told you they can’t hit us! Those sons of bitches hung up some shitty junk and—hey, light it and throw it already! Didn’t you say there was a chick in Building 102 you wanted? You have to get over there before you can pin her down!”

“Ah, fuck it! Whatever!”

Twisted anger, resentment, and the desire to run wild in a world already ruined erased his reason.

The man from 401 lit the Molotov cocktail with a lighter and hurled it in a long arc over the five-meter-high barricade.

Booom! Boom! Bang!

The Molotov cocktails made from a mix of harsh whiskey and thinner began to fly long and burst.

Soon, red waves rose here and there outside the barricade, along with black smoke.

“Nice! All right! Everyone, let’s go! Let’s gooo!”

Waaaaaaaah!

The wall made of stacked obstacles was not actually impossible to climb.

The only reason they had not climbed over it until now was the psychological fear that if they crossed it, “that man” with a gun might appear.

But they had already had several drinks each, and the fact that the turret fire seemed terrible filled them with even more courage. The flames and smoke rising everywhere excited them further.

“Wh-what should we do?”

“I’m joining them. Fuck, I can’t live like this anymore, with all this dirty, petty bullshit.”

“I’m going to kill the bastard who did that to our Jaeyoung.”

A fair number of residents joined the men and began climbing the barricade.

They were all people whose family members had died back when the Moku-ri gangsters had been supporting this place, while looting other residents inside the complex or attacking The First Apartments.

Before the world became like this, they had lived thinking of themselves as “upper class” in their own way. After the apocalypse broke out, they had naturally survived on things stolen from others.

“What did our Jaeyoung do wrong? In a world like this, is taking a little from other people a crime? Even if it is, does that mean you kill someone?”

To people like them, the fact that their family members or acquaintances had died while raiding another place and committing robbery and murder was unbearable.

“Fucking bastards... sons of bitches... how dare they make me work? Do they know who I am? Back in the old days, bastards like them wouldn’t even have been able to meet my eyes....”

Other people who refused to acknowledge the authority and status they had enjoyed were nothing more than targets of anger and contempt, lower than insects.

If this had been another region, perhaps their anger and desires would have been justified in a world where law, order, and morality had collapsed.

Most people had already been living like them for months now.

But here in Gahyeon-ri, there was a clear “line” set by one man who did not directly rule this place, but regarded it as his territory.

And what was deeply unfortunate for them was that, of all days, he happened to be passing nearby today.

Worse, he was passing nearby with people who had been stressed to the limit by nuisances and villains like them—though the people in question would never admit they were such things—and who utterly despised them.

“See! There’s nobody here! Everyone hurry!”

The man who reached the top of the barricade first and had just cut through the concertina wire with bolt cutters shouted down at the people below.

“Ha ha ha! Those bastards were all talk after all! They’re not shit! First, we get over and either loot the other houses or escape outside and—”

Thwack!

The ringleader, who had been shouting in a frenzy, suddenly had his head snap violently backward.

Then his body tilted, and he dropped outside the barricade wall he had so badly wanted to cross.

“...Huh?”

The young man from 401, who had thrown more than ten Molotov cocktails and was trying to carry the rest over the wall, widened his eyes.

Thwack!

“Urk!”

A round hit him in the shoulder, and he rolled down below.

“What, what was that?”

“A g-gun! Someone fired a gun!”

The instant someone shouted that, Yoon Seolhee, Kim Jimin, and Kim Jaemun descended by rope from a retaining wall over ten meters high and walked toward them.

“Ah!?”

Someone spotted the three people dressed very similarly to Junho, in multicam combat uniforms, tactical vests, helmets, and goggles.

“Those fucking....”

After confirming that the three had no guns, only knives and batons, he made a choice he absolutely should not have made.

“It’s those bastards! Those bastards killed Mr. Hyeongseok!”

He did not know where they had appeared from, but in any case, the enemy numbered only three.

And the people who had started or joined the riot numbered more than ten times that.

In an apocalypse where people lost their reason over trivial reasons, or had their aggression brought out after being swallowed by desire, this was more than enough of a magnificent reason to beat those three down.

“Fuck, kill them all!”

“You die, we die! You sons of bitches!”

They lost their reason and charged at the three, weapons raised.

Then Kim Jimin, at the front, closed the distance in an instant with a kendo pushing step and brought the collapsible baton down as beautifully as a painted stroke.

Whoosh!

“You son of a—”

Thwack!

The man struck on the crown of his head by the steel-cored collapsible baton fell forward without even being able to scream, his arms and legs stiffly spread.

That was the signal.

The final nuisances and maladjusted residents left in Gahyeon-ri began paying the price for doing something that might be ordinary elsewhere, but could never be tolerated here.

They paid it to the shelter’s new combat personnel, who had gladly accepted their new employer’s standards and released the limits they had suppressed until now.