Thud! Thud! Thud!
Someone knocked on the door.
It was the middle-aged president of the mid-sized company from the neighboring cabin. His bloodshot eyes fixed on Baek Seung-hyun as he abruptly spoke.
“You. You’re a hunter, right? An old hunter, huh?”
“What about it?”
“What do you mean, ‘what about it’? You need to gather people. Get the ones who can fight together, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
Though Baek Seung-hyun was a cold and ruthless man, his demeanor was one of calm restraint. He wasn’t the type to yell, turn red in the face, or lash out impulsively.
But even now, there was a sharp edge to his voice.
The man in the neighboring cabin didn’t know much about Baek Seung-hyun, but he thought he understood him.
As the president of a company with over a thousand employees, he prided himself on being a good judge of character.
To him, Baek Seung-hyun was no exception.
“He probably knows how to shoot a gun, but he lacks real-world experience. A man who can’t think for himself—a grown child.”
Having come to this conclusion, the man looked at Baek Seung-hyun with pity and spoke curtly.
“Are you clueless about what might happen next?”
“What might happen?”
“Ah, damn it, is your brain rusty because you’re one of those old hunters? Look, our resources are limited, but there are too many people. What do you think is going to happen? Can’t you figure it out?”
Baek Seung-hyun glanced around.
“Let’s talk somewhere else. My child might cry.”
He gestured toward the man’s cabin.
“Let’s use your cabin. That okay?”
The man glanced at the woman holding the baby in the room and then at her faintly visible tattoos. With a cold expression, he nodded and led Baek Seung-hyun to his cabin.
The room was empty.
The man poured expensive whiskey into a glass and offered it to Baek Seung-hyun.
“So, what’s your name?”
It was meant as a gesture of goodwill.
Baek Seung-hyun ignored the glass entirely, staring at the man coldly before opening his mouth.
“dongtanmom.”
“What?”
Before the man could react, Baek Seung-hyun lunged, grabbing his throat.
The attack was so sudden that the man didn’t know how to respond. But even if he’d expected it, he couldn’t have stopped it.
Baek Seung-hyun was a trained killer, someone who didn’t hesitate when it came to murder.
“Gaaahk!!”
The man’s face turned beet red, his eyes bulging as he clawed at Baek Seung-hyun’s arm, silently pleading with his eyes.
Why?
Why are you killing me?
Without a word, Baek Seung-hyun maintained his grip, strangling the life out of the man.
When the man finally stopped struggling, Baek Seung-hyun found some cord among the scattered items in the room, fashioned a noose, and hung the body from the ceiling.
He stared blankly at the dangling corpse’s shoes before rummaging through the man’s belongings.
He took water, food, medical supplies, a few clothes—and didn’t forget the whiskey.
As he turned off the lights and stepped out of the cabin, he came face-to-face with another person: the dead man’s wife.
She was the loud woman who had made disparaging remarks about him and his wife.
“Why are you coming out of here?”
“Oh, your husband had something he wanted to tell me.”
“What did he want to say?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Baek Seung-hyun stepped aside, letting her pass.
She hesitated, suspicious, but eventually entered the cabin.
The moment she stepped inside, she froze at the sight of the dimly lit figure hanging from the ceiling.
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“D-dear?”
As she realized what she was seeing, Baek Seung-hyun struck.
Thud!
He smashed a fire extinguisher into the back of her head.
The blow was merciless and final. He ensured she wouldn’t get up again.
When Baek Seung-hyun returned to his cabin, his wife asked, “You went next door, didn’t you? What happened? I heard strange noises.”
“I killed them.”
“Why?”
“If I didn’t, they would’ve gotten us killed.”
Baek Seung-hyun gestured toward her.
“Help me move the bodies.”
“Move them where?”
“Our cabin.”
“Our cabin?!” she exclaimed.
Baek Seung-hyun replied with an emotionless face.
“Their door’s different. Ours is just a makeshift wooden panel, but theirs is part of the original structure—much sturdier, with a proper lock. It’s not something that can be easily forced open from the outside.”
Under his wife’s watchful eye, Baek Seung-hyun moved the bodies into their cabin.
He didn’t forget to hang the man’s body back in its original position before locking the door and closing it.
Thud.
His wife held their baby tightly, looking at him with unease.
“This will work. Our chances of survival just went up. Even if raiders come, they won’t be able to break through that door.”
Bang! Bang!
Gunfire echoed in the darkness.
Someone armed was on the deck.
Shouts rang out, and it was clear that raiders were closing in.
Baek Seung-hyun tucked the kitchen knife into his sleeve.
“Stay here. Lock the door, and don’t open it for anyone but me.”
As he stepped outside, screams pierced the air from every direction.
Beyond the hallway, a group of First Class passengers had gathered.
“We need to form a militia. If we don’t stick together, we won’t survive,” a man—introduced as a former colonel—shouted to the group.
“Fortunately, we First Class passengers have managed to form a cooperative and friendly community, unlike the other grades. Even though we’re few in number, sticking together will increase our chances of survival.”
While Baek Seung-hyun wasn’t fond of the First Class passengers, he acknowledged the colonel’s reasoning.
In a confined space like a ship, forming a group was the easiest way to ensure survival—or at least buy some time.
He decided to stay and observe the meeting.
“There are four entrances to the First Class area. Let’s block them all immediately. If raiders get in, they’ll target us first. We don’t have time to waste!”
The colonel efficiently assigned people to guard each entrance.
When raiders tried to storm the First Class area, they were met with passengers armed with clubs and knives on the stairs. The raiders, unable to advance, turned back and targeted passengers elsewhere.
The chaotic night eventually passed.
A thick mist, tinged with the colors of the ruined city, enveloped the ship.
The metallic stench of blood and the odor of human waste filled the air.
From below deck, cries, screams, and wails rose like the echoes of hell itself.
“How much food do we all have left?”
“What about the other ships?”
"Does anyone have a gun?"
The militia moved swiftly, busy organizing themselves.
Though Baek Seung-hyun didn’t like his fellow First Class passengers, he cooperated silently for the sake of survival.
After some time, the women brought out food—an unrecognizable soup made by boiling baked bean cans with mixed grains.
It wasn’t about taste; it was about filling their stomachs. Yet, for some reason, Baek Seung-hyun thought the soup tasted good.
“You’re a hunter, aren’t you?” a man asked, recognizing him.
Baek Seung-hyun replied, “Just a worthless old hunter.”
“Are you good with a gun?”
“Good enough.”
The man handed him a dull, black object—a .38-caliber revolver. Along with it, he gave Baek Seung-hyun a packet of twelve bullets, sealed in paper.
“You’ll shoot better than me. If things get bad, please use it to help us.”
Baek Seung-hyun took a closer look at the man.
He was in his early sixties, dressed neatly in a button-up shirt and slacks.
Baek recognized him. He was a self-made businessman who’d once boasted about making a fortune by opening a large-screen golf facility in the countryside. Like many First Class passengers, he had spent the trip gossiping and speaking ill of others.
Now, he smiled sheepishly as he handed over the gun.
“I only kept it by chance. I don’t even know how to use it.”
A nearby man in his fifties chimed in, “Unless you’re an officer, when would you ever shoot something like that?”
“I’ve fired one,” the man replied. “I used to be in the military police.”
“Military police? Do they use those?”
“Of course.”
“Army?”
“Air Force.”
Even in the face of crisis, the First Class passengers couldn’t resist their petty chatter.
It wasn’t a harmonious group by any means—a haphazard alliance formed out of necessity. Yet, as the situation grew dire, the trivialities and facades fell away, and they began to genuinely unite for survival.
Their past experiences contributed to this shift. As the former colonel had pointed out, First Class passengers were prime targets for raiders. They had already seen how quickly those who were isolated met their ends in Seoul and Incheon.
By afternoon, the raiders launched a full-scale assault.
What had started as scattered groups of four or five, sometimes ten, had now coalesced into a single force targeting the First Class area.
Their numbers reached the hundreds, perhaps even more than a thousand.
The First Class passengers—about 150 men—stood their ground. They had better positions, were more organized, and had every reason to fight for their lives.
“Kill them all!”
“You bastards!”
“Get out of here!”
The raiders surged forward with a deafening roar.
Baek Seung-hyun swung a makeshift spear—a kitchen knife wired to the end of a pole—alongside his fellow passengers, desperately resisting.
Though he had a gun, he reserved it for the raiders who might also be armed.
Bang!
A gunshot rang out in the chaos.
It came from the raiders.
“Mr. Kim!”
One of the First Class passengers guarding the stairs collapsed.
Baek Seung-hyun’s eyelid twitched.
It was the man who had given him the revolver—the self-made golf entrepreneur.
He died instantly, his eyes wide open, unable to leave any last words.
Baek scanned the sea of raiders below, searching for the shooter.
There he was.
The raider holding a gun grinned and aimed at Baek Seung-hyun.
Bang!
But Baek fired first.
His bullet struck the raider squarely between the eyes, leaving a clean hole.
Baek Seung-hyun was a hunter—trained to shoot with paranoid precision and a kill-or-be-killed mentality honed through countless battles.
With his gun drawn, Baek descended the stairs.
The raiders shouted and swung their weapons at him, but each time his gun was pointed in their direction, they retreated.
In full view of the raiders, Baek picked up the fallen raider’s gun, then slowly backed away, keeping the barrel trained on them.
“Anyone here know how to shoot?” Baek asked his fellow passengers.
A man raised his hand.
Baek handed him the gun.
Normally, he would never trust someone else with a weapon, but even he understood—survival required unity.
Though these people had insulted his wife, for now, they were his only neighbors.
Meanwhile, the chaos wasn’t limited to the Hope.
Smaller fishing vessels had turned into pirate ships, preying on other boats, killing passengers, stealing supplies, and siphoning off what little fuel they could.
Some of these pirate ships turned their bows toward Korea, disappearing over the horizon.
A week passed in this uneasy state.
“Damn it. We’re out of food.”
“There’s no water left.”
“The stench of rotting corpses is unbearable. If this keeps up, we’ll have an epidemic.”
As the atmosphere grew increasingly grim, Baek Seung-hyun realized their group wouldn’t last much longer.
“Hey, Hunter Baek. That room you’re using—it used to belong to the construction company president, didn’t it?”
One of the passengers glared at him.
It was the man in his early sixties who’d boasted during introductions about owning a large funeral hall in Gyeonggi and being good at golf.
From the look on his face, it was clear he’d suspected all along that Baek had killed the former occupant of the room.
He had turned a blind eye when Baek was useful, but now, with supplies dwindling, he was raising the issue.
The man narrowed his eyes and demanded, “Why did you change rooms?”
Baek replied flatly, “The old one didn’t suit me.”
“Why not?”
“Said it smelled like iron.”
“Funny, your old room smells like rotting corpses now.”
“Must’ve been a suicide.”
“Suicide?”
“This world’s shit, isn’t it?”
Baek raised his revolver slightly, his gaze sharp. The man turned away, muttering under his breath.
It truly was a miserable world—where things like this were nothing out of the ordinary.
Fortunately, even the raiders below were beginning to fracture.
The government hadn’t left any relief supplies or food on this cursed ship.
Everything was running out.
The survivors were like fish tossed out of water, thrashing desperately, but with their fate already sealed.
“Why do they keep coming at us? We don’t have anything either,” a fellow guard muttered with a sigh.
“They think we do,” replied another man, sucking on what was little more than a cigarette stub.
Though his appearance was shabby, he claimed to have been a university professor before the war.
“They’ll keep attacking until they see for themselves. Even if we give up everything we have, they won’t spare us.”
The end was near.
Baek acted quickly.
The day thousands of raiders swarmed the stairs, he retreated to his cabin, locking the door tightly.
The problem was the window—a round porthole that had been part of the ship’s original design.
If he covered it, the raiders would grow suspicious. If he left it exposed, they could see inside.
“What’s the best solution?”
Baek looked at the ceiling and remembered the man he had killed days ago.
In the dim cabin, he fiddled with a rope under the glow of his nearly-dead phone.
His wife, watching him from the corner, asked quietly, “What are you making?”
“A harness.”
“A harness?”
“For hanging from the ceiling.”
“Why?”
“To look like a suicide.”
Baek secured the harness to the ceiling and strapped himself in.
Suspended in mid-air, his body swayed lifelessly, like someone who had hung themselves.
From above, he looked down at his family and spoke briefly.
“Take care of the baby.”
Soon, the sound of countless footsteps, like a torrential downpour, echoed through the ship.
The defenses had fallen.
The stairs were overrun, and the raiders poured in.
“Kill anyone who’s still alive!”
“Let’s see what these bastards were hiding!”
The slaughter began.
“Please, don’t! We have nothing left!”
It was a familiar voice, begging for his life—the funeral hall owner.
“Shut up!”
A chilling scream followed the sound of a blade cutting through flesh.
“Throw the bodies into the sea!”
The shadows of the raiders passed chaotically beyond the porthole.
One of them pressed his face against the glass, peering into the cabin.