I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 221: I miss Zombies.

***

(Kim Si-Hon days ago)

The further north we pushed, the more the city stopped being a city.

It didn’t happen all at once— it crept in gradually, building by building, block by block, the way something takes over when nothing stops it long enough.

The vines I’d been ignoring for hours got thicker first, no longer just threading through window gaps but wrapping the entire floors in dense layered coils, pulling facades apart at the seams.

Then the roads started disappearing underneath root systems that had grown wide enough to crack the asphalt clean through and keep going.

Trees pushed up through the centers of buildings that couldn’t hold them, their canopies bursting out through upper floors like the structure was just something to grow through on the way up.

And the zombies were just— gone.

Not dead. Just replaced. Different things moved through this part of the city now, and they weren’t interested in us the way the horde had been.

I actually stopped once. Because. A deer crossed a rooftop two buildings ahead while I was mid-jump, and I landed and stared at it and it stared back and everything was fine until I counted itslegs.

6.

And 2 extra, growing from the midsection, folding against the body when it walked like it hadn’t decided what to do with them yet.

It moved on without caring about us... luckily.

Then birds started appearing.

Normal enough at a distance— until you got close enough to see the eyes. Human EYES. Fully human, looking out from feathered faces with an awareness that had no business being there, tracking our movement across rooftops with something closer to recognition than animal attention.

I stopped looking at the birds after that.

Why? Because I’m genuinely freaked out, I just wish this would end already!

Jisoo had gone quiet too, which said more than any comment would have!!!

Sigh.

Eventually I spotted a tree that had grown directly up through the center of a rooftop, wide enough that its canopy spread shade across a decent section of the building top.

I landed, set Jisoo down, and held out my hand toward her bag. "Can I?"

She handed it over without asking why. (She’s... the best, if it’s Jisoo Jisoo she would’ve hit me first before giving it.)P

I unzipped it, found the frozen mattress, and pulled it out.

"Woah," Jisoo said, genuinely surprised. "What’s that?"

"Your night version’s mattress... actually, it’s mine... she just stole it and froze it to make it fit."

"Grrr, she’s the worst, stealing it from you."

"Please don’t say that..."

She nodded. "Oh, yea, sorry... I forgot that might get you a beating... sorry Hon Hon (⁠っ⁠˘̩⁠╭⁠╮⁠˘̩⁠)⁠っ"

She then looked at it for a second. "Hm. But she’s useful, I guess." Muttered. Grudging.

"So since it’s your skill, how do we unfreez—"

A bang came from below before I finished the sentence, loud and close, a gun probably.

We both moved at the same time, crossing to the barrier edge and looking down.

And saw.

4 people. Running. Humans, actually— real ones, armed, moving fast through the overgrown street below with the desperate coordinated energy of people who had done this before and knew exactly how little margin they had.

And behind them, five of them.

Then more.

I activated Focus Eye and immediately wished I hadn’t.

The things had the shape of a body— mostly— a pale human torso with a stomach torn open at the center, organs visible and wrong, dark and glistening where they peeked through.

The head was gone, replaced entirely by a moth skull, wide and flat, antennae rising in branched curves above it, the face nothing but layered compound structure and a mouth full of teeth that didn’t belong on something with wings.

And the wings themselves— huge, spanning wider than the body should’ve allowed, patterned in deep amber and brown in overlapping scales, beautiful in exactly the way something had no right to be when it was also that.

Long clawed arms extended from the body where arms should be, fingers ending in points that dragged slightly as it moved.

5 of them became 10. The first one caught a runner, and the guy immediately fired— a shot then clipped one of its wings and it went down, it didn’t stop. It crawled forward without slowing, and when it reached the man it pinned him and— licked. Long, deliberate, starting at the arm. The man screamed.

Then it bit.

Then it fed.

And It suck~

The other three went the same way before any of them made it another block.

I stepped back from the barrier.

"Why," I said carefully, "is it licking them first before it—"

"Okay so," Jisoo said, with the tone of someone who had been waiting for an opportunity to share information. "Butterflies? Are actually just flies. But slightly prettier."

I looked at her.

"That’s why they land on people." She cleared her throat. "They’re tasting the sweat. With their feet. That’s a real thing."

Silence.

"ಠ_ಠ, that’s bullshit," I said. "I hate butterflies now. I hate them... so fucking bad."

"Me too, honestly. And I liked them before I started searching for them since I was bored on around... hmm 1900 round?"

"I think I miss zombies."

"Me too," Jisoo said, very quietly. "Me too, Hon Hon."

I looked at the mattress in my hands. Then I folded it back up, put it in her bag, zipped it, and handed the bag back.

"Why?" she asked.

"Let’s just keep going."

She nodded and came to me without needing to be asked, arms around my neck, legs around my waist, face tucking in against my shoulder with the ease of something we’d done enough times now that neither of us commented on it anymore.

I turned north and pushed off the edge.

The city kept getting stranger the further we went— more trees, less road, more things moving between the branches that I made a point not to focus on too clearly.

We jumped in silence mostly, the canopy below thickening until some of the rooftop jumps became jumps between actual treetops instead, branches solid enough to land on if I hit the right ones.

And actually... I almost fell one time, luckily I got a hold of a vine.

Then the camp came into view.

I landed on a rooftop that still had a clear sightline down, set Jisoo down, and looked.