Paldang Dam’s automatic discharge system had kicked in long ago.
The central controls had gone offline, and the personnel responsible for the floodgates were either dead or had turned into zombies.
As a result, the discharge volume had increased, the Han River’s water level had risen above what it had been before the apocalypse, and stretches where boats normally could not travel—or where it had been forbidden—had now become fully navigable.
So it was entirely possible for Daeseong syndicate gangsters to use boats to get as far as the area around Paldang Station.
Or—
“Youngsu, what stations are there in Namyangju on the Gyeongui–Jungang Line? Near the Han River.”
“—Hang on. Uh... Deokso, Dosim, Paldang, and Ungilsan.”
“Ungilsan is the closest to here, right?”
“—Yeah.”
If that was the case, then it was also possible they had traveled along the line as far as Ungilsan Station, which bordered the Bukhan River, then crossed the mountain from there or made their way upstream along the river.
Unlike the Gyeongchun Line—the metro light-rail line that cut straight through the densely populated heart of Namyangju—the Gyeongui–Jungang Line, where Ungilsan Station was located, had been built along the Han River.
Which meant it was possible to come this way while drawing much less aggro from the zombies.
Ungilsan Station in particular was rural °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° to the point that the population around the station had been under a hundred people.
“—Boss, what are you going to do? You gonna grab those gangsters too?”
“...No.”
Under normal circumstances, he might have taken them too and beat the truth out of them, but Junho answered like that.
The reason he had wanted to capture them in the first place was to confirm exactly how they were getting here and back.
Not just how a few people were moving around, but how they were managing to transport a captured Alpha all that way.
He needed to know that to prepare and at least make a minimum plan.
But there was no need to provoke the Daeseong syndicate any further here.
If those bastards did not make it back either, the other side would obviously send even more men.
Besides, he had already more or less dealt with the ones directly tied to his death before regression.
More importantly, Junho knew which forces the Daeseong syndicate—who controlled southern Guri and Deokso in Namyangju—would eventually end up clashing with.
“Let’s watch for now.”
“—Got it. But if they head toward Onae-ri, I can’t send the drone that far.”
“I’ll handle that.”
With that, Junho picked up his speed a little.
Right now, he was riding the electric mountain bike he had first used back when he discovered the hiking trail in the mountain behind our shelter.
The first time he had gone to Moku-ri by this route, he had done it on foot. But after going back and forth himself and checking it thoroughly, he had concluded that it was fully passable by mountain bike.
Of course, there were sections where you had to hoist the heavy bike and carry it over, so it would have been impossible for an ordinary person.
But that did not apply to Junho.
In the end, after just over twenty minutes, Junho had covered a route that had taken the gangsters several hours. Concealing himself on the mountain overlooking the junkyard, he focused on the footage coming in from the drone.
A few minutes later, the gangsters Daeseong had sent emerged from the junkyard’s secret passage.
After checking the state of Cheongsan Building, they left the area acting far more cautiously than they had when they went in.
And while there had been five of them when they entered, one was now missing. Judging by the state they were in, they had obviously fought a battle with the zombies inside Cheongsan Building.
The bastards climbed the slope, got back into their electric carts, and set off again.
“I’m following them.”
“—What? Isn’t that dangerous?”
At Yoon Youngsu’s question, Junho smiled faintly.
“For me? Or for them?”
“—...Have a safe trip.”
After hiding the bike securely in the mountain, Junho lowered his body and moved along the slope.
***
Wearing a snow-camouflage combat uniform patterned in pale gray-brown, Junho followed the gangsters riding the electric carts from roughly a hundred meters behind.
The drone feed had already been cut off, and communications with the shelter had been down for a while now.
Which meant Junho was continuing the pursuit completely alone, with no support of any kind.
'This brings back memories.'
Before regression, he had moved around alone like this almost all the time.
Of course, back then he had barely been eating, his physical condition had been terrible, and his gear had been pathetic, so he had had to move like a frightened animal, constantly scanning his surroundings.
But the Junho of now was different.
He was armed with firearms fitted with optics and suppressors, and his physical abilities and combat skills were on a completely different level from back then.
He moved quickly along the mountain path, his eyes fixed on the gangsters riding the electric carts with the gaze of a predator and a hunter.
The pursuit was not difficult. Electric carts were slow to begin with, and this was mountain terrain.
After passing in the direction of Onae-ri, the gangsters rode into the low mountains of Guam-ri, pressed up against the Bukhan River.
It was almost strange how there were mountain paths in a place where no one even lived, and stranger still that the gangsters somehow knew all of them.
After traveling over rutted dirt mountain roads and concrete-paved country roads, the gangsters’ electric carts reached Gyeongchun-ro, and some time later came to a complete stop at a desolate water-leisure marina where several cars had been abandoned.
Lying prone on the slope of a low hill overlooking the marina, Junho watched the place through a digital monocular.
“Thought so.”
The roof of the marina—which also housed a restaurant and a café—was packed tightly with solar panels.
That much could generate thirty to forty kilowatts of electricity a day.
The gangsters were obviously using the electricity produced there to charge their electric carts.
And there was another means of transportation there that also ran on electricity.
“Electric motorboats...”
Unlike motorboats fueled by gasoline, boats equipped with electric motors made very little noise.
Expensive electric motors also had long operating times, and especially at low speeds, it was possible to travel dozens of kilometers on the standard battery alone.
“...”
Junho watched the gangsters all the way to the end as they split between two electric motorboats and headed downstream along the Bukhan River.
He could not fly a drone to confirm their final destination, but he was almost certain it was Jinjung-ri, where Ungilsan Station was.
The Bukhan River and the Han River were cut off by Paldang Dam, making it impossible to move between them by boat.
And if they wanted to get to Guri and Deokso, where their base was, they had no choice but to move along the Gyeongui–Jungang Line from Ungilsan Station.
And if that was true, then—
“I can use it too.”
Among the goods Junho had purchased during the month-long shopping spree were several electric motors that could be mounted on boats.
Since Namyangju itself bordered the Han River, that had been an obvious choice.
And Junho had not prepared only electric motors.
The shelter had every piece of gear needed for snorkeling, especially high-performance underwater scooters.
Junho thought that sooner or later, he might have to use them to leave Namyangju.
Because even if it was a little earlier than expected—
“...I need to go to Gwangju.”
It felt like the time had finally come to make contact with Kang Baekho, who by now would have completely settled in Gwangju, Gyeonggi.
***
February 27, 2025, 9:30 a.m., Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province.
“Man, it’s cold. Cold as hell.”
“You should’ve dressed a little thicker, sir.”
“Then I’d waddle around like some penguin. This is perfect. A man’s gotta have some style.”
Looking at Kang Baekho—wearing a tight padded jacket, thick fleece-lined pants, and a scruffy beard—Yoon Seolhee shook her head.
“Huh? What’s with that look, Manager Yoon? Don’t tell me this is mutiny. That’s exactly the kind of face you make before mutiny.”
“If I was going to mutiny, I’d have done it a long time ago. We busted our asses and only just got to where life’s finally manageable. Mutiny, my ass.”
“Look at that, look at that. You’re even talking more casually now. Something’s definitely off.”
“You told me to speak comfortably, sir.”
“Ah. Damn. If I’d known it’d turn out like this, I wouldn’t have. Anyway, how’s that bastard Rap Dragon these days?”
Thinking of the rapper Rap Dragon—who, because his highest degree was a master’s, had supposedly used Lab instead of Rap for his stage name—Yoon Seolhee’s expression twisted slightly.
“He’s gotten a little worse lately, but it’s fine. He still hasn’t crossed the line.”
Rap Dragon, one of the celebrity survivors at Kangho Resort, was an enormous pain in Yoon Seolhee’s ass.
He was constantly hitting on her, but always stopped just short of crossing the line, which was the only reason she was still letting it go.
More than anything, he was slick with words and apparently well liked in entertainment circles, so if she laid hands on him over a little harassment, there was a good chance it would turn into a bigger problem.
“We’ve arrived, sir.”
At the words of the head of Kangho Resort’s security team—a former KW Cops section chief who had driven in silence—Kang Baekho and Yoon Seolhee got out of the golf cart.
More than ten people stepped out of the other vehicles that had come with them, and after climbing the mountain for over twenty minutes, they reached the top.
“Damn, I’m beat. Let me see the binoculars. It’s over there, right?”
“Yes.”
Taking the kind of binoculars commonly used on golf courses, Kang Baekho looked in the direction Yoon Seolhee indicated.
The typical rural village beside the Gyeongan Stream flowing in from Paldang Lake on the Bukhan River was eerily devoid of human presence.
“It’s too quiet...”
“It’s especially cold today, so that’s probably why. Based on everything we’ve observed so far, there are no survivors—just a little over two hundred zombies.”
“That’s weird. Don’t villages that small usually not have that many zombies?”
As Kang Baekho handed the binoculars back, the security team leader answered him.
“All those greenhouses across the river are ginseng greenhouses.”
“Oh, yeah? I did think it was weird there were so damn many.”
An enormous greenhouse complex, too large to count, sprawled across the river barely a hundred meters away.
“Yes. Apparently a fair number of foreign laborers who worked in the ginseng greenhouses lived across the river. We believe that’s where the zombies crossed over from and spread into that village.”
“Damn. Then I guess it couldn’t be helped. Anyway, we’re taking that place for ourselves, right?”
“Yes. The conditions are ideal for farming.”
They had taken care of the gangsters and seized the golf course, but there were simply too many survivors at Kangho Resort.
And during the process of taking the golf course, the survivors from nearby villages—the ones those bastards had been using like slaves—had also ended up taking refuge at Kangho Resort.
At this point, the survivors under Kang Baekho numbered around three thousand.
And to feed that many people, farming only the resort and the golf course was nowhere near enough.
“What about the village zombies?”
“Most of them are elderly. There’s no one in their twenties or thirties at all, and even the people in their fifties are considered relatively young.”
“Then if we take out those ones first, we should be able to clean up the rest without too much trouble. All right, let’s get started.”
“Yes, sir.”
One of the security men launched a drone.
Whiiiiine!
Watching it fly toward the village with its loud mechanical buzz, Kang Baekho spoke with obvious satisfaction.
“Goddamn. We wouldn’t even have that if it weren’t for Juno Juno, right? That thing was expensive as hell, wasn’t it?”
The resort had originally had drones too, but not industrial-grade ones like that—cheap models.
Their performance was worse, their batteries were small, and in mountain terrain like this they were not easy to use for reconnaissance.
“Yes. It was over ten million won apiece. It’s the kind they use at construction sites.”
At Yoon Seolhee’s answer, Kang Baekho nodded in satisfaction.
“If it weren’t for that thing, the golf course would’ve been rough too, and even now we’d probably just be charging in blind. That bastard Juno Juno—when your big brother sees you again, I’m really gonna love the hell out of you.”
Since the apocalypse began, they had gotten enormous use out of that drone, and every time Kang Baekho thought of Junho, he grinned wider.
“There’s nothing on the way down, and for now there are no moving zombies in the village.”
“Then let’s go.”
“You should stay here, sir. Just in case—”
“Huh? Wait. Something’s moving.”
“What?”
At the words of the security man piloting the drone, everyone who had been checking their gear before heading down toward the village turned their heads.
“People. It’s people. They just came out of the village hall. Ah... and a few of them are carrying guns!?”
“...!”
Kang Baekho’s eyes widened, and he hurried over to the laptop screen connected to the drone controller.
In front of the village hall, more than ten people had come out and were looking around warily while doing something.
“Who the hell are those bastards...? And what the hell are those guns?”
“Sir, those are real guns. Chinese military issue.”
Yoon Seolhee, her face grave, answered the baffled Kang Baekho. As a former special-forces soldier, she was familiar with Chinese and North Korean firearms as well.
