“Uh... sir? Do I really have to wear all this?”
“Yes. Absolutely. That stuff doesn’t tear easily, even if a zombie bites you.”
“Oh! Right, yes!”
At Junho’s dry answer, Choi Jeongwoo hurriedly pulled off his T-shirt and put on the clothes neatly folded in front of him.
“...Huh?”
Wearing the long-sleeved Gore-Tex work clothes, Choi Jeongwoo tilted his head.
“Cooler than you expected, right?”
“Ah, yes. It’s amazing, sir. These shoes are really sturdy too, but lighter than they look.”
“They should be. They’re good ones.”
The work jacket alone cost close to a hundred thousand won per set.
The underarms and back were mesh, so it was breathable, highly flexible, and easy to move in, and its abrasion-resistant construction meant it could withstand zombie bites to a certain degree.
And the mid-top outdoor shoes were a high-end model that still cost nearly two hundred thousand won even at outlets that sold older stock cheap, and were also widely used by trackers and camping enthusiasts overseas.
Waterproof by default, hard to slip in, and extremely tough, they were the ideal choice for outdoor activity in the apocalypse.
“Put this on too. And wear these on your elbows and knees.”
“Yes.”
Choi Jeongwoo also put on a lightweight tactical helmet, enough to stop air-rifle pellets, and reinforced-plastic protective pads on his elbows and knees.
“Daddy, you look cool...!”
Lifting his daughter, who was staring up at him with her mouth hanging open, Choi Jeongwoo forced a smile.
“Daddy looks cool?”
“Yeah! You look like a police mister! But Daddy, are you going to pick Mommy up?”
“......”
Fighting back the expression that almost twisted out of shape in an instant, Choi Jeongwoo forced himself—really forced himself—to smile.
“Jiwoo. Mommy got sick, so she went to the hospital, okay? So she has to stay there a long time. Mommy’s really, really sick.”
“Mm... then can’t I go see her with you and the doggies?”
“It’s too far for Jiwoo to go. You’d have to ride in a car, and on the subway for a long time, and walk and walk forever. So Mommy said if our Jiwoo listens to Daddy and plays nicely with the puppies... th-then she’ll come. She said she’ll buy Koromi and Coco dolls and come see Jiwoo....”
“Koromi and Coco! Really? Really really?”
“Yeah. Really really. Promise.”
“Daddy, put me down. Junseo! My mommy said she’s gonna buy me Koromi and Coco dolls! When she gets better, she’s coming with Koromi and Coco!”
Watching his daughter run off excitedly to brag to Kim Junseo, not knowing it might be a promise that would never be kept, Choi Jeongwoo wiped away his tears.
“...Your daughter and the other children will be safe. That much I promise.”
“Yes. Th-thank you. You even got them a game console and cartoons too... thank you so much.”
At Junho’s calm words, Choi Jeongwoo kept bowing his head over and over.
Both of Kim Hayoon’s hands were full of game discs and character-animation DVDs as she took Choi Jiwoo and Kim Junseo into the container lodging.
Junho had even set up the game console that played DVDs a little earlier and shown them how to use it.
Ordinarily, he had never intended to go this far, but the unexpected presence of young children had made him put in a little extra effort.
After confirming that the children had gone into the container lodging, Junho held out a blindfold to Choi Jeongwoo.
“We’re watching them on CCTV, so you don’t need to worry about the kids. All right, put this on and get in.”
“Yes.”
Once Choi Jeongwoo, his eyes red around the edges, put the blindfold on, Junho loaded him into the electric truck and gestured toward the place where the CCTV was installed.
At once, with a low mechanical noise, one of the containers making up one side of this residential zone split open down the middle.
From the outside they all looked like the same kind of lodging containers, but the containers on both ends of the short side of the rectangular residential block were actually automated entrances.
That was why Choi Jeongwoo had thought the entire residential zone was completely sealed off and kept wondering how people and vehicles got in and out.
Whiirr...
As the electric truck swayed lightly and passed through the entrance, the container returned seamlessly to its original form with a heavy mechanical sound.
Whether from the inside or the outside, unless someone inspected it closely, they would think it was nothing more than an old, worn-out container.
***
Whiiing.
The electric truck rolled down the mountain along the winding road.
The container residential zone was located halfway up the mountain where their shelter sat, about a fifteen-minute walk downhill from the shelter itself.
And the container zone and the shelter grounds were connected by a winding two-lane road with no fewer than three sharp bends.
All along that road, more than ten two-meter metal barricades were hidden, ready to spring up automatically in an emergency.
And even this road leading all the way downhill from the container zone had several bends and took more than twenty minutes on foot.
And even after you got all the way down, that still was not the end of it.
At the entrance to the mountain where the shelter and container zone were located, the approach had been blocked off with a sound barrier, making it look like construction had been abandoned there years ago.
Inside that main entrance was a state-of-the-art fully automated bullet-resistant steel gate, and outside it was a rusted steel gate, also automatic but looking like no one had passed through it in years, the two forming a double barrier four meters high.
In addition, ultra-small high-definition CCTV cameras had been installed at four spots difficult for people to notice, thoroughly watching the entire area around the entrance with no blind spots.
In other words, any outsider or vehicle had to pass through all of that before entering their shelter.
Thunk.
After driving another ten minutes or so, the electric truck came to a stop.
Junho opened the cargo compartment, guided blindfolded Choi Jeongwoo down onto the road, and said,
“Get in. Watch your head.”
“Yes, yes... ngh.”
“I told you to watch it.”
“S-sorry.”
After seating Choi Jeongwoo in the passenger seat of the waiting Bionic5 armored vehicle, Junho gave a hand signal to Baek Hail, who had climbed into the driver’s seat of the electric truck, then set off first.
The reason for going through all this trouble was simple.
Choi Jeongwoo may have had a rough idea where the container residential zone currently was, but he still did not know where Junho lived—in other words, where their shelter actually was.
So Junho needed to keep reinforcing the impression that the shelter was somewhere more than twenty minutes away by car from the container zone.
Not that Choi Jeongwoo was likely to do anything with his daughter still there.
But Junho had to prepare for even the slightest chance that something outside his expectations might happen.
***
It was just approaching two in the afternoon.
The armored vehicle retraced Junho’s patrol route in reverse and arrived at the entrance to the secret bypass cut into the industrial-road sound barrier.
The inside of the rusted steel gate had been welded with high-strength steel plates, and even reinforced with steel-bar supports, so it was built not to break even if a truck rammed it.
The sound barrier on both sides of the gate had also been reinforced with supports one by one over a stretch of about three hundred meters, so unless a container truck or a tank smashed into it, there was no danger of it collapsing.
And besides, the inside led to nothing but low hills and a small creek, so there was probably no lunatic who would try breaking through the sound barrier anyway.
“No traffic within one point five kilometers in either direction on the industrial road. No threats within three hundred meters of Vehicle One.”
Whiiing... clank!
As soon as Junhyeok’s report came over the comms and the gate to the secret bypass opened, the armored vehicle passed through quickly and entered the industrial road.
From the industrial-road side, the worn, rusted gate looked like something that had not been used in years as it shut and locked tight behind them.
The armored vehicle proceeded toward Gahyeon-ri along the industrial road at a somewhat slow speed of around thirty kilometers per hour.
“No threats within three hundred meters of Vehicle One. No abnormalities from the forward drone either... ah! Seven Bs—no, eight—six hundred meters ahead in Vehicle One’s direction of travel! You’ll see them the second you come around the bend, hyung!”
“Copy. I’m stopping just before the bend. Transfer control of the forward drone then.”
“Roger.”
Junho slowed the armored vehicle and stopped about thirty meters before the bend wrapping around the mountain.
Then he took out the drone controller Yoon Youngsu had set up and waited for the signal.
Soon, along with the blinking signal, drone-view footage appeared on the controller display.
The drone hovering high above moved toward the bend and picked up the “Bs”—the zombies—lingering around crashed vehicles.
“I’m handing control back. Keep the forward drone fixed on the Bs from its current position, and widen the follow drone’s monitoring radius to five hundred ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ and focus on Vehicle One’s safety.”
“Roger.”
“Mr. Choi Jeongwoo, wait in the car for a minute. This won’t take long. Oh, right. I should take this off.”
When Junho removed the blindfold, Choi Jeongwoo spoke with a trembling voice.
“S-sir. Will you really be okay?”
“I’ll be fine. When I rescued you and the kids this morning, the situation was much worse than it is now.”
“Ah...”
“Anyway, stay seated. There’s another drone hovering above this car right now, so everything within a five-hundred-meter radius is safe. And the dashcam’s recording all this, so don’t touch anything.”
“O-of course, sir. I’ll just sit here and not move a muscle.”
Gripping his seat belt, Choi Jeongwoo nodded hard.
As Junho ran quickly toward the bend with his body lowered, he flipped open the reinforced plastic cover at the center of his tactical vest and checked the drone feed on the tablet.
A zombie group made up of six adults and two teenagers.
Three of them were too busy tearing apart corpses to notice anything, while the other five wandered with grotesque steps, then suddenly whipped their heads around to glance at their surroundings.
Since they were not following any fixed routine, if he rounded the corner just like this, there was a high chance he would be spotted.
Roughly fifty meters.
At that distance, zombies saw and heard exactly the way they had when they were human.
If they noticed even a slightly loud sound or movement, they would come sprinting at full speed.
Then...
After rapidly assessing the situation and finishing the calculations, Junho spoke into the headset.
“Twenty seconds after this transmission ends, distract them with the drone. I’ll take them out in that window.”
“Roger. Be careful, hyung.”
“Yeah.”
After cutting the line, Junho flicked the selector on the KP9 and relaxed his elbows into position.
Whiiiiing!
A moment later, the drone that had been monitoring from above dove toward the zombies with a loud buzzing whine like a swarm of hornets.
The instant the ones wandering and the ones tearing at corpses alike all turned their faces toward the drone,
Junho rounded the bend in a low sideways crab walk, maintaining his shooting posture and bringing the zombies into the red-dot sight one by one.
Junho, who had earned an Outstanding rating with 98 percent accuracy in the Redrock Academy live-fire evaluation,
tack! tack! tack! tack! tack! tack! tack! tack!
did not miss a single head box with his godlike single-tap fire.
The 9mm subsonic rounds cleared the muzzle and in 0.2 seconds punched through every one of the creatures’ temporal and occipital bones.
All eight zombies’ legs gave out, and within barely five or six seconds they collapsed onto the asphalt one after another.
“All down, all down!”
Junhyeok’s voice came over the line, full of amazement, but Junho kept his shooting stance and advanced slowly.
His survival experience in the pre-regression apocalypse, Scott’s instruction at Redrock Academy,
and some inexplicable sixth sense kept him from letting his guard down.
And then—
“Kyaaah...!”
A small-framed female zombie burst out of the half-open rear seat of a car about ten meters away.
Tack!
Junho reflexively swung the muzzle toward it and fired at the same time.
Thud!
Confirming that the zombie had dropped backward with a hole punched right through the center of its forehead, Junho said in a low voice,
“Use the drone and check the inside of every car here thoroughly. Tell me when you’re done.”
“R-roger!”
The line ended with Junhyeok’s flustered voice.
And—
“......!”
Watching all of this unfold through the drone feed on the armored vehicle’s display, Choi Jeongwoo sat there with his mouth open, his whole body trembling without realizing it.
***
After a thorough drone sweep, there were no more zombies.
Junho moved the zombie corpses into the brush below the road and concealed them well for the moment, then asked Baek Hail to collect them later and started the armored vehicle again.
Maybe because they had just gone through one unexpected danger, Junhyeok’s voice over the comms was tighter and sharper than before as they reached the mountain road leading up to the Mount Cheonghak communications relay station.
“Hyung, from here on the drone signal’s getting iffy. I’m handing control over.”
“Okay.”
Control of the drone transferred back to Junho—or more precisely, to the armored vehicle.
Just as the head of ADT Mobil had boasted, the drone integrated perfectly with the armored vehicle’s operating system.
Of course, they had already confirmed that through repeated test flights since last year, but it would have been a disaster if something went wrong when it mattered.
But the drone synced smoothly with the vehicle system, followed the car from high altitude, and displayed all the surrounding conditions on the wide screen.
Choi Jeongwoo, staring at it with fascinated eyes, finally spoke cautiously.
“Um... sir. May I ask you something?”
After seeing Junho dispatch people—no, zombies—in an instant, Choi Jeongwoo’s manner had become even more respectful.
Just seeing those things was enough to make his hands and feet shake. How could someone kill them so easily, without hesitation?
He feared Junho, but he was awed by him too.
“Go ahead.”
“Yes, thank you. It’s just... I can tell this screen is from the drone camera, but I was wondering what the display right in front of you is.”
“That’s the vehicle’s thermal imaging, front, back, left, and right. If anything giving off heat is hiding within a twenty-meter radius, it’ll show up most of the time.”
“Ah...”
“We’re almost there. Get ready.”
“Ah, yes. Understood.”
Tension returned to Choi Jeongwoo’s face, and a little later the armored vehicle pulled into the brush.
It was summer, and the grass and scrub had grown wild, making it an ideal place to hide a vehicle.
Even so, Junho went a step further and covered the armored vehicle with camouflage netting.
It was in case someone, by some slim chance, flew a drone over this area.
Once the concealment was complete, Junho tapped the tablet on his tactical vest and set the drone’s follow-mode target to himself.
The encrypted wireless comms system and antenna mounted on the armored vehicle worked normally out to a radius of five hundred meters, and the relay station, though higher up, was only two to three hundred meters away in a straight line, so that was enough.
“You hearing me?”
“Yeah! I can hear you, but the signal’s a little weak. We really do need to put a repeater up there.”
“Right. That’s why we came. Anyway, you should still be able to see the drone feed well enough from there, so keep watching it and stay on comms with me.”
“Roger.”
The moment Junhyeok’s voice ended—
beep, beep, beep, beep...
The sudden warning tone in his headset made Junho start and look down at the tablet on his tactical vest.
Along with a red blinking Alert indicator, the drone’s surveillance mode had switched from passive to trigger.
The drone’s wide-angle camera was locked on one direction.
“.......”
Junho narrowed his eyes.
Below the tall communications tower at the relay station were four buildings of varying size, and people were coming out of the largest gray one.
A total of eight people exited the building, walking normally rather than with the grotesque gait of zombies.
All appeared to be adult men, and every one of them was carrying a weapon like a steel pipe or a machete.
More than anything, two of them were...
“Air rifles...?”
They had hunting air rifles slung over their shoulders.
