When the two men with the air rifles looked around the relay station and started giving orders, the other men split off in pairs and spread out toward the surrounding buildings.
“Hyung. See that stuff piled up in the middle?”
“Yeah. I’m looking at it now.”
“Those people... are they looting the place right now?”
“Probably....”
Absurd as it was, that seemed to be the truth.
In front of the gray building the men had just come out of, all sorts of equipment and facilities—including computers—had been stacked up neatly.
“......”
Watching the video feed from the drone, Junho narrowed his eyes.
He had no idea how to process what he was seeing.
He had never imagined that on the very first day of the apocalypse, people would already be stripping a communications relay station.
On the first day of the apocalypse, more than 90 percent of survivors stayed holed up in their homes, trembling as they waited for rescue, or trying to figure out what was happening through the news or the internet.
Of course, there were a few brave people with enough foresight to try, even in the middle of all that, to secure whatever they lacked or whatever would become important later.
Food and drinking water, for example.
But even those few would never come up to a relay station on a high mountain unless they were insane.
Not with this many people, and not this organized.
“......!”
Junho’s eyes suddenly widened.
His expression turned so frightening that even Choi Jeongwoo, who had been quietly watching his mood from the side, flinched. Junho immediately adjusted the drone’s position.
Soon the drone camera dipped slightly lower and drew closer to the relay station little by little, then stopped at an altitude of 110 meters and began moving slowly to the right.
As it did, the zoom camera started showing the men looting the relay station in greater detail.
And then, at one moment—
“Han Changoh....”
“......!?”
In a voice savage enough to make Choi Jeongwoo recoil, Junho muttered one man’s name, then continued.
“You see him?”
“Uh, hyung. You know that guy?”
“...I’ll explain later. For now, save the one in the white short-sleeved golf shirt—the one with the air rifle, Team Leader.”
Then Yoon Youngsu’s voice came through the headset at once from the control room where Yoon was with Junhyeok.
“Yes, sir!”
“From now on, every outside survivor we clearly catch on camera—other than us—gets sorted into one of three categories.”
“Yes, hold on. ...Okay, go ahead.”
“First, potential consideration. Second, caution. And third... elimination. Put the guy in the white short-sleeved golf shirt under elimination.”
“...Yes. I just did it.”
While Yoon Youngsu’s voice continued, Junho stared at the display on the drone controller without blinking.
On the screen was Han Changoh, a man in his late thirties, joking around while pointing the air rifle at someone else.
And in that instant, what had happened before the regression came back to him.
Should I kill him now...?
The urge to murder rose up out of nowhere.
But Junho steadied himself.
The unplanned mess with Choi Jeongwoo and the others was already enough of a disruption.
“Register all the others on screen under caution. Get clear facial impressions and distinguishing features.”
“Yup.”
“Hyung, who are those people? Do you know them?”
As soon as Junhyeok’s worried voice followed, Junho spoke low.
“I’ll explain later. I’m cutting comms for a bit. Looks like they’ll be heading down soon.”
“Got it.”
The headset connection ended.
Junho turned to Choi Jeongwoo, who was beside him, visibly terrified and unable to settle down.
“Looks like we need to wait here for a little while. This way.”
“Yes, y-yes, sir.”
Following behind Junho as he moved quickly, Choi Jeongwoo swallowed dryly.
It had already been terrifying enough watching him kill zombies without even blinking, even as it had seemed incredible.
But just now, the Junho who had been relatively normal toward him and his daughter until this point had felt like a completely different person.
Whoever Han Changoh—or Han Changho—was, Choi Jeongwoo had a feeling he probably would not die peacefully.
Already breathing harder, he moved with difficulty behind a darker patch of brush.
About ten minutes later, the men came down carrying the equipment and facilities they had removed from the relay station, loaded into one electric SUV and one small electric truck—the bestselling model in Korea.
Keeping themselves hidden in the brush, ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ Junho and Choi Jeongwoo watched as the vehicles came down the narrow dirt mountain road, then peeled off onto a side road leading directly to Gahyeon-ri.
“Huh? If you go that way, that’s the country-house neighborhood....”
At Choi Jeongwoo’s tense voice, Junho nodded.
“Does it look to you like they came from there too, Mr. Choi Jeongwoo?”
“Yes. But... I think I’ve seen one or two of those men somewhere before.”
“Really?”
“Yes, yes. My company installs solar systems and boilers in Gahyeon-ri too. So there are a few businesses we deal with there... I think I saw them at one of those. No, I did. I’m sure of it.”
“That business you deal with—it’s been in Gahyeon-ri a while, right? About ten years....”
“Y-yes, that’s right. I know it’s been over ten years. I heard it started up when they were first building all those country houses and townhouses in Gahyeon-ri.”
Junho quietly nodded.
That would be right.
Gahyeon-ri had originally been a rural backwater with rice fields, dry fields, regular houses and villas, and maybe around ten small factories handling the “small” in small and midsize companies.
But around ten years ago, in the early 2010s, it had started changing into a place with almost ten thousand residents.
Because that was exactly when the Gyeongchun Line in the Seoul metropolitan rail network opened, and Moku-ri, about three kilometers away from Gahyeon-ri, had developed around its train station so dramatically it might as well have been remade from scratch.
Gahyeon-ri had benefited from that. Two apartment complexes had gone up, along with a country-house district and a high-end townhouse complex, and the area had developed right along with it.
But when money and people suddenly pour into a rural backwater like that, there is always one kind that follows close behind.
Thugs. Gangsters.
And the men Junho had just seen were exactly that kind.
More precisely, they were the sort of half-thug operators who wore the mask of a real-estate development company and got involved in anything connected to it if there was money in it.
Han Changsik, Han Changoh....
Junho knew Han Changoh and his older brother, Han Changsik—the leader—very, very, far too well.
“Let’s head back up for now.”
“What? A-are you sure, sir? If those people come back from earlier—”
“They won’t. They took everything they needed.”
“Ah....”
Still anxious, but with Junho sounding so certain—and his own situation being what it was—Choi Jeongwoo had no choice but to nod at once.
***
Just as Junho said, the half-thugs who had gone down to the country-house neighborhood did not come back.
It was more than a two-hour walk, but only about ten minutes by car, so if there had been anything left worth stripping, they had more than enough time to return. But the drone picked up nothing.
Junho drove the armored vehicle up to the relay station, then recovered the drone, whose battery was nearly depleted.
After that, he launched two fully charged replacement drones prepared in the vehicle, setting one to focus on monitoring the side road and using the other to search the relay station thoroughly.
There was no one inside the relay station headquarters or the attached buildings.
Then again, relay stations like this did not normally have staff on site in the first place, and with it being a holiday stretch now, there was no way anyone would be here.
“There’s one thing I’m grateful to them for....”
Thinking of Han Changoh and his group, Junho muttered under his breath.
The men who had gotten to the relay station ahead of him and stripped everything from the solar panels to the generator had smashed every single CCTV camera in the place.
He had been thinking about how to work without leaving a trace, and thanks to them, that problem had been solved.
“All right, let’s begin. The drones are watching both here and that side road from before, so you can work without worrying.”
“Yes, sir.”
Now fully trusting both Junho’s combat ability and the advanced equipment he possessed, Choi Jeongwoo got to work earnestly with the gear and facilities they had moved over from the armored vehicle.
Junho, who had picked up a fair amount of knowledge about repeaters and amplifiers from Baek Hail and the specialists while the shelter was still under construction, helped him.
Meanwhile, the four drones were rotated through surveillance duty while being charged one by one on the fast charger installed in the armored vehicle.
On the empty steel frame beside the relay tower, Choi Jeongwoo and Junho installed a three-meter aluminum pole engineered for wind resistance, then mounted an RF repeater, an antenna, and a high-performance surveillance camera to it.
Then they placed the router and amplifier inside waterproof housing and connected a 3.5-kilowatt low-noise diesel generator to an ESS-integrated charger battery pack.
It took about three hours to finish that much work.
“Whew... I think that should do it, sir.”
Vrrr....
The diesel generator, attached to a fuel tank holding about four to five days’ worth of fuel, let out a restrained hum as it began charging the ESS battery and supplying power to the installed equipment at the same time.
“I’ll start on the network setup.”
“Yes, sir. You just need to follow what I say. First...”
Operating the laptop while staying on comms with Yoon Youngsu, Junho started configuring the router according to Yoon’s instructions.
He split the ports into VLANs and finished forwarding one of them to the headquarters’ internal network IP.
A little later, the repeater activated and wireless packets began transmitting back to the shelter.
It seemed to take about thirty minutes.
“Sir, VPN tunneling just came through. SNR is over 42 and minus 47 dBm, so it’s stable. Packet loss is zero, and AES encryption—”
“So it’s working, right?”
“Yup.”
“Then I’m handing over control of the CCTV camera and the drones to your side. Check it.”
A little later—
“Drone control transfer complete. The live video feed is up. Video delay is 0.3 seconds. Clean too.”
“Okay.”
Letting out a breath of relief, Junho turned to Choi Jeongwoo.
“Mr. Choi Jeongwoo, you really did a great job.”
With this, the whole Gahyeon-ri area—which until now had only partial wireless communication and drone coverage in the eastern and western sections, with the most important central section left uncovered—could now be brought under full drone surveillance and wireless communication.
What was more, they would even be able to fly drones beyond Gahyeon-ri into parts of Moku-ri, the busiest area in this region and the one with the Gyeongchun Line station.
“N-no, not at all. You really helped a lot, sir... honestly, I thought maybe you’d worked in this field for years... no, I mean, someone like you obviously wouldn’t, but anyway....”
Junho cut off Choi Jeongwoo’s rambling.
“What’s certain is that I never could have done it alone. This is thanks to you, Mr. Choi Jeongwoo. Which means...”
Rising to his feet, Junho suddenly held out his hand.
“......?”
Startled, Choi Jeongwoo slowly reached out and took it. Only then did Junho show him a faint smile and say,
“You and the children should be able to live safely now.”
“Ah....”
At that moment, moisture slowly welled in Choi Jeongwoo’s suddenly widened eyes.
“Th-thank you, sir. Thank you so much. I’ll never forget this. Really, I’ll really work as hard as I can....”
Relieved that it was not himself but his very young daughter who had been saved from this hell, the young father broke into tears.
***
The armored vehicle returned under the support of the new drones the shelter had sent out to help with surveillance.
And as a show of a certain degree of trust, Junho did not blindfold Choi Jeongwoo this time.
Even without it, the most Choi Jeongwoo would learn was a little about the container lodging. He would still have no way at all of guessing anything about the shelter itself.
There were no more encounters with zombies on the way back.
Thinking of Bucheon on this same day before the regression, it was almost miraculous.
Feeling newly grateful for the low population density around their shelter, Junho returned to the container residential zone around sunset, with faint gunfire, cannon fire, and explosions drifting through the air.
Choi Jeongwoo was first startled when he saw that the old iron gate at the entrance connected to the road below the mountain was actually incredibly solid and operated by a cutting-edge security system.
Then when they arrived at the residential zone and he saw the container door opening and closing automatically, he could not hide his shock at all.
But because that meant he and the children were now almost perfectly safe from the hell outside, he was finally able to relax completely.
After taking Choi Jeongwoo into the container where the children were sprawled out asleep—apparently having worn themselves out playing games and watching cartoons—Junho went back up to the shelter.
He loaded four bags of food and supplies, enough to feed four people for three or four days, and brought them back down.
Of course, since he still intended to watch Choi Jeongwoo for a few more days, he did not forget to kill about an hour before returning.
And as for the clothes and shoes in the supply bags, there were sizes for Choi Jeongwoo and Kim Hayoon, but for the two little kids he had no choice but to give them the smallest sizes available.
Still, since it was hot summer weather, if they rolled up the smallest women’s sizes a few times, the clothes were breathable and wearable enough for now.
As for shoes, they could just keep wearing the ones they already had.
“Whether the kids do or not, Mr. Choi Jeongwoo and Student Hayoon need to be up at six. And...”
Junho explained the precautions and schedule matched to the shelter’s timetable, and the two of them nodded hard, careful not to miss a single word.
“...And, Student Hayoon.”
“Yes, yes!”
“Now that we’ve installed the repeater, starting tonight we’ll use the drone to check around Hanaareum Nursing Home.”
“Ah...!”
“But we still won’t be able to see all the way inside right away. The drone is loud, so if it gets too close, it’ll be spotted. So we still might not be able to confirm what happened to your grandmother.”
“Ahh....”
Kim Hayoon’s face, which had filled with hope, instantly crumpled. Looking at her, Junho continued.
“But we’ll keep checking with the CCTV and the drone. Then if your grandmother comes outside the nursing home building, we’ll know right away. Anyway....”
Junho told them part of an operation he had never thought would be connected to these two, but one he had absolutely planned to carry out within a month of the apocalypse beginning.
“There are people I need to bring out of Hanaareum Nursing Home. If your grandmother is there and safe, I’ll bring her back with them.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much, mister. I’ll really, really do anything you tell me and work hard.”
“Good.”
Whether he brought back two or three, it made no real difference, so Junho made Kim Hayoon that promise.
More than anything, either way, he would have to proceed by dealing with large numbers—whether zombies or people.
