Moving all the supplies that filled more than half the cargo bay ended up taking less time than expected.
That was because Choi Hyunwoo, true to his size, had ridiculous strength and stamina.
“Man, how the hell am I supposed to organize all this?”
Staring at the boxes filling up his room, Choi Hyunwoo scratched his head hard.
“Let’s see. First...”
The boxes labeled bottled water, instant rice, and various canned goods he stacked neatly on the veranda next to the kitchen.
Since there was not enough room, the remaining boxes, combat rations, biscuits, and the like he piled into his father’s study-slash-private room, since his father was not home right now.
That still left the other food items, and—
“Medicine and electrical... electronics? Tactical...?”
If not for the words [For Hyunwoo] written on the front, Choi Hyunwoo never would have guessed what these four boxes were for just from the stickers. He carried them into his room.
Then, with a box cutter, he carefully sliced through the tape on the box labeled [Tactical].
“Holy shit....”
He really meant it.
Because the items were not just sitting loose inside the box—they had been packed again inside airtight plastic storage containers.
“No wonder it sounded weird when I was carrying it....”
Muttering to himself, Choi Hyunwoo opened one of the tightly sealed containers.
“......!?”
This was... literally a full survival-and-tactical package.
A folding survival knife, a hunting slingshot kit, bolt cutters, a fully folding tool set, and a hand axe.
A stun gun, a high-output tactical flashlight, a solar-powered electronic watch, and an analog compass.
Folding binoculars, digital night vision goggles, a compact emergency tent, a waterproof sleeping bag, a portable water filter, and dry fuel.
Windproof goggles, replacement-filter dust masks, and two full gas mask sets.
A portable radio with earphones, and on top of that, an expensive handheld transceiver.
He had thought it felt kind of heavy, but it really was packed with almost everything a person would need to survive in an extreme situation.
“This is insane... but why send me all this?”
While sorting through the items, Choi Hyunwoo suddenly remembered the message Junho had sent and searched the box more carefully.
He found a white envelope.
And inside it...
“...Under no circumstances, absolutely do not go outside before 8:00 tomorrow morning, and even if your family calls for you, stay in your room first... if you’re already outside, go to our place... if you move the black cabinet next to the kitchen, a door will appear....”
After reading the whole letter Junho had sent, Choi Hyunwoo just blinked, still unable to make sense of any of it.
But then—
“I don’t get a single damn thing, but... can’t I just go over there now? To the place where hyung and that punk Junhyeok used to live....”
Grinning, Choi Hyunwoo sent a message.
[Mother dearest! I’m sleeping over at a friend’s place tonight!]
Then he grabbed a pair of sunglass-style goggles that somehow looked cool, the electronic watch, a little flashlight that clipped onto the collar of a T-shirt, and the survival knife, then left the house on his bike.
***
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The moment the alarm started ringing, Junho’s eyes snapped open.
After showering with water only, without using soap, he went down to the first-floor dining room.
Choi Haneul and Baek Sua were just finishing up breakfast preparations.
“You’re up, Mr. Junho? You worked yourself to death all day yesterday—did you sleep okay?”
“Yes. I’m used to waking up at exactly this time. What about you two? Did you sleep well?”
Baek Sua’s eyes were obviously swollen, but Junho asked anyway as if he had noticed nothing.
“Honestly, I couldn’t sleep much. Kept worrying about my part-time kid and all that. But well... what can you do.”
At Choi Haneul’s sad smile, Junho only nodded and drank some water.
Soon the others, including Junhyeok, came into the dining room.
“All right, then...”
Just as Junho was about to speak while looking around at everyone seated at the table—
♪♫♪♬♩♬
Soft music started playing.
“Good morning, everyone at our shelter. As of 6:40 a.m. on Saturday, August 17, 2024, the outside temperature is 25.3 degrees Celsius, humidity is 81 percent...”
AI Akina’s voice filled the room.
“What the hell’s that?”
“Oh my God? Who’s talking?”
Despite everyone’s startled reactions, the voice of the AI computing system Akina continued.
“Lastly, based on body-temperature detection, no abnormal signs are present in any member. Let us all stay bright, healthy, and alive together.”
It sounded like that was the end of it, but then—
“Our shelter is open for business today as well.”
And just like that, the AI computing system Akina finished the first morning report that Junho and everyone in our shelter might end up hearing every day for many long years to come.
***
“What’s the situation?”
When Junho came up to the control room after finishing his morning workout routine, Yoon Youngsu answered.
“The nursing home’s unchanged. Seven are still wandering around in front of the main building and the front yard, and eight around the parking lot. No movement inside. And honestly, you can’t really see much anyway—they blocked things up with curtains and furniture from the start.”
“Hmm....”
The survivors in the nursing home had probably been the ones who covered the windows with curtains and piled things up at the entrance.
“At least four or five....”
Aside from the elderly residents, there were probably at least that many survivors there between their twenties and fifties.
And two of them would be the doctor couple.
“What about the country-house neighborhood? Anything there?”
Yoon Youngsu tapped away at the keyboard, then pulled up the camera feed from the drone that had just flown in to rotate into duty.
“There are twenty houses total. Eleven are wrecked to hell. I think people are in the rest. Problem is, it’s the same as the nursing home. Curtains drawn everywhere, and nobody comes out... huh?”
“They’re coming out.”
Junho and Yoon Youngsu stared at the monitor.
At the very top of the upscale country-house complex built one after another up the slope along a paved road wide enough for a couple of cars to pass,
the door of the biggest and fanciest house opened, and several men cautiously stepped out into the yard.
“That’s them! Boss, right?”
“.......”
Junho silently nodded.
They had finally found the base of Hanchang Development. More precisely, it was probably Han Changsik’s house.
“Get their faces and features logged and add them to the category list, and... huh?”
“Holy shit? Are those guys... heading out somewhere?”
“Probably. Can you drop the altitude a little?”
“Yeah. At 120 meters they probably won’t hear it. It’s still noisy because of the zombies.”
Soon the drone slowly descended, and the zoom camera drew in as far as it could.
The men who had come out into the yard were all wearing jeans and long sleeves, but that was not all—they also had armor-like protection strapped to their forearms and shoulders, and were wearing motorcycle helmets.
On top of that, every one of them was carrying either a knife, a hand axe, or a short spear with an awl attached to the end and wrapped all over with blue tape.
Fully armed like that, they carefully opened the yard gate and went out.
Then, like alley cats, they crossed the road and moved diagonally downhill to another country house, climbing over the walls one by one.
“That house?”
“One I judged probably has people in it. Those bastards aren’t trying to kill zombies...”
“They’re trying to kill people.”
Right as Junho muttered that, a vehicle slowly rolled out of the garage at Han Changsik’s country house.
“That’s the same car from yesterday, right?”
“Yeah. Can you redirect the drone over at the nursing home for a bit? If nothing’s happening over there, let’s use it for a minute.”
“Yep. I’ll put it on follow mode.”
The drone system the shelter operated could follow not just people or vehicles belonging to the shelter, but designated outside targets too.
A moment later, the drone that had been watching the nursing home flew over at high speed and started tracking the electric SUV from above.
“Huh? Boss, right? They’re heading toward the nursing home, aren’t they?”
“...Looks like it.”
They were.
The SUV that had come out of Han Changsik’s country-house garage was moving slowly in the direction of the nursing home the drone had just left.
But it had not even gone two minutes before it stopped.
Because outside the rear gate at the end of the road that looped around ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ behind the country-house neighborhood,
past the tightly shut iron-bar gate, was an area packed with small factories, old villas, and one-story houses.
And even from the drone footage, there looked to be well over fifty zombies wandering through it.
The SUV hurriedly backed up and hid near a corner, and then two men got out from the back seat.
“Han Changoh....”
Junho’s gaze sharpened.
Han Changoh, still wearing the same white short-sleeved golf shirt as yesterday, came out holding an air rifle and aimed it at the zombies.
He fired several shots, and some of the zombies beyond the bars staggered—
but they did not go down.
Which made sense.
With the small-caliber pellet rounds used in a standard air rifle, even if you hit a zombie in the head from within fifty meters, it was not easy to kill one.
And since he was not even hitting their heads, only their torsos, there was no way he was going to kill them.
Apparently dissatisfied either with his own shooting or with the air rifle’s performance, Han Changoh made an irritated gesture, then got back into the car, and the SUV returned to the country-house garage.
After watching the whole sequence, Yoon Youngsu said in disbelief,
“So they’re trying to seize the other country houses and open up an outside route at the same time, huh? That’s what this is, right?”
Junho nodded.
There was a side road from the front gate of the country-house neighborhood leading toward Cheonghak Mountain where the relay station was located, but the situation near the front gate was even worse than at the rear, and that side road led only into the mountains.
Of course, they could have gone down by the route Junho had taken up in the armored vehicle—
but those bastards did not have the guts to push it that far.
Because for Han Changsik, who had lived in Gahyeon-ri for over ten years as the head of the real-estate development company Hanchang Development, it was not exactly impossible to know that the communications relay station normally had no staff stationed there.
So for someone as sharp and opportunistic as Han Changsik, looting the relay station full of “essential goods” like solar panels and generators was the obvious choice.
But heading out toward the national highway, where there were bound to be lots of vehicles and lots of unpredictable zombies, was not an option someone as cowardly as him—though he would have dressed it up as being coolheaded—would ever choose.
That left only one thing.
“So you were trying to punch through the easier rear gate. While stripping the country houses one by one too....”
Han Changsik—just as expected—was fast at assessing a situation, and smart as hell.
That was probably how a guy who had originally been driven out of Moku-ri by actual organized gangsters, after playing half-thug there, had managed to take over this whole area within a few years.
But then—
“......!”
Things Junho had heard and experienced in Gahyeon-ri before the regression flashed through his mind,
and one assumption—no, one pattern that now looked almost certain from the circumstances—locked into place in his head like puzzle pieces fitting together.
“Hoo.”
After taking a quiet breath, Junho said to Yoon Youngsu,
“Youngsu. It’s a little less hot outside right now, isn’t it?”
“Yep. It’ll hit 29 soon, but since it’s morning, it’s way better than midday. Why?”
“Those bastards probably aren’t moving during the day. Looks like they’re only going to move in the morning and evening.”
“Ah...!”
Trying to fight either zombies or people in broad daylight while loaded down with that much gear would be incredibly hard.
Yesterday they had moved in broad daylight because looting the relay station had been urgent, but when it came to actual combat, it was clear they meant to do it early in the morning or around sunset.
And the reason they were trying to force a route through the rear gate even while prepared to fight zombies to some extent was—
The nursing home. It was those Hanchang Development gangster bastards who set fire to Hanaareum Nursing Home and killed the doctor couple.
—Doctors? I heard there used to be some, yeah. There’s a nursing home over across that hill, and I heard a doctor couple used to volunteer there.
—But whether it was those NOBIs controlled by an Alpha or some looter bastards, there was a huge fight there, and I heard both of them died in it.
—Why would looters go to a nursing home? Are you stupid? Places like that usually stock like two weeks, maybe a month’s worth of food. Enough for dozens of people. And it’s not a hospital, but they’ve got a decent amount of medicine too.
The consideration target had told him that before the regression, so it had to be reliable information.
And in Junho’s judgment, the only people who would try something like that less than a month after the apocalypse began were—
Han Changsik. Han Changoh....
Those two.
“Youngsu, keep watching for now and let me know if anything changes.”
“Yep.”
Leaving the control room in a hurry, Junho brought Junhyeok—who had just come back from checking the chicken coop and greenhouse with Kkamsoonie—to his room.
“What? Something happen, hyung?”
To his younger brother, who tilted his head in confusion, Junho said as calmly as he could,
“Do you think you can kill someone today?”
“......!!!”
Junhyeok’s eyes went wide.
But then—
“You mean... those bastards from yesterday?”
Junhyeok recovered his composure so quickly that it surprised both Junho and Junhyeok himself.
“Yeah. Maybe not Han Changsik and Han Changoh, but I think it’d be best to take out some of those gangster bastards around them.”
That was the only way to stop them from heading toward the nursing home.
If unnamed enemies—whether zombie or human—started taking out his men, Han Changsik was neither brave enough nor stupid enough to keep forcing that route.
“We’re excluding the AR-15. We may end up using blades too. Let’s do some practice at the range this afternoon. Oh, right—we’ll need to get the night vision ready too.”
“...Got it, hyung.”
Junhyeok clenched and unclenched his lightly trembling fist.
But for our shelter, and for the older brother who had done everything he could for him—
he was sure he would never let him down.
