“How many people are on the first and second floors?”
“Six—no, seven including the women on the first floor, and six more on the second.”
“Why are there women here?”
“To make sure nobody steals food. The market’s car wash runs on pumped groundwater, so people also rotate through here to do laundry and bathe.”
Junho nodded at the explanation from the man who had introduced himself as Daewoo’s dad.
It was not all that different from what Song Gijun had told him before the regression.
“That.”
Junho pointed at the crossbow Daewoo’s dad had set down and continued.
“Can you shoot it well? Any good with it?”
“More or less. At ten meters, if I shoot ten bolts, eight or nine hit where I’m aiming.”
“You’re a good shot.”
At that level, in the apocalypse, that made him a marksman.
And judging by the confidence in his tone, he probably meant he could hit moving targets too, not just fixed ones—zombies or people.
“Then here’s what we’ll do. You only fire when I tell you to.”
“Excuse me? Then until then...”
“You stay on me and cover the rear. You’ve got a knife, don’t you?”
Junho asked, glancing at his waist, and Daewoo’s dad drew his hunting knife and nodded.
“Ah, yes. Understood.”
“Don’t try ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ to be a hero. Just do exactly what I say. That’ll be enough.”
“Yes. Yes, sir.”
Daewoo’s dad nodded hard.
A couple of months earlier, the incident where the “Mansion Butcher” wiped out dozens of delinquent punks had become famous.
The place where it happened was barely a kilometer from the apartment complex, so some of the residents in the high-rises had seen the mansion burning that night.
And one of the survivors from that neighborhood, whom they had run into outside the apartment complex not long ago, had described the appearance of the “Mansion Butcher” in fairly vivid detail, so most of the survivors in The First Apartments, including Daewoo’s dad, knew about him.
This is the guy who killed more than fifty delinquent punks by himself in ten minutes?
Swallowing dryly without realizing it, Daewoo’s dad fell in behind the Mansion Butcher.
Creak.
The emergency-exit door opened with a sound.
“...Huh?”
The moment one of the thugs a few meters away looked this way—
the Mansion Butcher whipped something from his waist and threw it like lightning.
Thwack!
“Aaagh!”
The thug, a palm-length blade buried more than halfway into his thigh, let out a scream, staggered, and dropped.
“......!”
“Shoot the arm.”
Before Daewoo’s dad even had time to be shocked by the ghostlike knife throw, the order came. He quickly leveled the crossbow and fired.
Thwack!
“Guaaagh!”
The bolt sank into the thug’s shoulder, and even as he collapsed, he finally dropped the metal-pipe spear he had been carrying.
Thud-thud-thud! Bam!
The Mansion Butcher sprinted forward with a speed that made his muscular build seem irrelevant and drove a kick into the thug’s jaw.
The thug went over backward without even managing to scream, and passing right by him, the man said,
“Reload and follow me. Fast.”
“Yes. Yes, sir.”
Bracing the crossbow between his legs, Daewoo’s dad loaded a new bolt with practiced hands and hurried after him.
***
“Hey, those cocksuckers used their brains? They tied zombies up here?”
Kyaaah! Krrr!
Han Changoh laughed as he looked at the four zombies straining to charge at him, their waists and chests bound by thick climbing rope tied to one of the building pillars.
“Well, fair enough. It’s not like we’re the only ones allowed to do something like this. Hey, get rid of those. No, I’ll do it.”
Han Changoh aimed the air rifle at the zombies, whose gray-white eyes rolled and whose jaws hung open wide as blood-flecked saliva dripped down.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
At a distance of a little over ten meters, the zombies, hit in the eyes by lead pellets, dropped one after another.
“Wow, boss. Your shooting keeps getting better and better.”
“At this point, this is just basic.”
Han Changoh shrugged and turned around.
Men hit with lead pellets, stabbed with spears and blades, or beaten down lay on the floor groaning.
The women who had been guarding the big refrigerators in the market’s butcher section were huddled together, trembling.
“They’re all married ladies, but there are a couple pretty hot young wives in there. What should we do?”
“Ugh!”
“A-ah...”
The young married women in their early to mid-thirties, singled out by the thug, recoiled in terror and shook even harder.
Han Changoh looked at them and slowly licked his lips.
“What do you mean, what do we do? We take them back and fu—”
Tak-tak-tak-tak...!
“M-manager! Brother Changoh!”
“What now, asshole?”
At the frantic voice of a subordinate from the escalator connected to the first floor, Han Changoh twisted his face in irritation and turned his head.
“S-someone down on the first floor is—kkh!”
The subordinate, who had just come up the escalator, failed to finish his sentence and suddenly jolted upright.
“Ghk! Ah, f-fuck...”
He clutched at his waist, where a black blade was sticking out, staggered a few more steps, then pitched forward with a curse.
“......!?”
“W-what the hell?”
Han Changoh’s eyes widened at the knife buried in his subordinate’s waist, and the two thugs with him raised their metal-pipe spears.
“Hey.”
Han Changoh immediately leveled the air rifle toward the escalator and jerked his head at his men.
The two nodded and crept that way, using the display shelves as cover.
“Who is it! Which motherfucker is it! Hey, you cocksucking bastard, get the hell out—”
Han Changoh was glaring through the scope toward the escalator and slowly stepping forward to open up a firing angle when
something black shot out from the escalator onto the second floor.
Thunk!
Han Changoh instinctively fired the air rifle at the black shape.
But the instant he pulled the trigger, another shape sprang out from the escalator—
Thwack!
“Aaagh!”
A drawing knife buried itself in Han Changoh’s right shoulder, and he had no choice but to drop the air rifle.
Thud-thud-thud!
In that instant, Junho—the Mansion Butcher—rushed in and closed the distance in a blink.
Then he drove a dropkick straight into Han Changoh’s torso.
“Guhk!”
Hit by the heavy kick, Han Changoh flew backward nearly three full meters before crashing down.
Junho landed, got up at once, kicked the air rifle far away,
then hurled drawing knives at the two thugs staring at him with bulging eyes and charged again immediately.
Thwack! Clang!
One knife hit one of them, but the other struck a shelf and glanced off with a metallic ring.
“You motherfucker!”
The thug swung his metal-pipe spear down at Junho like he was trying to smash him.
Tang!
Junho blocked the attack with the reinforced plastic guard on his forearm, slipped inside the thug’s reach like lightning, caught him by the collar with his right hand,
and threw him toward one of the market’s pillars like a body slam.
“Uaa...!”
Bang!
The thug spun once in midair, smashed hard into the pillar, and crumpled.
And there were several zombie corpses there—the ones Han Changoh had just “killed” with the air rifle.
Unfortunately for the thug, one of them was not actually dead yet, because the lead pellet had failed to punch through its skull.
Krrrgh! Crunch!
“Aaagh! Aaaagh!”
The bastard, bitten in the neck of all places, thrashed and screamed,
while Junho walked toward the other thug, who was still jabbing with the metal-pipe spear even after being hit by a drawing knife.
“W-what the fuck are you? What the fuck are you, you crazy bastard!? S-stay the hell away!”
Maybe that spearwork would have worked on ordinary people, but to Junho it was so slow and pathetic it was enough to make him yawn.
Tang!
With a single swing of the machete, Junho disarmed him, then tossed a cable tie at the thug and said,
“You want to drag that bastard over here, tie him and yourself up, and kneel? Or do you just want to die?”
“I-I’ll tie us up!”
The thug dragged over his partner, who had first gone down with a knife in his waist and had been crawling on the floor, then bound both of their hands together with the cable tie.
That was when—
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Han Changoh, somehow back on his feet after getting launched by the dropkick, suddenly broke into a sprint in the opposite direction.
“Shoot him now.”
The instant Junho finished speaking, Daewoo’s dad, who had only just made it up there, fired the crossbow at Han Changoh.
Thud!
“Aagh! Fuck!”
With the bolt buried in his back, Han Changoh cursed and hurled himself straight at the window.
Crash!
Leaving the loud shatter of glass behind, he vanished downward.
Junho moved quickly to the broken window and looked below.
Han Changoh—knife in one shoulder, bolt in his back—was limping across the lot toward the parking area.
“......”
Right now, with the Glock 17—or no, even with another thrown drawing knife—Junho could have punched a hole straight through the bastard’s skull.
But he simply turned away.
Han Changoh needed to stay alive a little longer so Hanchang Development would eventually clash with the Jung-dong locals.
And before that, he would clear out quite a few zombies on that side for them too.
“The others?”
- Just like you said, I centered on shoulders and legs. Six are down, and the rest are trying to run—
- Emergency! Emergency! They heard the sound of that glass breaking, and zombies are pouring in from the apartment complex! There are over a hundred of them!
“Good.”
Junho did not panic. He stepped forward and swung his right arm hard.
Bam!
“Guaaah... ghk!”
The thug who had been screaming as a zombie tore at his neck and face rolled his eyes back when Junho buried the machete in his head just before he could fully turn.
“Zombies from the nearby building are coming this way.”
“Eek!?”
“Gah!”
The market residents and the cable-tied thugs, all of whom had been staring at Junho like they were looking at a ghost, flinched violently.
“Don’t panic. Move. Block the escalator first, then everyone get into the emergency stairwell.”
“Everyone, hurry!”
“Yes, yes!”
At Daewoo’s dad’s voice, the residents jolted and sprang into motion, dragging over shelves and whatever furniture they could find to block the escalator.
Krrrgh...! Gaaah...!
They could hear the zombies howling.
The zombies drawn by the sound of the shattering window reached the market entrance in under ten seconds.
There had to be around two hundred of them, and when they all piled on at once and shoved, part of the barricade at the entrance gave way under the pressure.
That’s pretty modest, actually.
Back in Bucheon before the regression, when something like this happened, nearly ten times that many zombies would come crashing in all at once.
That was why even soldiers got swept away in moments, never mind ordinary survivors.
And if you fired a gun, more would come running to the sound.
“Uuaaah!? P-please save me! Help me!”
“Please! Pleeease...!”
The thugs and townhouse men crawling on the floor after being hit by Junhyeok’s air rifle screamed themselves hoarse, begging their comrades for help.
But—
Kyaaah! Kyaak!
That only drew the zombies’ attention instead.
“G-get away! Uaa... aaagh! Guaaagh!”
A moment later, they were bitten, torn, and ripped apart by a dozen or more zombies each.
And more than half the horde rushed deeper into the market, some of them charging straight for the escalator.
Boom! Boom! Bam!
Kraaah! Kyaak! Kyaaahk!
Listening to the zombies slamming and battering against the barricade,
“Hhk! H-hhk!”
“Shh.”
The people hiding inside the emergency stairwell shook all over, fighting to keep the screams from escaping.
The only two not trembling in fear were Junho—holding the steel fire door shut with his back while staring at the two thugs—and Daewoo’s dad, aiming the crossbow at them.
Two or three minutes passed like that.
Eventually, the zombies’ howls and the chaotic noise stopped altogether.
By then, after tying the thugs’ legs with cable ties as well, Junho opened the emergency door and said,
“They won’t be able to run, but two people stay behind and watch them. The rest of you, come out.”
They were still terrified, but they had survived for more than three months, and they knew at least something about zombie behavior by now.
So they nodded and followed Junho out.
Then they crouched low and crept over to a window where the inside could not be seen from outside, lifting their heads just enough to peek.
“Except for maybe thirty of them, the rest are already heading back to where they came from.”
“How can you tell—?”
In response to Daewoo’s dad’s question, Junho pulled out the tablet mounted at the center of his tactical vest and showed him.
“......!?”
Daewoo’s dad and the residents’ eyes went wide as saucers when they saw the live drone feed.
“Then what do we do about the ones left?”
“My partner will take care of them.”
A few seconds after Junho said that—
Pow...! Pow...!
The same strange sound they had heard on the rooftop came in through the shattered window,
and the zombies wandering in front of the market and around the parking lot started dropping one by one, their heads caving in or blown through with large holes.
“T-this is insane.”
“Wow...”
Hearing the residents’ awed exclamations of relief, Junho looked at the only person here who seemed remotely useful—Daewoo’s dad—
and said, with the machete slung over his shoulder, still sticky with thug blood and brain matter,
“Now then, let’s settle accounts.”
Because settling accounts was important.
