December 9, 2024, 7:20 p.m., Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province.
Bang! Bang-bang! Brrt-brrt-brrt...!
Boom! KABOOM...!
Choi Hyunwoo and Kim Taeyoung were sitting half-reclined deep inside a long stretch of yellowed roadside brush, listening to the distant gunfire and explosions that had started up somewhere far away.
In the old world, there would have been no hiding in a place like this.
But after so long without maintenance, the brush had grown to nearly a meter high.
“That’s mechanized infantry.”
“I was public service. I don’t know that stuff.”
“Army grunts riding around in armored vehicles.”
“Yeah? They still have fuel?”
“They probably had a decent stockpile. Though with crude imports completely cut off, they’ll run out soon enough. Anyway, those guys are all going to die or turn into zombies pretty soon too. Or they’ll run.”
“Is the military weak? Or are the zombies just strong?”
At Kim Taeyoung’s question—coming from a former public-service worker—Choi Hyunwoo kept scanning the area from inside the brush and answered with a sigh.
“From what I can tell, it’s neither.”
“Huh? Then what?”
“It’s more like they’re a terrible matchup, and the people in command don’t know how to fight this kind of war.”
“Matchup?”
“Yeah. Look.”
Kim Taeyoung cautiously stuck his face out in the direction Hyunwoo pointed.
Hundreds—no, probably over a thousand—zombies were pouring out from alleys all along the main road and sprinting toward the source of the gunfire.
“And it’s not just here. They’re probably swarming in from every direction—east, west, south, north. Doesn’t matter where that unit came from, their rear’s in danger too.”
“So they’re getting wrapped up and eaten alive?”
Even doing the roughest math, that meant tens of thousands of zombies were currently surrounding the area where that unidentified unit was fighting in a full 360-degree ring and charging in mindlessly.
“Yeah. Even if the people fighting right now are battalion strength, how much ammo do you think they have? And the things don’t even die unless it’s a head shot.”
“...Fuck.”
Even if he had only done public service, Kim Taeyoung had still seen and experienced enough over the last few months to understand some things.
“In my opinion, defensive fighting against zombies actually isn’t that hard. But attacking and taking territory? That’s several times harder.”
And that was coming from Choi Hyunwoo, a former Marine.
“Coach, you saw that Alpha bastard stationing the zombies under its control inside buildings to watch outside, right? Just letting the military pass through the road, then once the rear guard is all the way past, hitting them from behind?”
“I saw it. Those crazy monster bastards...”
It was a terrifying sight. A chilling one.
Like a pack of predators that didn’t pounce right away, just watched their prey the whole time and then struck when the moment came.
The Alpha and the zombies under its control behaved in much the same way.
The bigger problem was that the Alphas seemed to communicate with one another.
Not through language, exactly. More like instinct.
If one group hit the rear, then another Alpha group nearby that had been watching the same target would immediately strike the flank.
And once a third group under yet more Alpha control joined the attack almost simultaneously, before long even other nearby zombies would start flooding in.
Both men thought—or rather, Lee Junho’s “golden rules” notebook said—that there had to be hundreds of those Alphas in Bucheon alone.
That was why, against simultaneous attacks by thousands upon thousands of zombies erupting from every direction—some of them even making tactical movements to avoid heavy weapons—the military could only be wiped out. Literally.
Because once even one point broke, it was over.
And the people who had been standing in the breached direction were no longer allies. They became part of the enemy.
“Just like in Junho hyung’s notes, the only real way is troops armed with suppressed weapons carving in from the outskirts. It’d take forever, but it’s the only way.”
No matter how heavily you armed up with heavy weapons, they were not much use if the zombies refused to come out of the concrete buildings.
And it wasn’t just one specific building, either.
There were zombies in nearly every building you could see.
Target one building. Surround it. Launch an attack.
Then the zombies would come pouring out of every building around the attacking unit.
There was no way they could hold.
The only method was for special operations troops with suppressor-equipped firearms to cut inward one block at a time—slowly, but surely—almost like taking territory in a land-grab game.
That, or abandon all the city’s survivors and just start dropping bombs.
“But suppressors aren’t exactly common, right? And for ammo, they need something different too, not what regular soldiers use.”
“Yeah. That’s the problem. By now, the military probably knows that’s the most efficient method too. They just either can’t do it—or won’t.”
The very real issue of supplying suppressors and subsonic ammunition, combined with the fact that it wouldn’t produce fast, flashy battlefield results, had probably driven commanders to keep running the same pointless operations that only bled manpower dry.
“That doesn’t mean all the commanders are incompetent, though. Who the hell could’ve imagined fighting a war like this?”
“...That’s true.”
It was an abnormal war against an abnormal enemy.
For an organization as rigid and conservative as the military, all they could do was keep doing what they already knew.
“According to Junho hyung, next spring the special operations units are going to try something by parachuting onto building rooftops. Maybe that’ll change things somehow.”
Brrt-brrt...! Brt...! Brt-brt...!
Boom...! Thud!
The gunfire and explosions, which had been so intense, gradually began to die down.
Even without seeing the battle, the two of them had a rough enough idea of what had happened just from the sound.
“We should get moving. Before the ones that swarmed into Sang-dong start coming back.”
“Yeah.”
After exchanging those grim words, they got to their feet from inside the brush.
Keeping as low as possible, they pushed through it at a run, passed the Sports Complex Station intersection, and kept going.
They moved on, constantly scanning their surroundings, passing a wrecked stretch of woods and more than ten plastic greenhouses choked with thick yellow reeds as tall as a man, before finally entering a residential neighborhood.
Only after turning into the side streets did they relax.
At last they could straighten up and walk while talking quietly as they headed toward the house.
“But seriously, today too. That makes three times already that army units came over here and got into a fight. Is there something in Bucheon or what?”
“No idea. Maybe they’re trying to get toward Gimpo Airport. Or maybe it’s just because this is on the way to Guro or Yeongdeungpo.”
“It’s weird, is what it is. Still, finding out that the roads near Wonmi Mountain and the library don’t have many zombies—that’s something.”
“Yeah. If we can just get close to Sosa Station, then once we’re on the tracks, getting to Bucheon Station and Jung-dong Station would be quick. It’s just that less-than-five-hundred-meter stretch to Sosa Station that’s the problem...”
The road running from the Bucheon Sports Complex intersection along Wonmi Mountain toward Sosa had relatively few zombies because the surrounding area was mostly mountain slopes, fields, or open spaces like public parking lots.
But the problem started after Wonmi Mountain, in Sosa-dong where the administrative welfare center stood.
A population of around six thousand people, packed into a narrow area of roughly 0.3 square kilometers—not counting the mountain itself—about nine hundred meters across and four hundred meters deep.
And to reach Sosa Station, they had to follow the narrow road running straight through the middle of it.
“The box trick won’t work anymore, huh?”
“No. Other people tried that and got taken out by an Alpha pack.”
Back at the beginning, when Kim Taeyoung and Han Areum had hidden themselves inside big cardboard boxes to get as far as the subway station, that had been pure blind luck.
It only worked because the Alphas had not fully awakened yet. Now? No chance.
The roads and alleyways were littered with obstacles, and at this point, sneaking around that way at night was nearly impossible.
Worse, some other survivor group had eventually realized that zombies had poor eyesight and tried moving around under cardboard boxes.
But the three of them had watched, through the house’s PTZ camera, as those people accidentally made noise, got discovered, and died horribly.
Which meant that now, the only thing worth trusting at night was night vision with thermal imaging.
“Jesus, fuck... why did I have to live in a crowded, cramped place like Bucheon?”
“Same here. Though my mom getting assigned to Bucheon Police Station kind of made it unavoidable... Still, at least my place and the gym owner’s place are both in Jung-dong.”
“That part’s true. And the apartments are right next to each other. Once we get to Jung-dong, we can see your mom and hyung Yuchan’s family all at once. That’s the one good thing.”
Choi Hyunwoo absolutely had to get to Jung-dong to find his mother.
And Kim Taeyoung, who had lost his parents young, had to find the gym owner and his family—the people who were basically his blood brothers in everything but name.
“What do you think Junho would say if he saw us?”
At Kim Taeyoung’s words, Choi Hyunwoo gave a small snort of laughter and nodded.
“He’d rip into us like crazy, probably. But honestly? I think Junho hyung would’ve helped us somehow anyway, even while yelling the whole time.”
Hyunwoo still remembered him standing through the funeral with a calm face all the way to the end, then breaking into burning tears the moment everyone else was gone.
If it was Junho—the man he acknowledged as a real one—then probably, no, definitely, he would have done exactly that.
“Anyway, let’s think slowly about how to get to Sosa Station. And Bucheon Station...”
“We cross that place as fast as possible. They said some gang called the Bucheon MZ Family faction took over the station and D-Mart.”
In the notebook Junho had left behind, the survivor group—or rather, looter group—centered around the MZ Family faction was marked with so many circles in red pen that it was obviously the most dangerous and vicious group in all of Bucheon.
***
“Kyaaah-ha-ha!”
“Kkamsoonie! Here! Over here!”
Woof! Woof-woof!
Choi Jiwoo, wearing rabbit-ear earmuffs, and Kim Junseo, with his hood pulled over his head, were running all over the shelter yard with Kkamsoonie.
The winter clothes Jo Yuna had made fit Choi Jiwoo and Kim Junseo so well they looked store-bought.
Everything around the two kids and the dog dashing around in their new clothes was bright white.
The first snow had fallen.
“Good lord... when the hell am I supposed to clean up all this white crap? This is killing me, I swear. I thought once I got out I’d never touch a snow shovel again, damn...”
Baek Suho let out a long groan, still haunted by his old snow-clearing memories from active duty, and Junhyeok, who was drinking coffee beside him, said,
“What are you talking about? Why would we use a shovel?”
“Huh? Hyung, if that snow piles up, don’t we gotta clear it? Then we need a shovel.”
“Come on. Why the hell would we use a shovel when we’ve got that?”
“Huh...?”
Baek Suho’s gaze followed where Junhyeok was pointing.
“Oh!”
A multipurpose electric cart had already rolled up and was waiting there, draped in gray-white waterproof winter camouflage netting.
“We just mount snow-clearing ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) gear on the front and push. The shelter’s huge. When were you planning to clear all that snow with a shovel?”
“Man, that is some cutting-edge shit... but what about the solar panels? I heard when it snows, power generation drops like a rock.”
“That’s why we installed those.”
The extra solar panels they had added on one side of the yard in case power ran short were fitted with automatic cleaning robots.
“One or two break down sometimes, but it’s still better than having nothing. And the broken ones? Mr. Baek and Jeongwoo hyung can fix those easy enough. Anyway, even if it snows, you don’t need to worry about power. Honestly, since we hardly ever run the emergency generators, tomorrow we’re going to use generator power on purpose. I heard if you don’t run generators hard once in a while, they start developing problems and don’t last as long.”
“Th-that’s insane. Top-of-the-line as hell...”
“Hey, Suho.”
“Yes, hyung.”
Junhyeok drained the last of his coffee in one go, then looked at Baek Suho with a somewhat serious expression.
“You really want to learn how to shoot and fight?”
“...Yeah. Doing grunt work while learning a trade isn’t bad or anything. But I want to be genuinely useful to our shelter too. I don’t know about going outside and fighting like you do, hyung... but doing rounds at the back mountain outpost or patrolling the road out front, taking out wild animals and zombies—that’s something I could do well too.”
That was right.
After Junho and Junhyeok, Baek Suho had decided he wanted to become the shelter’s third combat-capable member.
And Baek Hail—his father and the shelter’s second-in-command—was taking a hands-off approach and basically telling him to figure it out himself.
Since he had come out of a frontline mechanized infantry division and, aside from the Junho and Junhyeok brothers, was the one with the most recent hands-on experience handling firearms as a reservist in his first year out, Junho too was giving serious thought to making Baek Suho part of the shelter’s combat personnel.
More precisely, to having him change classes into a Shelter Guard.
