“Huff, huff, huff...”
Han Changoh and four of his men came charging up the emergency-exit stairs with everything they had, reached the rooftop, blocked the door, and stood there gasping for air.
“Fuck it, let’s go. We’ll head to the main building for now, either take a breather or beat the shit out of the bastards inside.”
But there was no time to rest, so they dragged their feet forward at Han Changoh’s order.
Gahyeon Elementary School was built in the shape of the Chinese character for “work,” with the main building, cafeteria, and gym all connected.
They crossed the rooftop of the central building, which had the cafeteria on the first floor and the faculty offices on the second.
The roof was packed tight with solar panels, but there were narrow maintenance paths between them.
So they hurried along, relying on the weak beam of an ordinary flashlight, the kind a security guard would carry.
“Huff, huff...”
They had made it about halfway across the central building when—
Pow. Thunk!
The instant they registered some unfamiliar sound from somewhere, the man in front jerked his head back with a heavy impact and toppled sideways.
“Ghk!?”
Another gangster froze at the sight of his dead teammate, eyes wide open with a hole punched through his forehead, while red blood leaking from the back of the man’s skull spread fast across the rooftop.
Pow. Thunk!
That was the end of him too.
“It’s a gun! Get down!”
Han Changoh bellowed as he threw himself behind a solar panel, but—
Pow. Pow.
The subsonic rounds came one after another in an instant, punching through the necks and chests of the others before they could hide.
“Grrk... grr....”
A gangster with his throat not just pierced but half torn open collapsed right in front of Han Changoh, bubbling blood from his mouth.
“...!”
Seeing that from behind the solar panel, Han Changoh’s mind naturally conjured up the image of someone dressed head to toe in nothing but black.
And then—
Pow.
The horrifyingly suppressed gunshot sounded one more time.
Crunch!
“Gaaaah...!”
The bullet punched through the metal panel and buried itself in Han Changoh’s shoulder.
—Elimination Target Number Two. No weapon currently in hand.
“...”
Junho, firing from the railing of the main building roughly fifty meters away from Han Changoh, heard AI Akina’s cold report, slung the AR-15 behind his back, drew his machete, and rose.
“Guhhh... ngh...!”
Han Changoh drooled spit and tears as pain spread through him like a red-hot sledgehammer had been driven into his shoulder and left there.
It felt like his arm was no longer his. All sensation was gone, and he could not put any strength into his fingers at all.
“Ghk! Uhh...!”
He twisted without meaning to, slammed against a solar panel, and another wave of pain ripped through him.
Then, at that moment, his vision flared bright in an instant, and Han Changoh squeezed his eyes shut.
“Ghk!?”
“Han Changoh. Biological younger brother of Han Changsik, head of Hanchang Development. Purchasing manager, materials manager, whatever the hell it was. Anyway, manager.”
“Hhk...!?”
At that flat, emotionless voice, Han Changoh forced one eye half open.
Someone was standing behind the light shining straight into his face.
“You spent your life as some half-assed neighborhood thug, in and out of detention a few times. The one time you almost actually went to prison was for rape, but thanks to the ex-prosecutor lawyer your brother got for you, you settled and got a suspended sentence. And after the world went to hell, you raped every decent-looking woman living in the country houses and the townhouse complex, didn’t you? In front of their husbands and families too.”
“You... who the fuck are you? You fucking bastard, who the hell...”
Thunk!
“Urk!”
Han Changoh took a hard smack to the face from the flat of the machete blade and went down sideways.
“Don’t recognize me? A few months ago, some of your Hanchang Development thug pieces of shit crawled into the apartment by the back gate of the country-house neighborhood, remember?”
“Hhk...!?”
“And not long ago, at The First Mart, I let you walk out alive. Still don’t know who I am?”
“You, you...”
A full-body chill ran through Han Changoh. He forgot the pain in his shoulder and face and just hung there with spit running down his chin, mouth open.
“I watched you go scurrying straight to your brother without even realizing I’d let you live on purpose. And today—surprised when all those zombies suddenly came flooding in? That was /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ my gift. Did you like it?”
“Y-you motherfucker...”
Not as clever as his brother Han Changsik, but no idiot either, Han Changoh finally pieced it together.
He had been scared shitless when hundreds of zombie bastards came pouring out all at once in weather this cold, when they normally would not come outside unless something was seriously wrong.
And that had all been the work of the Mansion Slaughterer standing right in front of him?
“Why... why’d you do it? You fucking bastard, what the fuck did I ever do to you? Fuck!”
“What did you do?”
Junho let out a short laugh inside his mask without meaning to.
In this life, Han Changoh and Han Changsik had not done anything to him directly.
But before regression, Junho had been beaten by Han Changoh more times than he could count, had his left ear and one of his ring fingers cut off—
and had lost reliable survivors from Gahyeon-ri, including Song Gijun, people who had given him help large and small, to the Hanchang Development gang.
“Just think of being born Han Changoh as your mistake.”
“What kind of fucking nonse—”
Slash!
The machete cut a short diagonal line, and Han Changoh never finished the sentence.
Thud!
Han Changoh’s head, cleanly severed, hit the rooftop and rolled away with his mouth still slightly open mid-word.
***
—Yeah. Just keep heading that way.
—No, I’m telling you, go straight. Nothing’s there. Nice and easy. Right?
—Ah, I’m saying there are no zombies and no people. Just keep going straight. Straight, straight.
“Okay, got it.”
Listening to the slightly flighty young man who said he was one of Lee Junho’s people, Song Gijun kept walking fast.
—Hold up. One of our guys is about a hundred meters ahead of you, so don’t shoot. You’ll see him in a second.
“Where... ah, I see him. Right.”
Song Gijun and the men from The First Apartments tensed slightly when they saw a tall man dressed almost exactly like Lee Junho standing in the dark.
The tall man, dressed all in black, was armed too, and not just that—he had two pistols, both fitted with suppressors.
“Mr. Song Gijun?”
“Yes. I’m Song Gijun.”
“Come this way. Oh, and don’t touch that. It’ll follow on its own.”
“...?”
Song Gijun and the others tilted their heads when they looked where he pointed.
Giiiiing.
“Ghk!?”
“Whoa—!”
But when the G1 drone moved by itself with a low motor hum, they nearly jumped out of their skin.
“You remember when the gangsters hit the mart before, right? That time, me and that thing helped you.”
“I-I see.”
“Wow...”
They had known for a while that Junho was no ordinary man, ever since he had brought them generators, batteries, three drums of diesel, and all kinds of emergency meds, including painkillers and antibiotics.
But it had never even crossed their minds that, on top of watching over them from the sky with drones, he also had bizarre weapons like this.
So Song Gijun and the men from The First Apartments swallowed dryly, caught somewhere between tension and relief, and followed the tall man.
The harsh wind cut at their flesh, and snow blew with it, but they kept moving, white breath streaming from their mouths.
And in less than thirty minutes, they reached the hill overlooking the townhouse complex and the country houses.
“From here on, we made a path where there wasn’t one before. Watch your footing and follow carefully so you don’t slip.”
“Okay.”
Another twenty or so minutes later, after struggling down a narrow ravine-like stretch that could barely even be called a path anymore, they finally reached the retaining wall of the biggest, fanciest country house.
“Grab that and come down one at a time. Careful.”
At Junhyeok’s words, they each grabbed the thick rope that had been set up in advance and climbed down the retaining wall, about ten meters high.
—Only the second floor has lights on. No light’s leaking out through the first-floor curtains.
—Six people confirmed on the first floor. Three on the second, including Elimination Target Number One. One woman and five men downstairs. Upstairs it’s the target and two women. They’re all in the same room.
There was no need to ask why two women were in the same room as Han Changsik.
“Backup?”
—Dolsoe and both G1 units are in position. The G1s will take anything coming toward that house, and Dolsoe will take anything coming out.
“Okay.”
At Yoon Youngsu’s report, Junhyeok opened the small ventilation window in the first-floor kitchen that they had identified ahead of time.
Slide.
He opened the plastic window just enough to fit a fist through, then pulled a mini drone out of his pouch.
“...!”
Bzzzz....
Under the curious stares of Song Gijun and the others, the mini drone buzzed softly and slipped in through the window.
“Three are loafing around in the living room, and two are in the first-floor bedroom and the sunroom. The woman’s in the room too.”
After checking the first floor of the country house on the controller’s small display, Junhyeok turned to Song Gijun and the men.
“Hit them all at once and beat them down. Like you mean to kill them. These bastards have already killed plenty of people and zombies alike. Do not show them any mercy.”
“Understood.”
They had already steeled themselves for this, so Song Gijun and the others nodded after steadying their breathing.
“I’ll take the second floor. The reason I’m handling that one bastard by myself is because he has a pistol.”
“Ah...”
“Then we start now. Once I’m upstairs, you’ll get the signal. Six of you into the living room. The rest go in pairs and hit the sunroom and the bedroom at the same time.”
“Yes.”
After hearing Song Gijun’s answer, Junhyeok grabbed the gas pipe and started climbing.
He had practiced this dozens of times from before the apocalypse up until now, so getting up onto the second-floor balcony was no problem for him at all.
Meanwhile, Song Gijun and the men moved quietly into position.
—All right, everyone, hold ready.
A few seconds after Yoon Youngsu’s voice came over comms—
Pow...! Pow...! Pow...!
The tungsten rounds fired simultaneously by the two G1 drones already in position and by Park Deokcheol struck the floor-to-ceiling windows connected to the first-floor living room and the second-floor balcony.
Jjeong! Jjaeng!
The instant the rounds hit the glass, Junhyeok on the second floor and the men on the first smashed the windows with the weapons in their hands.
Crash! Krrrsh!
Song Gijun leaped in through the shattered window with a roar of broken glass and let out a full-throated bellow.
“You motherfucking bastards!”
Then he thrust out his left hand.
Flash!
A blinding 2,500-lumen beam blasted into the gangsters scrambling to their feet with knives in their hands.
“Argh!?”
“Ahhh!”
It hit like a white explosion, a literal blast of light that punched through their eyes and into their brains.
With that savage flash burned into their retinas, the gangsters instinctively threw up their arms and turned their faces away as if their vision were being scorched out.
One of them dropped flat onto his ass with both hands over his face.
“Kill them all!”
The instant Song Gijun shouted, the men from The First Apartments rushed in and brought their weapons down on the gangsters without mercy, beating and smashing them.
***
Crash!
After breaking through the balcony window and entering the room, Junhyeok swung the muzzle around fast.
Just as they had identified earlier, there was nobody there, so he ran straight to the bedroom door and cracked it open.
“Aaah! Kyaaah...! Fuck, what the hell!?”
Women’s screams and someone’s curse rang out from the living-room side across the hall.
The voice from the master bedroom on the second floor was unmistakably Han Changsik’s, Elimination Target Number One, so Junhyeok stepped back out at once and moved quickly toward the master bedroom with the muzzle trained on it.
He had gone maybe ten steps when—
Bang!
The master-bedroom door flew open with a loud crash, and someone came bolting out.
Junhyeok instinctively tightened the finger resting on the trigger.
But—
“Aaah!”
What came out of the master bedroom was a half-naked young woman.
“...!”
Remembering the mistaken shot during the Redrock Academy test, Junhyeok made the call in that split second and did not pull the trigger.
Then, the instant he saw someone else thrust head and shoulders out from the master bedroom behind her, arm extending toward him—
KWAANG—!!!
Tat-tat!
The pistol shot fired from the master bedroom and the suppressed crack of Junhyeok’s KP9 went off at the exact same time.
