Chapter 31
I saw a group of red creatures at the windows. I couldn’t tell exactly how many there were, but there seemed to be around ten to twenty of them. Those were rookie numbers compared to the number of zombies I had fought earlier. I saw a similar number of red creatures at the school entrance as well.
I ran toward them without any hesitation.
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Dirt flew everywhere. The field, which was at least a hundred meters in length, was tiny to me. The red creatures were slow to realize I was dashing toward them. Once they noticed me, they whipped around. However, it was too late for them.
It was too late for them to escape or beg for their lives. They should’ve known better before attacking my people. Survival was no longer an option for them.
‘This is your destiny. Death is upon you.’
Crack!
I grabbed the head of the red creature in the very front and used my momentum to smash its head into the school wall.
If you ever wondered if a person’s head can be smashed flat, I’d reply that I wasn’t exactly sure what you meant by ‘flat’. However, I would tell you that it was more than possible for it to shatter into pieces.
Its eyeballs popped out of their sockets and slipped in between my fingers. Without a moment’s pause, I started crushing the other creatures’ heads.
I didn’t even need to punch them. All I had to do was grab onto their skulls and crush them with my grip as if I were squeezing an apple. Or I could pin them to the ground and squash their round skulls into pancakes.
The intent to fight was still coursing through me following the fight in the building lobby. Well, to be precise, it was a murderous intent.
I crushed the heads of the red creatures clinging onto the windows like a bat out of hell. I was a raging beast.
Without even realizing it, I reached the entrance to the main building, and took care of the ones that were blocking the entrance.
‘Where is it, where is it? Where is it, goddamn it!’
I didn’t see the one with glowing red eyes anywhere. I had to kill the boss no matter what. I knew that if I left it alive, it was possible that it would come after me again. And when it did, it would probably bring more underlings, or even come back stronger.
I had to pull out this evil by its roots, before it had the chance to grow. I searched around with my glowing red eyes, my senses heightened. I could perceive even the tiniest details. To be precise, my zombie instincts to search for prey had taken over me.
Patter, patter.
At that moment, I detected my quarry. I heard its footsteps. They weren’t ordinary footsteps. They were the footsteps of someone fleeing the battle alone. They were the footsteps of the defeated. I paid closer attention to them.
‘Where are you? Where the hell are you hiding?’
My eyes eventually honed in on a burgundy-colored zombie climbing up a wall. I couldn’t help but smirk when I saw the effort it was expending trying to save its dear life.
‘Oh boy, I got you now.’
I mustered all my strength and jumped. I floated through the air and landed right in front of the only red light that glowed brightly in this world of darkness.
As soon as the fleeing zombie made it over the wall, it fell onto its bottom in surprise. It was horrified to see me. It stared at me as if it was seeing a ghost.
Its eyes were full of fear and despair. ‘Don’t, don’t come near me! Get away, you fucking monster!’
I couldn’t stop smiling at its groveling fear. I enjoyed the sight of this creature being scared of me. The madness within me was driving me to feast on this wretched being.
It started looking around desperately, as though looking for help. I grabbed its neck and forced it to face me. My glowing red eyes bored into its face. ‘Keep your eyes on me eh? I can’t tell what you’re saying if you don't, you idiot.’
‘You, you fucking monster! Fucking monster!’
At that moment, I saw a reflection of myself in its glowing red eyes. I immediately let go of its neck in shock. I looked hideous and terrifying. The feeling that had filled me the last time I saw the black creature laughing rushed into me again.
I couldn’t believe I was feeling the same way just looking at myself. I felt like I was looking at the black creature. I had been roaring with bestial laughter. I was enjoying this moment like a beast feasting on flesh. Most striking of all, my eyes looked like those of a cat. They didn’t look normal. My pupils were no longer round, but were shaped like vertical slits.
My glowing red eyes and vertical slit-like pupils were enough to shock me. It took me a moment to come back to my senses. After a while, the crazed instincts within me slowly died away like a candle burning itself out. I was still taken aback at my reflection.
‘Me? That’s me? That’s how I look now?’
I couldn’t keep myself together. My mind was past the point of confusion. As I stood there in shock, the red zombie leader rushed at me, believing that it was the perfect moment to get me.
I wondered if it knew that attacking me was like banging its head against a wall. I didn’t even have to look at it; I could already tell what it was going to do.
My left arm shot out and grabbed its face. It screamed at the top of its lungs out of agony. I saw its eyes peeking through between my fingers. I looked straight into them and said.
‘Do I still look like a monster to you?’
‘Let go of me! Let go of me, you son of a bitch!’
It didn’t bother to answer my question, but went on spewing out a string of vulgarities. I fixed my gaze on the creature again. ‘You’re right. I am a monster.’
‘Wait, wait! I’ll tell you everything. Please, please don’t kill me!’
‘...’
I looked at it silently, my expression deceptively calm. I could see right away that its eyes weren’t that of an animal begging for its life. It had the eyes of a hyena, looking for another chance to pounce on its prey.
Realizing its intention, I calmed myself and asked the questions I wanted answers to.
‘You asked me earlier if I knew what would happen if a zombie like us ate other zombies, right?’
‘Yes, yes. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything. I swear! Please don’t kill me!’
‘You know what? I actually don’t need to hear it from you anymore.’
‘Huh? What do you mean?’
It looked at me with eyes filled with fear.
‘Let’s just say it’s time for an experiment.’
Splat. Thud.
I crushed its skull. The light from its glowing red eyes faded away. In moments, the lifeless body sagged to the ground.
This was the end.
Everything was over.
The fight was over. But I was left with a scar within me, one that marked where a piece of my humanity had been burned away, a scar that I could never forget. I knew I had won the fight, but something just didn’t seem right. I felt like I had lost something.
‘Do I enjoy killing?’
Even though they were zombies, they were creatures that still resembled humans. I sighed deeply, so deeply that I almost thought I was going to vomit.
After several moments, I shifted my gaze toward the dead body on the ground. There was still some unfinished business. And I had to do this voluntarily, with a sane mind, unlike the previous time when I’d done it unconsciously.
Gulp.
I swallowed hard. The sound was louder than I’d expected. I took in a few shallow breaths. There was no time to hesitate. I had to get this over with before one of my people came searching for me.
I plucked the dead zombie’s dented brain from its skull. I tore into it, believing that there was no time to lose. One bite after another, I ingested its brain. I was voluntarily doing something inhuman in order to obtain more information.
With every bite, I felt the remaining humanity within me getting torn to pieces. At the same time, I was beset by a painful headache, and my body began to shiver uncontrollably.
It felt similar to the time when I ate the black creature’s brain. However, I wasn’t on the brink of death, nor was I trying to ward off unthinkable agony.
Beeeeep.
With my last bite, a high-pitched whine filled my ears. I felt dizzy and I couldn’t keep my balance, as though something had gone wrong with my inner ear.
‘Huh?’
I didn’t have any difficulties breathing, nor was my body engulfed in pain. My mouth wasn’t itching, nor did the headache persist. But for some reason, I still couldn’t keep myself upright. I collapsed to the ground.
‘What? What’s happening?’
I was completely sane, but everything in front of me started flickering, as though I was watching a movie where the film had been damaged. I could tell that my body remembered this feeling. I inevitably began to feel drowsier. I felt my body grow warm, and soon after that, I felt all the accumulated fatigue rush into me at once.
Just as when I’d eaten the black creature’s brain, I was ready to enter a deep sleep.
* * *
“Grr…”
I had no clue how long I’d been out for. I slowly picked myself up as I opened my eyes. My vision was blurry, so I rubbed my eyes and blinked them hard to clear it.
I looked around and saw desks and chairs stacked on top of each other irregularly. I could tell that people had been there earlier. I saw rice on the floor, along with footprints, and marks that indicated that someone had been sitting on the floor.
Rattle, rattle.
The classroom door opened and I saw a familiar woman with a big water jug in her hands step inside. When she saw me, her eyes widened in surprise.
“Huh? Oh!”
As she stood motionless at the entrance, the man behind her started complaining. “Eun-Jeong, just go in already. This stuff is heavy, you know.”
“But, but look!”
“Look at what?”
“So-Yeon’s father!”
Kang Eun-Jeong placed the jug on the floor and came running up to me. Her face was as red as a beet. She grabbed my hand and began to sob without saying a word.
Realizing that I was awake, the man who followed her in called my name with a bright smile. “So-Yeon’s dad!”
It was Lee Jeong-Uk. He came up to me and gave me a good smack on the back.
“Hey, I thought you were dead!”
“Grr?”
“I mean your heart wasn’t beating, you weren’t breathing, and you seemed to be asleep as well! You were sleeping as though you were dead! I was on the verge of burying you!”
To them, my condition would’ve been confusing. Since I had no heartbeat, if I fainted, my condition would be no different from that of a dead body. They probably couldn’t tell if I was dead or just knocked out. But Lee Jeong-Uk, he had a way of knowing if I was alive or dead.
If my underlings stood still like soldiers waiting for orders, that meant I was still alive. If they acted like defeated soldiers, not knowing what to do with themselves, that would mean that I was dead.
Since he had already experienced this before, he’d probably acted according to his observations of my underlings.
I flashed a bitter smile and scratched my side burns. Lee Jeong-Uk smiled gently. “Thank goodness you didn’t die.”
I didn’t immediately offer a reply.
‘Not dead huh…’
I couldn’t help but laugh. The whole situation seemed ironic.
‘So what exactly am I? Dead or alive?’
I stood up and headed straight to the bathroom. My sudden movement left the two of them feeling rather perplexed, but they continued with what they were doing, assuming that I had business to take care of.
They checked their stores of water and inspected their weapons. The classroom and the hallway outside still bore battle scars. Judging by their state, I assumed that not a whole lot of time had passed.
As soon as I entered the bathroom, I checked myself in the mirror. My pupils, which had been vertical slits earlier, were now normal and round again.
‘What in the world? I swear they were vertical earlier.’
Despite this, I couldn’t stop imagining the way I had appeared earlier on. Thankfully, the murderous madness seemed to have left me, and I was normal as anyone in my state could be.
I had lost my mind as I’d fought off the hundreds of red zombies that had crashed into me like a tsunami. Back then, I couldn’t think of anything else other than killing them.
Slowly, fragmented memories came back to me, showing me how I fought and how many of the zombies I had killed. Back then, it felt like an alter ego hidden somewhere deep down within me had taken over my body. The other part of me that enjoyed killing, unlike the one that loved humans. Perhaps my zombie instincts were getting stronger and stronger. I wondered how much longer I could remain around humans.
“Grr…”
Saddened by this thought, my head sagged and I let out a sigh. I couldn’t come to any solid conclusion. I had no idea what would happen to me down the line.
I turned the sink on to try to wash my face with cold water, but I realized that the sink wasn’t working. So instead, I had to slap myself in the face a few times to get myself together.
When I returned to the classroom, I saw the survivors sitting in a circle and drinking water. The constant anxiety had probably left them feeling rather thirsty. I sat next to Lee Jeong-Uk and gave him a nudge. As he turned to me, I pointed toward my wrist, asking for the time.
He looked at me closely, and then asked hesitantly, “Are you asking how long you were out for?”
“Grr.”
“Not sure. Maybe half a day?”
‘Half a day, huh?’
That was nothing compared to the week I’d been knocked out for after my fight with the black creature. I smacked my lips and sighed in relief.
Lee Jeong-Uk passed me the water. “Can you drink water?”
Honestly, I didn’t know. I had never tried drinking water after my transformation. Instead of answering his question, I took the bottle and slowly drained the water down my throat.
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