Chapter 50
I fainted for half a day after I ate the enemy leader’s brain. The wall clock in the kindergarten was showing four in the afternoon by the time I got back to my senses.
I massaged my temples as I picked myself up and saw that Kim Hyeong-Jun was still in deep sleep, snoring away. I got up to stretch and then trudged toward the night-duty room. Even with the sun up, the night-duty room was pitch black.
I twitched my nose at the musty smell and looked around. There were countless dead bodies on the floor, along with Mr. Kwak’s. I wondered what had happened. As I took a look at the zombies, I realized that all of them had similar facial expressions.
I saw blood coming out of their eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The eyes of every one of them had rolled back into their heads. They showed clear signs of being in agony. I didn’t think much of it at first, but the moment I began to move Mr. Kwak’s and Ms. Koo’s dead bodies outside, it hit me.
‘Traces of pain? From a zombie?’
Zombie’s couldn’t feel pain. But I was certain that the ones on the floor showed expressions of pain, and every single one of them had bloodstained faces. I wondered if something had gone wrong with their brains.
‘There must’ve been hemorrhaging blood from their eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. But wait, that can’t be right.’
I examined their faces more closely, and felt a flicker of nervousness. Their eyes were no different from those of ordinary zombies. The zombies with glowing red eyes lost the light in their eyes once they died, and their eyes turned pitch black afterward. They wound up looking like miniature black holes, an abyss of darkness that filled the entire eyeball.
However, there was nothing to indicate that the others lying around were anything else but regular zombies.
‘Did someone do experiments with these zombies? If they did, what kind of experiments did they do? Was it related to the zombie brains somehow? Would Kim Hyeong-Jun know anything related to this?’
That moment, I remembered what Kim Hyeong-Jun had said to me before we went to sleep.
- ‘There’s still more I want to talk about, but let’s eat first before it gets too late.’
Without a doubt, he’d said that there was more he wanted to talk about. Since he knew that Mr. Kwak was here too, there was a fair chance that he knew what had happened in the night-duty room. I spat a gob of saliva on the floor.
‘Let’s settle Mr. Kwak and Ms. Koo first.’
I carried the two dead bodies on my shoulders and went outside. I had even retrieved a shovel from the night-duty room. I was planning on burying them and sending them off properly.
I ordered three of my underlings to join me.
There were actually four shovels in the night-duty room. I knew it would take some time to dig two graves by myself, so I called my underlings to help me. We began digging away.
Thanks to my underlings, it didn’t take long to dig two graves. After I dug graves for Mr. Kwak and Ms. Koo, I laid them gently into their graves. Once done, I took some twigs and tied them together to make two crosses.
I offered up a silent prayer for them.
I stood there for a while as I praised the two for acting in the way they did, and for making the decisions to live as proper humans and to act humanely until the end, despite having been thrust into a world in which it was almost impossible to do so. The chirping noises that tickled my ears sounded like a final hymn for them.
I took a deep breath after I was done with my prayer. I would bury all my regrets and ruminations with them. I knew I was going to have to make a lot more decisions in the future.
I looked up at the sky and prayed that I would make the right decision when the time came, and that my naive mind would not get in the way when things grew difficult.
After offering up all my prayers, I went back to the kindergarten. Seeing that Kim Hyeong-Jun was not going to get up anytime soon, I picked him up and carried him on my back.
All my underlings, those in the field and inside the school building, stared blankly at me. Unfortunately, Kim Hyeong-Jun’s underlings were doing the same thing. If I wanted to get going, I had to take all of Kim Hyeong-Jun’s underlings, but I couldn’t give orders to them. If another gang member came to check up on the one we had just killed, Kim Hyeong-Jun’s underlings would just stand here blankly like they were doing right then, which would lead the gang back to us.
Any gang member would be able to deduce that a third party had gotten involved, given all the zombie bodies laying all over the place. If Kim Hyeong-Jun’s underlings were still around when they came, they could find us by tailing his underlings when they started moving.
I had no choice but to bring his underlings with me as well. I laid Kim Hyeong-Jun down on the ground and thought about how I could get all of these underlings moving with me. After a moment, I came up with a rather silly but brilliant idea.
I directed a thought to the underling in front of me.
‘Hey, you see the purple guy next to you?’
Grrr!
‘Piggyback the guy.’
Grrr!!!
I watched it nervously, just in case it caused Kim Hyeong-Jun’s underling to attack it. Thankfully, Kim Hyeong-Jun’s underling did not resist, and let my own underling carry him.
The purple zombie looked at me, confusion written on its face.
‘Hmm? Huh? What?’
That’s what I saw in its facial expression. I let out a sigh of relief and then gave orders to all of my underlings.
‘Everyone, piggyback the purple guy next to you!’
Grr!!!
With a grand battle cry, my underlings put all the purple zombies on their backs together. I carried Kim Hyeong-Jun off the floor, then issued an order to my underlings.
‘Let’s get going!’
Grr!!!
My underlings answered loudly and followed me. I moved cautiously and shortened my strides, afraid of the worst-case scenario. However, I couldn’t sense any particular danger, probably because I had taken care of the leader who had been in charge of Majang-dong.
Interestingly, after devouring the leader’s brain, the map of a network had appeared in my mind. The scouts that the leader had sent out had become my underlings, and I knew where they were located along with how many of them there were.
I could always sense where my underlings were before, but now I could even count how many I had. I wondered if I had gained this ability because I had gotten stronger. I no longer had to count each underling I had one by one.
I sent an order to the scouts that had been posted around Majang-dong.
‘Let me know if any red creature shows up.’
- Yes sir.
The scouts that had followed the enemy leader’s orders were now following mine.
A mutant that could control underlings. At first, I just thought of it as an ability that was alright. But now, I finally realized that it was an ability that others would die to have. Thanks to this ability, it was no different than having a map of Majang-dong inside my mind.
The green network that I could see in my mind’s eye let me see a map of Majang-dong without me having to see everything with my own eyes.
On the way back to the shelter, I stopped by the elementary school to pick up the underlings from the fourth squad of the third platoon, along with the kids. The children were horrified, but they followed me without saying a word. They treated me as someone who was on their side.
I didn’t let myself relax until we left Majang-dong. We passed the intersection at the Seongdong District Office, and kept on going down the road until I finally saw Shelter Hae-Young from afar.
I’d made it back to where my people were, where my family was. This time, though, I saw some new faces at the entrance of the shelter. There were three to four people standing in front of the screening station to the right of the entrance.
They were survivors.
They weren’t people who had helped build Shelter Hae-Young, but survivors who had come to join up with Shelter Hae-Young. As soon as they noticed me, their eyes grew wide, and they yelled back to someone at the temporary guard post.
“Get me a weapon! Quick!”
“What did you say?” came the placid reply.
A man walked out from the temporary guard post. It was Lee Jeong-Uk. He beamed at me as he waved.
“So-Yeon’s dad! Where’d you go out this early in the morning?”
I chuckled and went toward Lee Jeong-Uk. All the survivors stared at us, dumbfounded. It seemed like all of them were struggling to understand what was happening in front of their eyes.
Lee Jeong-Uk looked over at Kim Hyeong-Jun, whom I was carrying on my back.
“Now who’s this? An injured person?”
“Grr.”
“Wait a minute. It’s a zombie! Why are you carrying it around?”
It was an expected response. To him, Kim Hyeong-Jun probably looked like an ordinary zombie. If Kim Hyeong-Jun’s eyes had been open, Lee Jeong-Uk might’ve noticed that the two of us had formed an alliance, but with his eyes closed, he seemed no different from the zombies that roamed the streets.
I shook side to side and gestured with my chin toward the entrance. I wanted to keep this conversation inside. He understood my intentions and went toward the barricade at the entrance. I saw Kang Ji-Suk and Byeon Hyeok-Jin in front of the barricade. The two came running toward me with smiles on their faces.
Lee Jeong-Uk gave Kang Ji-Suk a noogie.
“Open the door first!”
“Uncle Lee, why do you always pick on me! How about him?”
They used to call Lee Jeong-Uk ‘ahjussi’, but now they were calling him uncle. It seemed like the two of them had grown close as well. The two quarreling and making jokes made me think of a lively boy getting along with an older next-door neighbor.
Kang Ji-Suk mumbled complaints under his breath, but still did everything Lee Jeong-Uk had told him to do. The apartment entrance opened, and my underlings and I walked into the complex.
All the sand in the playground had been dug out, and I saw Lee Jeong-Hyuk, Choi Da-Hye, and the white-haired elder in conversation. Lee Jeong-Hyuk noticed me first and walked toward me with a smile on his face, but then he gasped after seeing the zombies that my underlings and I were carrying.
“So-Yeon’s father! What’s that on your back?”
Everyone else had the same reaction. I let out a sigh and laid Kim Hyeong-Jun down on a wooden bench, then gave orders to my underlings.
‘Put down the zombies that you’re carrying.’
The calm, spacious complex was now full of zombies. The elder shouted at the zombies near the garden.
“You fools! Not the garden! Don’t step on the garden!”
It was so packed that the zombies over there could barely stand. I ordered my underlings next to the garden to carry their purple zombies again. Thankfully, none of the crops were affected.
‘All of you, carry the purple zombies to apartment 101. The rest of you wait at apartment 102.’
This apartment complex had a total of eight apartments, from 101 to 108. Apartment 101 and 102 was across from where we were staying, which were apartments 103, 104, and 105. I sent the underlings to an apartment far away from where we were staying so that no one else would cross paths with my underlings.
My underlings shuffled off in unison, leaving a mess in the apartment complex. It seemed as if a tornado had just passed through. There was dust, bits of torn clothing, and zombie blood all over the place. The three children who were right behind me looked at everyone blankly, and everyone else stared at me in a dumbfounded manner.
After a moment, Lee Jeong-Uk spoke.
“I’ll go back and finish up screening the people waiting outside. Jeong-Hyuk, don’t let So-Yeon’s dad go anywhere.”
“Hmm?”
“He’s obviously going to go see So-Yeon first! Make him at least change his clothes if he wants to see her. And it seems like we’ll have to do another round of spring cleaning again!”
Lee Jeong-Uk mumbled under his breath and trudged back to the screening station. I chuckled at the way he was acting. Lee Jeong-Hyuk scratched his head and let out a sigh. He then smacked his lips.
“So what exactly happened?”
I scratched my neck, not knowing what to say. Lee Jeong-Hyuk clicked his tongue.
“Well, let’s get everyone washed up first.”
I nodded, and Choi Da-Hye took the three kids to apartment 104. Lee Jeong-Hyuk went back inside to get water, towels, and a change of clothes.
I enjoyed the momentary peace as I washed off the filth from my body.
* * *
When I was done with my shower, I went to the forty-pyeong-sized unit on the fourth floor of apartment 103. It seemed like everyone had been working hard since the morning. The empty living room now looked like a conference room. There was a long table with chairs lined up neatly, and A4-sized paper along with pen and pencils were laid out on the kitchen table.
As I looked around the meeting room, the Lee brothers, Choi Da-Hye, the principal, the elder, and Han Seon-Hui came in. Each of them greeted me—freshly cleaned and changed—and took their designated seats.
Lee Jeong-Uk pointed to the middle seat at the end of the table.
“So-Yeon’s dad, sit there.”
“Grr?”
“The leader has to sit in the center.”
Lee Jeong-Uk smiled gently and patted me on the shoulder. I scratched my sideburns, not knowing how to react, but eventually smiled as well and walked toward the center seat.
As I settled down into the center seat and looked around at everyone, something hit me. Things were different. For some reason, I remembered the first time I had met everyone. No one looked like they were struggling from hunger or engulfed by fear anymore. No one had eyes filled with hopelessness. Instead, everyone was full of life.
Han Seon-Hui was watching me with her lips pursed, as if she wasn’t used to or was embarrassed to be in a meeting room. The Lee brothers and the principal, along with the elder, had energetic expressions. Choi Da-Hye had the face of a young girl, full of curiosity.
I couldn’t help but smile as I looked into everyone’s faces. No one was perfect, but everyone was now able to live like human beings.
I wrote a message out on the A4 paper in front of me, in as large a font as I could manage, so that everyone could see.
- Everyone, good job.
The room was all smiles after they read what I had written.
And of course, I smiled back at them.
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