Chapter 38

There was no medicine.

The place had been stripped bare, as though a swarm of locusts had swept through every aisle. Nothing remained except a few masks and bottles of children’s vitamins. After sweeping his flashlight across the empty shelves, Muwon released a frustrated breath.

Han Dongwoo approached him. His wife had been suffering from morning sickness and poor health for several days, and desperation strained every word that left his mouth. “Why… Why is everything gone?”

“The military.”

“Pardon?”

“They searched the building during the rescue operation, remember? They must have emptied the pharmacy then.”

Once Muwon said it aloud, the answer seemed obvious. In a crisis like this, medicine and food were second only to weapons. Naturally, the soldiers would have taken everything useful.

“What do we do now?”

“We search the rest of the place, then check the dermatology clinic.”

Muwon and several others bent low, sweeping their flashlights across the floor in the faint hope that a bottle of pills might have rolled beneath a shelf.

Then a scream tore through the corridor.

“Run! Aaaack!”

From the direction Attorney Song’s group had taken came the guttural cries of zombies, followed by the frantic pounding of feet.

Everyone inside the pharmacy dropped instinctively, lowering their bodies and holding their breath. Muwon vaulted over the counter in a single motion and peered through the doorway.

Rumble!

Lightning split the darkness beyond the rain-lashed windows, illuminating the corridor for a heartbeat.

Attorney Song’s group was racing toward them.

A horde of zombies thundered close behind.

“Fuck…”

Over the past few days, the search party had grown unconsciously complacent. With rain and thunder raging outside, they had assumed the chaos would make it harder for the zombies to notice them.

Muwon knew better. In weather like this, the rain concealed the zombies’ movements just as effectively as it concealed human footsteps. Caution mattered more than ever, which was precisely why he had remained so tense, his senses honed to an almost painful degree.

Attorney Song and his group, however, had apparently failed to hear the horde gathered nearby.

“Save me! Run!”

Their bloodcurdling screams did more than alert Muwon’s party. They summoned every zombie scattered throughout the building. Yet, consumed by the instinct to survive, the fleeing people continued shrieking as they ran, oblivious to the disaster their panic was creating.

One man shoved desperately past the others, only to slip in a puddle of gore. He crashed to the floor and was seized almost at once by grasping, bloodstained hands.

“Ah… Save me! Please, save me!”

How were they supposed to survive this?

When panic took hold, instinct drove people toward whatever place still felt safe.

For them, that place was the restaurant.

“People are coming! No… Wait, are those zombies?”

The warning from the person stationed at the restaurant entrance marked the beginning of a sudden and unavoidable catastrophe. The screams and pounding footsteps belonged to Attorney Song’s group, who were fleeing toward the restaurant with an enormous train of zombies at their backs.

To those waiting inside, the sight was a waking nightmare.

The zombies clung to the heels of the group, dragging down the man at the rear and tearing into his neck. Blood sprayed across the floor. His scream snapped the stunned people inside the restaurant back to their senses, and the room erupted into chaos.

“Holy shit! Are you fucking kidding me? You brought them straight here?”

“Aaaack!”

“S-save me! Help me!”

“Block the door!”

Everyone scrambled to their feet at once. Some rushed toward the entrance, while others fled for the restrooms or the terrace. Even Park Yeongil, who had been hiding in the staff lounge, emerged with naked shock on his face.

“Block it! Hurry!”

“Wait! Attorney! At least let me inside first! Just one second!”

“Assistant Manager, wake up. Something terrible is happening!”

Jeong Yu-su opened his eyes to Joo Hee-eun’s voice, still drifting in and out of consciousness. He did not waste time trying to understand the entire situation. Grabbing the first object that could serve as a weapon, he staggered upright and rushed toward the entrance.

The door had already been pulled shut, but the people outside were throwing their bodies against it, preventing those inside from securing the lock. Angry voices exploded through the narrow gap.

“Open the door!”

“Are you insane? Do you want all of us to die with you?”

“Get out of the way! My son isn’t inside yet!”

“Hurry! This… Aaaack!”

Those whose families remained outside continued shoving against the barricade. Under the pressure, the door buckled, tore loose, and collapsed inward. People spilled into the restaurant in a tangled heap.

“Guaaah!”

“Kieek!”

The zombies surged in with them.

Of the dozen or more creatures at the entrance, half threw themselves upon the people trapped beneath the fallen door, while the rest raced toward the fresh prey scattered throughout the hall.

“…!”

Yu-su knocked aside a lunging zombie, then looked beyond the ruined doorway. His face drained of color, and he stumbled back a step.

Muwon was not there.

Do Muwon was nowhere to be seen.

Hee-eun and Sim Gorak had just driven back another zombie when they noticed Yu-su’s expression and understood. Hee-eun spun toward the doorway.

“Manager Do? Manager Do!”

“Muwon-hyung!” Gorak shouted. “Hey! What happened to the others who went out with you?”

“We got separated! I don’t know! Get out of my… Hrk… Guaaah!”

The man forcing his way past Gorak suddenly collapsed, his body convulsing violently. Before he could turn, Yu-su drove a splintered length of wood through his heart. Then he stared toward the corridor, desperation twisting his face.

“Do Muwon!”

Only scattered screams answered him.

Yu-su bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, then roared at the others. “We have to fight! There are enough of us here to bring them down!”

“Th-that’s right! We can do this!”

“Move the injured first! Protect them!”

At Yu-su’s command, Gorak and Hee-eun rushed toward the people who could not move on their own. Gorak went to the man whose calves were rotting with infection, while Hee-eun seized the pregnant woman, who was panicking because her husband had not returned, and pulled both her and the crying child to their feet.

Yu-su drove his wooden stake through another zombie, then shouted again. “Don’t run! Fight!”

“Protect the injured!”

“Y-yeah. We have to fight!”

Someone scrambled upright and smashed a broken chair leg into a zombie.

Thud.

The creature shrieked, Kieek!, and staggered sideways.

Once one person began fighting, another followed, then another. Men and women alike snatched up shattered chair legs, broken partitions, and anything else they could wield, forming a desperate line against the zombies rampaging through the restaurant.

Those who were unable to fight hurled flowerpots against the walls, using the noise to pull the zombies’ attention away from the wounded. After several creatures fell, fragile confidence began to return.

Even Yu-su believed they could regain control.

They should have been able to.

BANG!

Then the gunshot split the room apart.

The deafening report crashed through the restaurant, leaving every ear ringing.

“…”

Every head turned toward Park Yeongil.

He was the one holding the gun.

“Uh…” Park Yeongil stared at the weapon with an awkward expression. “Why was that so loud?”

The silencer that had been attached to the barrel struck the floor with a metallic clatter.

“Are you out of your fu…”

“Kieeaack!”

“Aaah! Aaaah!”

The rest of the sentence vanished beneath the swelling screams of the living dead.

The zombies already inside went berserk at the sound, jerking and twisting as though the shot had struck each of them. From the nearby corridors came the heavy slap of wet feet converging on the restaurant. With the entrance destroyed, nothing stood between the hall and the creatures outside. Their numbers multiplied with terrifying speed.

“Don’t come any closer! Guaaack!”

A zombie soaked in rain and blood seized one of the people nearest the doorway and began tearing into him. In an instant, the fragile resistance collapsed back into chaos.

“Cough…!”

“Stop! It hurts! It hurts!”

The howls of the zombies seemed to rise from every direction. Faced with that relentless sound, even some of those who had been fighting moments earlier finally broke.

“This isn’t working! R-run!”

“Hurry! We need to barricade ourselves somewhere!”

“Jump down!”

They dropped their weapons and scattered.

Yu-su shouted after them. “Stop! We have to kill the ones coming through the entrance and move the injured first!”

“Who gives a shit about the injured?” a fleeing woman snapped. “If you want to kill yourself, do it alone!”

She shoved Yu-su with both hands.

“…!”

His weakened legs gave way. He crashed to the floor and tried to rise, but after days of illness, his body no longer obeyed him.

The zombie pursuing the woman did not waste the opportunity.

“Yu-su-hyung!”

“No! Assistant Manager!”

A crimson shadow fell across him.

The living dead reached for Yu-su, human hair still tangled between its teeth. Yu-su searched frantically for something he could use to drive it back, but the wooden stake had been kicked away by the fleeing crowd and was nowhere in sight.

Maybe…

The thought flickered through him, faint and treacherous.

Maybe dying is the only way this ends.

It lasted no more than a heartbeat.

As death descended upon him, fear swelled inside his chest until it blotted out everything else.

No. I want to live.

I don’t want to die.

Yu-su dragged himself backward, but that instant of hesitation had already cost him. The zombie seized his shoulder. As it stretched its jaws wide, bloody saliva spilled from its mouth and dripped down his clothes.

Then a voice thundered across the hall.

“Jeong Yu-su! Get down!”

A suppressed shot cut through the chaos with a sharp, muffled whistle.

The zombie’s chest exploded inches from Yu-su’s face.

Yu-su curled inward on instinct, avoiding the spray of blood and gore. Through the haze, he saw Muwon vault over the terrace railing and charge toward him.

“Fuck, seriously. You fucking idiots.”

Muwon smashed the triangular nameplate through the heads of two zombies, then reached Yu-su and dragged him into his arms.

Perhaps it was because he was drenched in rain and sleet, but Muwon’s embrace felt unnaturally cold.

Drip, drip.

Water streamed from his clothes.

Only then did the crushing reality settle over Yu-su.

He had survived again.