Chapter 173


    Kim Hyeong-Jun stared at the captain.


    “The survivors here, where are you hiding them?” he asked.


    "What?"


    “Come on now, I saw everything at the entrance. I saw a couple of survivors tied up in rope being dragged away.”


    Kim Hyeong-Jun slowly approached the captain, who backpedaled, trembling all the way.


    “Hey hey, wait, how about we both just calm down first and talk this through?” he said.


    "You keep avoiding my question, man. If you keep doing that, I’ll have no choice but to kill you the hard way.”


    Kim Hyeong-Jun frowned and tilted his head, and the captain gulped. His eyes swam about. It seemed like he was trying toe up with a way to get himself out of this situation.


    In an instant, Kim Hyeong-Jun was in front of the captain. His hands locked around the captain’s neck.


    “If you don’t answer in ten seconds, your neck’s going to break.”


    “Gaaa! Wait, wait…”


    “Ten, nine, eight…”


    As Kim Hyeong-Jun started counting down, the captain squirmed about.


    “Hey, let go. Let’s talk this through…” he tried to say.


    “Three, two, one, zero. You’re up.”


    "The kitchen. I hid them in the kitchen!”


    The captain shouted as he tapped Kim Hyeong-Jun''s arm. The pain around his neck was causing his eyes to narrow into slits. Kim Hyeong-Jun grinned.


    "Did you know?” he asked.


    “What? What?”


    Kim Hyeong-Jun tilted his head and made a cheerful expression.


    “When Koreans give you a ten-second countdown, they always give you extra time by saying ‘you’re up’ after counting down to zero.”


    The captain didn’t know how to respond. Instead, he swallowed and stared at his tormentor’s face. Kim Hyeong-Jun smiled and continued to speak.


    "Wait… That means I just gave you twelve seconds, didn’t I?”


    The captain turned pale after he heard that he’d been given twelve seconds, not ten. Then Kim Hyeong-Jun clenched his teeth to the point that the captain could hear them grinding.


    “You went over ten seconds, you son of a bitch," he said, furrowing his brow.


    Pow!!


    The captain''s limbs went limp as the bones in his neck shattered.


    Kim Hyeong-Jun was furious. He couldn’t believe that the captain was keeping the survivors in the kitchen. It could only mean that the people here were using the survivors as food. They were no different from the dogs in Seoul.


    Kim Hyeong-Jun clicked his tongue vigorously as he tossed the captain’s corpse—with its neck broken—to the floor. The woman in the bed squirmed. When Kim Hyeong-Jun’s eyes fell on her, she cried her eyes out and began to beg for her life.


    “Please, please spare me. I don’t know anything.”


    Kim Hyeong-Jun gave the woman a sidelong look, then ruffled through the clothes on the floor. There was torn women’s clothing scattered under the desk. Kim Hyeong-Jun scratched his head and sighed, then walked over to the corpse of the soldier with the shirt and stripped him of his clothes. He tossed the clothes to the woman.


    “Put those on for now so that we can get going.”


    "Please spare me. I…”


    “Why do you keep asking me to spare you? I have no intention of killing you.”


    "Really?"


    “The soldiers here. How many of them are there?” Kim Hyeong-Jun asked her, his voice growing slightly annoyed.


    The woman looked at him, her eyes full of confusion.


    "Wait, who… Who are you?” she asked, her voice tinged with bewilderment.


    “I told you, I’m the rescue team.”


    “The, the rescue team? How, how in the world did the rescue team…”


    “Enough with this. Let’s go save the rest first. Get dressed quickly. I don’t have all day.”


    The woman hesitated as she looked at Kim Hyeong-Jun. It seemed like she wanted him to do something. Realizing what it was, Kim Hyeong-Jun sighed and turned around. Only then did the woman begin to put on the clothes. After she was done, she approached Kim Hyeong-Jun hesitantly, and repeated her earlier question.


    “Are you really the rescue team?”


    “Yes. I’m part of the Survivor Rally Association. I''m from Seoul. Ask your questionster, and answer my questions first.”


    "Oh… Yes.”


    “Tell me everything. How many soldiers are here, where the other survivors are, what are these prizes the soldiers were talking about earlier, and how much food there’s left here.”


    The woman seemed to hesitate as Kim Hyeong-Jun fired off questions at her, but then began to fold her fingers one by one. She then said that there had been forty-two soldiers in total. She gave him other details about the soldiers as well. She added that, among the forty-two soldiers, twelve of them had fought on the side of the survivors during the rebellion, so the captain killed them himselfter on.


    That meant that there were twenty-six soldiers left, since he had just killed four of the remaining thirty. And since the man, the so-called captain, was an idiot with no future, the guys serving beneath him were probably the same, or even less.


    The woman then said that there were twenty-two survivors in the station. They had escaped from the zombies, but ended up running into the soldiers. Since the people and the soldiers were already in a bloody conflict, they were like water and oil, unable to mix together.


    The men became food, and the women were set aside as prizes for the soldiers. Hearing this, Kim Hyeong-Jun closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. Once again, it was clear that in a world where there were no rules, humans behaved even worse than animals. They fell back to their base instincts, which made him feel nothing but disgust.


    Kim Hyeong-Jun looked at the woman.


    “What is your name, miss?” he asked.


    “Shi… Shin Soo-Jeong.”


    “Shin Soo-Jeong, from now on, we’re heading out there together to find the other people. Got it?”


    From her appearance, she seemed like a woman in her mid-tote twenties. Shin Soo-Jeong nodded vigorously as she wiped away tears from her eyes.


    Kim Hyeong-Jun knew that it would have been perfectly normal for her to have been half-insane at this point. After all, she and everyone else in this ce had gone through more hardship than should’ve had. However, Shin Soo-Seong seemed confident and strong-spirited.


    Giving her one more look, Kim Hyeong-Jun took a deep breath.


    “Let’s go to the kitchen. Lead me there.”


    “Yes!”


    The two of them opened the door and headed to the kitchen.


    * * *


    While Tommy and Alyosha gathered the documents and samples they needed, I gathered the bodies of the new species of zombies. I retrieved some gasoline from the cars on the streets and burned their bodies.


    Since I wasn’t able to fully understand their characteristics, I couldn’t rule out the possibility of zombie infection passing on through their severed limbs. After I burned all the zombies, I went to look for Tommy.


    “Let’s get going. Did you get the samples you need?”


    “Yes, I have them here.”


    Tommy opened his bag to show me the samples he had obtained. Now that he knew Alyosha had broken the syringe containing the vine while carrying it on him, Tommy was now handling the samples with more care.


    Ji-Eun and my stage-one mutants escorted Tommy and Alyosha while I cleared a straight path back to the airport for us. To my surprise, not many zombies attacked us. Perhaps it was because we’d taken this path earlier on as well.


    After walking for a while while keeping a wary eye on the surroundings, something tickled my ears. I signaled Tommy and Alyosha to stop and focused on my hearing.


    “Isn’t he taking too long?”


    "What''s with the hurry? Our job right now is to wait.”


    It was a familiar voice, but since I wasn’t a hundred percent sure and that there was nothing wrong with being cautious, I jumped onto the roof of the building on the left. I looked toward where I’d heard the conversation and saw Park Gi-Cheol and Yoon Jeong-Ho conversing. I also saw the airline staff and Kim Hyeong-Jun’s underlings behind them.


    When I whistled, Park Gi-Cheol hurriedly grabbed his K2 rifle and looked around. When he saw me, he smiled and gestured to me toe down. When I jumped down next to him, he looked at the zombie bloodstains on me.


    "Looks like you''ve had quite the fight,” he said.


    “Yes. There were actually a lot of zombies in Innovation City,” I answered with a chuckle.


    Yoon Jeong-Ho, who was next to Park Gi-Cheol, looked away and scratched the back of his head hesitantly. When I looked at him, he nced down at the ground.


    "I… I joined the Survivor’s Rally Organization,” he mumbled.


    "Congrattions."


    It seemed like he was struggling to befortable around me. The way he was reacting made sense, since ourst encounter hadn’t been the best.


    I then smirked and patted Yoon Jeong-Ho on the shoulder. He wet his parched lips and looked me in the eyes.


    “You don’t have to act so disheartened. If Lee Jeong-Uk and Hwang Ji-Hye have epted you… I’ll consider you as one of my people too.”


    “I''m sorry for all the trouble I put you through…”


    I smiled gently and patted him on the back. After I called Tommy and Alyosha to join us, I asked Park Gi-Cheol why they were here in the first ce. When Park Gi-Cheol exined everything to me, I clicked my tongue.


    “Is Hyeong-Jun doing something on his own again?” I asked.


    "It doesn''t seem like things have gone wrong yet, since there haven''t been any gunshots."


    I clicked my tongue loudly and sighed.


    “I can’t tell if he’s good at improvising or he’s just reckless…”


    I looked at Park Gi-Cheol, then swept my gaze over everyone else.


    “Everyone, please wait here. I’ll go take a look.”


    “If anything happens, call in your underlings right away. We’ll follow when we see your underings move.”


    I nodded once and stealthily entered theplex. I heightened my five senses by elerating my blood flow, and heard some faint screaminging from within theplex. The screams were apanied by the smell of blood floating through the air. I could tell that a massacre was taking ce.


    It seemed like Kim Hyeong-Jun was going at it. I crouched down as I followed the screams. As I made my way through the long passageway, some soldiers with K2 rifles appeared in front of me. It seemed like they hadn’t noticed me in the passageway, since they were fixated on their right nk. I approached them swiftly and kicked the first one in the leg.


    "GAAA!!"


    The man in uniform let out a scream and fell down. I kept on going; I grabbed the man''s gun and smacked the other two with the buttstock. Having swiftly taken down the three soldiers, I looked over at where they had been aiming their guns.


    I saw a woman covering herself with a ragged cloth running down the passageway, along with several men. The soldiers had been pointing their guns at survivors.


    “Ahjussi!”


    I heard Kim Hyeong-Jun’s voiceing from the direction in which those people were running. When I turned to my right, I saw Kim Hyeong-Jun, his body covered in red blood. I tossed the K2 rifle I was holding onto the floor.


    “Who are those people?” I asked him.


    “The survivors who were trapped here.”


    Suddenly Kim Hyeong-Jun’s blue eyes shed, and he rushed toward me like a raging wave. I quickly dropped into a defensive stance in response to his unexpected behavior.


    “GAAA!”


    Kim Hyeong-Jun went straight past me and kicked the soldier behind me. It seemed like the soldier whose gun I’d taken had tried to attack me with his sword, aiming for my head. Kim Hyeong-Jun mercilessly stamped on the other two soldiers on the floor, then looked me in the eyes.


    “Kill all the soldiers. They’re not considered survivors.”


    "What happened?"


    He was telling me to kill people. I needed a reasonable exnation, some sort of justification for why he was saying this. I gave him a serious look, and Kim Hyeong-Jun smacked his lips.


    “You can think of the soldiers as dogs,” he said.


    "Dogs? Are you saying that they ate human flesh?”


    "Yeah. The naked ones are the survivors, and the people in uniform are just dogs.”


    That was enough reason to get rid of them. I took a breath and let it out.


    “Did you get a tally of the number of survivors and soldiers?” I asked Kim Hyeong-Jun.


    “We still have to find four more survivors, and since we just killed three soldiers, we still have six left.”


    “You haven’t checked this area yet, right?” I said, pointing to my left.


    Kim Hyeong-Jun nodded. My blue eyes shed.


    “I’ll check this area. Go ahead and get the other survivors out first.”


    “The remaining survivors are all men.”


    “How do you know that?”


    Kim Hyeong-Jun pointed at the woman behind him. “Shin Soo-Jeong told me.”


    A fair distance behind him—about twenty meters away—a woman in a shirt was staring at me and Kim Hyeong-Jun. She was looking at us with a rather nervous expression, as if she was still a little afraid of me and Kim Hyeong-Jun. We were, after all, two zombies covered in blood. That was probably how she saw us.


    My voice took on a tinge of bitterness.


    “See you outside. Go ahead first.”


    “ording to Shin Soo-Jeong, the remaining men are most likely in the torture chambers. She said they were at the end of the hallway. Let me know when you’re out.”


    With that, Kim Hyeong-Jun led the survivors out. I focused my mind on sharpening my vision and hearing as I elerated my blood flow. As I moved along the passageway on the left, I came across several doors. I opened every door and checked to see if any survivors were inside the rooms.


    When I got to the end of the left passageway, I noticed that the passageway split into two directions—left and right. I examined both passageways, and noticed that a door on the right passageway had more handprints than the other doors. It was more worn than the other doors, and there were brown palm prints on the door. They seemed to be made of dried blood.


    Above the door was a dusty window. I wiped away the dust and carefully peeked through the ss. There were four men inside, tied up with rope.


    I wet my dry lips and cautiously opened the door.