“Move! Move!”
The soldiers who had been riding in the trucks poured through the back door and into the warehouse.
“Holy shit...!”
What greeted them was the sight of dozens of 800-kilogram public rice reserve sacks, each packed with unhusked rice and stacked two high.
“The hell are you doing?!”
“Hey! Stop standing there like idiots and move!”
Startled by the officers’ and NCOs’ barking, the soldiers hurried into action.
“Pull!”
“One! Two! One! Two!”
Each sack weighed eight hundred kilograms, but with six or seven n pushing and hauling together, they could move them.
The soldiers who had co packed into the trucks quickly built fighting positions of a sort on both sides of the warehouse entrance using five or six of the public rice reserve sacks.
“Opening it!”
Keeeeeak!
When Junho pulled up the lever, the thick stainless-steel shutter blocking the warehouse entrance rose with a tallic groan.
The entrance was roughly five ters wide.
The instant the warehouse door opened, the two electric trucks that had driven inside pulled up side by side and sealed the entrance completely.
The soldiers sprinted to the tops of the trucks and to the rice sacks at both ends of the entrance, braced their rifles, and took firing positions.
“Check magazines! Seat magazines! Charge bolts!”
Clack! Clack!
At the command from Major Lee Seokjin, who had climbed onto one of the trucks first, the soldiers pulled out their magazines, checked them, reinserted them, then racked and released their bolts.
All the while, Major Lee Seokjin and the two lieutenants kept their eyes fixed on the front gate of the National Agricultural Cooperative warehouse.
Not a single rat was in sight yet, but with the zombies bound to co swarming in sooner or later, their eyes and faces were taut with tension.
Grrrrraaaah...!
At the zombie roars drifting in from the distance, Major Lee Seokjin parted his dry lips wide.
“They’re coming! Squads One and Two, selector to semi-auto! Squads Three and Four, full auto!”
The soldiers—just as tense as he was, if not more—adjusted their fire selectors.
Then, about twenty seconds later—
zombies in tattered old clothes with hair hanging in wild tangles began pouring through the shattered front gate of the warehouse, about fifty ters from the entrance.
***
“Open fire!”
Major Lee Seokjin shouted at the top of his lungs.
The soldiers lying prone or seated on the trucks fired in semi-auto.
The soldiers bracing their rifles behind the rice sacks at both ends of the entrance opened up in full auto.
Boom-boom-boom! Boom! Boom-boom-boom!
Dozens of K2C1 rifle muzzles erupted with thunderous fire.
They all had ear protection on, but with everyone shooting at once in a confined indoor space, the noise was overwhelming.
Even Junho, waiting behind the trucks with his air rifle, winced for a mont.
But for the zombies that had just co through the warehouse front gate, the gunfire was nothing less than a catastrophe.
Boom-boom-boom! Boom-boom-boom! Boom!
Thud-thud-thud! Thud-thud-thud-thud!
The zombies collapsed in heaps like cut straw.
Just as Junho had suggested, the soldiers firing in bursts from behind the public rice reserve sacks on either side of the entrance aid for the zombies’ lower bodies.
A zombie shot through the knee or thigh with standard 5.56 rounds would not die, but once it took two or three hits, it had no choice but to lose mobility, collapse, or start limping.
And the soldiers on top of the trucks, firing in semi-auto, aid for the heads of those crippled ones whenever possible.
They did not hit every shot, of course, but the thod was working extrely well.
“Rotate! Rotate!”
Boom-boom-boom! Boom-boom!
As soon as a soldier emptied his magazine in full-auto fire, the soldier standing right behind him quickly took his place and resud laying down fire.
Soldiers with little real combat experience had more trouble than expected swapping magazines quickly and cleanly once an actual firefight started.
That was why Junho had suggested that instead of having the sa full-auto shooters fumble through reloads, it would be better for the man behind them to imdiately take over the position and keep the fire going once a magazine ran dry.
Major Lee Seokjin had judged the idea sound and adopted it.
By contrast, the n firing single aid shots from atop the trucks were the ones with particularly good marksmanship or NCOs who had spent years in service.
They could keep firing carefully in semi-auto with ten or so magazines laid beside them and simply swap them out as they went empty.
Boom-boom-boom! Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom! Boom!
The gunfire flowed on without interruption, and in proportion to it, more and more corpses piled up at the warehouse front gate and across the yard.
The biggest contributors were the K15 light machine guns, one emplaced behind each rice-sack position.
“Burst it! Short bursts! We don’t have many spare barrels!”
At the NCO’s shout, the K15 gunners—caught between tension, fear, and the exhilaration of adrenaline—did not simply hold their triggers down, but fired in disciplined bursts of four or five rounds.
“Ammo box empty!”
“I—I’ve got a stoppage!”
“Goddammit! Swap out imdiately!”
Even with the K15s, they were rotating not just the ammo boxes, but the guns and gunners themselves.
No one knew how many more battles lay ahead, so they had to preserve the weapons and, at the sa ti, give as many soldiers as possible real combat experience.
Boom-boom-boom-boom! Boom-boom! Boom-boom-boom! Boom!
Under Major Lee Seokjin’s command, his n kept killing the zombies of Yeongho 2-ri through three- and four-man rotation, without a single pause in the firing.
And about five minutes after the first shots were fired, the battle entered its final stage.
***
“Cease fire at both rice-sack positions! Squads Three and Four, keep firing!”
“Selector to safe! Muzzles up!”
At the NCO’s shouted relay of Major Lee Seokjin’s order, the soldiers at both fighting positions raised their muzzles toward the sky.
The fight had lasted only a few minutes, but every one of them was soaked in sweat.
Shooting at countless zombies with them only a few dozen ters away drained both stamina and nerve.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The n atop the trucks were still calmly firing single shots into zombie heads.
But with no more zombies charging through the front gate, all they had to do now was pick off the ones that had fallen and were flailing on the ground, or those hobbling slowly closer.
“Squads Five and Six, with ! Everyone else, inspect your weapons! Officers and NCOs, check the n’s condition and thoroughly inspect weapons and ammo! Lieutenant Jung, scout the area with the drone and radio !”
“Yes, sir!”
When both lieutenants answered crisply, Major Lee Seokjin turned to Junho, who had been firing alongside them with his air rifle.
“Mr. Lee Junho. The ones that didn’t push in here and pulled back instead—they were Alphas, right?”
“Yeah, probably. They could tell at a glance this was a slaughter, so they bailed and ran. Rat bastards.”
“I’m going after them. Will you co with us?”
By now, Major Lee Seokjin was deeply impressed with Junho.
Just monts earlier, even among active-duty soldiers, so had been so overwheld by the fear of zombies closing to within a few dozen ters that they could not shoot properly.
But Junho—civilian or not, veteran or not, long-term survivor or not—had kept firing without panicking in the middle of that horrifying real combat situation.
That was not sothing just anyone could do.
“Sure. The more of those bastards we kill, the safer the survivors around here will be.”
One of Junho’s goals was also to kill an Alpha and boost his physical abilities, even if only a little, so he agreed without hesitation.
“Good. Then let’s move.”
Nodding, Major Lee Seokjin turned and shouted behind him.
“Squads Five and Six! Move out!”
Junho and Lee Seokjin ran out of the National Agricultural Cooperative warehouse with so twenty soldiers.
The soldiers’ faces went pale as they got an up-close look at the zombie corpses shot to pieces.
But the adrenaline from the battle was still coursing strong through them, and they bravely followed their dependable battalion commander.
***
Tracking down the zombies that had fled by using the drone to locate them, then killing them, was more dangerous than the battle at the warehouse.
No matter how rural it was, Yeongho 2-ri was still developed enough to have a cluster of shops.
That ant Alphas hiding in second- and third-floor buildings with the zombies under their control could attack from the flanks or rear of the advancing force.
But among the n moving through the streets of Yeongho 2-ri now, there was one very special person.
A regressor who had passed CQB training and practical live-environnt testing at both dostic and overseas military academies with near-perfect scores, and who had already gone through several brutal real battles.
“Second-floor shop on the flank!”
Now practically a natural predator of Alphas, Junho brought his exceptional combat skill and animal instinct to bear, spotting the zombies first, shouting, and firing his air rifle.
And the soldiers, the instant his words left his mouth, would direct their fire there, clearing out the zombies left in Yeongho 2-ri.
Then, about ten minutes later, the force under Major Lee Seokjin’s command had dealt with most of the remaining zombies near the warehouse, as well as the ones that had fled.
'There really aren’t many Alphas. Guess that’s because the town’s small.'
Having taken out one that was unmistakably an Alpha in the process, Junho swept his sharp gaze around the area, then spoke to Major Lee Seokjin.
“I think that’s enough. The people in this town should be able to deal with the rest. Or if not, I can co back later and finish them off.”
“Understood. Then we should notify the survivors here and conduct rescue—”
“Major, don’t do that.”
“What do you an?”
Major Lee Seokjin’s eyes narrowed.
Junho decided to tell this stubborn officer—highly capable, and still not forgetful of what a Republic of Korea Army officer was supposed to be—the reality of the apocalypse.
“You said the soldiers who seized Jojong-myeon and Sang-myeon had changed, right? That they weren’t like the army anymore.”
“...That’s right.”
Thinking of those n who had beco sothing close to warlords, n he could no longer call comrades, Major Lee Seokjin’s expression twisted slightly.
“It’s not just soldiers who changed. People changed too.”
“......!”
“You know as well as I do how hard, how selfish people have to be to survive in a world like this. If you rescue the people in this town, they’re going to treat you and these soldiers like you’re public service clerks.”
“That’s impossible. They’re not idiots. There’s no way they’d treat ard soldiers like that—”
“So then, Major, could you shoot them?”
“......!!!”
Major Lee Seokjin’s eyes widened sharply.
“You couldn’t, right? Country people aren’t stupid. They’ll realize what kind of person you are right away. And then what do you think happens?”
Junho gave him only a tiny glimpse of the future Major Lee Seokjin would most likely have run straight into if he had never t Junho.
“......”
And Major Lee Seokjin, still not having forgotten his duty as an officer of the Republic of Korea Army, bit down on his lip with a stiff expression.
“So just leave them alone. The gunfire was loud as hell, and so of them are probably already watching from hiding.”
At that, several soldiers glanced toward the surrounding buildings.
Sure enough, behind slightly parted curtains, figures that looked like people were visible.
“Right now they’re scared of the soldiers and staying hidden, but after you and your n leave, they’ll make their way to the warehouse on their own and start taking rice. Once they do that, they’ll realize most of the zombies in this town are dead. Then they’ll figure out the rest themselves and claw their way through however they can. If you can’t take responsibility for them to the very end, it’s better to just stick to your original plan.”
“...I understand what you an.”
At last convinced, Major Lee Seokjin spoke to the soldiers.
“We’re heading back to the warehouse. Don’t let your guard down. We return in search formation.”
“Yes, sir.”
The soldiers spread out in teams to the front, rear, left, and right, walking in firing posture.
Maybe it was because they had just gone through fierce real combat, but there was not a hint of slackness in their bearing.
And so, the soldiers who had liberated Yeongho 2-ri instead of occupying it were no longer ordinary draftees who had once lived ordinary lives.
Now they were warriors making their way through the apocalypse.
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