Waaah!
Listening to the terrified cries of children who looked about six to eight years old, Junho moved.
“Uuuugh....”
Even while tears stread down his face from the pain, Yoo Youngjae was trying to drag his ass away from Junho, inch by inch.
“Ugh, ugh....”
But there was no way he could escape with his right thigh pierced by a knife and his left ankle crushed.
Junho looked down at Yoo Youngjae, who was blocked by a desk and trembling all over, and said,
“Did you want to find out how big children have to be before zombies see them as prey and eat them?”
“Krhk...!?”
“How developed their brains have to be. Whether it has anything to do with intelligence. How tall they need to be. Whether body weight is related too. Whether even among children, so individuals are considered prey and others aren’t... Was that what you were trying to figure out?”
Yoo Youngjae was horrified.
How did a soldier he had t for the first ti today know that?
But soon, as a businessman, he reached the most rational conclusion.
“Ugh... s-so the governnt is running the sa experints too, right? Of course. I knew it. Those bastards would be exactly that kind of bastard. Khuhuhu....”
Yoo Youngjae twisted his face into a grin and hurriedly continued.
“H-hey. I’m almost done with the experints, okay? I stored the data properly too. If you want, I’ll give you all of it. S-so...”
Kwaang!
“Uaaaaaagh...!”
Yoo Youngjae scread as his other ankle was crushed too.
Taking his eyes off Yoo Youngjae as he rolled across the floor with his eyes flipped back, Junho turned to Jeon Yohan.
“......!”
Jeon Yohan, who had been staring at Junho with a bloodless face, flinched. Then, all he could do was laugh weakly.
“Hah. Fuck....”
There was neither anger nor disgust on Junho’s face as he silently stared at him.
And Jeon Yohan had seen eyes like that before.
They were the eyes of a butcher looking at cattle or pigs that had already been slaughtered and delivered to the at market.
***
“Huh? It’s open.”
“What the hell? Fuck, did they already run?”
As the n who had co up to the penthouse in Building 501 whispered, Kim Sunwoo put a finger to his lips and stepped forward.
For so reason, the penthouse entrance was open, with a fire extinguisher wedged between the door and fra.
Ugh... mmph, mmph.
Faint groans and signs of movent ca from inside.
And though others might not know it, a sll extrely familiar to Kim Sunwoo, who was on the police tactical unit, rushed into his nose.
“...Flashbang?”
At the lingering scent of subtly burned tal mixed with chemicals, Kim Sunwoo frowned.
The Daeseong syndicate did not possess flashbangs.
In other words, soone other than the gangsters had already co through here.
“Don’t tell ...?”
Junho’s face naturally ca to mind. Kim Sunwoo shouldered his HK416, set his finger on the trigger, and carefully entered.
“Huh...?”
The n who had co with him were startled by the sudden entry.
But they knew what kind of man Kim Sunwoo was, and they rembered what he had shown on the way here, so after exchanging glances, they followed behind him.
Khmp...! Mmph! Khp!
The farther they moved down the hallway, the louder the groans mixed with the lingering sll of the flashbang beca.
And when he listened closely, it was not one person groaning, but several.
“Hoo....”
Stopping before the living room, Kim Sunwoo steadied his breathing and listened.
After confirming the movent inside, he aligned his muzzle with the corner’s edge and quickly twisted his body to the right.
“......!?”
In that instant, Kim Sunwoo’s eyes widened, and he slowly lowered his muzzle.
“What is it?”
“...Huh?”
The n, who had nervously peeked their heads toward the living room, also opened their eyes wide, then walked into the living room one by one.
“Mmph! Mmph!”
“Khp! Khhmp!”
Between the two corpses lying dead in pools of blood with their heads and upper bodies cut apart, old n wearing only underwear lay sprawled with their hands and feet bound by zip ties.
And those old n were people Kim Sunwoo and the others knew well.
Riiip!
“Huuuh...!”
“Hah, hah....”
When the tape over their mouths was torn away, the old n gasped roughly for breath, then began shouting at Kim Sunwoo and the others.
“Hey, you bastard! If soone is like this, you hurry up and untie them! What the hell are you doing?”
“Fire Captain Choi, what are you doing!?”
“Hey, Kim Sunwoo, untie this right now.”
City counciln, high-ranking officials, prosecutors, police executives—the old n were all people with influence in Guri and Namyangju, and they demanded as if it were only natural that the n, forr and current public officials, police officers, and firefighters, untie them.
“.......”
But neither Kim Sunwoo nor the other n moved to untie them. They simply stood there in silence, looking down at the old n.
Only then did the old n realize sothing was wrong with the atmosphere. They swallowed, exchanged looks, and then spoke in awkward smiles, deliberately softening their voices.
“Lieutenant Kim Sunwoo. Is this about what happened before? B-but you know too, don’t you? If you stay with , your nieces will be able to live much more safely. M-my granddaughters. Yes, I thought of them like my own granddaughters, so I was trying to protect them.”
“Manager Oh, Manager Oh. You know, right? I’m a victim who got caught by the gangsters too, man. My whole family has been suffering terribly too, I’m telling you. So...”
It was then.
“Ugh, khh... You sons of bitches worse than dogs....”
One of the n who had been searching each room of the penthouse ca out into the living room supporting soone, cursing through tears.
The person he was supporting was a young woman with disheveled hair, and the woman, barely covering herself with a thin blanket, was the man’s youngest sister, who had only just turned twenty.
“You animals....”
“What? You were caught and suffered? This is what you call suffering? You filthy bastard.”
Shing.
Seeing that, the n’s faces twisted one after another, and instead of guns, they drew knives and axes.
“Hhk...!”
The old n froze when they saw the blades shining blue in the moonlight.
Step, step, step.
The old n had once been their superiors, or high-ranking figures they would never have dared look up at.
The n who had lost precious people to those old n and the gangsters colluding with them, or had lived like slaves under them, approached with faces like demons.
“N-no...!”
“Fire Captain Choi! I-I, I’m... Uaaaah...!”
Slice! Thwack! Thud-thud! Crack!
As the blue blades danced, red blood sprayed all across the living room.
Kim Sunwoo also swung his knife at the police superintendent who had retired and been trying to secure a city council nomination.
“Khhuaaaagh!”
He drove the knife into the eye of the old man, a monster worse than a zombie, who had licked his lips every ti he saw Kim Sunwoo’s young niece.
“Die, you son of a bitch!”
Kim Sunwoo was sincerely grateful to Junho for creating this opportunity.
Kyaaaagh! Aagh! Krhk!
With the screams of the old n who had lived by devouring people in a different sense than zombies, the ti of slaughter that had unfolded in the middle of the night ca to an end.
***
The fierce yet one-sided night battle was almost over.
The Daeseong syndicate’s main force had been annihilated after being caught in crossfire, but the small number of organization mbers who had not participated in the battle scattered and fled or hid in the various buildings.
However, wiping out those n, rats trapped in a jar without firearms, was not difficult.
Lee Seokjin ordered Lieutenant Jeong to lead a search team, find the remaining gangsters, and shoot them dead.
At the sa ti, he instructed another lieutenant and the noncommissioned officers to deploy troops at the apartnt’s main and rear gates in preparation for a possible zombie horde attack, then headed for the culture center with only one squad.
Park Cheolwoo, who had perfectly carried out the difficult mission of crossing the apartnt complex with the combat team to confuse the gangsters and rapidly seize the main gate, also left the combat team on-site and joined them at the culture center.
“......!”
When they arrived at the culture center, they flinched at the sight of Yoo Youngjae and Jeon Yohan’s corpses, dead in horrific states.
But when they saw the children who had been imprisoned in one room of the office, and heard from Junho what those two dead n had been using them for, their faces flushed red with fury.
“Co on, co on, don’t cry. Can you walk? Want to carry you?”
“Corporal Kim! If you’ve got water left, give so!”
While the soldiers looked after the children and carried them out, Junho spoke in one corner of the office with Lee Seokjin and Park Cheolwoo, whose anger still had not subsided.
“Major, please hold on to this data.”
“This disgusting thing? ?”
When Junho held out an SSD neatly sealed in a zipper bag, Lee Seokjin looked down at it with eyes full of intense revulsion.
Junho could fully understand how he felt, but he calmly nodded.
“Yes. You may need it later, if you ever get in contact with the governnt or a higher unit. You’ll need sothing to justify this.”
“.......”
Although they were gangsters, a large number of civilians had been shot dead, and on top of that, many high-ranking figures from all sectors of Guri and Namyangju had also been killed.
In a world like this, where law and order had collapsed, that might not be especially a big problem.
But if, by so chance, governnt officials or commanders from a higher unit interrogated him and demanded responsibility, Lee Seokjin, who had not lost his sense of responsibility and identity as an officer of the Republic of Korea Army, would be put in a fairly difficult position.
The data Yoo Youngjae had made was insurance for that mont.
“This is only my guess, but he probably recorded worthless nonsense. Even if it has so value, by that point, the governnt will already know it all anyway.”
He spoke hypothetically, but Junho was certain the data inside would have no real value.
If Yoo Youngjae’s research had achieved even the slightest result, then before the regression, the Daeseong syndicate would not have remained in the exact sa place as now, and they would not have been so desperate to capture survivors.
“...Hoo. Understood. I’ll keep it for now.”
After sighing, Lee Seokjin slipped the SSD into his inner pocket, and Park Cheolwoo stepped forward.
“By the way, aren’t there Alphas in the basent here? What happened to them...?”
“I killed them all.”
“......!”
Park Cheolwoo’s eyes widened, then he clicked his tongue.
“Tsk. Once again, Mr. Junho took the hardest job. You could have had our kids or the soldiers handle it.”
But Junho shook his head, recalling the basent of the culture center he had just returned from.
“They were extrely ferocious, so it would have been dangerous. And that place... Even for people who have gone through real combat, it wasn’t sothing an ordinary person could endure.”
The number of people the gangsters had provided as “feed” to the twelve Alphas in the basent far exceeded five hundred.
And among the victims were not only minors, but also many around the sa age as the children currently being rescued.
If the combat team or soldiers saw the hundreds of horrific corpses, torn and ripped apart until their forms were difficult to recognize, they would lose their minds.
So the work that had to be done in that hellish place, a scene no human being should have to see with open eyes, was sothing Junho himself should handle.
Most of all, he could not hand over the task of killing Alphas, which increased his physical ability by a tiny amount each ti, to anyone else.
“Hoo. Then it’s roughly wrapped up. For now, starting with the buildings the search team has finished checking, we’ll gather the survivors, finish clearing the battlefield, and then...”
Just as Lee Seokjin was laying out the next plan, both his and Junho’s radios rang at the sa ti.
- Battalion commander! Z-zombies! An enormous number of zombies are coming!
- Brother Junho! Across the highway! The hill with the apartnt complex! Zombies are spilling over the guardrails!
“What? How many?”
When Lee Seokjin asked in surprise at the drone operator’s report, an urgent answer ca back.
- I-I don’t know! We can’t count them! It looks like well over a thousand! S-so of them look like they’re trying to circle around!
- Thousands! Maybe more!
“......!”
Lee Seokjin, shocked by the report that thousands of zombies were coming, soon clenched his teeth and raised his voice.
“Tell them to deploy light machine guns at the main gate! And on the rooftop of the building closest to the main gate! Leave only the minimum number of n at the rear gate and commit everyone else to the main gate! Relay that to the officers imdiately!”
- Yes, sir!
After quickly giving his orders, Lee Seokjin spoke to Junho and Park Cheolwoo.
“Let’s join them imdiately. Manager Park Cheolwoo, how much live ammunition does your side have left?”
“About three or four magazines each. It would be better to move the rear-gate troops to the front too. We’ll handle the ones trying to circle around.”
“That sounds good. Then, Mr. Lee Junho...”
“I’ll go outside and fight.”
“Yes!?”
At Junho’s completely unexpected words, both n’s eyes widened.
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