“Y-you son of a... nghk, glrk.”
One of the EoktenZ higher-ups, a guy in his early twenties who still had his hair plastered back with whatever the hell it was—gel, wax, sothing—even in the apocalypse, crumpled with a diagonal gash hacked into the right side of his chest, longer than a hand span.
Putting down bastards who could not even stand properly after taking a flashbang and then a blast of tactical flashlight glare was easy work.
Thinking he would probably have to fight like this from ti to ti whenever he was dealing with “humans” inside buildings, Junho flicked the blood-and-at-sared machete to shake it clean.
“......”
Maybe because this was where the top dogs lived, there did not seem to be any other threats besides these four.
Still, he had to check the bathroom and every room, so Junho moved quickly but thoroughly through the half-open apartnt, clearing it.
After checking the living room and kitchen too, Junho stopped in front of the only closed door left—the master bedroom.
“Can you check the master bedroom with the drone?”
—Hang on. Uh... I think there are people in there? Two in the corner by the window? No. Three of them are huddled together, holding onto each other. Going by their build, I think they’re won?
At Yoon Youngsu’s words, Junho kicked the doorknob side of the door.
Bang!
The locked bedroom door flew wide open with a thunderous crash.
“Aah!”
“P-please spare us. Please, please spare us.”
“We were wrong! Please, please don’t kill us!”
The three won clinging to each other on the large bed by the window all scread at once.
No—looking closer, it was one adult woman and two girls who looked about high-school age.
“W-we were dragged here. It’s true. Please, please...”
“Please spare us. Huaaah. Huaaah...”
As the two younger girls sobbed and begged, the only adult woman, who looked to be in her early to mid-twenties, moved in front of them protectively and spoke.
“W-we really were d-dragged here. Th-they’re just st-students.”
“......”
Junho looked the three of them over in silence.
All three were definitely filthy and disheveled, but they were wearing ordinary clothes.
The two girls especially had on the kind of loose, thin gray sweatpants teenage girls commonly wore, along with black-and-white Adidas short-sleeve T-shirts.
Put caps and masks on them, and anybody would have taken them for ordinary neighborhood girls heading to cram school or a study room.
“Hhk... ngh! Mom....”
“Uwaaaah...”
And on top of that, their pants had been yanked down to their hips, and their tops were torn or stretched out and hanging off them. It was obvious they had been seconds away from sothing awful at the hands of the bastards he had just killed.
Junho lowered the machete he had been holding out at them.
“Tell where you were and how they brought you here.”
“W-we were hiding in a study room at the academy, and so boys who were in there with us said there’d be l-lots of food if we ca here. They said th-they were going to join them...”
“Th-that asshole Park Sangbeom sold us out! That crazy bastard should’ve gone by himself, but he dragged us into it too... he told them where we were hiding... hhk, ngh...”
From their reactions, Junho could piece together what had happened.
There really had been so victims dragged in by force like this, even if only a few.
Of course, none of the won he had killed today were victims like that. With won, you could tell right away just from the makeup and the clothes.
“Stay in this apartnt and don’t co out. I’ll co back later. Wash your faces and fix your clothes.”
“Yes, yes!”
“Th-thank you. Thank you so much. Nngh...”
Leaving the three of them there, trembling and crying as they all but bowed to him in gratitude, Junho started to head out, then suddenly turned his head and added,
“Oh, and there are bodies from the guys who lived here lying by the front door. Watch where you step when you go to the bathroom.”
“...Y-yes. Yes, sir.”
Seeing Junho’s clothes—which had probably originally been black, but had long since turned a dark reddish brown—and the machete still gleaming wet with blood, the three of them swallowed hard.
***
Nearly fifty EoktenZ delinquent punks were dead.
All except the ones barricaded inside Unit 301 with the front door locked.
Junho briefly considered forcing the door open, then ca up with a much easier way.
“Junhyeok, shoot out all the windows in 301 with the air rifle.”
—Huh?
He wondered what the hell his brother was planning, but Junhyeok followed the order and shot out every window in Unit 301.
The shots were fairly loud, but the zombies near the mansion had already mostly been taken care of by the EoktenZ bastards.
And Junhyeok had killed the rest with the air rifle today, so there was no real danger.
Junho wrapped the punks’ clothes around the baseball bats and tal pipes they had been carrying, then soaked them thoroughly in the gasoline from the generator fuel can the top dogs in 302 had been using.
Then he lit them and hurled them through the windows of 301, and after that tossed the fuel can with the rest of the gasoline through the broken living-room window.
—Wow. Strike.
With two or three improvised torches going through each window, Unit 301’s windows were blazing within minutes.
And the fire was obviously going to spread through the whole apartnt fast.
Sure enough, before even five minutes had passed, the door to 301 burst open and the bastards inside ca stumbling out in a frenzy, coughing like crazy.
“Cough! Cough!”
“Kuhh... urk!”
Waiting by the stairwell in his mask, Junho chopped them down one by one with the machete as they ca bursting out like cockroaches hit with insecticide.
And then, just as he raised the machete toward the very last one, who was practically crawling his way out—
“Ah! N-no!”
The woman in her early to mid-twenties ca out after all, even though he had definitely told them to stay inside, and shouted.
“He was dragged here too, just like us! Youngjun! Youngjun, are you okay?”
“Cough, cough! T-teacher Seulgi? Cough! Urk! Bleegh...”
The kid, who looked young and wore horn-rimd glasses like Yoon Youngsu’s, was sprawled on the floor retching, his hands and face blackened with soot.
But even so, Junho still had the machete pointed at him.
The woman called Seulgi quickly threw herself around the kid and pleaded desperately.
“P-please. Youngjun’s a good student. He’s the kind of kid who cos to the academy early in the morning on holidays to study. He really was dragged here with us. Please. P-please don’t kill him.”
“...Lift his face.”
At Junho’s words, Seulgi hurriedly raised the face behind the horn-rimd glasses.
Looking closer, one arm of the glasses was broken and wrapped with tape, and the area around his mouth was split and badly swollen.
Anybody could tell he had been beaten.
Only then did Junho lower the machete.
“Bring the girls out too. The fire might spread to 302, so get them downstairs. Fast.”
“Yes! Yes! Thank you! Youngjun, wait just a second.”
After bowing over and over again, Seulgi left the boy with the glasses there and ran back into 302.
***
Fwoooosh...
Leaving the mansion behind them—the only thing in the darkness pouring out red and yellow flas and black smoke—
Junho headed back the way they had co, with the four survivors behind him.
The two girls and the boy were students at the sa high school, and the only adult, Lee Seulgi, was a college student on leave who worked part-ti as an assistant teacher at the academy.
All three high-schoolers were model students, the kind who went to cram school first thing in the morning even during a holiday.
And Seulgi, too, had gone there before dawn despite it being a holiday because she was studying for a certification exam, which was why she had ended up facing the apocalypse there.
“Huff, huff...”
“Hang in there, Youngjun. Are you hurting bad?”
“I’m okay. I can handle it. Hngh...”
Oh Youngjun limped uphill, sweating like rain.
And Lee Seulgi, who was helping support him, looked just as exhausted, even if Youngjun was only a skinny kid around average height.
The other two girls looked more or less okay, but between Youngjun and Seulgi, the group’s pace had slowed down badly.
‘Tch.’
Junho clicked his tongue inwardly and said,
“Hey. Get on.”
“P-pardon?”
“I said get on my back. At this rate you’re gonna keep up all night. What are you waiting for?”
“Oh. Y-yes...”
Oh Youngjun was rail-thin, but he still looked like he had to weigh at least fifty-five kilos.
Junho slung him onto his back in one smooth motion,
then started climbing the mountain road at a pace faster than the two high-school girls and Seulgi.
“Whoa...”
“That’s insane...”
Even in the middle of all this, the three of them stared with wide eyes in shock, but—
“You coming or not? Want to just leave you behind?”
“N-no! We’re coming.”
“Sorry!”
They imdiately bent themselves into little bows and hurried after him.
***
—How co every ti the boss goes out lately, he keeps picking people up?
“No. I’m not taking these ones in.”
—Huh? Then what?
“Hanaareum Nursing Ho.”
—Ahh.
Whiiirrr...
The utility electric cart sped past the shelter access road, carrying the three high-school students and the assistant teacher in the cargo bed, all of them masked.
After crossing the stream inside the sealed tunnel and looping back along the road connected to the secret path behind the shelter’s mountain, the utility cart ca out through the hidden route leading to the industrial road and headed toward the relay station.
About ten minutes later, the cart reached the side road branching off toward the nursing ho, and Junho had the four of them get out before removing their masks.
“Ugh...”
After nearly twenty minutes in the cart with no visibility and a rough ride, all four of them were pale as sheets.
“Here. Take one each.”
Feeling bad for them, Junhyeok handed each of them a five-hundred-milliliter bottle of water, and they drained them in one go like starving animals.
“All right, everybody follow . It’s only a little farther on foot. Hyuk, you stay here.”
“Okay.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Honestly, they wanted to rest a little, but having witnessed the massacre Junho had carried out, the four of them were still trembling and could only drag themselves forward like he said.
Then, after they had walked for around ten minutes—
Rustle.
The instant the four of them registered that they had heard sothing,
Thwack!
Junho pulled sothing from his belt at a speed too fast for them to follow and hurled it toward the sound.
Kyaaak...!
Sothing let out a hideous shriek and ca leaping onto the mountain path.
“Aaah!?”
“Eek!”
The four nearly jumped out of their skins.
The bizarre creature thrashing around with a drawing knife buried deep below its neck
was a water deer.
Kyaaak! Kkeek!
The deer went insane for around ten seconds, kicking and flailing everywhere, then started stumbling, limped once or twice, and finally collapsed.
Junho walked over, pulled the knife back out, and examined it closely.
“Full-grown.”
That ant if they cooked it up as side dishes, there was enough at there to feed over ten people for three or four als.
If they soaked it in salt water or vinegar to draw out the blood, then packed it with soybean paste or soju, the gay sll would co out too, so it would probably taste decent enough.
Of course, not for our shelter. For Hanaareum Nursing Ho.
From the pouch attached to his tactical belt, Junho pulled out the reflective ergency foil used to preserve body heat in an ergency, wrapped the deer carcass up in it, and slung it over his shoulder.
Then he looked at the four people staring at him with their mouths hanging open and said,
“Lucky you. Looks like you’ll be eating at tomorrow.”
Judging by the way they nodded with round eyes and open mouths, they seed pretty happy too.
Not because of the deer at, of course, but because they were still in shock from the knife throw he had just pulled off—sothing close to a magic trick.
Oblivious to that, Junho felt a little better knowing that instead of handing over four extra burdens to Hanaareum Nursing Ho, he could at least provide fresh at.
And with that, he moved on with a lighter step.
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