Kwoooaar...!
Kyaaak...! Kyaa...!
Hidden in the brush along the national road, Junho listened with his ears to the hideous harmony of their shrieks while studying the tablet screen with careful focus.
An uncountable mass of zombies was trudging up the national road through the snow.
It was a full-scale zombie wave, several tis larger than the one at Hanaareum Nursing Ho, and the first one he had seen with his own eyes since regression.
In Junho’s experience, waves like this were extrely rare out in the countryside.
Because there usually weren’t many situations where dozens of survivors moved all at once like this.
Especially while openly making that much noise.
“Cease fire.”
—Yes, sir.
At Junho’s order, the G1 drone stopped shooting.
But there was no way the zombies, already fully aggroed toward Gahyeon Elentary School and the surrounding area, were going to stop now.
As what looked like three to four hundred zombies filled the national road and kept moving—
a similar number of zombies burst out from the villa district, ten-odd buildings about a hundred ters from the school, and headed in the sa direction.
If there was one lucky thing, it was that they were not moving especially fast.
The snow made everything slick as hell, and more than half of them were elderly.
But that was only from Junho’s perspective, watching through the tablet.
To the people who had just been about to pass the school’s front gate and head for the National Agricultural Cooperative mart, it was pure despair and terror.
“Have G1 Unit 2 move with , then put it in cover sowhere near the mart and keep it waiting. If zombies co out, open fire. If it’s people, let them pass. Oh, and send one delivery drone over here too.”
—Got it!
Clack.
After racking the bolt and finishing the chamber check, Junho lowered his body and moved quickly along the national road.
Whirrr.
—Reduced visibility detected. Switching to thermal mode.
With AI Akina’s voice, the thermal cara activated automatically, and the landscape, made up not of color but of differences in temperature, swept past Junho in a blur.
Giiiiiing...!
The G1 drone also ran hard four or five ters ahead of him.
Several vehicles had crashed into the guardrail or piled into one another, but thanks to long surveillance, he knew there were no zombies there, so Junho and the G1 drone moved without hesitation.
Then, about thirty ters ahead, three or four pale orange figures suddenly burst out of the precision machine shop attached to an auto repair garage—
Paang! Paang! Paang! Pow! Pow!
Along with the popping hiss of compressed air, the subsonic rounds fired from the AR-15 and the tungsten rounds fired by the G1 drone punched through their heads in sequence.
“Their response ti really is a little slow.”
—That’s because you’re too fast, boss. And your shooting’s dead-on, right?
Fair enough. Detecting multiple targets at this distance and putting headshots into all of them in under three seconds without wasting a single round was beyond even a combat-hardened career soldier.
“Keep moving.”
The G1 moved first again, and Junho followed behind it.
***
The alley leading toward Gahyeon Elentary School was now less than two hundred ters away, and the zombies inside the buildings between here and there had already sward in that direction.
“Huff... huff....”
Even while running, Junho steadied his breathing and kept checking the tablet screen mounted at the center of his tactical vest.
The Hanchang Developnt n who had been trying to break toward the National Agricultural Cooperative mart had taken one look at the zombies suddenly pouring in from that side and panicked, scrambling backward.
The problem was that several hundred zombies were now pouring onto the national road from the direction they had entered too, charging toward the school.
—Well, they’re fucked now, huh? What do you think the gangster uncles are gonna do?
At Yoon Youngsu’s sneering comnt, Junho thought there was only one possible choice.
And when Han Changoh started screaming sothing while waving his air rifle, they did exactly what Junho expected.
The n wearing the heaviest gear ripped off their coats and threw them over the barbed wire installed on top of the school’s front gate, then started climbing over it as fast as they could.
But no matter how many of Gahyeon-ri’s zombies were middle-aged and elderly, it did not take minutes to cover fifty or sixty ters.
And not all of them were old.
In barely twenty seconds, zombies charging in from two directions slamd into the n standing braced behind raised shields around the school gate.
They were all under forty and well-built, so they were not pushed back easily.
On top of that, they were wearing winter clothing that would not tear open from a few zombie bites.
When the shield line held the zombies back, the n behind them stabbed like mad at zombie heads with spears, awls, and knives.
It was a highly effective tactic, and Hanchang Developnt had gotten a lot of mileage out of it up to now, from the country houses to the townhouse complex and the surrounding area.
But that was over now.
The mont zombies with more than ten tis the numbers and mass ca crashing in all at once, the situation changed.
As if to prove it, when more than ten hands grabbed at a shield and the man holding it at the sa ti—
the person dragged into the zombies was instantly disard. No, literally torn apart.
Winter clothes, helt, all of it was fucking useless.
Gwoooaar...!
The screams of the dying were swallowed up by the roars of the zombies drawing closer and closer.
And while ten or so of them were swept away like that, the rest scrambled over the school gate in a frenzy.
But what was waiting for them on the other side was the local survivor group, already fully prepared after the chaos that had exploded in the middle of the night.
After confirming that much, Junho—
Creak.
Tat-tat-tat-tat...!
—ran up the stairs of a four-story comrcial building along the national road facing the school.
***
—Boss! The gangsters and the Jung-dong guys started fighting!
—The gangsters struck first, and they fight like hell! The elimination targets already dropped three people with the air rifle!
—Looks like the gangsters stuffed magazines or sothing under their clothes! The Jung-dong guys’ knives and axes aren’t doing much!
Listening to Yoon Youngsu over comms, Junho climbed the stairs quickly, using all five senses to check his surroundings.
The situation was too urgent to spare ti scouting the inside of the building with a mini drone, but luckily there were no zombies left inside.
Soon, after reaching the rooftop of the four-story building, Junho ran to the side overlooking the school gate and the playground, braced his AR-15 on the railing, and took a firing stance.
Whether they were running on generators or batteries, the streetlights at the front gate and around the schoolyard were casting light.
Junho switched off thermal mode and sighted in through the scope to assess the situation.
—Only two gangsters are down, but the Jung-dong guys lost more than ten already! They’re retreating toward the main building! Ah!
—Boss! The school gate’s about to go down!
The instant Yoon Youngsu finished speaking, the automatic front gate—made not of old-style iron but stainless steel—gave way imdiately under the mass of hundreds of zombies.
Of course, they had piled up desks, chairs, and other furniture from inside the school behind it.
But the survivors did not know that zombies under an Alpha’s command could get over that.
Kwarrrr! Kwarung!
Guhhhhhh...!
Not caring whether their own kind got crushed in front, the zombies shoved through and vaulted over the furniture.
The Hanchang Developnt n, who had been driving back and slaughtering the local survivors of the elentary school, saw that and instantly ran for the main building like n possessed.
But even though more than ten of their own were still out on the schoolyard, the survivors inside the main building slamd the doors shut.
There was no way to break through the doors of the main building, which had even more furniture piled behind them than the front gate, so the Hanchang Developnt n—and the local survivors who had been fighting them—scattered left and right around the main building like a swarm of locusts.
The zombies that had just made it over the barricade at the gate went chasing after them.
“Hoo... here we go.”
After catching his breath in the anti, Junho muttered that under his breath.
Pow...! Pow...!
The G1 drone positioned at an angle overlooking the schoolyard and the main building opened fire.
Paang! Pang! Paang!
Junho also started blowing apart the heads of the zombies caught in his scope.
While the G1 prioritized targets with the best firing angles, Junho shot the ones chasing the local survivors from the school.
Paang! Paang! Paang!
Emptying three magazines in an instant with chanical precision, Junho swapped magazines fast and spoke.
“What about the delivery drone?”
—Almost here! It’ll make the rooftop drop in under a minute!
Listening to Yoon Youngsu’s voice, Junho ramd in the fresh magazine and was just about to resu firing—
“...!?”
A sudden, eerie chill ran down the back of his neck, and he spun his body and muzzle the other way like lightning.
The instant a black shape ca into view, just stepping out through the rooftop door, he pulled the trigger five tis in a row.
Papapapapaang!
Kwehk! Gweok!
Along with the shrieks only zombies could make, three black shapes slamd onto the rooftop.
With the gunfire and the howling of the zombies in the schoolyard below, he had not heard them coming up.
Kraaaah!
Then more zombies burst out through the rooftop door behind the fallen ones like animals.
Junho reacted on instinct, moving his feet to open distance while continuing to fire.
Pang-pang-pang-pang-pang! Papapang! Pang-pang!
He was shooting on the move, and the falling snow kept interfering with visibility, but Junho buried every single shot into their heads as if none of that affected him at all.
In barely ten seconds, more than twenty zombies dropped with their heads blown apart.
Guaaak! Kyaaat!
But the monsters, incapable of fear, did not care in the slightest whether their own kind died and kept pouring out through the rooftop door, charging at Junho.
After putting a subsonic round into the forehead of the one in front and finally emptying a magazine—
Junho imdiately threw the AR-15 to the floor and drew the awl from one side of his waist and the commando dagger from the other.
The adrenaline surging up at the approach of a life-or-death fight drove Junho’s body—already beyond the physical abilities of an elite athlete—to move even faster and more explosively.
Shik! Shishik! Shishik!
The specially made awl, twenty centiters long, and the custom Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife commonly called a commando dagger danced in the falling snow in a monotonous rhythm.
Junho himself did not realize it at all, but he did not blink even once as he stabbed into the zombies’ eyes, mouths, and ears.
Any of them that got close to that monotone, chanical assault dropped like cut logs.
Kwoooak! Khat!
And then five or six ca at him from different directions at the sa ti.
But for more than two years, Junho had trained his body and learned and drilled every kind of combat skill for one purpose only: to prepare for the apocalypse.
With the fastest and most efficient motions made possible by the fusion of technique and instinct, he pierced zombie skulls and destroyed the brains inside them.
And even while fighting, Junho’s eyes kept flicking toward the rooftop door.
‘Alpha D...!’
Unlike the others, one of them stood near the rooftop door, continuously letting out shrieks.
The more successful an Alpha was at hunting and feeding on people, the stronger it beca.
It did not simply grow stronger physically.
Like a beast of prey that knows nothing as a cub but becos an experienced hunter over ti as it grows and accumulates experience—
a zombie Alpha learns how to hunt people like the most cunning and brutal of predators.
And right now, Alpha D, the one directing the zombies it controlled to attack Junho—
was the only Alpha in Gahyeon-ri that had once been a healthy man in his twenties, aning its physical ability was at the very top of the scale here.
Calling the D in Alpha D “Dangerous” would not have been wrong.
Shik! Thunk!
Driving the awl in his left hand up through the roof of one zombie’s gaping mouth and dropping it, Junho swung his right arm almost at the sa ti.
Shiiik!
The commando dagger cut through the pouring snow.
Thunk!
It hit Alpha D.
But at a distance of twenty ters, the commando dagger buried itself not in its head, but just below its neck.
Kuuuooooong!!!
Like any Alpha capable of expressing “emotion,” it let out a roar full of pain and rage.
It sounded uncannily like the infrasound roars made by large cats like tigers or lions.
The Alpha’s roar, containing frequencies lower than the normal human hearing range, was less a clear sound than a wave of pressure or vibration.
It stimulated the sympathetic nervous system of living humans, increasing heart rate and muscle tension and producing a freezing effect on the body.
And even Junho, who had experienced an Alpha’s roar once before regression and had been braced for it, felt his body stiffen for an instant.
But—
“...!?”
He shook off the physical and psychological abnormality so fast it surprised even him.
But there was no ti to stand there shocked.
Tak! Tatak! Tak! Tak!
On instinct, Junho drew his Glock 17 and fired a rapid string of shots, while pulling his machete with his left hand and charging straight at Alpha D.
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