Apocalypse N-Student - Chapter 36



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Episode 36 Bird’s Eyes

Winter did not end easily.

The weather, which had been gradually warming up toward spring, suddenly took a step back into a cold wave in mid-March, and the melting world froze over again.

It was only after four days that the sunlight finally brought its temperature back to normal.

Winter still lingers firmly on the ground, but most of the snow on the roads has melted.

The buildings were also gradually taking off their white veils and regaining their original appearance.

The mountain was still covered in a blanket of white snow, but birds were busy coming and going from their nests, shaking off the snow that had accumulated on the branches.

As survivors who could not stand the cold and hunger came out to find a way to survive, those who had been staying at home and just watching also quietly stepped out.

There were quite a few people on the streets, and frozen corpses began to appear here and there in places where the snow had melted or collapsed.

People who saw the body were terrified and turned around, turned their heads, and hurried their steps as if they were running away.

Even after watching for a long time with a drone, no one dared to crush the head of the corpse.

Whether it’s someone who’s actually frozen to death or a zombie in a dormant state, if you see a corpse, you should always drill a hole in its head to avoid any trouble later.

If you leave it alone, someone might suddenly wake up and grab your ankle or barb their teeth when they pass by.

Of course, killing all the zombies on the streets doesn’t make you safe.

Those many apartments and villas, high-rise buildings and single-family homes, vehicles and bushes under subway bridges······

Zombies are everywhere where people can hide.

Zombies were dangerous, of course, but the survivors were not trustworthy either.

Countless people died from the zombie wave, heavy snow, and cold wave, and most of those who survived were in a desperate state where death loomed before their eyes.

With their sunken eyes, rough, bloodless faces, disheveled hair, and a look of anxiety, fear, and wariness, they looked like abandoned dogs who had been living a comfortable life but were suddenly thrown into the wild without any explanation.

Some men came alone, while others came together as couples or families.

Most of them were empty-handed, but there were quite a few who were armed.

Baseball bats, golf clubs, bamboo swords, wooden swords, cue sticks······

Crude spears made by attaching knives or sharp blades to straw handles and curtain rods were also occasionally seen.

People followed the melted snow roads to places where they could find food, such as convenience stores and marts.

Some of them formed groups and entered villas and apartments.

It seemed like they were planning to open the doors one by one and raid them, so it was obvious that there would be a big fuss whether there were zombies or survivors inside.

As I was watching the drone flying in the sky, after about 5 minutes a man ran outside.

The man kept vomiting, leaning against the wall, after seeing something inside.

An old man wearing a navy jumper followed him out, yelling something and leading the pale-faced man in.

The drone was raised to its maximum altitude so that the sound of its propellers could not be heard from the ground, so there was no way to know what was going on inside.

I couldn’t even hear the conversation properly.

I was about to lower the drone to take a look inside, but I shook my head and moved to the side.

As I was calmly scanning the streets here and there, an unexpected sight came into view on camera.

I parked the drone in the air and zoomed in.

A woman wearing a long padded coat and a fur hat was pushing a stroller.

Judging from his posture and gait, he wasn’t an old man.

The stroller also had a plastic cover properly placed on it.

“It’s not a baby, is it?”

Jongseok frowned with a dumbfounded expression.

“No way. Even if you have a baby, you don’t bring them out so openly.”

Even with the zoom turned all the way up, the plastic was so shiny in the sunlight that I couldn’t see inside the stroller at all.

As the drone was lowered, the angle of the sunlight changed, revealing its interior.

It wasn’t a baby after all.

Staring up at the drone with its black eyes devoid of white hair was a small dog with white fur.

“······Maltese?”

The face was too round to be called a Maltese.

“It looks like a Bichon?”

“This is crazy. Walking the dog in the middle of all this······”

I can’t say for sure about the woman’s mental state, but she was definitely no ordinary person, given that she had survived this long and had the presence of mind and courage to walk her dog.

The woman stopped and tilted her head back, either because she heard the drone’s propellers or because she noticed the Bichon’s gaze.

The woman’s face, squinting and looking up at the drone, was almost completely hidden by the thermal mask.

As I was trying to zoom in on the face, the woman suddenly waved her hand at the drone.

It was not a gesture of asking for help or telling someone to go away, but a leisurely gesture like a vacationer who saw a broadcasting helicopter reporting from Haeundae Beach in August.

Like the apartment residents I met on my way back from robbing the pharmacy, are they now optimistic that the disaster is over and that rescue workers will arrive when the snow melts?

Looking at the three corpses strewn across the back road, it didn’t seem like that was the case.

You must have been pushing a stroller when you passed that road, so your head can’t be full of flowers.

It would be normal to tremble and hurry along, but the woman was calm as if nothing had happened.

“Who is that woman? Has there been a woman like that before?”

“It’s my first time seeing a real dog walker, but there have been worse humans.”

He raised the drone high and flew east.

As we passed Jangjeon Station and arrived at a large parking lot where there was still a lot of snow, a sight as breathtaking as our walk with our dog awaited us.

“ah······”

Jongseok sighed softly, feeling a little different than when he saw the stroller.

I also stopped the drone and watched the incredible live feed being transmitted to my 75-inch TV.

It wouldn’t be this weird to see a zombie with an arm cut off and half of its face half-blown, revealing white eyeballs and cheekbones······

On one side of a snow-covered road, three children were having a snowball fight.

The Busan-Gyeongnam area is a place where it is difficult to see snow even if you live your entire life.

Those kids may have been to ski resorts or sledding hills, but this is the first time they’ve seen snow covering the entire world.

The sight of children laughing heartily while throwing snowballs with their dirty faces that had lost all their baby fat was more dazzling than the March sunlight reflecting off the pure white snow.

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If there is such a thing as hope, isn’t that what it should look like?

In the apocalypse, children are a burden that is of no use to survival, but they are also the only beings that can smile brightly with just a piece of candy.

For some, it is a reason to survive and not hang themselves on a clothesline.

As I silently held in my memory the hazy scenery that would soon disappear when the snow melted, an uncomfortable sense of discomfort got on my nerves.

There were no adults around the children who could be considered guardians.

It’s so dangerous outside, there’s no way mom or dad would send their kids out alone.

As I was moving the drone to scan the surroundings, I spotted a boy on the roof of a truck, looking around like a watchman in a wheat field.

He had a young face that looked like he was in his first year of middle school, and he was holding a small wooden sword and looking very alert. He looked very tired and worn out.

It didn’t seem to be just because of the cold and hunger.

It’s like he’s burdened with excessive weight and responsibility that doesn’t match his age and abilities.

Although it was the first time I saw the boy, his expression and atmosphere strangely resembled someone I had met in my past life.

He was a good person, competent and responsible, as befitting a leader of a group.

However, because he wanted to remain a good person, he was unable to discard the people he needed to discard in time, and as a result, both he and those around him met with a vain and tragic end.

The boy looked up in surprise as the drone was lowered too low.

The children who had been having a snowball fight also gathered under the drone, exclaiming, “Wow!”

“Those kids······”

Jong-seok couldn’t continue speaking easily, as his mind was in turmoil due to all the terrible things he had heard from me.

In the apocalypse, it was common practice to use women and children to steal supplies and lives from others.

Whether it’s because you miss people, out of pure sympathy, or out of a desire to confirm that you are human in this cruel world, the moment you hastily reach out, the cold reality will hit you in the back of the head.

It’s the same even if those children are innocent beings.

Helping someone and taking responsibility for them wasn’t easy even when the world was okay.

“Let’s just wait and see.”

The drone was moved and left the location.

The children continued to wave until they were out of sight.

*

About two kilometers away from the children fighting in the snow, in a market, seven men and women were fighting over a small amount of food.

The argument, which was filled with shouting and swearing, ended in punches and kicks.

The big man glared at them and spat out curses in a proud manner, while the women who had been beaten sat on the floor and cried and cursed.

The spoils of war the man took from his fight with the women looked at first glance like a sack of flour, but when you zoom in, you see that it was actually dog ​​food with a mouth-watering Shih Tzu drawing on it.

As the women glared at him sharply, the enraged man ran over and trampled on them.

There were about 20 people watching around, but no one stopped him or helped him.

Everyone stared intently at the dog food the man was holding and swallowed their saliva.

Some of them with sharp eyes stood shoulder to shoulder, whispering secretly, and secretly adjusting the weapons they were holding.

When his girlfriend, wearing a pink padded jacket, sensed the ominous atmosphere and grabbed his arm to stop him, the man reluctantly pretended to cry and turned around, holding the dog food in his arms.

Just then, someone came running out of the alley across the street, shouting urgently.

People who turned around with a start were left in a state of confusion.

Following the man who ran away, about ten zombies came out of the alley with their characteristically slow gait.

– Kaaaah

It didn’t look like they had been buried in snow and had just woken up from hibernation, but rather like zombies who had heard a noise inside the room and escaped.

Zombies don’t have the intelligence to open locked doors, but they are quite capable of pushing open doors with their bodies and getting out.

Although there were far more people, they did not dare to fight and hurriedly hid in their respective quarters.

Zombies also scattered here and there, following the footsteps of people.

The brutal game of tag, which had been interrupted by heavy snowfall under a cloudless sky, began again.

*

I slowly retrieved the drone while looking around.

There was no one on the rooftops of apartments or villas, but people could be seen here and there in houses surrounded by walls.

Old people basking in the sun in the yard, a woman baking something by burning fallen leaves and books, a man digging the ground with a shovel, and a woman kneeling next to him, stroking a teddy bear······

At the end of the residential area, I stopped the drone as I saw two men struggling and climbing over a fence.

The men who came down to the yard awkwardly took out kitchen knives from their jumpers.

As if it wasn’t the first or second time he had done this, he exchanged glances and gestured, then went inside the house without hesitation.

Their purpose was obvious, but what happened next was unexpected.

With a short scream, the two men who had just entered came running out in terror.

The landlord, a sturdy man who followed, hit one of the men in the back with a golf club, knocking him down and smashing his head in.

The man who tried to climb over the wall fell to the ground, apparently exhausted from fear, and after desperately swinging a kitchen knife, he was killed by a few terrifying swings from the enraged landlord.

The homeowner, who had quickly dispatched the two intruders, shrugged his shoulders, took a deep breath, and threw his golf clubs on the floor.

With trembling hands, he took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, then turned his head toward the house, shuddering.

As if someone was saying something inside, the man turned his eyes to the brutally murdered corpses and shook his head as if to shake them off.

The unlit cigarette fell from the man’s mouth and his hands slowly rose to his head as if in surrender.

The man, who had been clutching his hair as if pulling it out, raised his head after a long time of agony.

After taking a deep breath, I walked down the wall.

He put his hand under the armpit of the still-warm corpse, raised it halfway up, and dragged his legs on the dirt floor into the house.

“······uh?”

Jong-seok’s eyes widened as he watched the outrageous act of bringing a corpse into the house.

I squinted my eyes and stared at the corpse on the screen.

Unpleasant memories that I didn’t want to recall crawled out like worms from the bottom of my consciousness, cluttering my head.

A moment later, the man came out into the yard and dragged the remaining body in the same way.

I waited a few minutes and then lowered the drone.

The view gradually lowered as if a bird was descending to the ground, and the front of a two-story house came into view of the camera.

Something moving was captured at the living room window next to the front door.

I slowly placed the drone on the window.

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