Apocalypse N-Student - Chapter 37



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Episode 37: The Root of the Problem

The living room windows were opaque, so I couldn’t see inside at all.

Even when I brought the drone close, there was no movement.

I walked around the wall toward the living room.

Here too, the windows were opaque and the lights were off, but a moving silhouette was visible.

Only when I put the drone right up against the window and made the propeller sound did I get a clear response.

Kaaaah

As I heard the expected zombie voice, the last piece of the dark puzzle in my head clicked into place.

Even without looking, I could clearly see what kind of hell it was inside.

There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and then there was a rustling at the front door.

As I moved the drone far back, the man from before came out holding a golf club and looked outside through the crack in the door.

I didn’t know it when I looked at it from above, but the man looked quite shabby.

His chin and cheeks were covered with a tangled beard, and his bloodshot eyes were glaring and creepy, giving him a look more like that of an animal than a man.

A man with a golf club that had been used to beat two people to death lumbered toward us.

As the drone rose into the sky, the man threw down his golf clubs and picked up rocks from the yard.

Even though the adrenaline rush just now had subsided and he must have lost a lot of energy, his stone throwing skills were top-notch.

The drone, which had been hit repeatedly by rocks, swayed violently.

As we were hastily launching to maximum altitude, the low battery warning sounded.

The man continued throwing rocks like a caveman until he could pilot the drone out of the sky above the house.

To hide the location of the hideout, they first flew south, then turned west after the man had completely disappeared from sight.

We entered the snow-covered mountains, lowered our altitude, flew low between the trees, circled, and returned to the roof of our hideout.

“Whew.”

I put the controller down and leaned back in my chair, letting out a heavy sigh that felt like it was being squeezed from the depths of my lungs.

“Why did they drag the corpse in…?”

Although his expression seemed to indicate that he had guessed well, Jongseok deferred his judgment to me, as if he really did not want to believe it.

When the world is ok, you will never see a dead body in your life unless a family member dies or you accidentally witness an accident.

In the apocalypse where there are no police or 119, corpses are as common as roadkill on the highway.

The state of decomposition of the corpses encountered here and there also varied.

Either they are safe skeletons with only bones left, or they stink and are full of maggots and crows, or they have lost both arms, lower body, and torso and are still wriggling······

The corpses were not only ugly and horrifying, but also spread all sorts of infectious diseases and attracted wild animals and zombies.

Zombies are indifferent to the corpses of other zombies, but they consider the corpses of humans who died before being infected as food.

So when a corpse is found, it should be disposed of as far away as possible, buried, or burned.

When circumstances are not favorable, there are cases where an empty house is laid down as a coffin and the windows are closed to seal it.

Jong-seok and I also drilled holes in the heads of all the corpses within a 100-meter radius of our hideout and threw them into the building.

If the house had a yard, the body could have been covered with a tarp and buried later by digging a hole, but the man insisted on dragging the body into the house.

Now that we know there’s a zombie inside, the man’s objective is obvious.

“There are zombies. They’re probably family.”

“So, give the body to the zombie······”

“That’s very likely. Did you see the man’s eyes? He’s already out of his mind. Maybe he’s eaten it too. Or maybe he’ll eat it in the future.”

When the possibility of cannibalism was mentioned, Jong-seok stared at me with a hardened face.

“Zombies······also need to eat to live?”

“No. Even if you eat, you’ll throw it all up later. It’s because you can’t digest it. You know the hell of the hungry ghosts? You eat whatever you can, but all the food falls out through the hole at the bottom, so you’re starving forever. That’s the kind of hell that zombies are in. The virus tells them to do it. They have to bite people with their teeth and make them bleed in order to spread the virus. It’s fundamentally the same as genes endlessly stimulating sexual desire in order to reproduce.”

“······Are there many cases like that?”

“It’s not that there aren’t any. It’s just extremely rare.”

If someone in the family turns into a zombie, most people just lock them up.

Then, they either get bitten and become zombies together, or they grit their teeth and kill a humane death with their own hands, and suffer from guilt and loneliness before following their families.

That’s common sense behavior by common sense people.

I’ve only ever seen two crazy people throw dead bodies at their zombie family members.

A woman who took the corpse of a zombie child, believing that he was suffering from hunger.

My wife, who suffered all her life, holding a blood-soaked knife in front of a dismembered body, the old man who protested that he should give her something to eat on her last journey.

There are monsters that hunt people and enjoy eating their flesh, but the man just now seemed to be one of the former.

Not yet.

“What are you going to do?”

“what?”

“······Are you just going to leave it alone?”

Jongseok hesitated for a moment, but I shook my head firmly.

“That can’t be.”

Looking at the map, the man’s house and our hideout were about 250 meters apart in a straight line.

There are many buildings and alleys in between, but as spring comes and the number of days becomes more active, you will encounter them at least once.

If there was even the slightest risk of being hunted by a creepy human who treated people like meat, it was safer to attack by surprise first and eliminate the cause of the trouble.

Moreover, the man killed two people, even if it was by accident.

I don’t know if he has any previous murder experience, but if he continues to kill in the future, he will become an increasingly difficult killer to deal with.

“When I was attending a civil service exam prep school, there was a guy I knew for a while. He was in his 50s and had quit working at a large company and entered the 9th level exam. We happened to have a drink together and he said that he would do anything for his family. In some ways, it was touching, but the way he muttered his determination with his face red from drinking was a bit murderous. So I kept my distance from him after that. Whenever I see that crazy guy, I think of him, damn it······”

Jongseok scratched his head with a disgusted and uncomfortable expression.

I played the drone footage that was recorded automatically without saying a word.

I watched the footage intently, from the scene where the assailants climbed over the wall to the scene where the man came out of the house and threw a rock at the drone, and then stopped watching.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Right sleeve.”

“huh?”

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Jong-seok sat up straight and put his face toward the TV screen.

The man’s right hand, stretched up toward the sky, had a white wrist wrapped around it through the gap in the sleeve of his jumper that had slightly lowered.

When I zoomed in to the max, it was a bandage.

“Bandage? Did he get bitten? That kid too.”

We rewind the video to see the scene where they are fighting the two intruders.

The same bandage was revealed under his rolled-up sleeve as he beat the intruder with a golf club.

When I zoomed in on the screen, the angle was good and the crimson stain on the bandaged wrist was clearly visible.

“I think I got bitten.”

“You must have been bitten by the zombie inside?”

“maybe.”

Even if you are bitten by the same zombie, the time you can survive varies depending on your health.

If the man I saw earlier looks like that, I don’t know when he got bitten, but he’ll have a hard time getting through tonight.

When you become a zombie, your intelligence and physical abilities are greatly reduced, so you can eliminate them much more easily.

You don’t have to feel unnecessary guilt about killing a living person.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes. It’s too dangerous to just leave them alone. You never know when they might find our hideout. If there are monsters like that around, there’s bound to be trouble. You and I, those kinds of people, would look like meat to them. Just like zombies.”

“If you get bitten by a zombie, you’ll turn into a zombie even if you leave it alone, right?”

“I should check it myself. Maybe it wasn’t a bite.”

I switched the TV screen to a surveillance camera and stood up from my seat.

Feeling depressed, I took out some ice and cola from the fridge and filled a glass, when suddenly my eyes went to the walkie-talkie on the table inside.

“Your brother hasn’t contacted you yet?”

As we tried to change the subject to change the heavy atmosphere, Jong-seok also turned his head to the walkie-talkie.

“······Uh. The last time we talked was before the zombie wave happened. He said he’d send me a radio message when he got to Busan, so he must still be in Yangsan.”

“Do you have a walkie-talkie?”

“Whew, I don’t know. I heard he was looking for one… I think he probably got one. It’s not like he couldn’t get a walkie-talkie.”

I just checked all the exits of the loading station when I flew the drone, but there was no promised sign anywhere.

The same was true of the radio.

I kept it on, but it was just making noise and I couldn’t pick up any voices.

You can get here in one day by walking along the road from the left wing.

However, Yangsan will be covered in heavy snow just like Busan, so it won’t be easy to move around.

If I hide in a safe place until the snow on the road melts a little, I will see your face soon, but the fact that you are a member of the Left Third Division still weighs on my mind.

The Left Third Unit, like other units, is initially almost destroyed due to internal infections, but the unit commander quickly gathers the remaining troops and takes over the logistics center of Hopo’s courier company, transforming it into an organization similar to a warlord.

If Jong-seok’s younger brother stays in the unit until the snow stops, he might be caught and it might not be easy to escape.

Even though the country had already collapsed, it was a real headache when they brought up the military chain of command and said that deserters would be summarily punished.

“It’ll be okay. He’s been quick-witted and has incredible survival skills since he was little.”

Although his words were bland, Jong-seok couldn’t take his eyes off the walkie-talkie for a long time.

*

The next afternoon, the drone was flown again to the house in question.

The medium-sized drone I used yesterday was hit by rocks and broken here and there, so I took out a new one, charged it, tested its operation, and then launched it into the sky.

I banged against the glass and made noise, but all I could hear were the zombies’ voices and the man didn’t appear.

“It looks like I turned into a zombie?”

“······Let’s go in tomorrow morning.”

Just in case, I waited another day to be safe and got ready to go out the next morning as soon as the sun rose.

I left my backpack behind and only took my weapon.

I put on my body armor, a tactical vest over it, and a cold-weather coat in case the man was still alive.

He also wore a bulletproof helmet.

I put the knife and axe in place and this time I grabbed the shotgun.

Considering the slight possibility that the man might swing the golf club, I took out all the birdshot I had loaded and filled my magazine with buckshot, intending to finish it off in one shot.

Instead of a crossbow, Jongseok wore a plastic riot shield, and I tied a folding ladder with a rope and carried it on both shoulders.

I grabbed the window, came out of my hiding place and went down the driveway.

As I walked along the quiet, almost hushed alley into the residential area, I noticed two zombies loitering next to a store.

“Let’s get rid of it.”

“okay.”

Jongseok and I ran forward without stopping, extending both our hands forward and stabbing our spears into the eyes of the approaching zombie.

As soon as I pulled out the spear blade that had dug deep into their skulls, two zombies collapsed in an instant.

“Are you okay?”

Jong-seok had gained quite a bit of experience stabbing spear blades into the heads of frozen corpses like me, but this was his first time dealing with a moving zombie.

Jong-seok looked down at the zombie he had finished off with a somewhat relieved expression and let out a short sigh.

“Whew, not so bad. I feel a little better after taking out one of them. It feels like all my worries have gone away.”

After wiping the spear blade on the zombies’ clothes, he hurried his steps.

By the time they reached the house, another zombie had appeared and Jong-seok had killed it.

“Isn’t it getting harder and harder to go outside now?”

“If you look at their clothes, they all came from indoors. When the zombies left on the street wake up, it would be better to stay in hiding for a while. After five months, when the radiation rumors wipe out all the survivors and zombies, it will be possible to go out and about.”

I stretched out the ladder, placed it against the wall, looked inside, and then climbed over first.

As I walked down to the yard where two men had been brutally murdered just two days before, the bitter, stinging air squeezed my heart.

While I was guarding the front door, the rooftop, and the blind spot next to the building with a shotgun, Jong-seok came over safely.

“let’s go.”

Jongseok took the lead holding a shield, and I followed behind holding a shotgun.

The glass windows and the front door, which were as opaque and closed as ever, making it impossible to see inside at all, came closer and closer with regular footsteps.

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