Apocalypse N-Student - Chapter 61



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Episode 61 Bichon

There was a woman pushing a Bichon in a stroller.

In a world where zombies walk around, killing and stealing from each other, the law of the jungle is a daily occurrence. Walking a pet is insane, no matter how you look at it.

It was first spotted while scouting a snowy city with a drone, and has since appeared here and there often.

I have never seen it after all the snow has melted.

I guessed that they had moved to another area or had been slaughtered by zombies or marauders.

It didn’t matter anyway.

We didn’t know each other and the whereabouts of the woman and her dog were of no importance to us.

Even if I survived, I thought I would never see you again.

But things in this world don’t always go as expected.

*

After losing a chicken to a cat named Rosie on a rainy spring night, we’ve been heavily reinforcing our greenhouse.

The multi-layered netting, made with shade cloth and mosquito netting, looked quite useful.

I was sure that the claws and teeth of any swift beast that could climb over the fence would never be able to penetrate it, but after several weeks, nothing was caught in the net.

The greenhouse was intact and the hens were safe.

Surveillance camera footage shows a few cats climbing over the fence, but they must have noticed the trap and didn’t come in easily.

April passed quietly like a cloud, with each monotonous day consisting of caution, work, and rest.

The mountains were showing off their vitality with increasingly lush green leaves, and the streets at the bottom of the mountains were turning into ghost towns.

Animals ran wild in the empty spaces left by people.

Rats, cats and wild dogs were the most common, and wild animals were often seen as well.

In the middle of a ruined intersection, a deer leisurely ate weeds, and a wild boar drank water under a subway station overpass.

Some of the survivors rushed to hunt the beasts.

Most failed, but those who miraculously succeeded either died in vain or were betrayed as they fled in panic from the gathered zombies.

We didn’t need to hunt because we still had plenty of frozen meat left in the freezer.

I still didn’t want to touch the smelly, parasitic wild animals.

I used to just sit back and watch from the safety of my hiding place, but sometimes annoying things come up that I have to go out and deal with myself.

“Why did you come down here again?”

Jong-seok finished the rest of his cola and got up from his seat while looking at the deer that had been standing blankly on the road near the hideout for 10 minutes.

I also got ready to go out.

The goral itself is harmless, but it can easily attract survivors to this place, so it must be driven away before it is too late.

As we packed our gear and headed down with Jongseok, a deer that sensed our presence ran down the slope.

We followed him to prevent him from coming back up. The deer ran away for a while, then instinctively avoided the main road and went into an alley in a residential area.

“You suddenly look like you’re playing tag.”

We quickly advanced forward, keeping watch on both sides against the walls and along the front, back, and the top of the fence, when a deer screamed from the other side.

“Kueeeeek!”

I quickly turned the corner and saw a tall woman pulling a spear from the neck of a fallen, bleeding deer.

A woman who was licking her lips while looking down at a dead deer noticed us and glared sharply.

With his hair tied back, a messy face, and two eyes with prominent whites, he looked like a wild beast.

“Hey, guys. Do you need some meat?”

“No. Okay. Take them all.”

It was enough to drive the deer away from the hiding place.

As he rolled down the window and slowly stepped back, the woman pulled out a knife and cut open the goral’s stomach.

As I stopped walking and watched, curious about the smooth and natural cutting of water, the woman turned her head away.

“Are you hungry? Let’s go eat.”

It was only then that I realized that what the woman was carrying was not a backpack.

I turned my gaze to the woman’s back, wondering if it was a baby, and my gaze met with two black eyes with no white pupils, wrapped in white fur.

Jongseok tapped my shoulder and whispered.

“Is that the Bichon before? The baby stroller.”

I nodded and stepped back, but as if the woman had heard me, she straightened her back and looked at me, putting a piece of meat she had cut into a sack.

“Have we seen each other before?”

Since we weren’t going to see each other again anyway, I just pointed to the sky with my finger without saying anything.

The woman tilted her head to one side like a puppy, then suddenly opened her eyes wide.

“Oh, the drone? Was that the old man’s? I waved my hand to ask for some food, and it just flew away? How many people are there in the shelter? If they’re going to use a drone, they must be quite a lot. Want to take a look at our Ssong?”

The woman, spewing out a series of mindless words, wiped her hands on the sack and took off the baby carrier.

He took the Bichon out and held it in his arms, then grabbed its front paws and shook it, even imitating, “Hello, I’m Bichon.”

There was a bluish madness in the way he hugged his Bichon as if he would rather die than hunt a deer and cut open its stomach with a knife.

“Isn’t she pretty? She’s an old lady who’s eight years old this year. She came from a breeding farm that was operated by a pet shop. She was locked up in a small cage for six years after she was born and only gave birth to puppies before she was finally rescued and adopted by me. In human terms, it’s like she was born in prison and released when she was seventy.”

The woman, perhaps trying to arouse sympathy and cling to us, casually talked about Bichon’s dark past, which we had no interest in knowing.

As you can see, the woman was alone.

If I had a partner, I would have gone hunting with him.

Even without the woman’s explanation, the Bichon’s two eyes were completely gray, unlike its cute appearance.

Curiosity, the will to live, even the most minimal biological responses were all dead, as if a switch had been turned off.

Even when the owner held him in his arms and waved his hand, he did not turn his head, lick, or wriggle.

I was just giving in to it helplessly, like a doll.

I don’t know what kind of hell the breeding farm was, but I could tell that the life of that small, fragile beast was over long before the world ended.

The woman’s lively expression of affection and the Bichon’s contrasting lack of response brought about unnecessary sentimentality deep in my memory.

When my tears fell on Choi Ye-ran’s dying face, she smiled brightly and said it was going to rain.

That’s when I realized.

No matter how much you love someone and how much you are bound together by trust and affection, a fundamentally incurable wound cannot be healed.

That doesn’t mean the time we spent together became meaningless, but it was an extremely sad experience.

“I’m Sim Ju-hee. I live nearby. See you next time.”

The woman quickly put the Bichon in a carrier, put it on her shoulder, put the goral meat in a sack, and coolly turned around.

“Did you need someone to talk to?”

Jong-seok scratched his head as he watched Shim Ju-hee disappear across the alley.

“I guess I just wanted to show off my dog.”

I’m glad I didn’t bother either way.

“What should I do with this? Should I eat it?”

Jongseok pointed to the deer corpse.

When I got closer and looked at it, I couldn’t help but exclaim in admiration.

He very carefully removed all the flesh from the torso.

Judging by the clean marks left by the knife, he seemed to have worked in a slaughterhouse or a deboning plant.

With this level of skill, you won’t be easily defeated even if you fight against zombies or people.

I thought my mind was full of flowers when I was pushing a stroller and waving at a drone, but it turns out I had some faith in it.

“Ugh, that smell is no joke. Is that wriggling thing a parasite?”

“Okay. Are you going to eat it?”

“No, that’s fine.”

Jong-seok waved his hand in disgust.

They put the deer’s body in a nearby villa and returned to their hideout through an alleyway.

*

In early May, a woman named Sim Ju-hee and her Bichon were captured by a drone again.

She was being chased by men.

The fight between survivors was nothing new, but the problem was the direction they were running away from.

Of all places, I was coming to a residential area.

After watching for a while, I picked up the walkie-talkie.

“Unknown individuals approaching the house from the west. One woman in front. Three men chasing behind. All armed with spears. Assistance immediately.”

– Admission.

Yeonhee’s reply to the radio was, as always, short but reliable.

I grabbed my drone and went to the house, where I positioned myself on the roof.

Next to them, Jong-seok and Yeon-hee looked around with binoculars, while Seon-ae Lee waited with a crossbow.

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“Coming.”

It would have been better if she had just moved to the side, but Shim Ju-hee headed straight for this place.

As soon as I climbed over the wall with great difficulty, I fell down, unable to control my body properly.

He had lost the spear he had been using before and was left empty-handed. He tried to stand up by touching the floor, but he lost consciousness and fell to the ground.

Then three very angry men climbed up the wall.

“Fuck, bitch, there she is.”

As soon as the men went down to the floor, gritting their teeth, Lee Seon-ae pulled the trigger of her crossbow from the rooftop.

Jong-seok, Yeon-hee, and I threw the spear at the same time.

The three men collapsed without being able to do anything.

After pulling out the window and checking for life or death, I searched the body and saw a familiar face.

“These guys are the ones who use zombies as security guards.”

Jongseok also recognized them.

“He’s still alive. He must have passed out.”

Lee Seon-ae, who was examining the fallen Shim Ju-hee, looked up at me anxiously as if asking for permission.

Anything that climbs over the wall is an enemy.

There was no reason to save that woman.

But it wasn’t easy to just say let him die.

Is it because I know their names and have at least spoken to them once?

I was wondering when I realized that Bichon had been staring at me for a while.

The eyes of the guy riding on his fallen master’s back were still a deep, dark gray.

He did not even plead or appeal to his master to spare his life.

My image was reflected like a silhouette in two eyes that were completely devoid of any trace of emotion.

In Bichon’s dead eyes, I saw an expression that seemed to wish for rain.

“······Let’s move inside first.”

Lee Sun-ae and Yeon-hee quickly took Shim Ju-hee in.

Jong-seok and I piled the bodies next to the door, covered them with a tarp, and monitored the area with a drone.

Even after watching for over an hour, no one followed me.

Shim Ju-hee was safe.

“I think I fell asleep because I was tired. But······ I have a lot of wounds on my body.”

The small, persistent burn marks left on Shim Ju-hee’s body were so horrible that Lee Seon-ae’s face darkened infinitely.

It was not an accident, it was clear evidence of abuse.

Judging from the scar on his arm, it was clear that he had been injured at least several years ago.

This woman’s life, like Bichon’s, was probably already hell before the world ended.

The Bichon crouched next to his unconscious owner and did not move.

Shim Ju-hee finally opened her eyes when the sunset burned the western sky.

“······Shong.”

The desperate cry that escaped between dry lips filled with thirst went unanswered.

As soon as the familiar sensation reached my groping fingertips, my empty, scattered breaths finally turned into a sigh of relief.

As Bichon stared blankly, Sim Ju-hee smiled weakly and stroked his head.

“Don’t die······I have to protect you. Ssong······”

Early the next morning, Sim Ju-hee left with Bichon.

She didn’t know how to react to Lee Seon-ae’s kind offer to rest for a few days, so she just blinked with a confused expression and shook her head.

It was somewhat expected.

It couldn’t have been easy for a person who had turned his back on humans and lived off of a dog to return to the human world.

*

Five days later, on her way back from going out, she found Shim Ju-hee surrounded by dozens of zombies.

It’s too late to help.

There were over 30 zombies coming out of nowhere, and the alley was narrow so there was no place to escape.

Shim Ju-hee must have sensed the end as well, as she took off the baby carrier and held the Bichon in her arms.

Bichon suddenly struggled and escaped from her arms as he saw the dead bodies approaching him with outstretched hands.

“Shoot!”

Ignoring the owner’s call, he dug under a pile of trash in the alley across the street and disappeared.

“저런 개새끼가······”

It was such a bitter sight that Jong-seok let out a soft curse.

When Bichon ran away, saying he wanted to live alone, Shim Ju-hee was shocked and momentarily dazed, but soon a smile spread across her face.

“······Thank you. Bye.”

Feeling relieved that she had kept it until the end and feeling liberated that she could finally let go of her heavy life, Shim Ju-hee gave up everything and just laid there.

At that moment, the sound of a dog barking was heard behind the zombies.

Woof woof woof woof!

“Huh?”

Shim Ju-hee raised her head with blank eyes.

I also laughed.

If you want to live, just run away, but why are you barking all of a sudden?

It was not a warning or a threat.

It seemed like he was barking at me to follow him.

It was only when I saw the zombies heading towards Sim Ju-hee turn around one by one, attracted by the sound of dogs barking, that I realized what the guy was trying to do.

Woof woof woof!

Woof woof!

As the zombies approached, the Bichon limped over and ran over to them, barking again.

It was a scream so loud and ferocious that it was hard to believe it was coming from such a small body, as if she had been enduring it for the past eight years just for this moment.

“Shong.”

Shim Ju-hee gritted her teeth, got up, and walked unsteadily.

Bichon turned his head to where Jongseok and I were hiding, as if he saw his owner walking between the zombies’ legs.

Even though it was quite far away, the guy stared at me intently, as if he recognized me by my smell.

In the guy’s black eyes, seen through binoculars, a strong will like the last flame was shining.

I thought I knew what the guy wanted from me.

“let’s go.”

“Huh? Over there?”

I took the bewildered Jongseok and went into the alley where Bichon had escaped and picked up the trash.

He broke through the road and caught Sim Ju-hee, who was staggering.

“Let go! Ssong-i is over there! If you leave him alone, he’ll get caught!”

“Are you going to let Xiong’s sacrifice be in vain?”

Sim Ju-hee, who had been struggling, glared at me with bloodshot eyes.

He was trembling and didn’t know what to do, then suddenly burst into tears and collapsed.

Meanwhile, the Bichon’s barking grew farther and farther away, leading the zombies, and soon faded into silence.

*

It was a week later that I saw Shim Ju-hee again.

To her surprise, a Bichon was clinging to her back.

“That night, Siong came home.”

She laughed in disbelief, but I thought I understood.

An old man who sneaked out at night when he was locked in a convenience store in his first life.

The zombies were said to have been unable to respond properly to stimuli below the knees and would crawl away on the ground.

The Bichon was much smaller and more agile than the old man, so it would have been able to slip between the zombies’ legs.

“What an outrageous guy.”

As I was watching with a blank smile, the guy suddenly stuck his tongue out.

I don’t know what it means, but I feel strangely good.

Although he still wasn’t barking or responding much, the Bichon seemed to be doing better than before, perhaps because he realized he had something to lose.

It’s a good thing I realized it before I lost it.

As I returned to the hideout and was eating with Jong-seok, Yeon-hee, and Lee Sun-ae, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

I’m also lucky.

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