Apocalypse N-Student - Chapter 63



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Episode 63: Zombie with Sapphire Eyes (1)

The operation to lure away the large number of zombies gathered near the charging station with fireworks was a great success.

The 50 suspicious zombies, as well as the zombies crouching like traps in the surrounding alleys, all headed towards Guseo-dong like the kids who followed the piper.

The reason I chose E-Mart among the many buildings was to gather as many zombies as possible while avoiding crowding.

In front of E-Mart, there is a small plaza with obstacles such as street trees and benches, and a four-lane road.

There was a large parking lot in the back, but there were quite a few abandoned cars, so even if hundreds of zombies were accommodated, it would be difficult for overcrowding to occur.

We’ve done several drone reconnaissances so far, but we’ve never found any survivors staying at E-Mart.

There were only people who came just in case, looked around once, and left empty-handed.

Unlike in George Romero’s movies, big box stores were not ideal places to set up shelter.

In the early stages of the zombie outbreak, people would flock in endlessly in search of water and food, and even after everything had been destroyed, there would often be humans wandering around, so the fighting never ended.

It was made entirely of glass and was so wide that it was difficult to defend, and there was no underground water.

As expected, there was chaos and zombies gathered, but there was not a single person visible on the rooftop or through the windows.

I thought it ended like this, but things took a strange turn in an unexpected way.

*

After the short but intense fireworks ended and the sun rose, I flew the drone again to check out E-Mart.

Now that the external stimuli have disappeared, the zombies surrounding E-Mart will be standing there like mannequins, slowly decaying in the May sunlight.

I was definitely expecting something like this, but the zombies were screaming and reaching for something flashing overhead like audience members at a rock festival.

“What is that?”

I stopped the drone and pulled the zoom.

An unbelievable sight filled the large TV screen.

More than ten medium-sized drones were swirling in the sky, flashing their lights incessantly.

It seemed like they were taking pictures rather than simply trying to provoke the zombies with light and sound.

I quickly hid the drone behind the wall of a nearby apartment, but in the meantime, two drones seemed to have noticed and flew in this direction.

“Ah, this time it’s going to be difficult.”

Jong-seok frowned as he remembered the black drone he had barely managed to bring down with the help of four drones.

I quickly calculated which would be more likely to succeed: fight or flight.

They were overwhelmingly outnumbered, so fighting was impossible.

Even if you run away from someone of the same mid-sized class, you won’t be able to get far.

When it was determined that the drone might be destroyed here, in order to avoid repeating the same mistake from the past, the memory where the video was being recorded was automatically deleted.

If you’re flying a drone, you’re probably also using electronic devices like a computer or TV.

It’s okay to lose a drone, but you have to prevent its memory from being stolen and its flight records from being exposed.

When the message ‘Deletion Complete’ appeared, I turned on the shooting mode again and overwrote the data.

When I didn’t move, the enemy drone didn’t attack me and just stood at a certain distance.

I felt like he was telling me not to disturb him while he was working, so I raised the drone high in the air and took a quick look around the area.

Beyond Guseo Station, three black SUVs came into view, parked on the road paved by the Golden Carriage.

A man dressed properly in a suit, including a shirt and tie, was looking at E-Mart through binoculars.

The five men behind were dressed casually.

The one in the middle was looking at a tablet in his hand, while the other four, who appeared to be bodyguards, were carrying machine guns with silencers on their shoulders and watching the surroundings.

The drone appeared to be controlled from inside the SUV.

The man in the suit looked up from his binoculars and waved his hand reassuringly.

As I gave some instructions into the walkie-talkie, the SUV door opened and a drone flew up.

The drone came straight towards me and struck me with its lower part.

The robot-shaped claw had a walkie-talkie attached to it.

He moved left and right as if telling me to follow him, headed towards E-Mart, and then put the walkie-talkie down on the rooftop.

There was no risk of the drone being stolen since they wouldn’t be able to enter E-Mart because of the zombies.

As soon as I landed the drone next to the radio with the intention of listening in, I heard a voice.

– A drone in this mess? That’s amazing. The fireworks yesterday were your work, too. I don’t know where you got them, but they’re pretty good. Thanks to you, our work is a little easier.

The suit man’s voice was gravelly, and his speech was friendly yet authoritative, like a boss talking to a subordinate.

– Do you want to try subcontracting? Just find a zombie. It’s a zombie with blue eyes like sapphires. You’ll know it when you see it. It sparkles in the light. If you find it, I’ll give you a truckload of whatever you want. I’ll leave a walkie-talkie, so whenever you find it, just call me on channel 2. See you next time, Fireman.

After some one-sided talking, the man in the suit hung up the radio and got into his car.

Drones that were flying around, spraying flashlights at the zombies, quickly returned to their SUVs.

The two drones that had been keeping an eye on us also returned home.

I zoomed in all the way to get the SUV and the men in the frame.

As the bodyguards got into the car, the man who had been looking at the tablet finally raised his head.

huh?

It was a face I vaguely but clearly remembered.

The SUV carrying the drone and unidentified men disappeared toward Nopo-dong along the same path the golden carriage had taken.

Since there was no point in following it, I put the drone back down on the roof of E-Mart and handed the controller over to Jong-seok.

I went into the bedroom, opened the closet, and took out Lee Gwan-myeong’s laptop that he had brought from Serihan.

On the laptop, which was password protected and could not be opened yet, was a photo taken by Lee Gwan-myeong and his colleagues with the Gori Nuclear Power Plant in the background.

Holding the photo in my hand, I carefully examined each person, starting from the back row.

As I passed by men and women with completely different impressions and facial features and reached Igwanmyeong, I held my breath without realizing it.

A man surrounded by bodyguards and looking at a tablet stood next to Lee Gwan-myeong.

With a strange, slightly distorted smile.

*

When I posted a warning about a zombie apocalypse on an internet community, two men in suits came to see me.

I showed them my ID and they asked me all sorts of questions in a threatening manner, but the impression I got and the atmosphere I gave off were more like those of a shady government agency.

When I bought 5 lottery tickets with the winning numbers, similar looking guys followed me for a while.

After the surveillance ended, account transactions were suspended.

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Why didn’t you come to me in person then?

The suit guy who offered me this strange deal this time felt completely different from the guys I’d seen before.

“You know those books I saw at Mr. Lee Gwan-myeong’s house?”

“Quantum mechanics?”

“Oh. I asked the lady in passing while having tea the other day, but she said it has nothing to do with nuclear power plants. So what would a person with a Ph.D. in quantum mechanics be researching at the Gori Nuclear Power Plant?”

I wondered how much Lee Seon-ae, a typical liberal arts major with an English literature major, would know about quantum mechanics, but I think she would know better than us.

Let’s go ask her with Jong-seok after sending a radio message. Lee Seon-ae hesitated for a while with an embarrassed expression.

“I don’t know much about it because that’s all I heard in liberal arts classes.”

“Please tell me at least what you know.”

When asked repeatedly, Lee Seon-ae brought out one by one the strange laws of the microscopic world that Einstein hated so much.

“······That is called the uncertainty principle. Parallel universes and space-time distortions are in the same context······”

In my dizzy mind, a single word flashed like a lighthouse.

“If it’s a distortion of space-time… are you talking about something like time travel?”

“I’m not sure, but I heard that it’s not like in the movies, but rather that it goes beyond the linear timeline from the past to the future.”

Lee Seon-ae, who had been speaking in a tone of uncertainty, raised her head as if she remembered something important.

“Oh, you know that one that was a huge topic of conversation about five years ago? The Telomere Restoration Project. It was about using quantum mechanical entanglement and stuff to turn back time in cells.”

“Telomeres?”

When I nodded, Lee Seon-ae nodded while caressing her coffee cup.

“Aging is the shortening of DNA telomeres. Think of a candle. The longer you keep it lit, the shorter it gets, and when it burns out, it goes out. Aging and death are also the process of burning out the candle called telomeres. They said that if you extend telomeres with quantum technology, you can regain your youth and live forever, so rich people all over the world rushed to invest. Don’t you remember the media making a big fuss about it, calling it the ‘Qin Shi Huang Project’? After that, the research institute was closed and it was all but forgotten, but it was really great back then.”

“Ah, the Qin Shi Huang Project.”

Only then did I remember what it was.

There was a lot of noise for a while about the coming of an era of immortality that even Qin Shi Huang could not achieve, but it ended with only a stock price crash.

I still vividly remember reading a recommendation on an internet community that said that aging and death used to be fair to everyone, but now the rich don’t age or die.

After talking with Lee Seon-ae a bit more, I left the house.

“I’m talking about zombies. Could this be the result of the Qin Shi Huang Project?”

On the way back to the hideout, Jong-seok came up with a bold hypothesis.

“No matter how much I think about it, it doesn’t make sense that such a monster would suddenly appear. Wasn’t the T-virus in ‘Resident Evil’ also created by a genius doctor to cure his daughter’s incurable disease?”

While listening to Lee Seon-ae’s explanation, I had similar thoughts.

The elixir of life was created through secret research and experiments by the wealthy and powerful to restore their youth and live forever.

I just stabbed a billionaire who was about to suffocate, and voila, he did get younger, but his telomeres went crazy and he ended up turning into a zombie.

Other rich people who took the drug because they were really amazed at how young they became must have made their families happy while waiting for the inheritance.

It may sound like nonsense, but in a situation where corpses are walking around and eating people, this is a fairly reasonable deduction.

I heard that if stem cells or something else differentiate incorrectly, they can become cancer cells.

If the treatment directly targets telomeres, wouldn’t it also be possible to modify DNA?

“That could be the case. But there’s no proof.”

“I have evidence.”

“A quantum mechanics expert named Lee Gwan-myeong worked at the Gori Nuclear Power Plant?”

“No, you. You are the evidence.”

Jongseok pointed at me with his hand.

When I stopped walking and stared, Jong-seok continued speaking.

“You said you were bitten by a zombie and then regressed after you died? Earlier, you said that quantum mechanics can turn back time. If a zombie is a monster with quantum damage to its telomeres, and you regressed after being bitten by one, doesn’t that seem like a perfect fit for the puzzle?”

“How many people died from zombie bites and all of them regressed? Even if it’s a multiverse, that’s a bit······”

Jongseok touched his chin with a meaningful expression.

“It won’t be that easy. That’s what they were looking for with the drone earlier. A zombie with sapphire eyes. Did you get bitten by it?”

I was momentarily dumbfounded by Jong-seok’s words that struck a chord with me.

So if you die after being bitten by a zombie with sapphire eyes, you will regress······

“no?”

“······I don’t know. I got bitten by a zombie, so I didn’t have time to check my eyes. I just broke the skull.”

“Haven’t you seen that variant since then?”

“None. Not once.”

I shook my head and started up the slope again.

“Most zombie mutations are just a bit faster, or a bit more powerful. They don’t change eye color or anything like that.”

“Those people aren’t looking for nothing, are they?”

Jongseok was almost certain, but I couldn’t easily make a decision.

“I don’t know. What I know for sure is that they released the zombies trapped in the building. The zombies that Sim Ju-hee encountered, and the zombies in front of Jangjeon Station yesterday, they must have done it all.”

Jong-seok also couldn’t easily guess the reason.

“Zombies tend to form groups, so when you release them and they form a group, you use a flash to find the sapphire zombies? Like finding a gem in the sand.”

“Yes. That would be easier than going around and checking everything one by one.”

After the sun had set and the surroundings were plunged into complete darkness, I carefully retrieved the drone.

I took a detour as far as possible and made sure there was no tailing.

I set a night watch and went to bed early.

I stared into the darkness under the blanket and thought deeply about the conversation I had with Jong-seok.

If, as Jong-seok said, the zombie with sapphire eyes is the main culprit behind the regression phenomenon, will finding it help us escape the cursed regression?

Even if that were the case, where would one find it?

A rare zombie that I have never seen in the past 10 years in the apocalypse······

It would be quicker to find a unicorn at the racetrack.

Even if I die, return, and roll around for dozens more years, I will never meet you again.

I shook my head coldly, not wanting to hastily touch the painful hope, and it only took four days from then on.

To my absolute dismay, exactly four days later I found a zombie whose eyes were glowing blue like sapphires.

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