Chapter 28

“…”

Crinkle.

The aluminum coffee can in Muwon’s hand crumpled beneath his grip, the sound ringing sharply through the treatment room. Everyone sheltering inside the Korean medicine clinic lowered their heads, their expressions grim. Hee-eun was the first to respond, her voice careful.

“Is it someone you know?”

“…Yes.”

“He’s the director of this clinic,” Daeseok explained. “We escaped here together, but he had already been bitten by then, so we had no choice but to…”

Muwon stared silently toward the herbal medicine room. Yu-su pried the mangled can from his vise-like grip, set it aside, and spoke.

“The herbal medicine room has been quiet this entire time.”

“We tied him down and gagged him before he turned.”

“…”

“He asked us to…” Jujae’s voice broke. “He asked us to kill him if he became one of them.”

As Jujae finished, Yeong-ae clasped her grandmother’s hand and began murmuring prayers. Daeseok dragged both palms over his face before continuing.

“We couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. We locked him inside and kept putting it off.”

“I’m sorry,” Yeong-ae added. “We weren’t deliberately trying to hide it. We just didn’t know how to tell you.”

The unease behind Yeong-ae’s intervention at dawn, when they had offered to examine Yu-su’s wound, finally made sense. Her earlier opposition to allowing them to remain at the clinic had most likely stemmed from the same problem.

While Yu-su remained lost in thought, Muwon rose abruptly.

“When did you lock him inside?”

“On the first day of the outbreak, so…” Daeseok calculated under his breath. “It has been at least four days.”

Yu-su sighed and stood as well. “I might be fine, but we can’t delay getting medicine for the grandmother.”

“…”

“And we can’t leave that zombie in there forever.”

Jujae nodded and released a heavy breath. “We knew that. Making the decision was the difficult part.”

“He was a good man,” Daeseok murmured. “Kind and virtuous.”

“…Then shouldn’t we be even more determined to let him rest?”

“That’s right. Yes…” Daeseok pulled his security cap lower over his brow.

Except for the half-conscious grandmother and Yeong-ae, who remained at her bedside, everyone rose to their feet.

“Do you need more time?” Yu-su asked.

“No. We have to go.” Daeseok swallowed with difficulty. “We have to go in there and…”

The man inside had been their neighbor. Although Daeseok took the lead, his steps were painfully slow. His hands shook so badly that the key repeatedly scraped past the lock without finding its way inside.

“Give me the key,” Jujae said.

“All right…”

Jujae eventually took it from him and unlocked the door.

Daylight poured into the herbal medicine room. A zombie was immediately visible, bound to a long sofa with a gag secured over its mouth.

Yes. In the end, it was only one zombie.

“…”

Grrr… Urgh…

The small, elderly zombie still wore a white medical coat.

Veins beneath his exposed skin bulged and writhed unnaturally, while blankets and electrical cords bound him tightly from his shoulders to his ankles, fastening him securely to the sofa. Perhaps because of those restraints, even after fresh prey entered the room, he could produce only muffled, strangled noises. His fingers clawed at the air, and his ankles twisted violently, the only parts of his body still capable of movement.

Yu-su, Muwon, and Hee-eun could do nothing but stand in silence.

Because the herbal medicine room also served as a small kitchen, Jujae reached for a kitchen knife and approached the zombie. Daeseok moved beside him and removed his cap.

“…May he rest in peace.”

“I’m sorry.”

After their final farewell, Jujae drove the knife into the zombie’s neck.

The wet grinding of steel through flesh and bone continued with sickening persistence, as though it might never end.

What followed, however, was Jujae’s bewildered voice.

“Why… Why isn’t he dying?”

“What?” Daeseok stared at the sofa.

Jujae had spoken the truth. Drenched in blood, the zombie’s decapitated body continued to twitch.

It was no mere spasm. The movements were ceaseless and deliberate.

“Why…?”

“If severing the head doesn’t work, we’ll have to stab somewhere else.”

Jujae, who had remained relatively composed until then, finally began to tremble. Muwon stepped forward, took the knife from his hand, and looked back at Yu-su. Their eyes met for only a fleeting moment. The instant Yu-su lowered his head, Muwon swung the blade and plunged it into the zombie’s heart.

SPLASH!

A fountain of blood burst from the corpse, striking the ceiling before raining down in thick, crimson droplets.

“…”

Muwon made a brief sign of the cross.

Yu-su, who had retreated with Hee-eun, seemed to remember something. He extended his hand and caught several falling drops of blood in his palm.

It’s hot.

Scalding hot, as though it might burn through my skin.

Far hotter than before.

Yu-su closed his fingers into a fist. Muwon wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand and turned toward the cabinets.

“Let’s take the medicine and get out.”

With Daeseok’s suppressed sobbing following them, the group eventually left the herbal medicine room. Before long, the heavy, bitter scent of medicinal herbs permeated the entire clinic.

A few minutes later, Muwon roughly washed the blood from himself and opened the door to the director’s office. Inside, Yu-su was fastening the last buttons of his trousers.

“Did you apply the medicine?”

“I found some ointment while you were washing and put it on.”

“Good.”

A knock sounded at the door moments later.

Knock, knock.

“May I come in?”

It was Hee-eun. She entered with exhaustion faintly shadowing her face.

“Grandmother has taken her medicine too. We decided to take care of the body this evening.”

“I see. Understood.”

“Um…” Hee-eun looked between them. “Assistant Manager. Manager.”

“Yes?” Yu-su replied.

“Go on, Hee-eun,” Muwon encouraged. “Say what you need to say.”

Drawing a deep breath, Hee-eun straightened her back and bowed deeply before them.

“Thank you. Thank you both so much.”

“Hey, you really don’t have to go that far…” Yu-su shifted awkwardly.

“What’s with the formal bow?” Muwon asked.

“If it weren’t for the two of you, I would’ve died back at the company. I’m truly grateful that you brought me here.”

Her voice trembled slightly at first, but by the time she finished, it rang with firm resolve. The look in her eyes was equally unwavering when she raised her head. Yu-su offered her a faint smile, while one corner of Muwon’s mouth curled in teasing amusement.

“If you really mean that, then make sure Joo Hee-eun is the kind of woman who knows how to repay a debt.”

“Do Muwon, she didn’t just tag along. She helped us too, so cut it out.”

“You two…” Hee-eun’s eyes began to glisten.

“Enough with the waterworks. Sit down. We still have other things to discuss.”

Muwon gave Hee-eun a gentle push, guiding her onto the edge of the physical therapy bed. He then planted himself between her and Yu-su, tilting his head. Yu-su immediately guessed what he wanted to discuss.

“Is this about the zombies?”

“Yeah. Let’s go through it one thing at a time.” Muwon rested his forearms on his knees. “First, why didn’t they die? We cut their heads off.”

“I was shocked too,” Hee-eun admitted. “Anything should die if its head is severed. So why…?”

A brief silence settled over them.

“I have no fucking idea.” Muwon exhaled through his nose. “All right, second question. When we stabbed it through the heart, there shouldn’t have been that much blood, right?”

“Right,” Yu-su agreed. “And the blood was hot.”

“The blood was hot?” Hee-eun repeated.

“Ah, Hee-eun. You probably haven’t seen that yet.”

Hee-eun had spent the beginning of the outbreak trapped in the lounge, and she had been too frantic during their escape to notice such details. This was evidently the first she had heard of it.

“Hot, you say?” Her expression tightened in thought. “But zombies are corpses, aren’t they? Then again, considering the way their veins bulge beneath their skin and how violently they move, I suppose it isn’t impossible for their blood to remain warm, but…”

Yu-su nodded before looking at Muwon.

“Remember the first day? We had to fight our way out just to escape.”

“Yeah.”

“Their blood was barely lukewarm back then, but now it’s hot. I’m certain of it.”

Just as Hee-eun had assumed, zombies in fiction were usually depicted as cold, rotting corpses that somehow continued to walk. The standard method of killing them was always the same as well: destroy the head.

What had changed?

With no answer in sight, Yu-su sighed and rubbed his tired eyes.

“For now, let’s remember what we know. Cutting off the head doesn’t stop the body. We have to destroy the heart to kill them for good.”

“Yeah,” Muwon said.

“Understood…” Hee-eun murmured.

The three of them rested for a while. About an hour later, Jujae and Jung Yeong-ae knocked on the door of the division head’s office, and Hee-eun immediately sprang up to let them in.

“You’re back. How’s Grandmother doing?”

“Thankfully, her fever has come down,” Yeong-ae said. “We wanted to thank you.”

Yu-su waved her gratitude away.

“You would’ve found the medicine even without us.”

“Even so, we were the ones who hid it…”

Jujae nodded, picking up where Yeong-ae had left off. “Thank you for going through all that with us earlier. We brewed some ginger tea, so please come out and have some.”

When they entered the treatment room, the grandmother was propped against the bed. She smiled warmly at Yu-su and the others, though her eyes were puffy, as though she had cried after hearing from the division head what they had endured.

“You all went through so much because of me. Come, sit down and drink before it gets cold.”

Everyone gathered around with cups of ginger tea cradled between their hands. As they drank, long sighs of relief escaped them one after another. Whether it came from the honey or the ginger, the tea was both sweet and pleasantly sharp, and their bodies visibly relaxed with every sip.

The oppressive tension that had weighed upon the room gradually lifted. Before long, the only sound remaining was the gentle crunch of the chocolate cookies Yu-su had brought out to share.

Sunlight streamed into the treatment room. Had it not been for the sickening stench and the occasional zombie groan drifting in from outside, one might almost have mistaken the scene for something peaceful.

That day faded into night, and another dawn followed.

In the cold air before sunrise, Yu-su reached over and shook Muwon by the shoulder.

“Do Muwon. Wake up.”

“Mmm…” Muwon stirred reluctantly. “Is it time to switch shifts?”

“No. Look over there.”