Chapter 14

“…”

Jeong Yu-su washed the bitter taste from his mouth with another swallow of water, then released a slow breath. An entire day had passed for him mentally, but in reality, they had only just reached the thirtieth floor and had barely rested. His hands still throbbed, and his body was far from its best condition.

Don’t rush.

Take it slowly.

Only after repeating the warning to himself twice did he manage to ease some of the tension from his body.

“Let’s rest a little longer before we move.”

“Yeah.”

After that, only the sound of their breathing remained.

Time crawled through the darkness. Perhaps because of the tension, Jeong Yu-su occasionally felt his heart contract with a sharp, painful pressure. His solar plexus felt heavy and leaden, as though he were suffering from severe indigestion, making every deep breath a struggle. Eventually, unable to endure the suffocating stillness any longer, he rose to his feet.

“Do Muwon, are you asleep?”

“No…” Do Muwon shifted in the darkness. “What time is it?”

“Midnight.”

Do Muwon raised his upper body and peered toward Jeong Yu-su’s faint silhouette. “Are you planning to move?”

“I’m getting restless. I thought I’d at least open the door and take a look.”

“I’ll come with you.”

During the previous two attempts, Jeong Yu-su had confirmed that there were no zombies on the thirtieth floor. Without waiting for Do Muwon, he immediately unlocked the corridor door and stepped outside.

A long breath escaped him.

A soft veil of moonlight lay across the pale blue darkness.

Bathed in its faint, wavering glow, Yu-su felt the tension begin to drain from his body. He drew in a deep, steady breath.

I feel alive. I should’ve opened the door sooner.

His eyelids fluttered, and the irises beneath them finally steadied. Only after taking two more breaths did Yu-su turn around.

Do Muwon remained in the shadowed corner.

“Do Muwon?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s with you?”

Muwon tilted his head as he studied Yu-su, then stepped closer and nudged him in the shoulder. “What would you have done if there were zombies out here? You were twitching like crazy.”

“You knew there weren’t any,” Yu-su countered, although he acknowledged that it had only been a highly probable assumption at the time.

The wretched gloom weighing on him had already begun to lift, so he continued in a lighter tone. “If the moon stays this bright, we won’t even need a flashlight. Ready to move?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Beneath the exceptionally bright moonlight, Yu-su and Muwon walked side by side along the corridor. Without either man intending it, even their footsteps settled into perfect rhythm.

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the outside world lay in ruins, overrun by swarming zombies. Inside the corridor, however, an eerie peace had taken hold, as though Yu-su and Muwon were the only two people left alive in the entire world.

“Jeong Yu-su, where are you going?” Muwon glanced toward the opposite end of the corridor. “The conference room’s this way.”

“We need to stop by the storage room first. The conference room door is locked.”

They had struggled desperately to pry that door open before. Do Muwon had eventually forced it apart with his own body, but afterward, they had discovered a chainsaw in the storage room. There was no reason to put Muwon through the same ordeal again, especially when his shoulders and back were already battered.

With moonlight spilling over him like a pale shadow, Yu-su slipped into the storage room and began rummaging through the toolbox.

“Jeong Yu-su.”

“Yeah?”

Yu-su set a hammer aside, stuffed a pair of work gloves into his pocket, and turned around. Muwon stood behind him with his arms crossed, his narrowed eyes sharp with suspicion.

“You’re acting weird.”

Yu-su’s hand paused above the toolbox. “What do you mean?”

“You’re moving like a robot following a set of programmed instructions.” Muwon watched him closely, his expression tightening. “You haven’t hesitated once.”

“Hmm…”

Of course he had not. He had already done all of this twice. This was his third attempt.

Since he could not tell Muwon the truth, Yu-su casually turned away and resumed digging through the toolbox. “I’m just familiar with this floor.”

“Why would a deputy manager have any reason to visit the conference-room floor that often?”

“Believe it or not, I gave plenty of presentations. I handled a lot of odd jobs up here, too.”

“Oh, reeeally?”

That was roughly seventy percent truth and thirty percent lie. Either way, Do Muwon’s intuition was frighteningly sharp.

Even so, Yu-su knew he was behaving with far less caution than before. He doubted it would matter once they were rescued and went their separate ways. Besides, with only the two of them here, he had no desire to waste energy pretending to deliberate or triple-checking every minor decision merely to conceal what he already knew.

Once they reached the fortieth floor, however, he would have no choice but to lie.

Muwon nudged a chainsaw toward him with his foot. “Take this.”

“A chainsaw?” Yu-su turned to face him. “It’s too loud. We can’t use that.”

“We can use it. Just not on zombies.”

“Then what’s it for?”

“Opening the conference room door.”

“Oh…”

Chainsaws appeared often enough as weapons in movies, but switching one on to carve through zombies would inevitably summon a horde they had no hope of handling. As a weapon, it carried far more disadvantages than advantages. For cutting through the conference room door, however, it was perfect.

Yu-su gathered a bundle of cable ties and headed out of the storage room. “Let’s go.”

The first time he had used the chainsaw, he had been terrified that the noise would draw the zombies from the emergency stairwell. This time, he cut through the door without hesitation and efficiently stripped the room of anything useful.

They collected power banks, long and durable cables, a wireless microphone, a miniature speaker, and whatever nuts, biscuits, and drinks they could find in the adjoining break room.

“The sun’s coming up.”

“Ah…”

By the time they finished sweeping the conference room and reached the elevators to organize their supplies, the night was nearly over. The bluish-purple world beyond the windows had begun to bleed into orange, gradually illuminating their surroundings.

“I can see properly now,” Yu-su murmured.

“Yeah.”

Daylight flooded the shared elevator shaft, revealing even the smallest screws embedded in the structure.

Yu-su dusted himself off and stopped in front of the elevator on the right, one of two positioned side by side. His gaze briefly shifted toward the one on the left.

If I climb through that shaft, I’ll die.

Someone else had probably attempted to escape through the elevator shaft, just as he had. The first time Yu-su reached this floor, he had begun climbing without the slightest suspicion. He had not known that an elevator door above him had been left open until a zombie came plummeting down and crashed into him.

I was lucky I passed out the instant it hit me.

Yu-su shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory, then entered the shaft first. With daylight filling the interior and the route already familiar to him, he climbed much faster than before.

“There really isn’t a single floor left intact,” Muwon observed.

“Yeah. Everything’s been destroyed.”

As they ascended without encountering any obstruction, the reality that the entire building had been drenched in blood struck them all over again.

Graaah!

Kieeek! Hk… heeaaah!

Crash!

Just as Yu-su and Muwon could see through the glass, the zombies outside could see into the shaft. The slightest movement sent them hurling themselves against the elevator doors, fingers scraping and clawing frantically at the panes.

One zombie mashed its face against the glass. Maggots writhed inside the hollow cavities of its cheeks, spilling across the ruined flesh. Beneath them, its pulped tongue lolled from its mouth and dragged a slimy streak of blood across the pane.

Muwon finally lost his patience. “Fuck. Seriously.”

Yu-su had been staring directly into the zombie’s eyes from only a few inches away, with nothing but a pane of glass separating them. He lowered his gaze.

When he thought about it, that thing had once been a living person. Had this madness never happened, they might have been spending the weekend peacefully, doing whatever they pleased.

Keeping their eyes on those creatures, neither properly alive nor entirely dead, the two men eventually reached the fortieth floor.

Yu-su stopped where he could see just enough of the lobby, then leaned into the corner of the shaft to steady himself. Muwon climbed up beside him, gripped the framework, and braced his weight against it.

Stretching his neck to peer around the other side, Muwon muttered beneath his breath, “There are a fuckton of them…”

As he had said, an unusually large number of zombies crowded the fortieth floor.

“They must’ve tried evacuating to the roof,” Yu-su said. “Same as us.”

“Tsk.”

Yu-su had already been to the rooftop, so he knew the truth. With both the emergency stairwell and the rooftop door hanging wide open, it would have been stranger if there were no zombies here.

From this point on, I have to convince Do Muwon.

Yu-su gently bit his lower lip, released it, and inclined his head toward him. “Do Muwon.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think we should head straight for the roof.”

Muwon hesitated for only a moment before answering with surprising certainty. “You’re probably right. Is there another way?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking we set an alarm on my phone for one minute from now, throw it over there, and move toward the break room.”

“You want to lure the zombies away and slip past while they’re distracted?”

“Right. Can I use your spare phone?”

Muwon pulled it out and tipped his chin in silent permission. “What if there are zombies inside the break room?”

“We don’t have another option. We’ll have to get inside and lock the door…”

And kill whatever’s in there.

Perhaps Muwon saw the answer written across Yu-su’s face, because he continued in a deliberately playful tone. “Any song requests?”

Yu-su blinked. “A song?”

He had never asked anything like that before. To be fair, the first time they reached the fortieth floor, both of them had been far more tense than they were now.

“No.”

“Think about it. We’re throwing the phone away anyway.” Muwon gave it a small shake. “We might as well blast something good.”

“You’re seriously…” Yu-su grimaced. “Just play something loud.”

At Yu-su’s gruff response, Muwon flashed him a silent, crooked grin and tapped at the phone. “I’m setting it to go off in one minute.”

“Got it. I’ll open the doors. You throw it.”

Yu-su pulled himself upward and wedged his fingers into the gap between the elevator doors, prying them apart by a fraction. Worried that Yu-su might lose his footing, Muwon braced him from below and extended one arm toward the opening.

“Should I throw it?”

“Yeah. Now.”

The phone sailed through the gap with a faint whoosh and skidded rapidly across the floor.

Kieeek?

Hee-aaah!

A few nearby zombies reacted to the brief, sharp sound and rushed toward it. As though the first disturbance had infected the rest, the surrounding zombies began to stir as well.

Then the dazzling, high-pitched howl of an electric guitar tore through the hallway.

Can’t stay at home, can’t stay at school,
Old folks say, ya poor little fool.

It was “Cherry Bomb” by the Runaways.

The music swelled rapidly. At last, the vocalist’s scream, the climax of the track, blared through the corridor at a deafening volume.

I’m the fox you’ve been waiting for!

At that exact moment, every zombie’s head snapped upward.

Then they sprinted toward the phone.

Hee-aaah! Heeaaah!

Graaaaargh!

Not only the nearby zombies, but even those lingering inside the emergency stairwell surged after the noise. The overwhelming stench of decay and the shrieking chorus engulfed the hallway in an instant before receding into the distance.

“Holy shit, they’re fast,” Muwon breathed.

“…Let’s open it now.”

Even the usually unflappable Muwon looked unsettled after watching the horde charge away. Prying the elevator doors fully open would inevitably make some noise.

Hello, Daddy! Hello, Mom!

Hee-yaah!

I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!

The zombies were so consumed by the flamboyant guitar and the vocalist’s piercing high notes that they noticed nothing else.

They did not even see the two shadows darting frantically behind them.

Thud.

Contrary to their fears, the break room door opened without resistance and slammed shut behind them with a heavy, solid impact. The blaring music and the zombies’ cries vanished completely, allowing both men to release the breaths they had been holding.

With soundproofing this effective, they seemed safe enough.

The problem was the smell.

The break room reeked of blood.

***