Chapter 24

By 9:00 a.m. the following morning, the night had fully receded, the morning dew had dried, and the sun was climbing higher into the sky.

“Want some coffee?” Muwon asked.

“I’ll make it.”

They had hoped to begin the day with the rich aroma of coffee, but that peaceful plan did not last long.

“I… I can’t do it!”

Yu-su and Hee-eun had already made it down to the nineteenth floor. Seongwook, however, was still sitting beside the sleeping-room window on the twenty-first floor, clinging desperately to the rope without having put so much as one foot outside. Muwon stood beside him. Apparently, Seongwook had been pretending to be magnanimous all along, only to lose his nerve at the last possible moment.

“Didn’t you say you earned reward leave after guerrilla training?” Muwon asked.

“I… Well, damn it, I developed a fear of heights recently. I never had it before, you know…”

“So what’s the plan? You want to stay up here alone?”

“What? Why are you suddenly talking down to me…?”

“Hey.”

Muwon crossed his arms and looked down at him. Seongwook held his gaze for barely a second before lowering his head.

“Yes…”

“Let’s say I’m willing to overlook the way you’ve been loafing around.” Muwon’s voice hardened. “From now on, though, you take care of yourself. Do I look like I’m here to clean up after you? Get that through your head.”

Seongwook said nothing.

Muwon shoved him by the shoulder, then leaned out the window toward Yu-su, who was waiting below with his head poking out from the lower floor.

“He’s too scared to come down.”

Yu-su swallowed a sigh. Judging by Muwon’s expression, he had already given Seongwook a thorough piece of his mind. Yu-su could not exactly condemn the man for being afraid, either. He had needed a long time to steel his own nerves before finally forcing himself through the window.

“Don’t take too long.”

“Got it. I’ll handle it.”

The twenty-first-floor window slammed shut, and Yu-su pulled his head back inside. Hee-eun, who had been busy working on another length of makeshift bedsheet rope, caught his eye.

“He said he can’t do it?”

“Yeah.”

“I know what he’s like from working with him. It’s all bravado.”

“Well… we can wait while we make more rope.”

To everyone’s surprise, Seongwook came down soon afterward. He did not say a single word, but his expression all but screamed, I’m pissed off.

No one felt inclined to strike up a conversation with him.

After a while, Seongwook’s ragged breathing left his throat parched, and he glared at Hee-eun as she chatted cheerfully with the two men.

By the time they reached the third floor, everyone was drenched in sweat.

The first and second floors had no sleeping rooms, so the group had fashioned the bedding into one long rope that would take them directly to the ground when it was time to descend. For now, having safely reached the third floor, they washed up and rested.

“There are so many zombies,” Hee-eun murmured, her expression darkening as she stared out the window.

Yu-su walked over and gazed outside with her. They were much closer to the road now, and the wandering corpses filling the streets made the reality of the apocalypse feel far more vivid.

“Yeah. And there seem to be more of them every time I look.”

“Do you think it’s like this everywhere?”

“Probably.”

“My parents are in Ulsan,” Hee-eun said, looking dejected for a moment. However, her eyes soon brightened again. “They’ll be fine. My parents own a restaurant, so they have plenty of food. Plus, there are all sorts of things there they could use as weapons.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“We’re moving once it gets dark, right?”

Yu-su nodded. “Yeah. We’ll leave when the helicopter gets closer and throws the nearby zombie swarms into confusion.”

“That sounds incredibly dangerous.”

“It’s basically a gamble. Most of the nearby rooftops are crawling with zombies, so we’ll have to head for a building farther away.”

“Whew… All right. I won’t slow you down when the time comes.”

And so, night arrived.

It was already past 7:00 p.m., but there was still no sign of the helicopter. Hee-eun showed hints of agitation but remained silent. Seongwook, whose teeth had been chattering as he studied everyone else’s reactions, finally opened his mouth.

“Why… Why isn’t it here?”

“It’s probably running late.”

“Have we been… abandoned?”

Yu-su gave him a flat look. “Have you ever seen anything like this show up on time?”

Seongwook fell silent. Yu-su and Muwon exchanged a look, and Yu-su gave him a slight nod.

Muwon clicked his tongue and swallowed a sigh. It had to be strange for him, watching Yu-su’s predictions come true one after another like prophecies while still being unable to accept the loop completely.

“It’ll come,” Yu-su assured them, his voice quiet but firm.

The room fell silent again.

Although they could not see the surrounding rooftops from the third floor, the terror outside seemed almost motionless, as though the entire district were holding its breath. Amid that suffocating stillness, Muwon continued checking his wristwatch.

It was already past 8:00 p.m. and creeping toward nine.

Yu-su’s eyes sharpened. “It’s coming.”

Hee-eun and Seongwook snapped their heads up and peered through the window. Sure enough, the distant thrum of propellers echoed through the night.

“It really came!” Hee-eun pointed into the darkness. “Over there!”

“The sound is still pretty far away…” Seongwook murmured.

The helicopter’s roar gradually began drawing the zombies toward it. One after another, the heads of the dead turned toward the moving aircraft.

Then the screams began.

“Aagh! Aaaaaah!”

“Kieeeek!”

The ground began to boil like water over a raging fire.

The streets, already clogged with wandering corpses, grew even more congested as zombies poured in from God knew where. They sprinted and shrieked, crashing into cars and triggering alarms that blared sporadically throughout the city. To make matters worse, clouds swallowed the moonlight, leaving the street only a few meters below them writhing like some unknowable circle of hell.

Above that infernal chaos, a hopeful broadcast rang down from the sky.

“This is the rescue team. We will prioritize hospitals and schools before proceeding with sequential rescue operations. We ask all citizens to remain calm and wait.”

“If you are unable to reach the roof and remain trapped inside a building, please wait for the rescue reinforcements scheduled to arrive in three days. I repeat, we will continue conducting sequential rescue operations, so…”

Jeong Yu-su’s head snapped up, and his gaze locked with Do Muwon’s.

Seongwook seized upon the announcement immediately. “They said the rescue team is coming in three days. Can’t we just stay here?”

Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating, until Joo Hee-eun answered in Muwon’s place. “We could, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Nobody can guarantee that a rescue team will actually make it here.”

“B-but it looks way too dangerous out there. The zombies are going fucking crazy.”

“If the helicopter comes any closer, it’ll be safer to leave,” Yu-su replied firmly.

“Even so…”

For them, the crumbling building posed a far greater danger than the zombies outside. Even if they somehow survived its collapse, there was little chance a rescue team would thoroughly search the lower floors of a ruined structure.

Do Muwon had listened in silence, but when he finally spoke, his command left no room for argument.

“Start checking the supplies. Now.”

As the minutes passed, the helicopter circled closer. Just as Yu-su had predicted, the thunder of its propellers soon became deafening, drowning out even the bloodcurdling screams of the zombies nearby. The dead went berserk, stretching their arms toward the sky as they clawed at walls or sprinted blindly after the noise.

Keeping a close watch on their surroundings, Yu-su hoisted the backpack containing his shower gown onto his shoulders and shoved the window wide open.

“Let’s descend. Muwon goes first, then Hee-eun, Seongwook, and me.”

“Understood,” Muwon replied.

Hee-eun clasped her hands together. “Please be careful.”

Wearing the headlamp, Do Muwon leaped into the darkness. Its pale yellow glow drifted downward like a will-o’-the-wisp before finally coming to a stop.

After securing the blanket rope to a roadside tree, Muwon traced three slow circles with the headlamp.

Thanks to the signal, the descent went smoothly. Lee Seongwook, perhaps eager to bury his fear beneath another display of bravado, climbed down without hesitation and ended up saving them more time than expected.

Tap.

At last, Yu-su’s feet touched the ground for the first time in four days, although it felt as if weeks had passed. He was not unafraid of the descent. He had simply spent every ounce of strength keeping himself quiet enough to avoid discovery.

Muwon reached out, squeezed Yu-su’s trembling hand once, and released it. Then he leaned closer and whispered in a low, cutting voice.

“This place is fucking insane.”

Yu-su said nothing.

Everything in the streets had ground to a complete halt. Moonlight and the helicopter’s searchlight, sweeping intermittently across the area, offered brief glimpses of a world that had fundamentally changed.

The first thing that struck Yu-su was the sheer intensity of the stench. It existed on another level entirely.

The world had rotted in only a few short days. The reek rising from the accumulated filth was so vicious that it felt as though his nose might rot away, while the resulting nausea drove a splitting headache through his skull. To make matters worse, the helicopter’s deafening roar made it almost impossible to think.

Then a pack of frenzied zombies, following the helicopter’s flight path, came surging toward them.

“Watch out!” Hee-eun hissed.

Her small gasp made Yu-su and Muwon whirl around and recoil from the charging horde.

Because the helicopter’s roar tore across the sky from every direction, the zombies stumbled around like headless insects, exactly as the group had anticipated. They were far too distracted to notice the four people crouching nearby, at least for the moment.

“Follow me,” Yu-su ordered.