Chapter 225: What Mattered More
Zombies did not touch very young children at all.
Whether it was because they were too small, or because their brains were not developed enough yet, they seemed to regard them as no more than small animals.
But from roughly the lower elementary school ages, that changed.
The standard varied slightly from individual to individual, but if the child was not especially tiny, then from about seven or eight years old, they recognized them as enemies or prey.
And...
Before his regression, Junho had seen people use those children for a specific purpose.
“You must have seen it before you started living here, right? That zombies don’t attack kids.”
“W-What, what, what are you talking about...? What kind of bullshit is that...?”
“You seem to be misunderstanding something.”
Shhk.
Junho drew the machete, its bloodstains still glossy because they had not yet been fully washed away, and continued speaking.
“Neither I nor these people are soldiers. We have nothing to do with the Republic of Korea government. So what does that make us?”
“......!!!”
At his chilling eyes and his flat, toneless voice, the middle-aged man flinched and shut his mouth.
The other Nami Island survivors watching the scene also backed away, terrified.
Staring at the people who had, at some point, moved away from Yoon Seolhee and Park Deokcheol, Junho said,
“Listen carefully. We didn’t come here to save you. We came to deal with those bastards. So complaining to us about the government or rescue or whatever won’t do you any good. I’m saying you people have to survive on your own.”
“......!”
“However.”
Junho snapped his head around and, like lightning, pulled something from his belt and threw it.
Pak!
“Aaagh!”
The middle-aged man, who had been trying to blend in among the others before anyone noticed, collapsed with a drawing knife buried behind his knee.
“I’ll deal with pieces of shit like that for you. I’ll give you five minutes. Pick out the bastards who usually treated you like garbage.”
Junho was an equal-opportunity reaper, not only to looters, but to the trash of the apocalypse as well.
***
“Mmph! Mmmmmph!”
Park Gyumin thrashed, his limbs bound with cable ties and duct tape stuck over his mouth.
Standing beside him, Junho checked the screen of his phone.
Expressionlessly, he looked through a list of videos filled with every kind of perverted sadistic act, violence, and murder.
Then he glanced at Park Gyumin, who lay sprawled on the cruise ship deck like an insect, tears streaming down his face.
“You filmed a lot, didn’t you? If this were a year ago, you’d have gotten the death penalty without question.”
“Mmmph! Mmph!”
“Of course, the Republic of Korea doesn’t actually carry out executions even after sentencing someone to death. But I have nothing to do with the Republic of Korea government.”
“......!!!”
Park Gyumin, who could not possibly fail to understand what that meant, widened his eyes until the whites showed and began struggling even more violently.
“What? Feel wronged?”
Junho lowered himself slightly, grabbed Park Gyumin by the collar, and continued in a voice low enough for only him to hear.
“Then why did you send those dogs when you didn’t know your place? None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t touched us first. Oh, right. All the dogs you sent are dead.”
“Hmph!?”
Only then did Park Gyumin realize who Junho was, and shock seized him.
The word “Paradise” flashed through his mind.
But what had come from that paradise was none other than the reaper of the end.
Thud.
Junho let go of the trembling Park Gyumin, whose eyes were rolled wide, and stood up.
“Th-Then what about me? What happens to me?”
Kim Geonwoo, who had been bound with cable ties but, unlike Park Gyumin, did not have duct tape over his mouth, asked urgently.
“.......”
Junho looked over Kim Geonwoo first, then the others sitting on the cruise ship in the same state as him.
Those who had lived as the ruling class on Nami Island, like Park Gyumin and Kim Geonwoo.
And the “pre-looters” who had viciously sold out survivors in the same situation as themselves.
They all looked at Junho with eyes mixed with anxiety and fear.
Among them was the middle-aged man Junho had stabbed.
“That’s why I’m giving you a chance.”
“Pardon? A ch-chance means...?”
Just then, Park Deokcheol came out onto the deck from the cruise ship’s wheelhouse.
“All done, boss. This is my first time with a Big Boat like this, so I got a little confused, but it should work the way you said. I started the engine for now....”
After hearing Park Deokcheol’s brief explanation, Junho nodded.
“Good. Got it. You get off first.”
“Yes, sir.”
Park Deokcheol nodded and started walking, then glanced over the people filling the cruise ship deck.
“You guys... Really disgusting.”
Looking over them with eyes filled with contempt, revulsion, and a much smaller amount of pity, Park Deokcheol soon shook his head and hopped down to the dock.
Junho went to the wheelhouse of the fifty-ton cruise ship that ran between Gapyeong and Nami Island, left the wheel as it was, and pushed the throttle lever forward at low speed, exactly as Park Deokcheol had told him.
“Wh-What?”
“Why is the boat moving!?”
“Mmph! Mmmph! Mmph!”
Junho returned to the deck, swiftly passed through the looters who had fallen into panic as the ship suddenly began moving, and leapt toward the dock.
Then he cut the mooring line connecting the cruise ship to the dock with his machete.
And the ship left Nami Island at ten kilometers per hour.
***
“Ah? Hey! Sir? S-Sir!? How can you just leave us like this!? Hey, sir! Hey! Hey, you fucking bastard! Aaaagh!”
As the ship left the dock, Kim Geonwoo, who had initially shouted in a pleading tone, soon poured out curses full of rage.
But no matter how much he shouted, Junho, already distant on the dock, was not going to come back.
Nor was the cruise ship, slowly but surely cutting through the water, going to stop for him.
“I-Inspector! What do we do!?”
A staff member who had been rolling around on the deck and had only just managed to get up asked urgently. Kim Geonwoo also groaned and raised himself as he said,
“How the fuck should I know! Damn it, if that bastard was going to let us go, he should’ve at least untied—huh?”
“What is it?”
The staff member asked back, but Kim Geonwoo’s gaze was already fixed on the direction the ship was slowly heading.
“Huh? Uh, uh...!?”
The cruise ship they were on was now cutting diagonally upriver toward the mainland.
Of all places, it was heading straight toward the dock where pensions, resorts, restaurants, and cafés were most densely packed in this area.
“Th-This fucking...!”
The moment he realized that fact, Kim Geonwoo’s face turned ashen.
“Aah! Aaaah!”
Kim Geonwoo hopped like a rabbit toward the wheelhouse.
But inside a cruise ship rocking as it moved through a river swollen with increased current, it was difficult to keep his balance and run properly with his legs bound by cable ties.
“Aah! Ah, fuck!”
After tumbling across the floor several times, Kim Geonwoo finally reached the wheelhouse. He twisted his body around and tried to turn the wheel with his bound hands.
But—
“Ah, aaah...!”
Even at low speed, traveling roughly seven hundred meters only took a few minutes.
The cruise ship only slowly changed direction by the amount Kim Geonwoo managed to turn the wheel.
KUUUUUNG!!!
And then it crashed straight into the dock.
“Aaagh!”
The people standing on the deck toppled forward in a mass.
Some rolled away, flipped over the safety rail, and fell into the river.
But no one could save them, and they sank beneath the cold Bukhan River.
“Eek! This fucking....”
Barely raising himself inside the wheelhouse, Kim Geonwoo gasped for breath and assessed the situation.
Fortunately, he had not suffered any major injury and had not fallen into the water.
“G-Good. Not bad. This isn’t bad.”
It would not be easy, but as long as he got his bound arms and legs free somehow—
“Hup!?”
In that instant, Kim Geonwoo’s eyes flew wide open.
Kwakakakakaka...!
Uwooooogh!!! Grrrrrr...!!!
From the road touching the dock, the parking lot, and the many nearby pensions and resorts—
Hordes of zombies that had been lying in wait, hearing the crash of the ship and human screams, came rushing in with insane speed.
“Ha, haha.... Fuuuck....”
Kim Geonwoo could only laugh hollowly as he watched zombies pounce on Park Gyumin and the middle-aged man, who had been crawling across the deck like insects, trying somehow to survive, and tear into their necks and backs.
But he did not have the courage to throw himself into the river either.
A natural defensive wall?
Using zombies as guards?
“Bullshit....”
None of it mattered.
Kwoooooo!!!
As the belated regret that they should have dealt with the zombies near Nami Island first flashed through his mind—
He saw gray-white-eyed cannibal monsters kick open the wheelhouse door and rush inside.
***
Aaaaaah....
Grrrrrrr....
At the horrific screams and roars carried over by the river wind, the Nami Island survivors on the dock shuddered.
The frenzied noise of slaughter called in even more zombies.
Across the river, they could see zombies from the pensions on the opposite bank running along the riverside trail toward the place where the cruise ship had crashed.
“Ugh....”
It was a satisfying sight, in a way, to see the looters who had abused and worked them like slaves until only yesterday paying off their karma.
But no one could openly rejoice.
The survivors glanced at Junho and his group with eyes full of fear.
“Roughly five or six hundred of them, I’d say. If we include the ones coming from other areas, two or three times that.”
“Yes. That side alone has at least that many. If we include the Gapyeong side and Jaraseom, there will be far more.”
After using the drone to check the situation across the river and at Jaraseom, roughly two kilometers away, Junho nodded.
“No need to advance there. It really must have been packed with people at the time, considering it’s the most famous tourist spot on the Bukhan River.”
He had roughly guessed as much, but this confirmed that around Gapyeong, Jaraseom, and the surrounding area, there had been an enormous number of people when the outbreak began.
At the dock where the cruise ship had crashed alone, there were easily more than five hundred zombies swarming.
And the ones that belatedly heard the sound and came rushing out across the roads numbered several times that.
There was no need to even mention Jaraseom, a famous camping site that held many events in summer, or central Gapyeong.
“Uh, boss, then are we just leaving this place as it is?”
Choi Hyunwoo, who had been watching the survivors, asked cautiously.
“Yeah. It doesn’t help us at all, and we don’t have the capacity to worry about this place too.”
“I-I see.”
At the answer, cold to an extreme, Choi Hyunwoo nodded.
But because he had only recently joined our shelter, his gaze kept flicking toward the survivors, all of them gaunt from not having eaten properly for a long time.
Seeing Choi Hyunwoo display pity—or rather, the bare minimum of humanity any normal person should have—without hiding it, Junho smiled faintly and said,
“You don’t need to worry too much about those people.”
“Pardon?”
Turning his gaze away from Choi Hyunwoo, whose eyes opened slightly, Junho gestured for a few people who had become representatives of the survivors to come over.
To the three who approached, tense all over, Junho spoke calmly.
“You know the food court where the bastards who acted like they owned this place were staying, right?”
“Uh... y-yes.”
“There’s still a lot of food left on the first floor and in the underground food-storage warehouse. We confirmed it ourselves.”
“Ah...!”
As their faces brightened visibly, Junho continued.
“At least six months? If you ration it carefully, you should be able to last over a year. And you said you were growing things in the fields and vinyl greenhouses they built here, right?”
“Y-Yes. P-Potatoes and things for side dishes....”
“You’ve got a fair number fewer mouths to feed now, so it shouldn’t run short. The electricity works here too, and as for meat, you can fish or take a boat out and cast nets. Catch fish. Whatever. In any case, we’re only taking the rifles and ammunition. Use the air rifles yourselves.”
“Ah! Yes, yes.”
“And if you want to leave the island, there are plenty of boats, so pick any one and take it. The riverbank is close, so even a duck boat should be enough. Oh, and that.”
Junho pointed at the zipline cable connecting Gapyeong and Nami Island through the air.
“We originally planned to come in on that too, but it seemed a little dangerous at night. During the day, though, it should be usable. On the way back, we’ll take a few people and drop them off at the departure point, so use it on your own after that.”
Originally, it moved by electricity, but because it could also work if a person turned the crank manually, it was perfectly usable as transportation.
Of course, it would be dangerous because it had not been maintained, but that was for them to handle on their own.
“Th-Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.”
He could have taken everything, and they would not have been able to say a word.
But Junho had not touched the food and was even giving them various kinds of help. The survivor representatives were grateful enough that their eyes filled with tears.
“And I didn’t tell those bastards this, but....”
“......?”
Glancing at the dock across the river, where the party of slaughter was slowly coming to an end, Junho continued.
“The government sent troops toward Incheon and Gimpo. Looks like things worked out somewhat well.”
Though he himself was the very person who had made those things work out, Junho said it as if it were someone else’s business.
“Ah!”
“So the Republic of Korea Armed Forces may move in along the Han River before long. I don’t know exactly when that’ll happen, but... if you hold out here, you might be rescued someday.”
“Ah, aaah...!”
“Hhk, sob....”
Junho’s purpose in coming here had been a preemptive strike against those who had targeted our shelter.
Therefore, Junho could not do anything more for these people, and had no intention of doing so.
But to the survivors of Nami Island, Junho was a benefactor who had not only saved them, but also opened a path for them to keep living.
And just now, he had given them something even more important than those things.
Hope.