Chapter 234: Emergeeency!
“Um... I’m really sorry, but could we discuss it among ourselves for a moment? It’s, it’s definitely not that we don’t want to.”
“What is there to be sorry about? Of course you should discuss it.”
“Ah, thank you for understanding.”
Junho watched as Oh Seungmin bowed his head and the kids all gathered in a cluster on one side.
No matter how good the offer was, that kind of caution, not immediately biting at it, was probably one of the reasons those kids had survived until now.
After the five high school students spoke quietly among themselves for several minutes, they approached while watching Junho’s reaction.
“Um... by any chance, would we all have to live separately or anything like that?”
“Why would that happen?”
“Th-then can we live together with Youngjun and the other kids too? At the place where they are now.”
“Yeah. That place used to be a nursing home, but it has electricity, farming, and things like that. There are trustworthy adults I know well there too....”
Junho briefly explained Hanaareum Nursing Home to them.
The kids were especially surprised when he told them that the surroundings were monitored twenty-four hours a day by CCTV, and that not only the nursing home, but the entire village of Gahyeon-ri had been fortified and the residents were surviving by cooperating with one another.
“We’ll go.”
“Good.”
The joining of the five Yeondeok High School survivors had been decided.
***
Junho and the kids returned to the floating platform and decided to spend the night there.
“Is anyone hurt? Any injuries?”
“Ah, my knee is like this....”
Lee Minjae rolled up his old, worn-out sweatpants.
“This is....”
After seeing the knee ruined by blisters and pus from a soft-tissue infection, a bacterial disease commonly called cellulitis, Junho clicked his tongue quietly.
“This will sting a little.”
“Yes. Ugh!”
Junho took disinfecting gauze from the emergency kit, cleaned the knee thoroughly, then carefully applied tube-type antibiotic ointment.
“That takes care of the first aid for now. Once we get there, the doctor will treat you.”
Everyone’s eyes widened at Junho’s words as he wrapped the bandage.
“There’s a doctor too?”
“Yeah. We have most medical equipment too. Even an operating room.”
“Wow....”
“When you sleep, hang a cord so your knee doesn’t touch the floor and sleep with your leg raised.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then rest.”
Junho smiled faintly at Lee Minjae as the boy snapped him a salute, then went outside.
The kids had said he could come into the studio-type living space where they stayed, but Junho said he was more comfortable outside and decided to spend the night in the bungalow with Purdy.
“I’ll stand watch too.”
“Excuse me? By yourself, sir? How would you....”
Without a word, Junho lifted a finger and pointed at the sky.
“Ah....”
Thinking of the drone that was probably still floating high above the reservoir even now, the kids nodded.
With the owner of the shelter here, it was only natural that surveillance drones would be rotated every fifty minutes in case of an emergency.
“But this is our first time doing something like this, isn’t it?”
“Yeah....”
And so, for the first time since the world had become like this, all five Yeondeok High School students were able to lie down to sleep without anyone staying awake.
Of course, they had nearly died, and they had witnessed scenes only a short while earlier that made their stomachs turn just thinking about them, so they could not fall asleep easily.
So for the first couple of hours, one or two of the kids would carefully get up from time to time, approach the window, and sneakily look outside.
And every time, they could confirm the same sight.
Junho lying comfortably in the hammock of the bungalow, and beside him, the German Shepherd Purdy lying flat while missing no sign of movement around them.
If Purdy sensed even the slightest presence, he immediately raised his head and pricked up his ears.
At that sight, the kids’ hearts slowly settled.
It was relief.
At the same time, an emotion difficult to explain surged up from deep inside their chests.
The fact that someone was protecting them.
Together with the reassurance that fact gave them, strangely, there was also a cold sense of longing mixed into it.
Because every one of the Yeondeok High School students had lost their parents in the infection outbreak.
The protection of adults, something that had been as natural as air before the world turned into this, so natural they had not even been aware of it.
They had not felt it in a long time.
And only now did they all realize just how large that empty space had been.
At that unfamiliar yet overwhelming emotion, one they had realized far too late and therefore missed so painfully—
“Hic, hngh... Mom....”
In the end, low sobs were heard in the darkness.
Even without checking who was crying, everyone knew.
The kids said nothing and curled up inside their own blankets.
And holding the relief they had felt for the first time in a truly long while, together with the longing that surged up alongside it, they fell asleep one by one.
***
Morning came to Cheondo Reservoir.
Only then, after properly seeing the scene of destruction and slaughter from the previous night, did the kids’ expressions harden.
The sight of wreckage and corpses floating here and there on the water was horrific.
But befitting genuine survivors who had endured hardship for a long time, the Yeondeok High School students did not turn away from that sight.
“You packed everything, right? Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
Junho took the boat to the pension observatory, then returned by the exact route he had used to come here.
Because the mountain terrain was rugged and there was no real path, the high school students had a very hard time.
But with Junho guiding them, a man capable of climbing mountains even while carrying someone on his back, they were eventually able to leave early in the morning and arrive slightly after noon at the place where he had hidden the utility cart.
The utility cart’s load capacity was 300 kilograms, so it was a little close, but there was no problem carrying five minors who had grown scrawny from not eating properly for a long time.
And so, the Yeondeok High School students, squeezed into the cargo bed like pieces of luggage, traveled for another thirty minutes or so and finally arrived at Hanaareum Nursing Home.
“Ranked first in the whole school?”
“It’s been a while since I heard that. You guys are Class One, right?”
“Ihyeon! Jiae!”
“Heejin? It’s Heejin, right?!”
They had an emotional reunion with friends who had once attended the same school.
As Junho calmly watched the kids cry, laugh, and squeal, finally reacting like teenagers their age, the academy instructor Lee Seulgi quietly approached his side.
“I heard you went all the way to Cheondo-eup and rescued those children. Thank you so much.”
“It’s nothing. I did it because it was something I needed.”
Junho spoke as if it were no big deal.
But although she had not seen him often, Lee Seulgi now roughly understood what kind of person Junho was.
He was cold and also cruel, and he never stepped forward if it did not benefit him.
But Junho always kept a “line,” and the things he did did not go against humanity’s universal values.
That was why everyone who lived in this nursing home trusted him and was grateful to him.
Moreover, Baek Suho, who had been coming here whenever he had time for the past few months and acting friendly with her, had said the same.
—Junho, man? From what I see, he’s just normal. Ah, except when he fights. That’s already gone beyond human level. Just... how should I put it? The way he thinks is really normal.
—If someone acts like shit, he treats them like shit right back. If someone’s a good person, he treats them well. Well, the world’s turned into this, so he’s a little extreme. But if you don’t do that, can you even survive in a world like this?
—In the end, in a world like this, that’s what normal is.
At first, she had not been able to understand it well, but now she could accept it.
All of Junho’s actions were ultimately for the people here, including her, and for those he considered “family.”
In a ruined world where law and morality had disappeared, where all kinds of terrible and horrific things ran rampant, Junho was a person who lived while keeping the line in an extremely ordinary way.
“Then will those children be staying here too?”
“Yeah. They’ll have to earn their keep someday, but for the time being, just feed them well and let them rest properly.”
At those words, Lee Seulgi smiled softly.
He said he would work them, but before that, he did everything that had to be done for them.
And it was exactly that kind of thing that made people trust Junho.
“Now, now, kids! First, let’s get you washed. Goodness, even the crows would ask to be friends.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Here, there’s soap and shampoo, so....”
Lee Seulgi, who at some point had become not just a part-time academy instructor but a real “teacher” who had taken on the role of temporary guardian for the students, led the five newly joined children away.
In this way, within the “territory” Junho had created, everyone had their own role.
***
After taking the Yeondeok High School students to Hanaareum Nursing Home, Junho immediately returned to the shelter.
“One truck should be enough.”
“Yeah. But to get there, we have to pass through the tunnel....”
“Now we need to clear that place too.”
Cheondo Tunnel, carved through the mountain, was extremely long.
And after the infection outbreak began, vehicles that had been fleeing had been abandoned all throughout the inside of the tunnel.
Which meant there were also many zombies.
“Even if there’s an Alpha inside the tunnel, it won’t be much.”
If it were an Alpha that had evolved and built a force, it would have left long ago for a place with more prey.
In the end, nine times out of ten, the zombies inside the tunnel would be ordinary individuals, and even if there was an Alpha, it would obviously be nothing more than some small fry commanding a few dozen slaves at most.
“The kids are ready, right?”
“Yeah. They’ve been waiting for a while.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
Junho and the shelter combat team took a ballistic vehicle and one electric truck and headed for Cheondo Tunnel.
As they advanced while reconnoitering with drones, just as expected, all the zombies inside the tunnel were ordinary individuals.
Junho’s group was able to deal with them easily using a combination of modified air guns equipped with night-vision goggles and IR pointers, and A2 drones.
But because the tunnel was so long, clearing the inside took about three hours.
Around 4 p.m., the group was finally able to emerge from the opposite side of the tunnel, sweating heavily.
“Hooah.... Now I feel like I can live.”
Because power had been cut and the air-circulation devices inside the tunnel had broken down, everyone in the group had been wearing gas masks or respirator masks.
Those too were things Junho had prepared by the hundreds of boxes in the shelter warehouse, and this was almost the first time they had been properly used.
“We should block the midpoint, right?”
“Yes. We need to make sure no one but us can use it.”
Junho planned to use the abandoned vehicles inside Cheondo Tunnel to build a barricade, draw power to it, and install cameras and turrets as well.
With that, their shelter, Gahyeon-ri, and Yeongho-ri would become even safer.
“Let’s rest for a bit before going.”
After resting for about ten minutes and replenishing calories, the group headed to the reservoir.
And about thirty minutes later, the ballistic vehicle and electric truck arrived in an area crowded with small and medium-sized company factories and warehouses, led by “Seongshin Metal.”
Creeeak—clang!
The moment they opened an old, rusted iron gate that showed no sign of people having come and gone for a long time—
“Whoa...!?”
“Holy crap....”
Whether it had been prepared for shipment or had only recently been received, they could see various kinds of metal materials stacked in mountains, still in intact condition.
“This isn’t silver....”
At this level, it needed to be promoted to a golden goblin, so a smile appeared on Junho’s lips, since he was not an ordinary survivor whose first priority was food.
***
The roughly twenty small and medium-sized company factories and warehouses contained truly all kinds of things.
Of course there were the metal materials they had discovered first, but all kinds of electrical wires neatly wrapped in vinyl would also be a great help to the shelter.
That was because wires were consumables, and for their shelter, which operated massive amounts of electricity and various facilities, the more they had, the better.
On top of that, at a CCTV company, they were able to secure a jaw-dropping number of brand-new CCTV cameras.
“You can mount these on drones too?”
—Yep. We were a little short on cameras anyway. Most of the ones you prepared, boss, are top-grade, so it felt a little wasteful to put them on modular drones.
Junho became even more satisfied when he heard that some of the cameras could be used as payloads on modular drones.
And so, Junho and the group diligently moved through the factories and warehouses, farming treasures that were no different from brand-new.
About two hours later, just as they were about to finish today’s work and return—
Beep. Beep. Beep.
At the warning sound sent by the AI Akina, everyone stopped what they were doing and snapped their heads up.
—Boss! Emergeeency! Zombies, zombies!
—Northwest. Approximately 1.2 kilometers in the direction of the Yeondeok district.
—About a thousand? Anyway, there are quite a lot! They’re heading that way!
An urgent report came in that a large horde of zombies was moving along the national road toward them.