Zombie Apocalypse Whiteout – 16
EP16 120 Kilometers (1)
“You said there is?”
Jin-woo asked with a hopeful expression.
“What is it? Huh? What is it?”
Tearing off a refrigerator door might sound easy in theory, but in reality, it was the last thing Jin-woo wanted to do. That commercial fridge had been left untouched for over four months. Just opening it would be horrifying. Who knows how much rotten food is festering inside, filling it with a stench of bacteria and decay...
“Those bastards had shields.”
The sheriff tapped his own wrist as he spoke. Jin-woo blinked, not immediately catching on.
“Those bastards' shields... what do you mean?”
“Ugh, come on! You know! The guys in black uniforms! The shields they carried around! Those things can stop bullets!”
The sheriff raised his voice, mimicking blocking with a shield. Of course, Jin-woo remembered that much.
“Oh, right, right. That thing... Was it polycarbonate?”
If it’s that, then Jin-woo was more than happy. The shields those guys used had even stopped 5.56mm rounds from a K2. And unlike stacking up metal sheets, polycarbonate was much lighter and easier to handle. Slotting one of those between the tables would create the perfect bulletproof barrier. But...
“Where are those, though? Don’t tell me you want us to go all the way back to the Taeyang Group building.”
Jin-woo asked. No matter how good something is, it’s useless if they can’t get it nearby. Sure, Yongsan isn’t impossibly far from here, but if it came down to it, he’d rather deal with gutting a moldy fridge door than make that trip.
“No, why would we go that far? They’re right here, in that caterpillar building. There’s two of them. Two should be enough, right?”
The sheriff pointed toward the caterpillar-shaped building. Jin-woo still couldn’t quite believe it.
“There? You’re saying they’re there? And two of them? Why?”
“You know... the guys who went after Yu-bin. They brought them.”
“Oh...!”
Jin-woo finally nodded, a small exclamation slipping out. It was standard equipment for those guys, after all. It made sense the ones who attacked the sheriff that day would’ve brought their shields too.
“Think they’re still there?”
Jin-woo asked with a hint of concern. The sheriff looked at him like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Who’d go out of their way to pick those up? It’s not like they’re made of gold or anything.”
True, the shields weren’t so valuable that someone would send in troops just to recover them. Still, Jin-woo didn’t remember seeing them.
“I didn’t see any yesterday, though.”
“Well, one of them got taken up by the guys who went looking for Yu-bin, so it should still be where he was attacked.”
“So the second floor, then. What about the other one?”
“I... uh, I beat up the guy carrying it and tossed it. Yeah, third floor! It should be up there, where the fish tank broke! That’s right!”
The sheriff squinted as he tried to recall, then answered confidently. The idea that he managed to beat a guy carrying a bulletproof shield in hand-to-hand combat was ridiculous, but the details in his memory were sharp enough that Jin-woo chose to believe him. He gave the sheriff’s thick, solid shoulder a smack.
“You should’ve said so earlier! Come on, let’s go grab them!”
With light steps, Jin-woo and the sheriff bounded up the spiral staircase. Knowing they could get their hands on polycarbonate shields felt like crossing a huge task off the list. It was a relief. Honestly, Jin-woo had never really done homework back in school, but if he had, this would be what finishing it probably felt like.
“You finished already?”
Yu-bin looked at them in surprise. The two had gone down to make a bulletproof table, but less than twenty minutes later, here they were, smiling and racing back up. Of course he’d be confused.
“Well, thing is... the table material’s no good. It’s not plywood, it’s particle board. Gets blown through like paper. Even MDF would’ve been better. Stainless steel was too thin, too.”
Jin-woo explained, though Yu-bin still didn’t look convinced.
“Then what’s with the big grins?”
“Well, I was worried too, but the sheriff remembered where we can find some bulletproof shields. Over by the caterpillar…”
Before Jin-woo could finish, Yu-bin already caught on and nodded.
“Oh, right. Those bastards in the black uniforms. They were carrying those...”
The memory hit him clearly. That moment when the men in black, realizing he was unarmed, had lowered their shields and closed in with batons, surrounding him… He’d never been beaten so badly in his life.
“With that, even particle board will work. We just need to wedge the shield in the middle, and we’ve got our barricade. So we’re heading out to grab them. Ungh..”
Jin-woo slung his backpack over his shoulder and asked,
“What time should we head out, Yu-bin?”
“Hold on... The green ones will be near the caterpillar building in about twenty minutes... then it’s the blue group after that…”
Yu-bin immediately flipped open his notebook, checking the movement logs of the zombies and doing the math. Since there were eight different hordes, each moving along separate paths and on their own cycles, figuring out the timing wasn’t simple.
He’d divided the Ttukseom Hangang Park area into three zones: one west of the caterpillar, the central walkway near the pool, and the plaza to the east. Then, using pie charts like the summer vacation planners from elementary school, he tracked everything hour by hour. A professional with math training could probably find a faster, more efficient method, but Yu-bin had never learned that kind of thing.
“After 25 minutes, you’ll have about 18 minutes of free time. If you’re any later than that, when you come back this way, you’ll run into those slick guys coming from the plaza. Or… you could leave after midnight. Then you’ll have more time, 33 minutes.”
Yu-bin finished his calculations and replied. The actual free time was closer to 20 minutes, but he deliberately trimmed it down by two to make the schedule tighter. That way, they could avoid any risky close calls.
“Eighteen minutes is plenty. Good! Let’s go now!”
The sheriff said confidently as he grabbed his hammer and backpack. Just going to the centipede nest to grab two shields? Eighteen minutes was more than enough.
With Jin-woo ready to take out a handful of zombies in seconds, and the bikes already prepped, this was a piece of cake. They even had enough time to boil water and enjoy a quick cup of instant noodles in between if they wanted.
“Right. Let’s get moving.”
Jin-woo agreed with the sheriff.
“I’m coming too.”
Min-gu picked up his bag with the machete inside, ready to follow. That long Boston bag was his standard gear.
“Sure, bro.”
Yu-bin didn’t stop him, especially after what he’d heard last night.
Come to think of it, Min-gu must be feeling restless too. He’d spent almost every day for the past month stuck on the oil rig, and even since arriving here yesterday, he’d been stuck watching the rooftop. It wasn’t strange for him to want to get out and walk around. Plus, this wasn’t some special mission, just a simple run to grab two shields nearby.
“Let’s go!”
Twenty-five minutes later, after confirming the blue zombies’ march had moved far away, Jin-woo, the sheriff, and Min-gu opened the iron gate and hurried across the pontoon bridge.
“Be careful! You can’t see a thing behind that side from here!”
Yu-bin locked the gate behind them and shouted after them. Jin-woo, who was easily leaping over the corpse of a headphone zombie, waved casually to show he wasn’t worried.
While the sheriff and Min-gu loaded their gear into the front baskets of their bikes, Jin-woo climbed the stairs toward the plaza. As usual, about ten zombies were wandering near the fountain and pool.
Rat-tat! Bang! Bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang!
Jin-woo raised his K-2 and started taking them down. Leaving these guys behind while working outside was never a good idea.
Bang!
With the last shot echoing, the twelfth zombie’s head exploded, and it collapsed by the fountain. After cleaning up the area, Jin-woo calmly made his way back down to the path and got on his bike.
Shhhrrrk!
The three pedaled hard, racing westward. Sam-suk excitedly ran alongside Jin-woo. They covered the less-than-300-meter distance in no time, parked their bikes right in front of the centipede nest, and ran up the exterior stairs to the second floor.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
Their footsteps on the metal stairs shattered the quiet air around them.
Grrraaahk!
Zombies lurking near the subway entrance turned their heads at the noise.
Bang! Rat-tat-tat! Bang-bang!
Jin-woo reached the second floor, aimed down, and fired quickly.
Thunk! Thud! Thud! Boom!
The zombies trying to chase them barely took a step before their heads were blown open, collapsing onto the pavement blocks. Watching how quickly and easily the situation was resolved, Min-gu chuckled softly.
“Rolling with the boss makes you lazy for sure.”
In just over a minute since they started, they’d taken down nearly twenty monsters without breaking a sweat. For Min-gu, who had to painstakingly slit throats and smash heads one by one, this speed and efficiency were impossible to match.
“But I’m terrible at close combat…”
Jin-woo replied humbly, brushing it off, then entered the second floor of the building.
“They should be around here. This is where Yu-bin got attacked.”
The sheriff pointed to the north end of the second floor. The broken large window and the black military uniform corpses moved to a corner were still left untouched since that day. That meant the shields the bastards dropped were still somewhere around here.
“These guys came up the stairs with those shields, threatened Yu-bin, and pushed him that way…”
Recalling the scene, the sheriff lazily imitated the black uniform, turning his head this way and that. The place was messier than he remembered, and the shields weren’t easy to spot.
Above all, there were so many large objects, chairs, tables, umbrellas, bookshelves, that blocked their view. Plus, unlike the bright summer afternoon it was back then, the place was quite dark now, with very little light filtering in.
“Something transparent… something transparent…”
Jin-woo walked slowly, eyes lowered, reaching out to suspicious spots. The zombies must have just set the shields down casually, they wouldn’t have hidden them deep.
“Hmm…”
Next to him, Min-gu narrowed his eyes, searching carefully. After more than a minute passed without finding anything, a quiet competition broke out among the three, who would spot the shields first?
Of course, no one actually said anything that childish out loud, but each of them silently prided themselves on being second to none when it came to competitive spirit. Instinctively, the atmosphere between them took on the immature tension of young boys trying to one-up each other. It created a strange but palpable sense of pressure in the air.
And then, about thirty seconds later…
“Found it!”
Min-gu shouted as he pulled a transparent polycarbonate shield out from under a toppled couch.
“Ah, damn it! I was just thinking about checking there too!”
The sheriff clicked his tongue in frustration. Judging by the bullet holes in the couch and the floor nearby, it looked like someone, probably that bastard Sam-sik, had ducked behind the couch with the shield during the helicopter's submachine gun fire.
“Hmph!”
Holding the shield like he’d discovered a priceless treasure, Min-gu smirked and threw a jab at the sheriff.
“I’ve never even been here before, and I found it first.”
It was a petty taunt, but damn, it was irritating.
“Ha! Look at you trying to get under people’s skin again…”
With a sigh, the sheriff broke into a sprint toward the stairs leading up to the third floor. He was dead set on being the first to find the next shield.
“Hey, sheriff! Don’t go running off like that! It’s dangerous!”
Jin-woo yelled after him while heading toward Min-gu. Of course, he wasn’t really worried about the sheriff’s safety. That guy could handle half a dozen zombies on his own without breaking a sweat.
“I’m fine, jackass! Don’t worry about me!”
The sheriff’s voice rang out from the external stairwell.
Jin-woo called out again, trying to rein him in.
“Let’s search together, you bastard! It’s only fair if we all go in at the same time!”
The loud clanging of the sheriff’s footsteps on the metal stairs suddenly stopped. After a brief pause, he called back like he was doing them a favor.
“…Fine! Get up here, then! Tell the old guy to come too!”
“Alright, hold on!”
After shouting to the sheriff, Jin-woo waved Sam-suk over, then pointed at Min-gu’s shield.
“Sam-suk, sniff this! We need to find another one like it on the third floor, got it?”
Pant pant.. sniff sniff..
Sam-suk eagerly pressed his nose against the shield, sniffing hard.
Seriously? What is he, a drug-sniffing dog now?
Min-gu looked at the scene in disbelief. No way it could be that easy. Still, without thinking, he kept raising the shield higher, trying to keep the dog from getting a good whiff.
And then it happened.
A chorus of howls echoed from the direction of the subway station.
Groaaaar! Skreeek! Grrraaaagh!
The zombies’ cries traveled up the tubular building walls, spreading louder and closer.
Jin-woo and Min-gu locked eyes. Judging by the volume, they weren’t that close yet, but there had to be a pretty large group coming from the subway. Most likely from the aboveground part of the tracks.
“We’ve still got over twelve minutes,” Jin-woo said after checking his watch.
That meant the Jaebalrae building wasn’t part of the zombies’ usual patrol range. They’d probably approach the tracks and then turn back, just like always.
Still, that didn’t mean they could relax. Zombies had a way of pursuing humans to the ends of the earth once they caught a whiff of them.
“Alright, enough fooling around. Let’s find that last shield and get out of here.”
Min-gu lowered the shield to make it easier for Sam-suk to sniff it again. The little treasure hunt was officially over.
Clang clang clang clang clang!
As their faces turned serious again, the sheriff suddenly came pounding back down the external stairs and yelled through the door.
“Hey! We’ve got a problem! Zombies incoming!”
“Yeah, we know. The ones inside the subway station, right…?”
Jin-woo pointed in that direction, but the sheriff scowled.
“Subway? Hell no! I mean outside! There’s a shitload of them coming!”
“Ah, fuck.”