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- Let’s get going tomorrow morning right when the sun rises.

Lee Jeong-Uk nodded and looked at Shin Ji-Hye.

“Do you have any weapons? I think we’ll take turns standing guard.”

“We have a couple of knives and some spears we made ourselves.”

“Spears? Do you mind if I take a look?”

“You don’t have to act so formally when speaking to us. You seem like you’re old enough to be the same age as my youngest uncle.”

Lee Jeong-Uk smiled bitterly at me and said in a low voice, “So-Yeon’s dad, being called old… Feels a bit odd, right?”

I nodded without saying a word. I didn’t want to deal with his joke at the moment. I wanted him to move on.

I kept staring into the pitch-black darkness while Shin Ji-Hye and Lee Jeong-Uk headed toward the storage room. There was no moonlight tonight, and with the mountains surrounding us, it felt rather eerie. The dark and cold energy felt stronger than usual. It was that kind of night in which anything could happen.

The survivors decided on their guard-duty shifts and stood next to me. After a moment, Bae Jae-Hwan looked at me.

“Umm… So, President sir, I heard you don’t usually sleep. Is that true?”

‘President huh.’

I flashed a sheepish expression and wrote down some words.

- You guys are on guard duty?

“Yes… Sir.”

- I’ll keep an eye on the front. You guys take care of the back.

“Yes, sir!”

- And let me know right away if anything happens.

Bae Jae-Hwan nodded energetically, and he and his two friends went to their respective locations. After a moment, Lee Jeong-Uk came back from the storage room with a sharp spear in his hands.

“So-Yeon’s dad, take a look at this. They said they made this themselves.”

It was a nicely-carved wooden spear that was about ten centimeters in diameter. What stood out to me was the fact that they had taped the handle so that they wouldn’t injure themselves from the wood. I wondered if they’d gotten the wood from Dae Hyun San Park.

It seemed pretty easy to get wood out here. Getting wood elsewhere was nearly impossible. I would have loved to make this place our second shelter if this place wasn’t in Haengdang 2-dong.

Lee Jeong-Uk observed the students covered in blankets.

“They’re living every moment to their best.”

“...”

“Do you think there’s a way to filter survivors so that only people who are like these kids join our shelter?”

It seemed like he was still thinking about the decision we’d made the other day, about not bringing in more survivors into Shelter Hae-Young. Lee Jeong-Uk had done his best and put in all his effort into reaching out to other survivors, starting with the survivors from the local market, high school, and supermarket. Maybe he had come to the realization that these other survivors were his reason for going on.

Even though Lee Jeong-Uk didn’t express his thoughts, it seemed like he’d been thinking about how to filter out the ‘dogs’ from the rest of the survivors this whole time.

I wrote out a few words and showed them to Lee Jeong-Uk.

- Just think of this as a little break.

“A break, huh…”

He smiled as he looked out into the darkness. After a moment, he asked in a low voice,

“So, do you have a plan?”

I let out a sigh and scribbled out some words.

- I need to expand our buffer zone, with Haengdang 1-dong in the center.

“Buffer zone? What buffer zone?”

- Our safe buffer zone.

Lee Jeong-Uk widened his eyes at the words ‘safe buffer zone’ and stared at me. After a moment, he swallowed and asked, “Didn’t you say that each area has a leader? Are you saying you’re going to take care of all of them?”

- They’re getting stronger and stronger. I need to expand our safe buffer zone when I can defeat them.

“But you could die doing so.”

- Has there ever been a day where you haven’t thought about death since the world turned out like this?

“...”

Lee Jeong-Uk could find no reply to my question.

Perhaps the word ‘safe’ was longer applicable to this world. As long as there were zombies outside, there was no such thing as safety.

At the end of the day, someone had to step up and take care of the zombies. And it was wrong to impose that responsibility onto the survivors. Survivors could take care of normal zombies, but it would be impossible for them to take care of the mutants.

They had no chance against mutants that ate other brains, especially ones like me that had eaten a black creature’s brain. If nobody was willing to step up, or if nobody could step up, it eventually came down to me to step up.

I knew it was going to be dangerous.

I knew I could die doing this.

But I knew I had to do it.

So that my family—my daughter—could live freely one day.

I was not working toward some temporary happiness, but for everlasting happiness, so that this world could become a world where people could be excited for the possibilities of the future.

I had to fight.

I let out a deep breath and closed my eyes tightly. Lee Jeong-Uk looked at me, his expression difficult to read. He probably wanted to stop me. However, just as much as he wanted to stop me, he knew more than anyone that he couldn’t.

I slowly opened my eyes and patted Lee Jeong-Uk on the shoulder, looking straight into his eyes. Lee Jeong-Uk pursed his lips as his gaze met mine.

‘Take care of So-Yeon for me.’

This was the only thing I wanted him to promise me. I could tell that Lee Jeong-Uk knew what I was thinking. His expression seemed complicated and uneasy, but I saw a glimmer of determination in his face. I could see the determination that he would do everything to protect So-Yeon, that he would protect our family no matter what.

“Save… me…”

At that moment, I heard a voice that caused my senses to tingle. Both Lee Jeong-Uk and I looked out the window at the same time. It was pitch black outside. We couldn’t see a single soul out there. Lee Jeong-Uk swallowed.

“Hey, did you hear that too?”

I nodded without saying a word. I wondered where it was coming from.

“Is it a survivor?”

It was begging for its life. Lee Jeong-Uk tightened his grip on the wooden spear he was holding and started peering through the other windows. I squinted my eyes and focused all of my attention on my hearing.

“Please… save… me…”

I heard it again. It was a desperate cry. However, its voice was an ambiguous, throat-rending sound that tickled my eardrums. If I stayed inside the gym, there was a limit to how precise I could be in locating the sound. I knew I couldn’t locate where this rather strange voice was coming from unless I stepped outside and had a look for myself. I hurried toward the gym entrance.

As soon as I tried to step outside, I heard footsteps scurrying my way. I turned around, my eyes growing wide. Bae Jae-Hwan was right in front of me. He looked at me with unfocused eyes, as if he had seen a ghost.

“It’s not a person.”

I soon realized that Bae Jae-Hwan was holding onto my wrist. I let go of the door handle and looked at the survivors in the gym. All of them had tossed their blankets aside and were looking around nervously.

Shin Ji-Hye brought some weapons from the storage room and laid them out on the floor. Every student reached out for their weapons in unison.

I took out my notepad and wrote down some words.

- It’s not a person?

“Yes, I’m positive.”

I tilted my head in confusion, and Bae Jae-Hwan gritted his teeth.

“That monster killed my friends.”

It was a mutant. But wasn’t a mutant a zombie as well? I couldn’t understand how it could speak. I knew that a normal zombie couldn’t talk even if they had eaten a human’s brain.

Being able to talk after eating a human’s brain was a privilege reserved for zombies with glowing red eyes. Yet this puny zombie was able to talk just because it had evolved. I didn’t know how to take this in.

“I’m… hungry… Mom…”

The bizarre, flesh-rending voice echoed throughout the gym. The students were looking around with terror on their faces. They were still clutching their weapons, but their rounded shoulders gave away their true feelings. Everyone was too scared to even move a single inch.

All of them huddled in the center of the gym with their backs to each other, trembling in feral. It seemed as if they couldn’t think of looking outside the windows. Lee Jeong-Uk went up to each student and looked them in the eyes.

“Hey wake up, wake up!”

A female student burst into tears. Her crying echoed through the gym, further highlighting to the other students the situation they were in.

“Save… me…”

The female student kept on crying. It seemed like the mutant voice had gotten closer. Its soft footsteps tickled my ears. It sounded like it was just outside the gym.

Its speed was much faster than that of regular zombies. The sound, which had been coming from the left, suddenly sounded from the right. I wondered for a moment if there was more than one mutant, but I quickly realized that the footsteps belonged to only one mutant, but the direction they were coming from was constantly changing.

I sharpened my senses and quickly looked around.

“Save…”

Suddenly, the mutant’s footsteps and voice disappeared. I went straight toward where I’d heard it last.

In moments, I saw a long shadow outside the window, and I glimpsed something unbelievable.

An enormous hand, the size of an adult male’s torso, was heading toward the window as if trying to break it. I roared as I tried to fight off the strange chills that were running down my spine.

“GRRR!!!”

Crash!

The arm, at least two meters long, broke through the window. The long arm stopped after I let out my cry. I put all my strength in my legs and launched myself toward it, grabbing onto it and breaking it in an instant.

GARRR!!!

The creature let out a cry loud enough to shatter eardrums. The broken arm was dragged across the gym floor, and disappeared through the gym window.

“So-Yeon’s dad!”

Lee Jeong-Uk came running. I gestured to him to stop and quickly jotted down some words.

- Get the survivors to the storage room.

I tossed my notepad to him. Lee Jeong-Uk read what I wrote and rushed to take care of the students. The students were all staring at the broken window with incredulous expressions, as if their souls had left their bodies. Some were staring blankly at me.

Patter, patter.

I heard it moving. It was moving even more quickly than before. It went over the gym roof and circled around the area. I heard rustling foliage. It was running through the forest.

After I confirmed that Lee Jeong-Uk had taken the students into the storage room, I leaped through the broken window. I tried and failed to shake off my nervousness as I followed the creature’s tracks.

‘It didn’t change.’

I was positive that my palm had touched its arm. In fact, I had gone beyond mere touching. I’d broken its arm with my hands. But it still didn’t turn green. For some reason, I couldn’t recruit it and turn it into an underling.

I tracked it through the pitch-black darkness and ended up at Dae Hyun San Park. I knew that I was extremely quick, and my speed was superhuman. However, despite my physical capabilities, the mutant was still nowhere to be seen. There were traces of it here and there, but I couldn’t see it.

‘Did I lose it? Can it move this fast?’

Its arms were at least two meters long. If its legs were that long as well, it was impossible for it to hide itself. That meant it was somewhere nearby, but the blinding darkness and lush forest were preventing me from locating it.

It was like a stick insect in hiding. I couldn’t differentiate between it and the trees that easily.

I shut my eyes tightly and focused all my attention on my hearing and smell. I heard leaves rustling, along with a disturbing sound. I could also smell the fragrance of grass, mixed with a rotting smell that filled up the air and made me nauseous.

It wasn’t far away.

Huff... puff...

Suddenly, I heard it breathing. I looked upward, my eyes going wide.

It was holding onto the end of a tree with its long arms and legs, hanging above me like an awning. As our eyes locked, they dropped down toward my head without hesitation.

Boom!

In desperation, I threw myself to the side to avoid its attack. The world disappeared in a shower of dust, and its arm came hurling straight toward me through the cloud of dust. I avoided its fist on instinct and closed the distance. I finally had it within my view.

The creature didn’t have two eyes. Instead, it had multiple eyes, like a spider, and they were all locked on me. Its face was disgusting, triggering a frown from me.

I reached out, grabbed onto its jaw and slammed it against the ground.