Free Web NovelPeople react completely differently to the same situation depending on the environment they’ve lived in.
Especially in an extreme situation like an apocalypse, where cannibal monsters roam around devouring people alive, those differences become even more pronounced.
Even people who had lived in the same world for decades could develop entirely different patterns of behavior after only ten months of experience.
'I could die at any moment.'
'I could become one of those monsters too.'
The fear and stress from those thoughts.
The desperation of having no tomorrow and only surviving the present moment.
And on top of that, relentless hunger that never truly disappeared.
Nearly a year of physical suffering and psychological pressure eventually twisted human judgment.
In that state, questions like 'Why would they do something like that? or Are they stupid? Have they gone insane?' were meaningless.
Expecting the mentality and judgment of people who survived through violence and murder in the most dangerous city imaginable during an apocalypse filled with absolute terror and despair to remain normal—
That kind of expectation was even more foolish.
And Junho, a regressor who had already lived through one apocalypse, understood that extremely well.
Which was why he could understand the raiders frantically fleeing exactly as he intended, like sheep being herded by a Border Collie.
No—
Because Junho himself had once experienced a similar situation, because he understood exactly what kind of psychological state they were in, he was able to subtly but decisively drive the raiders down a “specific route.”
***
EEEEEEEEENG....
GWOOOOOOOAAARRR...!!!
While the medium-sized drone flew barely thirty meters above the ground, countless zombies split into several groups continued chasing both the drone and the raiders.
At first, all the raiders had fled in the same direction, but before long they had split into three groups, and Junho designated the group containing the fastest runner as the drone’s follow target.
And exactly as Junho intended, that man and his remaining four companions had no choice but to enter Sosaro and run toward the intersection near Sosa Station.
The distance from their position to the Sosa Station intersection was a little over four hundred meters.
At their current speed, it would take roughly a minute and a half.
“Hoo....”
After lightly steadying his breathing, Junho tightly secured his weapon and gear to his tactical vest and belt.
Papapapapapak!
Then he sprinted down the mountainside at maximum speed.
An old apartment complex entered his wide-angle night vision view.
The distance between the landslide-prevention retaining wall and the apartment building was roughly five meters.
Thud!
Reaching the edge of the slope, Junho kicked off the ground with all his strength and launched himself through the air.
Thwack!
He caught the security bars outside a third-floor window behind the four-story villa and landed while hanging there like a cat.
It was the parkour technique Cat Leap, which he had spent months learning alongside his Krav Maga training.
Papapak.
Like a famous spider-themed superhero, Junho rapidly climbed the building using a climb-up movement.
Once he reached the rooftop, he sprinted at full speed again before throwing himself toward the rooftop edge of another villa across the road only four or five meters away.
Whoosh!
Dozens of zombies wandered the road below, but none of them noticed Junho.
Tap!
Crossing over the road like a bird in flight, he absorbed the impact with a perfect roll, immediately rose, and moved toward the next building.
Dash vaults over low walls and railings.
Drop and rolls from high ledges.
And when necessary, tic-tacs that used walls to launch himself even higher.
Using parkour techniques so fast and precise that even his instructors had clicked their tongues in amazement back then, Junho unleashed truly superhuman physical ability.
And in barely a minute, after crossing over more than twenty buildings, he arrived atop a commercial building at the corner intersection overlooking Sosa Station.
“Hoo... hoo....”
Reaching the rooftop of the old four-story shopping building—which had to be at least twenty years old—Junho quickly steadied his breathing and lowered himself against the railing.
The intersection viewed through his wide-angle night vision goggles instead of the drone camera was utterly horrific.
Wrecked and abandoned vehicles littered the streets among piles of debris and garbage.
Countless zombie and human corpses were tangled together between them.
And after hearing the gunshots and zombie roars, even more zombies were crawling out from buildings surrounding the intersection.
The sight was visual violence that showed exactly what “the horrors of the apocalypse” truly meant.
KRAAAAAAAAH...!!!
And from somewhere beyond that ruined street of the end times, the screams of innumerable cannibal monsters rapidly grew closer.
At some point, more victims must have appeared, because now only two humans remained at the front of the fleeing group.
One was a man in his fifties with a solid physique for an apocalypse survivor.
The other was Ju Seongcheol.
Sweat drenched their faces twisted with terror and despair as they ran.
Watching them with cold eyes, Junho swiftly drew out his KP9 and extended the stock.
Then he raised the drone’s altitude slightly now that it had served its purpose and slowly swept over the zombie horde chasing the two men—
No.
The massive “swarm” filling the entire five-lane road.
“Found them....”
Spotting two Alphas running together in the middle of the incoming swarm while dozens of slave zombies surrounded them like escorts, Junho’s eyes grew even colder.
Distance: roughly seventy meters.
At their current speed, they would pass through the intersection in under ten seconds.
Click.
Inside the wide-angle night vision goggles, the IR laser swept past the man in his fifties and Ju Seongcheol before settling onto the zombie swarm chasing them from ten meters behind.
BOOM! BOOOOM! BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM...!!!
KWOOOAAARRR...!!! KRAAAAGH...!!!
The thunderous noise of cannibal monsters smashing through wreckage and vehicles, trampling over fallen zombies and leaping forward nearly numbed his hearing.
The waves of zombie heat signatures—completely different from those of the two humans—surged violently across his night vision display, making even his field of vision feel unstable.
But Junho’s eyes inside the goggles remained fixed only on the two heat signatures glowing brightly like fluorescent lamps.
And at that exact moment, the fifty-year-old man and Ju Seongcheol crossed the intersection.
***
KRAAAAH!
“Haa...! Haaak...! Fuck!”
Smash!
The leader of the library raiders, who entered the intersection slightly ahead of Ju Seongcheol, slammed two charging zombies aside with his body.
But zombies crawling from the surrounding buildings had already reached the hundreds, and he realized escaping cleanly would be difficult.
Still, difficult didn’t mean impossible.
“Hey! This way!”
“Huaaah....”
Crying and sniffling uncontrollably, Ju Seongcheol ran after the man like he’d gone insane.
The direction leading from the intersection toward Sosa Station had already entered redevelopment before the infection outbreak, so all the buildings there had been demolished and fenced off with tall barriers.
That meant far fewer zombies were coming from the Sosa Station direction compared to the roads connected to Bucheon Station and Yeokgok Station.
But after sprinting several hundred meters at full speed, Ju Seongcheol was too exhausted to confidently dodge all those zombies.
So there was only one decision left for the raider leader to make.
“I’ll clear the way, so keep up, asshole!”
“Huff... huff... thank—”
Smash!
The raider leader kicked Ju Seongcheol the moment he got close.
“Kuhk!?”
Already visibly exhausted, Ju Seongcheol collapsed with a startled scream.
Then the raider leader brought down the spear made from a steel pipe onto his leg.
CRACK!
“KRAAAAAAAAGH!”
Leaving Ju Seongcheol behind with a shattered knee, the raider leader immediately resumed sprinting toward Sosa Station.
As soon as he did, a large number of zombies charging from the park near Sosa Station changed direction toward Ju Seongcheol instead.
“Huaa!? You fucking bastaaaaard—!”
Seeing the zombies rushing toward him like evil spirits, Ju Seongcheol screamed in sheer terror.
But his cry was abruptly cut short.
The pursuing zombies from behind and part of the horde rushing in from the park near Sosa Station all piled onto him at once.
“Kuhahk! Kehk! Kreeeh....”
Gwoook! Kuuk! Krrrgh!
His sobbing screams mixed together with the sounds of zombies feeding.
It was a miserable ending perfectly suited to a parasite.
But Junho paid no attention whatsoever, focusing only on the brightly glowing Alpha heat signatures inside his wide-angle night vision goggles.
And then—
Tap-tap!
A single double-tap rang out.
Immediately afterward, Junho shifted the muzzle to the next target and pulled the trigger again.
Tap-tap!
Both Alphas collapsed as 9mm subsonic rounds pierced their heads.
Junho quickly ducked behind the rooftop railing and checked the drone footage.
KWOOOOOOOAAARRR...!!!
The intersection remained complete chaos, still packed with countless zombies.
Then suddenly, far more than half the zombies froze almost simultaneously.
The sight of an uncountable number of cannibal monsters stopping in perfect unison was bizarre beyond description.
But only for a moment.
GWOOOK...!!! GWOOOK...!!!
Like mollusks thrown into boiling water, the zombies grotesquely twisted their bodies.
Then after roughly ten seconds, they slowly began returning the way they came.
Gwoooooooo....
Like the tide pulling back, the zombies shuffled down the streets in groups of five, six, or several dozen, muttering low growls.
Still, around a hundred zombies continued chasing toward Sosa Station.
And then—
Aaaaaaagh....
At one point, a man’s scream rang out among the monsters’ roars before abruptly cutting off.
“.......”
Expressionless as ever, Junho continued operating the drone and sent it back toward the intersection.
The man in his fifties and Ju Seongcheol had not been particularly lucky.
The two men had failed the roughly seventy-percent probability.
Instead of being infected and turning into zombies, they were being torn apart and eaten alive.
Ju Seongcheol’s upper body had been ripped open, both his legs torn off, and his neck nearly pulled free.
The library raider leader—captured only moments earlier—was in even worse condition.
Dozens of zombies swarmed over him, tearing him apart alive while his horrifying screaming face occasionally appeared on the camera feed.
Ignoring the scene completely, Junho raised the drone higher and surveyed a roughly two-hundred-meter radius centered around Sosa Station.
In the residential area toward Yeokgok Station, another Alpha chasing one of the other raider groups had succeeded in hunting.
Slave zombies and an Alpha carried two living men overhead while they screamed in agony as they headed toward a fairly large church building.
After memorizing the location, Junho narrowed the search radius again and scouted around Sosa Station.
Then he raised the drone to roughly two hundred meters and left it hovering while broadly observing Sosa-dong and the Wonmi-dong district where the city integrated control center was located.
***
For roughly ten minutes, Junho stared persistently at the tablet screen.
Through that process, he tracked where the other zombie groups—especially the swarms controlled by the remaining Alphas in the area—were moving and marked all of their routes and bases one by one.
Eventually, even the zombies that had flooded the intersection finished hunting and feeding before returning to their respective territories.
And the Sosa Station intersection gradually returned to its original state, aside from roughly twenty ordinary zombies that had already been lingering near the park from the beginning.
Slowly, Junho rose from behind the rooftop railing.
The intersection, now left with only traces of destruction, looked as though the murderous festival of feeding—Mass Cannibalism—that had just taken place there had been a lie.
But the chunks of Ju Seongcheol’s flesh and scattered bones lying in pools of blood in the middle of the intersection, along with the zombies greedily picking at them, proved everything had truly happened.
Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!
Junho eliminated the zombies feeding on Ju Seongcheol’s remains as well as the ordinary zombies wandering the park across the four-lane road with his KP9.
And just like that, the Sosa Station intersection transformed back into a silent, ruined district of the apocalypse.
With two Alphas gone from the area, the survival odds of the stubborn survivors still hanging on nearby would probably improve somewhat.
Of course, Junho himself had done it entirely for his own benefit.
“23:10....”
After checking the time, Junho landed the drone—whose battery had just over ten percent remaining—along the forest trail behind Catholic University.
Then he inspected his gear and rapidly descended the shopping building using parkour techniques.
Now the only thing left was to avoid the Alpha patrol routes he had just identified and lead everyone into Line 1 near Sosa Station before sunrise.
