The Apocalypse Regressor's All-Purpose Shelter

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Unlike the other zombies, Yang Myeongsuk was only slamming her face against the door with her mouth hanging wide open.

Sometimes, though, as if trying to show an actual intent to break it down, she would stagger a little way back and crash into the door again.

The lower half of one thigh had been torn away, and both arms hung limp as if broken, completely unable to put any force into them.

“......”

“She ended up like that while evacuating the people staying in this room out into the yard. She did save the three of them, but... she was bitten.”

At Choi Uisu’s words, Junho nodded.

“I see.”

“But why Yang Myeongsuk...?”

“Hoo...”

Junho let out a low sigh before answering.

“There are two siblings living where I stay. Yang Myeongsuk is their grandmother. Their only guardian too. It’s a grandparent-headed household.”

“Ah...”

There was probably no one left in this world without some kind of story, but Kim Heeyoung, who was exactly the type to be strong against the strong and soft toward the weak, let out a sorrowful sound.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“That isn’t for me to decide.”

Junho, who had already prepared for all three possibilities—Yang Myeongsuk alive, Yang Myeongsuk dead, and Yang Myeongsuk turned into a zombie—sent a transmission at once.

“Youngsu.”

— Yes, boss.

“Are the kids downstairs asleep? Can you check the CCTV?”

— Just a second. Uh... the grade-schooler’s asleep, but the middle-schooler’s awake.

Since she knew Junho had gone to Hanaareum Nursing Home today, she seemed to be staying up and waiting.

“Then... tell Hail for me. Have him take a tablet and headset to her. One of each. And can you link my mini-drone feed over there?”

— It’ll work, but the image quality will suck. Better idea, I’ll send one of our drones. It’s a small one, so it’s quiet enough the zombies won’t hear it. Once I send the transmission, go up to the roof.

“Okay.”

About five minutes later, Yoon Youngsu called in, and after going up to the roof, Junho came back down carrying a small drone operated by the shelter.

Standing in front of Room 207 with the drone set to camera-only mode, Junho spoke.

“Is Hail there?”

— It’s me. I’m about to go in now.

“Yes, sir. I’d appreciate it.”

— Right.

A moment later—

— H-hello? Mr. Junho?

“Hayoon.”

— Y-yes, yes. G-go ahead. But... you’re not hurt anywhere, are you?

“I’m okay.”

After watching her for quite a while, Junho had concluded that Kim Hayoon was kind and diligent.

During the day, she always found something she could do and did it without the slightest sign of complaining, all while looking after her little brother and Choi Jeongwoo’s daughter.

She even used spare moments here and there to teach the two of them schoolwork.

Junho had basically no point of contact with teenagers her age, but even he could tell that Kim Hayoon was not like most kids these days.

But now, he had to tell that good kid a brutal truth.

“Hayoon, listen to me carefully.”

— Y-yes, yes, mister...

“I found your grandmother.”

— Ah! R-really!? You found my grandma? My grandma—where is she?

“Hayoon.”

— Can you show her to me? Is she hurt anywhere? She’s okay, right? Right?

“Hayoon. Your grandmother changed.”

— ...What?

“She changed into one of those things. So—”

— No!!!

Kim Hayoon shouted so loudly that even Junho flinched without meaning to.

— No! That can’t be true! Y-you saw wrong, didn’t you, mister? Right? My grandma...

Junho lifted the drone toward the door to Room 207.

Yang Myeongsuk’s face filled the drone camera feed—her chin covered in blood, mouth working open and shut as she kept smashing her head against the door.

— Ah, ahh...

“......”

— No. G-grandma... aaahhh!

Kim Hayoon’s sobs filled the headset.

Junho stood there without moving, listening to the cries of a girl left alone in this grim, brutal apocalypse with only her younger brother.

He could ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) not comfort her, and he should not.

As the owner of the shelter and as one of the adults, Junho had to tell her the reality and show her the path for getting through it.

Kim Hayoon was still young, but if she was going to take care of Kim Junseo, who was even younger than she was—

Then she had to get ready to become an adult.

Because the apocalypse was the kind of place that demanded it.

“Hayoon, listen to me.”

— Huaaah...

“Now you have to decide. What to do about your grandmother.”

— H-how? Hic... what am I supposed to do?

she asked back in a voice thick with tears.

“First, leave her like this. Second, give your grandmother rest.”

— R-rest?

For a second, she seemed not to understand. Then her voice shot up.

— N-no! Don’t do that! Don’t kill my grandma, mister! I’ll do everything you say. Really, please don’t kill my grandma, Mr. Junho. Uwaah...

“Get ahold of yourself, Kim Hayoon.”

— Hhk.

At Junho’s cold voice, her crying quieted.

“Your grandmother, Yang Myeongsuk, is already dead. That isn’t your grandmother. It’s a monster that hijacked your dead grandmother’s body.”

— Hngh... hic.

“So you have to decide. Leave it like this, or give your grandmother real rest.”

— Hic, h-hic. Mister.

Forcing down her sobs, Kim Hayoon called out to him and continued.

— C-could you show me my grandma’s face... one more time? Just, just once. Please?

“Okay.”

Junho held the drone out toward the door again.

And Kim Hayoon looked at Yang Myeongsuk’s face—expressionless, opening and closing her mouth as if trying to eat the little clear window.

— Grandma... hngh, hhk!

She cried for a moment, only a very brief moment, then spoke.

— M-Mr. Junho. My grandma... I...

“...Okay. Yeah, I understand.”

Listening to Kim Hayoon’s words through the sound of her sniffling, Junho nodded several times.

***

Oddly enough, Go Seokjin was good at work. Not just good, either—ridiculously good.

In less than an hour, he and Lee Jaeseok had gathered every corpse inside and outside the nursing-home building into one spot in the yard.

He even pulled off the feat of recovering over sixty percent of the shell casings.

The way he nervously insisted he could find the rest once it got a little lighter out was almost pitiful.

Still, seeing him recover this many casings in the dark, Junho found himself a little impressed.

“He’s good when you tell him what to do. Really good. It’s only when he tries to think something through and do it on his own that he screws it up.”

Thanks to Go Jeongnam’s sigh-laced complaining, Junho came to understand exactly what kind of person Go Seokjin was.

Apparently, the reason Go Seokjin had made a career out of the military in the first place was because he had been excellent at “doing what he was told.”

And in the military, that basically made him an A-grade soldier.

That was why his seniors, platoon leader, even the career NCOs and officers had all praised him, saying army life fit him perfectly.

So he had applied for the NCO track, and even after making sergeant, he became known in other companies as a sergeant who was good at his job.

Because sergeants usually only carried out the tasks assigned by officers like the company commander or the senior NCO.

But after he got promoted to staff sergeant, and enough time passed that he became older than the seasoned platoon leaders and had more years in uniform than they did—meaning he had to directly lead people himself—

Another side of him, one that had been hidden without anyone realizing it, came out.

And after failing promotion to sergeant first class several times, he ended up leaving the military.

“You worked hard. Get some rest now.”

“Ah, yes, sir.”

After working until he was drenched in sweat, Go Seokjin trudged over to one corner of the yard, dropped down, and gulped down the water his wife brought him.

Come to think of it, Go Seokjin’s wife looked way younger than he did, which had seemed a little strange.

To think that face is only thirty-four...

Naturally, Junho had assumed Go Seokjin was well over forty, but in reality he was almost ten years younger than that.

Career NCOs who served a long time in the military usually looked older than they were, but Go Seokjin was especially bad.

And on top of that, he had a touch of hair loss too.

“Sir. Doctor.”

At Junho’s call, Go Jeongnam and Choi Uisu nodded and stepped forward.

As Hanaareum Nursing Home’s representatives, the two of them had decided to send the dead on to true rest.

Click.

The two men lit clubs wrapped in gasoline-soaked rags, then exchanged looks with hardened faces.

At the same time, they threw them onto the pile of corpses.

Whoom!

Flames rose over the bodies, which had already been doused in fuel and stacked with firewood in several places.

The fire softly embraced the bodies of the twice-dead and radiated the same scorching heat as the bitterness they had left behind.

The flames might draw zombies, but Junho was not especially worried.

They had already cleared away all the corpses near the nursing home’s front gate and all the way to the corner where the road bent downward, and they had piled up barricades too.

Working without making loud noise had been a little tricky, but thanks to Go Seokjin’s A-grade yard-mule ability and Junho’s monstrous strength, it had gone more smoothly than expected.

So even if zombies came, they would stay outside the barricades.

And after some time passed, they would drift back to where they had been before or wander nearby, faithfully serving as a “living alarm system” for the nursing home.

Fwoooosh...

Making the summer night hot again after the typhoon had passed through and left it slightly cooler, the flames burned the dead.

***

August 25, 2024, 6:40 a.m., Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province.

“Hup...! Hup...! Hup...!”

Choi Hyunwoo ran like a madman.

About thirty meters behind him, the zombies that had been tearing apart a few corpses moments ago were now flailing their arms as they chased him.

Though big, Choi Hyunwoo was athletic enough to run a hundred meters in the fourteen-second range, and he sprinted back the way he had come, vaulting easily over the low wall of a villa building.

Then he raced along the side of the building, glanced back, and vaulted another wall.

“Hff, hff...”

Pressing himself tight below the wall, he tried to make as little noise as possible while he got his breathing under control.

Grrraaaah!

The sound of the zombies running and their grotesque cries brushed past the wall he had just crossed, then gradually faded.

But he did not move an inch, remaining there exactly as he was.

— Zombies have bad eyesight. It varies a little by individual, but on average their vision tops out at around a hundred and twenty meters.

— Once they lose sight of a target and there’s nobody else moving nearby, they usually stop chasing within one or two minutes.

— But they hear well. So even if you hide somewhere that seems safe and out of their line of sight, don’t move for about three minutes.

Recalling the contents of the notebook the honorable Junho had left in the basement, Choi Hyunwoo waited under the wall for more than three minutes before finally moving.

Keeping low, he chose the route with the most trees and brush and climbed the hill beside the villa.

About thirty minutes later.

After reaching the safe zone on the mountain marked with string, Choi Hyunwoo carefully checked his surroundings before leaning back into a hollow under a tree stump.

“Haa... haa...”

After roughly wiping away the sweat pouring off him like rain, he took out a small plastic water bottle, poured some into his palm to wash his face, then drank the rest in one shot.

Instead of throwing the bottle away, he tucked it back into the bag slung diagonally across his body and took out a map folded in half twice.

It was an enlarged map of the area in aerial view.

“No good here either...”

With a red ballpoint pen, Choi Hyunwoo marked an X over one spot.

That made three routes now, out of several possible ways to reach his parents’ home at Hansung Apartments in the downtown district, that were impossible to use.

“Four left.”

Muttering low, Choi Hyunwoo carefully folded the map again and put it back in his bag.

Then he took a long breath, got to his feet, and returned to the “mini shelter” Junho had left for him.

Bzzzz...

From the mountain overlooking the house, Choi Hyunwoo launched a drone, combed over the entire area around the house through the camera of the drone flying at an altitude of one hundred and twenty meters, then recovered it and hurried back down the mountain.

This mini drone too—priced at well over one million won—was one of the five Junho had bought and left in the basement for him.

***

Choi Hyunwoo took a quick cold shower in the bathroom, then hurried back down to the basement naked, slid the pantry cabinet back into place, and shut the blast door.

In the basement, which held every kind of foodstuff, assorted equipment, and even a few things that could serve as weapons, he dried himself off with a towel and shook out his hair.

Only after changing into fresh underwear and a tracksuit did he finally let out a sigh of relief.

“Haa~ I can finally breathe.”

Choi Hyunwoo dropped onto the mattress in one corner of the basement.

Then, with renewed eyes, he slowly looked around the place.

About ten days earlier, when he had first stepped into this basement, Choi Hyunwoo had been massively shocked.

Just at a glance, there were enough food and drinking water sealed in airtight containers to last one or two years.

On one side, a refrigerator and freezer were both running.

Inside them were fresh food and frozen food stored in sealed containers, along with separately prepared refined emergency medicine and refined antibiotics.

On top of that, everything in the basement ran entirely off solar power, and there was even a small generator set aside in case of emergency.

And except for the air-conditioner drain line and the ventilation shaft, the whole place had been fitted with perfect soundproofing.

He had secretly turned the volume of a video stored on the basement PC up fairly high, gone out into the yard, and walked a full loop around the house—and not the slightest sound had leaked out.

Even the outdoor unit for the air conditioner had been well hidden in a secluded corner of the backyard, to the point that the sound of the AC running was barely audible even from inside the yard, never mind the alley outside the house.

This house and basement were, in the truest sense, a “mini shelter” where a small number of people could safely hold out and live for a long time through a disaster—or an apocalypse.

“Junho... thank you. Really.”

Choi Hyunwoo murmured it with heartfelt sincerity, as if Junho were standing right in front of him.

Why had he delivered all those supplies to his house as a “gift”?

Why, after visiting this place several times before, had he only later told him about this basement—a place he had never known existed—and told him to come here if anything happened?

Now that he thought about it, why had he known this world was about to turn into hell and still said nothing to him, leaving behind only these arrangements?

By now, he knew well.

“My parents are government workers. There’s no way he had any other choice...”

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Choi Hyunwoo’s parents were government employees. More than that, his father was a naval officer, and his mother was a police officer.

So of course Junho had not been able to tell him. And of course he had not been able to bring him to that place—the place where the brothers were probably living now—which was surely bigger and safer than this one.

If he had told his parents something like that—

They would never have believed it in the first place, but even beyond that, it would have caused one hell of a mess.