Free Web Novel“We picked wild grapes and chestnuts.”
“Picked? We mostly just gathered what’d already fallen. Anyway, that wraps up this year’s harvest. Man...”
No longer wearing poop-brown work clothes and rubber boots, Park Deokcheol stepped down from the utility cart in camouflage-patterned Gore-Tex hiking gear and mid-top outdoor shoes, stretching long.
“You worked hard. Goodness, there are persimmons too. Were there still some left?”
As Choi Haneul rummaged through the sacks stuffed with chestnuts and wild grapes in the cargo bed, Jo Yuna linked arms with her and answered.
“Yep. Just like you said, Auntie Haneul, we left a few behind for the birds.”
“Not for the birds. For the magpies. Though around here the crows eat everything anyway. Still, good job.”
“Yes, ma’am, hehe...”
Jo Yuna gave a soft laugh when Choi Haneul patted her on the butt.
In the month since becoming official shelter members, the Park siblings and Jo Yuna had grown pretty close with the original members.
But the person they had grown closest to was, of course, Choi Haneul, who was cheerful by nature and always smiling.
Jo Yuna in particular loved cooking and loved eating good food, so she adored Choi Haneul and followed her around almost like a real aunt.
“You all worked hard. Sis, brother.”
“No problem. Ah! Where are our little angels?”
“...The kids finished their cartoons and are playing with Kkamsoonie. And Deokcheol, could you please stop with the angel stuff? It’s so cringe.”
“Why? Jealous? Hayoon, my li’l ang—”
“Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!”
Carrying a sack of chestnuts, Kim Hayoon shrieked at the top of her lungs and backed away from Park Deokcheol.
Maybe because she was an active middle-schooler, Kim Hayoon had known Deokcheol’s group Junix from the very start, and that had made him ridiculously happy.
But she also knew Junix was a failed idol group, and while she knew who they were, she did not particularly like them, which had immediately made Deokcheol wilt.
On top of that, Kim Hayoon was actually much more familiar with and fond of Park Sunhee and Jo Yuna’s group, Psyche Flare. They were rookies, sure, but the older girls were just too pretty.
And the same went for Hayoon’s younger brother Kim Junseo and the shelter’s only preschooler, Choi Jiwoo.
Even the little kids had liked Park Sunhee and Jo Yuna the instant they first saw them.
But.
“Then I’ll go hang out with my little angels—”
“Where do you think you’re going, Deokcheol? You need to move the rice, flour, and pasta from the cold-storage room. And we’re making fermented cabbage too. This is no time to be playing with your sons. Come on.”
“...Yes, ma’am.”
Back in America, Park Deokcheol had absolutely adored his cousins’ children, his once-removed nieces and nephews, and the moment he saw Kim Junseo and Choi Jiwoo, his face had lit up.
After that, any time his work was done and he had a spare moment, he went looking for those two so he could play with them.
And because Deokcheol, having grown up in a big family, was so good with kids and played with them so well, the shelter members, including Junho, were more or less satisfied with it.
“From now on, you get one hour a day to play with your sons. And what do you keep feeding them all the time? Junseo and Jiwoo already eat so much their bellies are sticking out. At this rate they’re gonna start rolling around because of you.”
The problem was that he was a little too good with kids and lavished a little too much affection on them.
“Once we finish all the fermented cabbage today, let’s roast chestnuts and sweet potatoes. You have any idea how good freshly made kimchi tastes on top of a roasted sweet potato?”
“Roasted sweet potatoes with kimchi!”
“Gulp...”
Jo Yuna’s eyes sparkled instantly, and Park Deokcheol swallowed hard too.
At the sight, Choi Haneul smiled, as always.
“You know, at first I couldn’t understand why he built two whole heaters in the dining hall. But that was all Mr. Junho. You all really ought to be grateful to your Mr. Junho.”
“I always am, Auntie Haneul.”
“Me too. This place is wonderful. I like you, and everyone else too.”
Jo Yuna meant it, and so did Park Deokcheol and Park Sunhee, who was not here at the moment.
The three idols still vividly remembered the day in mid-October when they left the container housing and first entered the shelter grounds.
They had never even dreamed that the door on the opposite side of the automatic container door they walked through every morning to go to work would open the same way.
And after riding the utility cart up the winding concrete road for about three minutes, the imposing gray building they saw had been enough to leave them speechless.
The double walls standing inside the barbed-wire fence, the CCTV cameras installed all over the building, and the air-rifle turrets mounted beside them had made them feel fear and relief at the same time.
Then there was the room they were assigned after entering the main residential building—a room with two single beds, and each person having a fairly large personal wardrobe and a desk. It was better in every way than the container housing they had grown attached to.
And unlike the container housing, where the siblings and Jo Yuna had all lived together up until then, this place’s standard setup was two people per room.
No matter that they were blood siblings and the older brother of her closest friend, there had been no shortage of awkwardness in a man and women living together.
So Park Sunhee and Jo Yuna, finally getting to live just the two of them, had been overjoyed.
And that was not the end of it.
They had each even been issued skin-care products together with the backpack of basic living supplies, though most of the products were heavy in oils for long-term storage purposes.
They could only use them while living inside the shelter, and were absolutely forbidden from using them when going outside the safe zone.
But since becoming shelter members, none of the three had left the safe zone even once, and their skin had already recovered to something close to how it had been before.
“We’ve got to finish winter prep by next week, so Deokcheol and Yuna, hang in there just a little longer. Hayoon, don’t let the kids stay outside too—well, Kkamsoonie’s always glued to them, so I guess they’re fine. Anyway, let’s take this in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Got it.”
Carrying the last harvest they had gathered from the mountain behind their shelter for this year, the four of them walked in through the main building’s front entrance.
Beep. Whirrr...
It had felt a little awkward at first, but now the sound of the ultraviolet full-body sterilizer—something that made them realize just how perfect this place was, both physically and in terms of quarantine—
and Akina’s voice, astonishingly cold and businesslike, yet oddly reassuring because of it—
- Resident Choi Haneul. Kim Hayoon. Park Deokcheol. Jo Yuna. No hazardous {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} substances detected. No signs of infection. Body temperature, heart rate, and pupil response all within normal range.
hearing all that, the four of them once again became certain that at least in South Korea, this place—Our Shelter—was the safest place there was.
***
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Aw, come on, it was just getting good... What now? Boars? Water deer?”
Crunching on his favorite potato chips while flipping through a comic book he had borrowed from the shelter library, Yoon Youngsu looked up at the beeping.
- Significant anomaly detected in Focus Surveillance Zone A.
“A? The Hanchang Development thug uncles’ side?”
- Analyzing camera 3 and camera 2. In Focus Surveillance Zone A, Elimination Target 2 and five Persons of Interest are moving together with ten armed individuals carrying blades and blunt weapons. Displaying predicted route.
A moment later, the main monitor lit up with zoomed-in views from two PTZ cameras and a map of Gahyeon-ri showing the direction the group was heading.
“Huh? That place is... Akina! Send a drone after them right now. One—no, two. And call the boss right away.”
- I reported to the Master immediately upon detection of the anomaly. Dispatching external work drones 02 and 04.
The black reinforced-glass ceiling hatch of the small drone bay built right next to the control room slid open.
Two high-performance industrial drones that had been waiting fully charged rose one after the other.
“The thug uncles are armed to the teeth. Is this finally it? They gonna smash The First Apartments and really become Gahyeon-ri The First?”
Staring thin-eyed at the Hanchang Development men walking the mountain trail toward Gahyeon The First Golden State Apartments just as the projected route indicated, Yoon Youngsu crunched another chip.
A short while later, the control-room door opened, and Junho, still in workout clothes from training in the underground gym, stepped inside.
“Hanchang Development’s on the move toward The First Apartments?”
Having already gotten a rough report from AI Akina through the wireless earbud he always wore, Junho fixed his eyes on the main monitor.
“Yes. Han Changoh, five thugs, and the rest look like people they pulled in while taking over the country houses and townhouses. Sixteen total.”
- Drones 02 and 04 have arrived at the location of the Elimination Target and Persons of Interest. Drone 02 has begun following the Elimination Target. Switching display.
With Akina’s dry voice, footage angled down from three hundred meters in the air, looking obliquely at Han Changoh and his group, split onto the left side of the main monitor. freēwēbnovel.com
“Max zoom.”
- Maximum zoom.
Eyes gone cold and heavy, Junho stared at the Hanchang Development men moving quickly up the mountain path with their bodies slightly lowered.
It had already been more than three full months since the apocalypse broke out.
Even a timid, fearful survivor who had hidden inside the house that entire time would have had enough time by now to figure out the basic traits of zombies.
And that went double for bastards who had been killing both people and zombies from the very start.
As if proving the point, every one of the thugs led by Han Changoh wore tough work clothes with planks, thin metal plates, or at the very least magazines taped around their torsos and limbs with duct tape. freewebnoveℓ.com
But the men with them from the country houses and the townhouse complex were only wearing somewhat thicker clothes and gloves.
“They’re showing off their numbers and planning to use those people as shields. And those people probably joined them without even realizing it.”
“Where’s a thug gonna hide his true nature? Even if they don’t kill people every day, a thug’s still a thug.”
Nodding at Yoon Youngsu’s cold sarcasm, Junho turned and walked out of the control room.
“I’m heading out now. Tell Junhyeok to get ready. And today, let’s test that thing.”
“Seriously?”
Yoon Youngsu’s eyes widened the moment Junho mentioned “that.”
“Yeah. The signal reaches that far, doesn’t it? If it doesn’t work from here, me or Junhyeok can do it.”
“No! It’ll work fine now that we installed the relay at the reservoir post. Leave it to me.”
“Good. The goal isn’t to kill them. It’s to injure and subdue them. Be careful and do it right.”
“Yes, sir. Though technically I won’t be the one doing it. But don’t worry. Heh heh.”
Pushing up his glasses with a grin that always made him look like some kind of villain, Yoon Youngsu pointed at—
the AI computing server room inside the control room, with its own separate door.
***
Whirrrr...
The utility cart, covered with a camouflage-patterned waterproof tarp, climbed the mountain road.
Junho was driving, Junhyeok sat in the passenger seat, and as always Purdy rode in the cargo bed of the utility cart.
But today, something else was taking up space too.
Thunk!
Before reaching the reservoir, Junho stopped the cart below the mountain road, hid it among the brush, then dropped the rear support gate of the cargo bed.
Then he carefully unloaded a child-sized electric ride-on car, 1.2 meters wide, 80 centimeters long, weighing 25 kilograms.
Mounted on top of it were a modified air rifle with an effective range of 220 meters and a high-pressure air tank with enough capacity to fire roughly two hundred tungsten rounds.
It was a ground-attack drone with a top speed of fifteen kilometers per hour, with AI Akina handling both movement and fire control.
Because the ground drone, modified from a child’s electric car, still did not have armor plates attached, it was relatively light, which gave it an operating time of close to an hour.
On top of that, the battery capacity had been increased further, and a portable relay unit had been installed inside.
Basically, the shelter’s AI system handled autonomous movement and targeting, but if necessary, a person could also take direct control using a controller.
And when operated manually by a person, the maximum control range was only about two hundred meters.
That was because the portable wireless controller had a short signal range.
But even if they sent it into a building, wireless control was possible as long as it stayed within two hundred meters.
And since its wheels were triangular crawler wheels, it could climb most staircases without much trouble, which would make it a huge help to Junho and Junhyeok.
And that very ground-attack drone, G1, would be making its first real combat deployment today.
