Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 23

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Potter

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◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 23: Injection

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Who in the world likes zombies?

There are people.

Scientists.

Monsters cannot be captured alive by any means, nor do they leave corpses behind, making the analysis and research humanity prides itself on impossible. Zombies, on the other hand, leave corpses behind.

Now that roughly half the world has collapsed, nobody objects whether you saw apart a zombie or shoot one. But in the early days of the apocalypse, there were, surprisingly, people concerned about zombie rights.

In hindsight, perhaps they had not been worried about the zombies themselves. Maybe they had been worried about their own future selves becoming zombies.

The test subjects in Professor J. Catterer's most-cited paper on the effects of mutation factors on dead human brains had once been zombie-rights activists.

To someone like me, zombies were, Crack!, something I was sick to death of.

Especially when I ran into them while exhausted like this, I truly wanted to close my eyes and join the comrades who had gone before.

“Grrrrrr!!”

Crack!

But the reason I desperately swung my axe to drive them back was not so much that I feared death.

I just had too much to lose.

Rather than watch someone else settle into my bunker, my personal sanctuary built with my blood and sweat, I would rather watch the world end.

With that mindset, I stubbornly drove back the zombies and reached safety.

“...Whew.”

I caught my breath and checked for injuries.

People said that getting bitten by a zombie turned you into one, but that was a myth.

The mutation factor that caused zombies affected only dead human brains.

The academic consensus was that if it infiltrated a living human brain capable of advanced mental activity, it would perish, just like the Monsters that had invaded Earth.

The minority opinion cited zombies occasionally appearing where there were no Necromancer types as a counterexample. But those people had not contracted a disease that turned them into zombies. They had simply gotten mutation factors on some part of their bodies, then died. The factors mutated their dead brains and made them into zombies.

Still, you never knew.

After feeling over every inch of myself and moving around, I found not even a scratch.

My cargo bike was intact too.

So was the gift from the Defender siblings.

I unwrapped a chocolate and put it in my mouth, replenishing my calories and energy.

“...Haah.”

They said leaving home was nothing but trouble.

Still, I had thought that, in the long run, it might be better for my mental health than staying cooped up at home.

That was before I checked the community.

Before my naive self learned of the havoc the Defender siblings had wrought on the board.

Unaware of the miserable future awaiting me, I felt the sugar from the chocolate pleasantly spread through my weary body and mind as I surveyed the mountains and terrain rising through the dimness.

I had a rough idea of my location.

It was a place I had checked and memorized with my own eyes countless times.

But something unexpected had happened.

Lights were on in the abandoned apartment building.

It was where the woman who fed cats had lived alone.

There should not have been anyone living there after she was blown to pieces.

Had new tenants moved in?

The apartment was only about six kilometers away as the crow flew, not too far from my territory.

A low mountain and a stream lay between us, though, and the roads were not main roads but winding side routes. Unless you had a way to cross rough terrain, the actual distance was considerable.

It had no particular strategic value, but the fact that people had moved into the area around my territory piqued my interest.

* * *

When asked what kept people going, most would say food. In my case, it was curiosity.

I was not lazy, but when I was curious and when I was not, even I thought my movements made me seem like two completely different people.

The biggest difference was probably my drive to act.

The fact that I went straight to the abandoned apartment instead of returning home had a great deal to do with my incurable personality.

A flag identifying their affiliation fluttered near the apartment entrance.

As expected, pioneers.

I checked my remaining ammunition.

I had plenty of pistol rounds, but not many rifle rounds.

I was not in peak physical condition either.

I had not recovered from the fatigue of prolonged travel and combat.

That meant that, at a critical moment, there was a chance my body would not move as I wanted it to.

I normally avoided combat, but the reason I was even considering it was my antipathy toward pioneers.

The gang in red pants had been vicious enough, but the group led by Lieutenant Colonel Choi had shown me their true nature.

Government-sanctioned raiders.

Perhaps that legitimacy had given them the audacity and cruelty to go too far.

It was not closely connected to my territory, but having pioneers nearby was unsettling.

I approached the apartment intending to conduct at least a light reconnaissance.

“!”

Something was there.

In the darkness.

Had exhaustion dulled even my senses?

I had not heard so much as a breath.

Cursing myself, I stared into the darkness.

Something resembling a person sat completely still.

Looking closer, it was an elderly woman.

She was not merely in her seventies, but nearly eighty, and sat on a cold rock, glaring at me like a worn-out piece of industrial equipment.

“Ma'am?”

The old woman said nothing and did not seem willing to.

Even when I called to her, she only smacked her lips, exposing her nearly toothless mouth, and continued sending me a meaningless stare.

Then a sudden shout erupted overhead.

“Hey, you fucking bastard! Hey! You fucking bastard!”

“What? What? What? What did you say, you lowlife bastard!”

It was the apartment building.

Voices arguing came from the open corridor of the hallway-style apartment.

Under pale lights, two elderly men were grabbing each other by the collar and fighting.

It was an ugly scene more suited to a subway station or a plaza where old people gathered, playing out in the ruins of the apocalypse.

Since I could not expect an answer from the old woman, I entered the apartment.

The fight was taking place on the third floor.

Two elderly men were grabbing each other by the collar between two open units, while the others watched with folded arms or clicked their tongues.

There were around ten of them. Since I had heard sounds from other floors on the way up, I guessed there were quite a lot of people here.

But they were all elderly.

At least among those gathered here, there was not a single young person.

None seemed to have guns or look capable of fighting, so I boldly revealed myself.

As soon as I appeared, every old person turned to look at me.

Even the two men fighting in front let go of each other's collars and stared.

A sudden silence settled over the apartment corridor.

As I wondered what to ask first, one old man approached me.

“I'm sorry. For making such a racket.”

He was one of the men who had been fighting.

I could not read faces, but I had a feeling he had lived quite slyly in his younger days.

“You're with the Pioneer Corps, right?”

I neither confirmed nor denied it.

He tried to take my hand, but I waved him off, making my refusal clear.

His fingers fidgeted awkwardly in the air as he continued.

“No, listen to me. The pioneers who came before assigned us rooms, but this man says his room is cold and the heat doesn't work, so he stole someone else's room and is acting like he owns it.”

The old man behind him flared up and raised his voice.

“What are you talking about? Unit 302 is my room. I won it in the drawing! You see, young man! This bastard's lying through his teeth! It's a complete lie!”

They seemed to think I was with the people who had brought them here.

I was not wearing a uniform, but my pants were similar to military fatigues. I carried a gun, and most importantly, I was young.

There was supposedly such a thing as the privilege of youth. Here, that was certainly true. It even felt connected to a kind of power.

“I came from somewhere else. This isn't under my authority.”

After making up a vague excuse, I looked around at the old people.

“What are you doing here?”

I could roughly guess the reason.

It was not a problem that needed much thought.

“What do you think we're doing? Fuck. The country sent us, so we came. The fucking Republic of Korea sent us here. Idiot citizens elect the wrong politicians, and that's why the country's ending up like this.”

An old man with a foul mouth standing at the back spoke with curses mixed into every word.

He stared at me and spoke as if giving an order.

“When's the next food distribution? My stomach's stuck to my back. We came because they said we'd get rice, but they're giving us garbage nutrition bars. I can't eat that stuff anymore.”

That old man seemed to have the sort of personality that invited fights.

I had only spoken to him for a very short time, but his unpleasantness had already revealed itself without fail.

Maybe that was what our Old Man Kim would have looked like if he had been here.

As the image of a corpse that had died by hanging overlaid the grumbling old man's face, I quickly turned away.

“That isn't under my authority.”

“Fuck. Then why'd you come here? Did you come to sightsee?”

“Excuse me?”

“If you're not giving out food, stop hanging around and get lost, asshole!”

“You there.”

I turned back to him.

Staring him down, I spoke clearly.

“Watch your mouth.”

When our eyes met, the old man trembled as if electrocuted and looked away. Then he fled into an open room.

The old man he had been fighting with snorted as though pleased and chased after him.

“I told you, that's my apartment!”

The sound of them scuffling again followed, but it only added to my fatigue.

“...Whew.”

Seeing no reason to stay, I headed for the stairs.

An old man followed me.

He wore a cheap hiking vest over a grimy shirt. A shiny badge was pinned to the vest.

Thinking he might be in charge, I looked at the badge.

“?”

The old man tried to take my hand.

Why did so many people here like holding hands?

I shook him off with some irritation and looked down at him.

“What is it?”

“Listen, young man.”

“Yes.”

“When I was young...”

By then, I considered cutting him off.

What was coming next was far too predictable.

“I worked for this country my whole life. I devoted my youth to the development of the Republic of Korea, day and night. I never once failed to pay my taxes. I just quietly lived as I was told, without speculating. So what is this? Why have they sent me to a place like this?”

“I couldn't say.”

“Do you know how much I paid into the national pension? I haven't received a single won.”

“Same here.”

“Please tell the commander. We here may be old, but we don't deserve to be treated like this.”

“If I happen to meet them, I'll tell them.”

The old man repeatedly bowed his head in thanks.

While he did, an old woman had come up beside me and was staring at me.

I excused myself in advance.

“I'm sorry, but I'm busy.”

“No. This is for you.”

The old woman held something out to me.

It was food made by hardening dog food and unidentified meat together, something I could not eat.

“It's the thought that counts.”

“Just take it.”

The old woman's voice suddenly turned forceful.

“I said, take it!”

When I accepted it against my will, there was, as expected, a request written on the back of the dog-food bar along with someone's contact information, asking me to call them.

What was wrong with every single person here?

It might have been presumptuous for a young person like me to judge the elderly, but the old people here were strange.

How should I put it?

They looked like people no one could love.

When I left the apartment, feeling more exhausted than I had facing a horde of zombies, I noticed the old woman sitting alone.

The old woman who had always guarded International Residence, whom I would never see again, suddenly crossed my mind.

Since I had something I did not need anyway, I approached her and held out the nutrition bar.

“Have this.”

Only then did the old woman move like a living person.

The hand in her pocket held prayer beads.

“Thank you. Thank you. Namu Amitabha[1]. Namu Amitabha.”

“Why are you here alone?”

“Because I didn't get the shot.”

“What?”

“Those people won't let me inside because I didn't get the shot.”

The old woman put the cockroach-colored food into her mouth and chewed.

“What shot?”

“The zombie shot.”

“The zombie shot?”

“They say there's a shot that keeps you from becoming a zombie if you get it.”

There was no such thing.

If you did not want to become a zombie after dying, you needed to wash. You had to wash your clothes and remove the mutation factors.

“How did you get here? Did you walk?”

“By car. They put me on a bus. The driver and a man called the commander saw this apartment while passing by. They said it would be good, then suddenly dropped us here.”

“I see.”

It was exactly the course of events I had expected.

I did not have the leisure to feel much about it, so I turned to leave.

“...If you get that shot, you die.”

The old woman muttered behind me.

“It's poison. Your hair falls out. Fluid pours from every hole in your body, and you die. At the place we were before, everyone but me died...”

Perhaps she had gained nourishment, or perhaps something had stirred her emotions. Unlike before, the old woman rocked back and forth while chanting.

“Namu Amitabha. Namu Amitabha.”

* * *

I returned to that apartment a week later.

The apartment where filthy curses could be heard from a distance was steeped in peaceful silence.

I found fresh tire tracks on the dirt- and dust-covered road.

The fluttering flag was gone, and naturally, the old woman who had guarded the entrance was no longer there.

There was a large pit behind the building, along with an acrid smell.

This pit seemed to be where the black smoke that had brought me back here had come from.

Up close, charred wood and white ash lay mixed in disarray, with partially burned bones visible here and there.

Human skulls.

I sensed a presence behind me.

A zombie stood there, swaying unsteadily.

It held prayer beads in its hand.

It was the old woman who had sat before the apartment chanting.

A bullet hole pierced her brow amid dried blood.

The sight was so miserable, and the thought of having to put this corpse down with my own hands made me carelessly say something I did not mean.

“...You should've just gotten the shot.”

The old woman who had been left out had joined the other elderly people.

I set fire to the piece of paper with the contact information another old person had given me and threw it onto the old woman's corpse.

By coincidence, the flames spread to the old prayer beads clutched tightly in her hand.

“Namu Amitabha.”

I prayed for the dead in the old woman's way and climbed the apartment stairs.

I had done so in case there were survivors or other clues to find, but I gained little.

Finally, I climbed to the rooftop and looked out over the autumn earth beneath sunlight that had not yet lost its freshness.

I saw things moving.

People.

Across the fields where nobody had ventured before, groups flew their flags as they moved east and south.

Even at a glance, their numbers were considerable.

Defender's words suddenly came to mind.

You can't hide forever.

I had been confident in my own way, but seeing that crowd made me keenly realize how flimsy the foundation of that confidence was.

Still, they said nothing in this world was meaningless.

I did not fully agree, but the old woman who had been chanting gave me an idea.

Thud!

I moved a fragment of the collapsed bunker outside.

Beyond it, the underground passage leading to my main bunker revealed its secret darkness.

If I could not hide forever, I should at least hide well.

The people who had brought the elderly here had chosen that apartment as a high-turnover nursing home because even to them, the building's exterior looked terribly shabby.

I planned to build a camouflage house where this bunker had collapsed.

A house so shitty even zombies would pass it by.

Footnotes:

[1] Namu Amitabha: A Buddhist invocation meaning “Homage to Amitabha Buddha,” often recited as a prayer.

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