HMT Chapter 3 (Part 1)

Escape (1)

“Kihik!”

“Kyaak! Kyak!”

“Kihyaa!”

It wasn’t only the people who reacted to the noise. Even those whose eyes were bloodshot to the point of dripping blood snapped their heads toward the direction the sound came from.

“…A police car.”

Kim Min muttered in disbelief. After being pushed toward a cliff, it felt like suddenly meeting a savior. His words became a signal. Just moments ago, the kids had been frozen in shock over Kyungtae’s death, but now they began waving their arms and jumping in place one by one.

“Over here! Officer! We’re over here!”

“Please save us!”

“Sir!”

They couldn’t make out who was inside the car, but the red and blue lights shone vividly like goblin fire in the pitch-black darkness. Even the heavy snowfall that had been pouring down eased at the perfect time. Jiwoo waved his arms as hard as the others. Only Yoon stood up, watching the patrol car closely as it approached the bus.

The siren’s power was immense. The monsters, who until now had focused entirely on the kids on the bus roof, began turning and charging toward the patrol car one by one.

“But can all of us even fit in that car?”

First-year Kang Munsu, who had been quiet until now, spoke up. After escaping the bus with Yoon’s help, he had been tending to Minji, who didn’t look well. Even if they loaded the girls in first, it seemed impossible.

The kids’ eyes shook all at once at Munsu’s words. The patrol car was just a sedan. Even if they squeezed in, six people would be the limit.

“There’s no way we can break through those monsters and run to the car anyway…”

Han Min’s expression collapsed. At first, he had simply felt relieved that a police car had appeared. Their bus driver, the adult they relied on, had turned into a monster. The first bus’s driver was beyond question.

In a situation like this, it was natural to feel hope now that not just any adult but the police had arrived. The problem was that the siren and flashing lights were drawing nearly all the monsters away from the bus and toward the police car.

And then the police car passed right by the bus and began moving farther away. Like the Pied Piper, it lured the monsters into the deeper darkness until it disappeared. Thanks to that, the area around the bus became empty. A few monsters remained inside the bus, along with some whose legs were broken or crushed, making them slow, but they were few.

“What do we do now…”

Ayoung’s voice trembled, as if she had realized the hope she had just tasted was nothing but a display model that couldn’t be eaten. The only ones who didn’t fall into despair were Yoon and Jiwoo. Jiwoo kept scanning the area, refusing to give up.

‘If that police car approached us to help, this can’t be the end.’

Just as he thought that, something caught Jiwoo’s eye.

“Doesn’t it look like something’s coming from over there…?”

Jiwoo grabbed Kim Min’s arm and shook him lightly. Sniffling, Min turned toward where Jiwoo pointed.

“Huh…?”

Just as Jiwoo said, something was rushing toward them at high speed. The remaining monsters also reacted to the sound of an engine.

“Kihyaaa!”

One monster whose lower legs were crushed and dragging along the ground lifted its head. Through tangled hair, its swirling red eyes shone. Chewing the scraps of flesh still in its mouth, it raised its upper body and crawled toward the sound.

Thud…

Its face was crushed flat against the bumper of the oncoming vehicle and flung backward. Its neck twisted from the impact, and the arms that had been flailing moments ago went still like a lie.

The monster’s blood splattered across the front of the truck. The truck’s wipers swept back and forth, wiping the windshield. The driver’s face was hidden behind smears of blood. While the kids hesitated, unsure what to do, a man shouted.

“Kids! Hurry, get on this side!”

A man stood at the back of the truck, wearing a green baseball cap and a black scarf covering half his face. He held a pickaxe in his hand. At his shout, one of the monsters inside the bus reached its arm out the window. It was the bus driver, his neck and one side of his face torn open.

Thud…

“Kyaaak!”

Without hesitation, the man swung the pickaxe. Jisoo screamed and covered her mouth with both hands. The blade pierced straight into the driver’s temple. His mouth opened and closed a few times before his body went limp.

The man yanked the pickaxe upward in one clean motion. Rotten blood sprayed in an arc across the air.

“No time! Jump down here, quick!”

He pointed at the truck bed piled high with feed sacks. Even if they had turned into monsters, the fact that they had once been people made the kids turn pale at the sight of him swinging a pickaxe without hesitation. Each time the man waved urgently, their color drained even more.

That was when they noticed the entire pickaxe, blade and handle, was soaked in blood. His right hand and the handle were wrapped in white bandages, but now the bandages were so drenched that almost none of the white showed. The kids hesitated, wondering if some of that blood might be human.

“Hello, sir.”

Yoon found his bag, slung it over one shoulder, and jumped onto the sacks without hesitation. Whatever was inside, the sacks felt surprisingly soft.

“Ah.”

Jiwoo was the next to jump. Wearing his bag in front, he threw himself onto the truck bed.

Unlike Yoon’s light landing, Jiwoo stumbled forward the moment his foot touched a sack. Thankfully, the sacks cushioned him enough to prevent injury. His face only heated at the thought that Yoon had seen him fall. Jiwoo quickly scrambled off the pile on his knees.

“You okay?”

Yoon held his arm to help him stand. Jiwoo nodded hard enough that his hair swayed, then realized he had only moved his head. He squeezed his tense throat to force out a small word.

“…Yeah.”

Anything was hardest the first time. Once Yoon and Jiwoo moved first, the others began throwing themselves down one by one. The man holding the pickaxe was terrifying, but staying on top of the bus wasn’t an option either.

“J-just grab me, Yoon…”

Jisoo couldn’t climb down by herself and reached both arms toward Yoon. Yoon briefly looked down between the truck and the bus. The siren really had been effective. The swarming monsters had dwindled to the point where he now had to look to find them.

Most of the ones that had been inside the bus had already come out. And every time a monster tried to crawl out of the bus, the man swung his pickaxe without hesitation, just like he had with the driver. The sound of metal slicing through flesh and bone rang out like background noise.

He wanted to dispose of Jisoo in a way that would look like an accident, the way Kyungtae had died, but waiting for the right timing would take too long. With no choice, Yoon opened his arms toward her. Jisoo shut her eyes and jumped into Yoon’s embrace.

Jiwoo caught himself staring at the scene with an unintentional flicker of envy. Once Jisoo landed safely, it seemed the last of the survivors on top of the bus had all boarded the truck. The driver’s side window rolled down. A man who looked five or six years younger than the one holding the pickaxe checked the side mirror and called out:

“More of them are coming this way! I’m starting the truck!”

“Go, now!”

At the pickaxe man’s shout, the window rolled back up. The truck shuddered and began moving forward. The kids quickly crouched down on the truck bed. The only one still standing was the man holding the blood-dripping pickaxe.

Kim Min glanced nervously at it. The man had saved them, but the pickaxe was still terrifying. Sensing Min’s frightened stare, the man lifted his cap with his left hand. A plain, harmless-looking face was revealed.

He seemed to be in his early fifties, the kind of man you could pass on the street without remembering.

“My name’s Kim Sangpil. Sorry, I was too out of it to greet you earlier. You don’t have to look so scared. I’m the owner of the pension over there.”

Sangpil gave a small grin and absent-mindedly gestured with the hand holding the pickaxe.

“P-please put that away…”

Jisoo pleaded tearfully. Every time she saw the pickaxe, she remembered her friends’ skulls caving in like soft soil.

“No can do. Not until we reach the pension. Things are a mess everywhere because of those monsters.”

Even as Jisoo begged, Sangpil shook his head firmly. Jisoo said nothing more and hugged her knees.

“Thank you so much for saving us. Everyone’s just terrified right now. Please understand.”

The kids were still too tense to relax. Yoon offered Sangpil a gentle smile and lowered his head slightly.

“You’re really handsome. Are you maybe a celebrity?”

Sangpil also seemed relieved by Yoon’s lack of fear. Even in the darkness, he could see Yoon’s good looks clearly.

“No, not at all. My friends and I all study at Korea University, Department of Law. We were on our end-of-term MT to Cheongha Pension, but as you can see, we got into an accident.”

“Korea University? You must all be really smart kids. And Cheongha Pension, I know exactly where that is. …Though there’s no contact now.”

Sangpil’s face brightened at the mention of Korea University but soon darkened. From his reaction, Yoon could tell something had already happened here even before the bus crashed.

“Are there other people at the pension?”

“Yeah. You saw the police car earlier, right? Luckily, two police officers are with us. Thanks to them, we’ve been driving around checking if anyone else survived and rescuing who we can.”

“You’re doing something incredible. In a situation like this, just trying to save your own life is hard enough.”

At Yoon’s words, Sangpil cleared his throat. He hadn’t been seeking praise, but it didn’t feel bad to hear it. But the peace didn’t last long. Because the streetlights weren’t functioning, the truck moved with only its dim headlights. As a result, monsters from afar were drawn to the headlights and engine noise.

“Kihik!”

“Kyaaa! Kyak!”

As the monsters appeared one by one, Sangpil clicked his tongue. He slammed his hand on the roof of the truck and shouted:

“Mr. Kang! Step on it!”

Before his words were even finished, the truck lurched forward. Their bodies nearly toppled over from the sudden acceleration. Jiwoo hugged his bag tightly against his chest to brace himself. Even with the increased speed, the monsters soon came into the light.

Crash…!

“Kyaaak!”

The truck plowed straight into a monster blocking the road. It was a man in his sixties wearing hiking clothes. The impact shattered one of the truck’s headlights.

The whole vehicle shook violently. Jisoo screamed and covered her ears, and Yejin, startled, covered Jisoo’s mouth. And that was only the beginning. No one could tell how many had been hiding nearby, monsters kept appearing, drawn to the lights like moths to a flame.

Each time they hit one, the truck’s front bumper grew more mangled. Scratched, crushed, smeared with dark red blood.

Kwaaak.

Even with the truck’s speed, some of the monsters managed to cling onto it. Sangpil drove the pickaxe down into the skull of one of them.

“Uuugh…”

A groan slipped out on its own. His arms trembled. He had swung the pickaxe more times than he could count already. Because he was used to chopping firewood at the pension, his arm strength was dependable. Thanks to that, most monsters were knocked away with a single strike.

“Kyaaaak!”

But his arms had weakened, and instead of the temple, he struck near the creature’s collarbone. Even with more than half the blade buried in its body, the monster lunged forward with its mouth open, blood spilling from its lips.

He had to pull the pickaxe out and strike its head again. But his exhausted body wouldn’t obey. Cold sweat gathered across his forehead. He wanted to let go of the pickaxe, but his hand was bound to the handle by the bandages wrapped tightly around them.

“Kiiik! Kyahaak!”

The monster’s gaping mouth came closer as Sangpil’s body leaned with it. He tried desperately to loosen the bandage wrapped around the handle with his left hand.

Crack.

The middle of the pickaxe handle split beneath an axe blade. Sangpil lifted his trembling eyes. A student, the one he had thought was tall and ridiculously handsome, was holding his favorite axe with both hands.

Yoon had tried to sever the handle in one swing, but the moving truck and the monster shaking the weapon made it impossible.

Still, the handle dented deeply from the single strike. Without giving up, Yoon kept hitting the same spot, and finally, the pickaxe head dropped away from Sangpil along with the monster. Its body slammed onto the road. The sound of breaking flesh and bone faded quickly behind them.

“…I just came back from the dead. Kid, thank you.”

“What do you mean? We’re alive thanks to you, sir.”

Yoon shook his head as if it were nothing.

“If you let your guard down even a little, this is what happens. Anyway, it’s perfect timing. Since we can’t let something like this happen again, everyone pick up a weapon. Take one from here.”

Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, Sangpil called the kids over. Inside the box Yoon had grabbed the axe from, there were many tools of similar type. Every single one had blood on the blade.

“Make sure none of their blood gets in your wounds. I don’t know everything, but I’m pretty sure getting bitten or getting their blood inside a cut is bad. You’ve all seen zombie movies, right?”

Sangpil was a zombie-movie fanatic. So when this whole disaster began, he regained his wits quickly and started doing all the things he had imagined while watching those films.

Using his pension as a base and gathering nearby survivors had been the first thing he did.

Once the kids each chose a weapon, Sangpil picked up a hammer. Then he noticed the axe in Yoon’s hands. Since it was his favorite weapon, the familiar grip lingered in his memory. When he asked to switch, Yoon readily nodded.

Taking back the axe, Sangpil looked around at the kids and continued.

“Their weak spots are the head and the neck. Smash the skull or break the neck. The neck seems more certain. Once the neck bone snaps completely, they can’t move.”

Yoon stared at Sangpil with more interest than he ever had in a lecture. He had suspected the monsters’ weakness was the spine. After all, he’d seen one completely stop moving after its neck broke backward.

His grip tightened on the hammer’s handle. He had been frustrated earlier, fighting barehanded. Now he wanted to swing the hammer and feel a skull collapsing beneath it.

“Be careful not to get bitten. If you’re on the edge and a monster tries to grab onto the truck, smash its head first. Got it?”

Looking at the long line of monsters trailing behind the truck, Sangpil warned them. Jisoo, clutching a sickle with both trembling hands, spoke with a shaking voice.

“Sir… I don’t think I can kill anything with this…”

Haena let out a deep sigh. Even now, Jisoo was acting weak, and it irritated her. But it seemed Sangpil thought differently. Seeing the pretty girl near tears softened him immediately.

“Alright. You sit inside. Stay away from the edge.”

“Thank you…”

Jisoo didn’t miss the chance. She put the sickle down in the box and went to sit where Sangpil pointed.

‘Sunbae is standing in the most dangerous spot.’

Jiwoo chose a weapon too, a shovel. Holding the handle tightly with both hands, he quietly moved to stand beside Yoon. His concern wasn’t for his own safety. His goal was keeping Yoon alive.

Of course, Yoon didn’t need his help. If he could fight off monsters barehanded, he was even stronger now with a weapon. Even so, Jiwoo couldn’t stop worrying. Because of Yoon’s personality.

If Yoon were someone who put his own life first, Jiwoo might worry less. But the Yoon he liked was more righteous than anyone, someone who couldn’t ignore another person’s danger.

In the bus, he had almost been bitten while trying to save someone else. Just remembering that moment made Jiwoo dizzy.

Even now, look at him. Yoon naturally took the rear of the truck, where dozens of monsters were sprinting toward them, screaming. If the truck slowed even a little, they would be surrounded in seconds.

“Jiwoo, it’s dangerous here. Go stand inside. I’m fine handling this alone.”

Noticing him, Yoon smiled gently and spoke.

‘I still have to protect him. I have to stay beside him.’

Just like when he threw the vitamin drink earlier, maybe he could help Yoon even a tiny bit this time.

“It’s just as dangerous for you, Sunbae. I won’t get in the way. I can pull my own weight.”

His hands tightened firmly on the shovel handle. The truck wasn’t driving on smooth ground anymore. Whenever they hit a rough area, the truck jolted. Jiwoo stumbled more than once but stayed at Yoon’s side with determination.

‘I’m telling you to get lost because you’re annoying.’

Jiwoo probably thought he was hiding his feelings well, but Yoon could see right through him. This small brat definitely liked him.

Back in high school, Yoon had been unsure. But when Jiwoo followed him to the same university and even the same department, he understood clearly.

Ah, this kid came to college because of me.

He noticed late simply because Jiwoo was quiet and never crossed a certain distance. The reason Yoon allowed Jiwoo to hover near him wasn’t complicated. Jiwoo didn’t bother him, and his quiet nature was part of it, but there was another reason as well.

‘Liking another man with the same thing hanging between his legs… this brat isn’t normal either.’

Maybe it was because he had heard the words you’re not normal from his parents more times than he could count since childhood. To Yoon, abnormal people like Jiwoo were only a little less bothersome than normal ones.

The kid who normally couldn’t even look him in the eye was now staring at him with shining eyes, voicing his opinion confidently.

While looking into those unusually dark, glossy eyes that even thick lenses couldn’t conceal, a small whisper stirred from deep inside him.

‘How long will he keep liking me? Will he still like me after seeing what I really am?’

Just from those eyes, he could tell what kind of gaze Jiwoo held toward him.

What fundamentally bothered Yoon about Jiwoo wasn’t that Jiwoo liked him. Many people liked him, whether they were women or men. Jiwoo was simply the least annoying one among them. That was all.

Even so, every time he saw Jiwoo, he kept feeling a pointless impulse.

‘I want to show this brat my real self.’

From the outside, Yoon’s life looked enviable. Good looks, intelligence, excellent physical condition, and parents who ran a solid food company. He could get anything he wanted, and people were always kind to him. Except for two, his parents.

‘…Every time I remember that you came from my womb, I feel sick, Yoon.’

His mother, whose tear-streaked face appeared whenever she realized her child wasn’t like others.

‘I told you, outside you act normal! Didn’t I tell you over and over?!’

His father, who beat him in places that wouldn’t leave visible marks if he showed even a hint of abnormality.

Because he had been mentally and physically abused from such a young age, by adulthood he’d learned to wear a perfectly normal mask. He knew that acting on the thoughts inside his head would get him locked away from society, so he learned to adapt. Even if it suffocated him, the outside world was better than prison or a psychiatric ward.

But strangely, whenever he met Jiwoo’s eyes, the desires he had forced down woke up and stretched.

It must have been because Jiwoo looked at him like he was some kind of savior. So Yoon felt conflicting emotions whenever he saw him.

He wanted to remove Jiwoo from his sight forever, yet he also wanted to keep him nearby, curious how long Jiwoo would continue orbiting him. And right now, the desire to keep him close and watch was far greater.

Telling Jiwoo to stand back earlier wasn’t out of concern. It was to hide the expression of exhilaration that would surface on his face as he smashed the monsters’ skulls.

But now he felt it didn’t matter anymore. The scale inside his mind tipped toward wanting to see how Jiwoo would react when he showed his true self.

“Alright. I’ll count on you.”

Jiwoo’s eyes widened behind his lenses, surprised. He nodded vigorously, making his glasses shake.

“Kyaahaak!”

Right then, another monster clung to the back of the truck. Gripping the metal with one hand, it clattered its teeth and tried to climb up.

Its legs were scraped away below the knee, leaving long trails of blood. Its bright red eyes dripped with murderous intent as it looked up at Yoon. The flaps of flesh on its neck fluttered in the winter wind, scattering pieces into the air.

‘I thought they had no intelligence left, but maybe that’s not it.’

A faint smile tugged at Yoon’s lips. Even though monster-Yujin had looked right at him earlier, she never thought to climb using a chair. She simply reached out her arms from where she stood. He had assumed their intelligence evaporated with the transformation.

But this one, this one looked like it was thinking.

‘Or maybe it just reached out and got lucky.’

Even so, the way this one grabbed the truck suggested it understood that holding on would bring it closer to eating him. If not that, then it was simply a coincidence.

Behind the monster clinging to the truck, others began grabbing onto its body, one after another. Whether it had intelligence or not, instinct seemed to drive them. Their bodies stretched out like a chain of children playing leapfrog, it was absurd enough that Yoon almost enjoyed observing them.

“Hey, kid! Hurry and knock it off! Otherwise more of them will keep piling up!”

Sangpil, standing behind the truck’s cabin and keeping watch, snapped Yoon out of his thoughts. Yoon rotated his wrist lightly, loosening his muscles. Jiwoo swallowed hard and lifted his shovel, ready to strike.

“Krhiik!”

The one that attacked Yoon wasn’t the first monster on the truck. One of the monsters climbing the bodies behind it crawled like a four-legged beast, darting forward at terrifying speed.

“Sunbae!”

Jiwoo shouted in alarm and pushed the monster back with the shovel.

Puh-uck.

But contrary to Jiwoo’s panic, Yoon swung his hammer and crushed the monster’s forehead in one blow. Its skull caved inward along the hammer’s curve. Rotten blood streamed down his face, yet the monster refused to die, gulping air like a gasping goldfish.

Its movements, however, slowed noticeably. Sangpil had been right, destroying the skull or snapping the spine stopped them.

Yoon wiped the splattered blood off his cheek with the back of his hand and raised the sticky, dripping hammer again.

Puhk, thunk, thunk.

With relentless strikes, the monster’s eyes bulged forward. It was a horrific sight.

“Uugh…”

Jiwoo covered his mouth with his free hand. The scattered flesh and blood filled the air with a nauseating rot. The sight alone was horrifying, and with the smell, even an empty stomach churned. While glancing at Jiwoo’s pale face, Yoon delivered the finishing blow.

“Ggurrrk…”

The monster gargled as it toppled backward. Like a bowling ball, its body rolled, and the ones clinging behind fell with it in a chain.

The relief lasted only a moment. A much younger-looking monster crawled toward them like a roach.

He looked to be in his early twenties. One arm was missing entirely. Jiwoo was almost impressed that he could move so fast with one arm. But the clothes he wore were familiar. Torn, blood-soaked, nearly rags, but the letters on his back were still faintly readable.

“He’s from our school…”

Jiwoo was right. The words HK University were familiar. The design was similar to the department jackets Jiwoo and Yoon were wearing now. Judging from the student number printed on his arm, he was a Korea University student who had entered in the same year as Yoon.

He must have arrived here before their bus and been caught in the disaster.

This time, Jiwoo couldn’t bring himself to shove the boy back. Something about the monster’s face, its rolling red eyes, felt familiar. Maybe they had shared a class once. Maybe not. But the shovel felt heavier than before.

Still, he couldn’t let pity endanger Yoon. Gritting his teeth, Jiwoo pushed the monster in the chest with the shovel…

“Haah, this takes more strength than I thought.”

Yoon exhaled lightly after smashing the side of the monster’s head in a full swing. The boy lost balance and rolled onto the road. They sped away too quickly to check if it was dead.

Whenever violent impulses filled him, Yoon trained, jiu-jitsu, boxing, kendo, anything that let him spar with people. Sometimes he went to private shooting ranges to unload his emotions.

But he could never actually kill anyone, so even in sparring he had to restrain himself. Now, he didn’t have to hold back at all. And that fact made him feel good. Maybe too good, he was using more strength than necessary. Jiwoo watched him rub his sore arm and felt a stab of worry.

‘Sunbae looks exhausted.’

All he had done was push monsters with a shovel, and even that made him feel guilty. Meanwhile, Yoon’s hammer dripped with layers of blood.

“Kyaaaak!”

“Krhiik! Kyak!”

The monsters were relentless. After one climbed onto the back of the monster hanging from the truck, they began pouring in endlessly.

Yoon looked downward. The one that had first latched onto the truck was still serving as a stepping stool for the others. He had left it there because he wanted to practice methods of killing them. But at this rate, the monsters would soon spill directly into the truck.

There were plenty of monsters he could unleash his bloodlust on anyway. The ones chasing the truck alone numbered in the dozens. The hammer, slick with dark red blood, swung cleanly toward the hand of the monster clinging stubbornly to the truck as if glued there.

With one strike, the monster’s middle and ring fingers were crushed. Even with exposed bone, the creature continued to cling on. Yoon redirected his hammer. His target was the creature’s neck, where clear bite marks showed someone had tried to tear into it.

With a crackling sound, the monster’s head collapsed sideways. Sangpil had been right, attacking the neck was easier than smashing the head.

Though the feeling of impact was more satisfying when crushing a skull.

Once the monster serving as a foothold died, the ones climbing over its back all toppled off together.

“Everyone, hang in there a little longer! We’re almost at the pension!”

Sangpil encouraged them loudly. Except for Jisoo, all of the kids held a weapon and were fighting off the monsters attacking the truck.

Monsters jumped out from the sides as well, latching onto the truck’s edges. It was the first time most of the kids fought monsters with real weapons.

The only ones actually aiming for the head or neck were Yoon and Munsu. Most others, like Jiwoo, could only shove monsters away with their tools. But even that drained their stamina quickly.

Because of the cold, they burned more energy maintaining body heat, and they had all been tense ever since the accident began.

Except for Haena and Yejin, the girls were so exhausted that it was hard to tell whether they were swinging their weapons or being swung by them. Watching the kids grow weaker, Sangpil yelled to the driver:

“Kang! We need to turn right up ahead! Most of the monsters have fallen off!”

Thanks to Yoon and Munsu’s efforts, monsters still chased the truck, but none were managing to cling on. At Sangpil’s shout, the driver lowered the window, flashed an OK sign, and rolled it back up.

The truck turned onto a completely dirt road now. The slope grew steeper. The truck shook violently, and the kids hunched down for balance.

Yoon wiped the blood off his hammer and leaned against the truck bed. Jiwoo, watching him nervously, quietly settled beside him. The wind bit at their noses like lashes across the face.

The monsters’ screams faded gradually. Even as monsters, their movement speed was close to human, which was fortunate. If they were as fast as cars, more than half the survivors would already be dead.

‘One, two, three…’

Jiwoo counted the remaining survivors. His face darkened with each number.

The two tour buses had been full, now only eleven people remained, including himself and Yoon.

They had all fought desperately to survive, yet the outcome was devastating. A flash of Kyungtae’s dead face passed through Jiwoo’s mind. If not for him, maybe twice as many would have lived.

If Yoon had been in the bus when the first transformation happened, he would have resolved it quickly.

He would have acted before anyone else, trying to save even one more person.

Kyungtae, on the other hand, had clearly been the type to act selfishly just to save himself. The same person who blocked their way into the bus would never have acted altruistically.

White breath escaped Jiwoo’s lips. The survivors were seven freshmen and four sophomores.

And Jiwoo wasn’t the only one who realized how few they were, silence filled the truck bed. Only Jisoo’s faint sniffles echoed softly.

Sangpil, instead of the exhausted kids, kept a sharp watch on their surroundings. Fortunately, the monsters couldn’t keep up with the truck speed. The road to the pension was isolated even within Gapyeong, which helped. The denser the population, the more monsters there would have been.

Because of its location, Sangpil’s pension experienced less chaos compared to other areas when the outbreak began. By luck, none of the guests at the pension turned into monsters. And the other pension owners he kept in contact with called him immediately to warn him.

Since he was a zombie enthusiast, he paid close attention when strange videos began trending online.

He never imagined things he’d only seen in movies and dramas would happen in real life. He immediately calmed his confused guests and gathered neighboring residents into his pension.

The two police officers on patrol nearby also joined, giving them a decent defensive team. They went out to look for survivors because staying still wasn’t an option.

He also wanted to search for his friends who had only managed to send a brief warning before going silent.

Saving these students had been sheer luck. He had visited nearby pensions operated by acquaintances, but none of them were themselves anymore. In despair, he spotted the kids on top of the bus and sought help from the officers to rescue them. Their shocked faces looked so young.

‘I hope my girl is hanging in there…’

The firm look on Sangpil’s face wavered briefly. He had a daughter, she wasn’t attending a university as prestigious as Korea University, but still a good one. She was a freshman this year.

She lived on her own near campus. Just yesterday, she texted that she’d stay in her rental room for the break instead of coming home.

After realizing something terrible was happening, he immediately tried contacting her, but had not been able to reach her since.

Risking his life to save these kids was partly because he hoped someone would save his daughter, too.

Just as thoughts of her face made his chest heavy, the truck passed a sign reading Sky Pension and drove inside.

In the parking lot, the police car that had arrived earlier was already parked. Next to it were two sedans, three SUVs, and a motorcycle, all with their engines off.

The moment the truck passed through the pension’s front gate, the two officers rushed out and shut the white metal gate behind them. The metallic click triggered the kids to rise from their seats one by one.

“This is the pension I run. You must all be exhausted. Let’s go inside, greet the others, and eat something.”

Sangpil jumped down from the truck with a surprisingly nimble movement for his age. The kids began preparing to get off as well.

The boys jumped down first so they could help the girls get off afterward. The last one remaining was Jiwoo. He placed the shovel back into the box, crouched on the truck’s edge, then slung his bag over his shoulder again. He intended to jump down like the others.

“Why do you look so unsteady? Don’t fall for no reason. Grab my hand and come down.”

“I’ll help too.”

Han Min stepped forward, and Kim Min also offered a hand. Jiwoo started to say he was fine, then stopped. If he fell, it would be even more embarrassing. He obediently took their hands and climbed down.

“You’re all students from Korea University, huh? University MT groups used to come around here a lot.”

Kang Hosan spoke as he got out of the driver’s seat after turning off the truck. He lived alone in a house near the pension, he had quit his city job two years ago and moved to Gapyeong for a quiet rural life.

A bitter smile crossed Hosan’s lips. Throughout the day, he had seen more monsters wearing outfits similar to the kids standing before him than he could count.

If not for this disaster, they would have been here burning their youth and having fun.

Hosan pulled out a cigarette pack from his inner pocket and walked toward a corner. The two police officers made eye contact with him and followed. After all the horrifying things they’d seen today, smokers like him craved nicotine above anything else.

That was when Sangpil gestured to the kids, who were standing around unsure of where to go.

“Come this way, everyone. It’s safe here, so don’t worry too much.”

When building the pension, Sangpil had surrounded the entire lot with a stone wall. The gaps between stones were packed with soil and hardened until it was as strong as any solid wall. At about three meters tall, it was an excellent defense structure in situations like this.