Chapter 4 Part 4

The first thing Yoo Min-ho saw was the back of a woman dressed in a business suit. She was wearing high heels, and one of her ankles was bent at a grotesque angle, exposing white bone. She was trembling intermittently, her head buried in the corner of the hallway, but she froze instantly at the sound of the elevator doors opening. In the deathly silence that made his heart pound, the woman slowly turned around. Yoo Min-ho was frantically slamming the close button, but those brief few seconds while the machine responded felt like an eternity.

The moment he realized he was making eye contact with a zombie whose head was strangely tilted, the woman began to run toward him, dragging her tattered ankle. If only she had taken off her shoes, perhaps she could have found balance, but the mindless woman approached with a pronounced limp and bizarre movements. It was a horrifying sight. At the sound of her dragging footsteps, two other zombies loitering at the end of the hallway started running over as well.

“…Spray the fire extinguisher! Quick!”

The moment I shouted, a chiiik sound of pressurized spray erupted. The narrow elevator, and even the hallway, instantly filled with thick, murky smoke, making it agonizing to breathe. But what was even harder to endure than the lack of air was the obstructed vision. Everything was so opaque that distinguishing objects became impossible. I couldn’t see anything beyond the haze—not Yoo Min-ho, nor the zombies. Unconsciously, my jaw began to tremble. It was a moment filled with sheer terror, not knowing when a zombie might suddenly spring out.

I gripped the handle of the fire extinguisher tighter, forcing strength into my hands to prevent the zombies from escaping, and slowly moved toward the side of the elevator door. My plan was to use the mop handle to barricade the elevator entrance. Simultaneously, with a screeching sound, the mop handle I was holding shook violently. It was hard to tell if the zombie that had been sprayed was thrashing after being hit in the throat, or if another zombie had entered and bumped the mop handle. It was chaos.

Soon, a recorded announcement declared the doors were closing, followed by a thud as the elevator doors locked into place. However, the narrow elevator was still filled with thick extinguisher foam, making it impossible to see even a foot ahead. With sight blocked, my senses of smell and hearing became acutely sensitive. I could detect someone breathing, the sound of something bumping and rattling, and an undeniable stench of decay vibrating through the air.

At that moment, I heard a sound like someone exhaling with a crushed throat—a hiss. Turning my head, I saw a human silhouette directly in front of me. One person, no, two people.

In the hazy smoke, I vaguely made out a zombie with a broken ankle that had entered and was lunging at Yoo Min-ho. He was standing right in front of me, as if protecting me, shoving the zombie’s face away with the fire extinguisher. The moment I saw the perilous sight—how close its sharp claws were to scratching my face—I completely lost control of my reason.

I couldn’t tell if it was the fear that everything might reset after getting this far, or the terror that Yoo Min-ho might die. By the time I regained my senses, I had already pulled the mop handle out of the zombie’s throat and shoved it into the woman’s mouth.

Thanks to that, the other freed zombie came lunging forward with a terrible racket. We were trapped in the cramped elevator with two zombies. The familiar wave of despair washed over me as I judged that surviving further was impossible. Just as I was resigning myself to fate and picturing the next loop in my mind, Yoo Min-ho suddenly snatched the mop handle from my hand and violently slammed the stick against the wall, shaking the elevator. Thwack, thwack, thwack. A gurgling, metallic sound, as if boiling, echoed from the zombie’s throat. I couldn’t tell what was happening from the noise alone.

– 49th floor, doors opening.

As the elevator doors opened upon reaching our destination, the thick haze that had filled the small space slowly began to dissipate. Only then did my vision clear enough to distinctly see Yoo Min-ho’s back. Everything around was saturated, a mire of pitch-black blood—the elevator walls, the mirror, the advertisement panels, even the ceiling.

Yoo Min-ho stood blocking my path, gripping the mop handle as if he meant to splinter it. Following my gaze down the wooden stick dripping with blood, I saw it had pierced through the woman’s mouth and gone all the way through to impale the male zombie behind her neck. The sight of the zombies skewered together, writhing on the stick, brought a wave of relief mixed with bewilderment. I wondered if this level of strength—piercing a skull with a wooden rod—was something achievable with bare hands.

The moment I regained my senses, I checked first to see if Yoo Min-ho was wearing his goggles. Fortunately, the cheap, Chinese-made work goggles were protecting his eyes. He was a pain because of his prickly personality, but he certainly followed orders well enough.

“Hurry up and get out!”

Yoo Min-ho shouted without turning back toward me. But naturally, I couldn’t get out by myself. We joined forces, wedged the mop handle against the wall next to the door, and backed out of the elevator.

…We had finally reached the 49th floor. We had succeeded. But there was no time to bask in the joy. I couldn’t be certain the zombie virus hadn’t spread to the 49th floor. 

Clutching Yoo Min-ho’s hand, I walked down the hallway and asked, “What unit number?”

“What?”

“Your apartment. What’s the number?”

“…Follow me.”

Finally stopping in front of unit 4907, Yoo Min-ho quickly began punching in the passcode. Beep, beep, beep. My anxiety climbed vertically with every repeating electronic tone. I thought I could hear hurried footsteps and the rattling, phlegmy breath of a zombie coming from somewhere. It was hard to distinguish between auditory hallucination and reality.

Dii-di-ding—.

With a cheerful melody, the front door finally swung open. It wasn’t a glass wall, but a steel fire door. It was the entrance to a perfect fortress, one that absolutely could not be opened without knowing the password. The realization that we had finally succeeded overwhelmed me with emotion, and tears streamed down my face. Even though the building was still swarming with zombies and our safety wasn’t guaranteed, my heart swelled with relief.

However, as is true of every thriller movie, the biggest twist always arrives the moment you let your guard down and strikes you in the back of the head.