And then the dream began.
It was the same dream as before. A blue field stretched endlessly in every direction, and the sky was so blue it hurt the eyes.
Blades of grass were swaying in the wind, but I couldn’t feel the touch of the breeze.
I was lying on that field. No, I thought I was lying there, but when I focused, I realized I didn’t have a body at all.
When I tried to raise my hand, there was no hand. When I tried to turn my head, there was no head. It felt as if only my consciousness existed in this place.
It was strange, but not frightening. If anything, I felt oddly at peace.
I sensed a presence from high above. Something enormous—whether it was the sky or the sun, I couldn’t tell—was looking down at me. I couldn’t see its form, but it was definitely there.
A voice resounded. It wasn’t something I heard with my ears, but something engraved directly into my mind.
—Congratulations on your achievement.
Achievement? What had I achieved? Was it talking about that condition to kill ten zombies?
—I shall grant you the ability to be immune to infection.
Infection? Zombie infection? Or every kind of infection? Then what about the arm I’d just been bitten on? Would I not be infected?
I wanted to ask, but no voice came out. No, I didn’t even have a mouth to speak with.
All I could do was accept those words.
—Kill twenty zombies.
A new condition was given. With those words, the immense presence began to recede. The blue field grew faint, and the azure sky started to be swallowed by darkness.
I opened my eyes.
I was inside the dark storage room of the convenience store. I was still sitting in the same position, leaning against the wall.
When I checked the time, only a few minutes had passed. It had felt like quite a long time had gone by in the dream, but in reality, it seemed to have been nothing more than an instant.
I looked down at my left arm. The wound I’d wrapped with cloth was throbbing. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but the bite mark itself probably hadn’t disappeared.
The ability to be immune to infection.
If those words were true, then whether this wound healed or not, it meant I wouldn’t turn into a zombie.
It might just have been a meaningless dream. But the fact that I’d had the same dream twice in a row meant there was a chance it was real, didn’t it?
My condition seemed better than I’d expected. I wasn’t shaking, and I didn’t have a fever.
In any case, I got to my feet.
I carefully opened the storage room door and looked outside.
The inside of the convenience store was still the same mess as before.
Collapsed zombies, broken glass, scattered goods. But there was no new movement. It seemed no more had come in from outside.
First, I retrieved the arrows from the fallen zombies. Every time I pulled an arrow out of a head, I felt a wet sensation, and the fact that I’d already gotten somewhat used to it was a little frightening.
Some of the shafts were broken, but most were still in condition to be reused.
After that, I gathered supplies from the convenience store. The shelves were fairly empty, but there were still useful things left.
Canned food, rice, cup ramen, energy bars, bottled water. I mainly chose things that could be eaten right away as long as I had water.
After stuffing as much as I could into my backpack, it seemed like I’d be able to last roughly four or five days. If I rationed carefully, maybe even a week.
I put on the backpack and headed toward the convenience store’s back door. It was the door that woman had blocked earlier.
A desk had been placed in front of it, but when I pushed with some force, it opened without much difficulty.
I checked the corridor, but there was no sign of anyone. As expected, the woman from earlier was nowhere to be seen.
She’d probably already run far away. Where she went, whether she was alive or not—I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know.
I closed the back door and decided to retrace the path I’d taken here. The route I’d checked with the drone would be the safest.
I moved cautiously. I stopped at every corner of every building to inspect the surroundings, and I placed my feet carefully so as not to make a sound.
Even so, I couldn’t avoid encounters with zombies. Ones standing in the street, ones bursting out from inside buildings. On the way back, I had to kill five more.
I thought I’d gotten the hang of it, but real combat was different every time.
One of them charged faster than expected, forcing me to shoot an arrow into empty air, and in the end, that arrow flew off somewhere and couldn’t be found. I’d lost one shot.
By the time the sun began to sink, I safely arrived at the camping car. Once I opened the door, went inside, and set down the backpack, only then did the tension leave me. Strength drained from my legs, and I sank to the floor.
I counted the arrows. I had twenty-two left.
If I kept fighting like this, the number of arrows could only continue to decrease. I couldn’t retrieve all of them every time, some would break, and some would be lost like earlier.
Killing zombies in close combat was definitely dangerous. As I’d experienced in the convenience store, once I got tangled up with one, getting bitten was inevitable.
One zombie, sure, I might be able to kill. But if several rushed me at once, I would have no choice but to die.
It was clear that the bow was the safest ranged weapon. Firearms were more dangerous because of the loud noise, and the only thing capable of ranged attacks without sound was a bow.
Should I make arrows myself...? I thought about it.
Carving wood into shafts, attaching feathers, putting on arrowheads. Theoretically, it was possible, but making usable arrows without proper tools wouldn’t be easy.
Or could I get more arrows somewhere? If there was an archery range or a hunting supply store, it might be possible.
For now, I had no choice but to conserve them. Shoot only from a distance where I was certain to hit, retrieve as many as possible, and avoid close combat.
My left arm throbbed. It was the spot where I’d been bitten earlier. I unwrapped the cloth and checked it.
The bleeding had stopped, but the teeth marks remained clear. The wound, swollen red, looked awful even at a glance.
More than an hour had passed since I was bitten by a zombie, but I was still fine.
My condition wasn’t bad either. I was tired and hungry, but that was only natural. I didn’t feel feverish or like my consciousness was growing hazy.
Had I really become a body that couldn’t be infected...
I recalled the voice I’d heard in the dream. I shall grant you the ability to be immune to infection. Had that been real? I still couldn’t be certain, but at least so far, it seemed those words were true.
I looked out the window. The sun was setting. This day had felt far too long. Drinking coffee with my hyungnim in the morning felt like something that had happened days ago.
I needed to eat dinner before the sun went down. Once it got dark, light could leak out, and that could draw something in—whether zombies or people.
There were enough cooking tools and water inside the camping car.
Just as my hyungnim had boasted, there was still plenty of water in the tank, and the gas burner worked fine.
I put water in a pot and tore open the cup ramen I’d brought from the convenience store. While waiting for the water to boil, I looked out the window.
The sun was setting. It was a peaceful scene. So peaceful it was hard to believe the world was falling apart.
When the ramen was ready, I slurped it down. Ramen eaten after nearly dying tasted heavenly.
The salty flavor clung to my tongue, and every time the warm broth slid down my throat, I felt the reality of being alive. I never knew a single cup of ramen could move me this much.
After finishing my meal, I took out my phone. The camping car had a solar generator with a capacity of 1200 W, so there was plenty of power.
Fortunately, the internet was still connected. It was slow, but pages loaded.
Some social media sites and communities wouldn’t open, while others did, albeit slowly. The posts being uploaded were a scene of utter chaos.
The first thing that caught my eye was a video someone had uploaded. It seemed to show a street in downtown Seoul, and the screen was filled with swarming zombies.
They stood with both arms spread, facing the sun, packing the street, and among them I could see collapsed bodies here and there.
The person who uploaded it seemed to have filmed it from an upper floor of a building. With a trembling voice saying, “It really feels like the world’s ending,” the video cut off.
I scrolled down. A single photo caught my eye.
It was a highway. Cars were tangled together in a massive traffic jam, and people had abandoned their vehicles and were fleeing.
Behind them, greenish-black-skinned zombies were pouring out.
Below the photo was a short caption: “Got stuck trying to escape. Be careful if you’re trying to take the highway.” Under it were hundreds of comments.
As I kept scrolling, the despairing posts continued endlessly.
[Mom changed... I can’t reach Dad either... What do I do? What am I supposed to do? I feel like I’m going crazy.]
[Our apartment building is completely surrounded. I hear sounds in the stairwell. I think they’re coming up. Fuck fuck fuck]
Among them, there were strange posts too. People who seemed to be enjoying the situation.
[Lololol a real zombie apocalypse is here lololol only ever saw this in games]
[I got 3 kills lol beat them with a baseball bat and their heads really burst]
[Looking for women. We only have reliable members with solid combat power, and if you’re decent-looking, we’ll protect you for free.]
Someone uploaded a video of himself killing zombies.
[You need to be at least an adult man to deal with them. As expected, aim for the head no matter what. Never get bitten.]
One of the posts with a high number of views was a video filmed from a high floor of an apartment building.
It showed two police officers leading people as they moved, but when several zombies gathered, they drew their pistols and started firing.
Fortunately, it seemed a few of them fell, but soon after, zombies began swarming in from every direction.
The incoming zombies looked to number in the hundreds—no, the thousands.
Some people were caught while trying to run away, and some simply collapsed weakly to the ground and were swept away by the zombies.
The person who posted it had written only “zombie wave” at the bottom. And below it were countless despairing comments and ecstatic ones.
Humans really are strange. To think there would be so many people getting excited even as the world was ending... Maybe they’d already been disillusioned with this world.
Another post was about infection.
[You turn into a zombie if you get bitten, but I think airborne infection is real too. It’s certain that people who weren’t bitten also changed en masse.]
So it really is something like airborne infection... Sangman hyungnim also just turned. Does it differ from person to person?
If people could turn without even being bitten, then it made sense that the world was collapsing all at once like this.
How could anyone handle it if the people beside them suddenly turned into zombies all at once? If I hadn’t dealt with it properly, I might have died immediately too.
Even as the world collapsed, people were reacting in their own ways.
People terrified, people despairing, people denying the situation, people strangely excited. Online, every side of humanity was mixed together.
When I refreshed, new posts appeared. But the update speed was gradually slowing. Posts were appearing less frequently than before. Were there fewer people left who could upload them?
I put down my phone and turned on the radio. Through the crackling static, a voice came through.
—We repeat. Citizens are advised to refrain from going outside and remain indoors. Lock your doors and windows, and do not make noise. Do not approach the infected, and if you are bitten or scratched, isolate yourself immediately. The government and military are doing their utmost to bring the current situation under control. The situation will soon be stabilized. We repeat...
The same message played over and over. It was identical to the emergency alert texts.
It was dangerous, so stay home. It would be resolved soon. I couldn’t tell whether those words were sincere, or a lie meant to prevent panic.
But when I thought of Seoul as I’d seen it on social media, the words “will soon be stabilized” felt hollow.
I turned off the radio and looked out the window. The sun had completely set, and darkness was falling. Outside the camping car, everything was quiet.
I couldn’t fall asleep easily that night.
I checked several times to make sure the camping car door was locked, and I peeked outside through the gaps in the window curtains.
I lay on the bed with my shoes on so I could rush out at once if I heard zombies approaching.
Even when I closed my eyes, the things I’d seen during the day came back to me. The zombies that had attacked me in the convenience store, the eyes of the woman who blocked the door and ran away, my hyungnim’s caved-in skull.
Those things surfaced one after another, until at some point, exhaustion covered everything. Before I knew it, I had fallen into a deep sleep.