By Zephyria 
“Grrrr… Woof!”
Pie barked fiercely outside the trailer. While the sounds of people calling out each other’s names served as background noise, Eden roughly grabbed Ha-jin’s arm. Ha-jin’s upper body swayed weakly from the force.
“Just a moment, Jeong Tae-geon…!”
“There’s no time for this. Abandon your luggage and only take your weapons.”
He gripped the blood-stained axe in one hand and added,
“It seems the bombs we planted in the forest have gone off.”
“Yes…?”
Ha-jin, belatedly grasping the situation, hurriedly got up. While picking up his weapon following Eden, he didn’t forget to grab the poker cards and brooch he had received as a gift, stuffing them into his pocket.
Stepping outside, he saw a red blaze rising far away, accompanied by the acrid smell of gunpowder. Hee-soo, standing at the entrance of the campsite, was attaching food and luggage to the back of a motorcycle.
“Is everyone out?! Check each other to see if anyone’s missing! Pack your things!”
“We’re all out!”
A married couple waved their hands vigorously at Hee-soo. Everyone staying at the campsite, except for one person who had gone out, all seven of them, gathered at the entrance.
While Hee-joon attached a large oil drum to the side of the bike, Hee-sung climbed onto his motorcycle.
“Everyone else, escape to the transmission tower on the mountain behind us! Hee-joon and I will assess the situation from the front and catch up right away!”
At Hee-soo’s shout, everyone except the siblings started running towards the back with the barbed wire fence. Pie quickly followed behind them.
Bang! Kaboom…!
The sound of another bomb exploding was heard in the distance. Eden firmly held onto Ha-jin, who almost fell as his legs gave way. The couple running beside them exchanged words in a panic.
“Are we abandoning this campsite?”
“I don’t know!”
“Could it be those bastards from back then!?”
“That’s not what’s important right now…!”
Whether the one who stepped on the bomb was an intruder or a Zombie didn’t matter. Once a commotion broke out, it was only a matter of time before the Zombies in the vicinity gathered here.
Eden, who arrived at the barbed wire fence, jumped out first. Pie and Ha-jin also followed him, climbing over the barbed wire fence that came up to their chests. The two of them safely escaped the campsite and were picking up the weapons they had thrown on the ground beforehand.
Suddenly, the rough idling sound of a motorcycle was heard from inside the campsite. It was quite different from the exhaust note they were used to.
Vroom─
Following the noise, Ha-jin turned his head, and at that moment, a man climbing over the barbed wire fence screamed sharply and fell to the ground.
“Aaaagh!”
Following him, the woman also screamed as if being torn apart and collapsed. It all happened in an instant. The couple who had not yet escaped outside the barbed wire fence fell to the ground bleeding.
“What…!”
Ha-jin, flustered, took a step back and tightly grabbed Eden’s hand. A long-haired man, grinning vilely, appeared in front of the fallen couple. He chuckled as he climbed onto the unfamiliar motorcycle.
Ha-jin’s eyes, which had been half-lost, suddenly widened.
“Wow… who do we have here?”
The long hair, muttering as if to himself, approached them, with only one barbed wire fence between them.
“Aren’t you that guy from back then? The murderer who killed our boss?”
At those words, Ha-jin’s forgotten memories quickly resurfaced. Snake-like, long, narrow eyes, dirty hair that flowed down to his shoulders…. The man was definitely one of the rapists they had encountered on the way to Neverland.
Meanwhile, the campsite was starting to be engulfed in flames. Ha-jin cast a dazed gaze at the chaotic site. Several burly men were seen wandering around the trailers and tents, robbing food and luggage. They were also familiar faces.
“Take everything you can get!”
“Search over there too!”
The long hair, who had been sneering at the flustered Ha-jin and Eden, swung a bat threateningly in the air. The baseball bat was studded with sharp nails like thorns. The man tapped the barbed wire fence with the gruesome-looking weapon, warning,
“You’re next. Stand still right there.”
He soon turned around and began to gather his companions.
Ha-jin bit his lip resentfully as he looked at the couple who had fallen inside the barbed wire fence. Blood was constantly flowing from their crushed and mangled heads. A tremendous amount of blood, enough to have killed them already, was leaking onto the ground. It was already too late to rescue them.
He had to escape. Ha-jin, firming his resolve, strongly grabbed Eden’s hand.
“Let’s go up…!”
The two of them led Pie and ran at full speed towards the forest. The shouts of the rapists calling out “Murderer bastard” were heard from behind. It wasn’t too difficult to shake off the men, but Zombies, drawn by the sound of the explosions, began to appear one by one.
They overcame several near-death crises, pushing through the bushes and climbing towards the summit. While climbing the hill where there was no proper path, the densely grown grass and thorny bushes painfully scratched their skin. Scratches were embroidered all over their bodies.
Ha-jin’s stamina, who had been lying down listlessly for days, was naturally exhausted quickly. He gasped, covering his trembling thighs and blood-tasting throat with his hands.
“Haa, we’re going to the transmission tower, right?”
Eden nodded at the difficult question.
“There’s a high probability that there’s an access road there. When we arrive, let’s try to get out that way.”
“Lee Hee-soo said he would come to the transmission tower too, whew, shouldn’t we wait first?”
“The campsite is gone anyway, and those people are no longer relevant to us.”
Eden’s voice was so chillingly cold and detached that Ha-jin seemed to snap back to his senses for a moment. Realizing that he had unknowingly included them in the category of companions, Ha-jin couldn’t find anything to say and bit his lip tightly.
The two of them continued to climb the mountain with Pie until the pursuers’ presence faded. After a difficult climb, the transmission tower was already right in front of them.
Ha-jin crawled up the steep slope until his fingernails were stained with grass. It was a height where he would have fallen and been left behind long ago if it hadn’t been for the hand firmly supporting his body from behind. He worked his trembling legs and finally set foot on the summit.
Ha-jin, craning his neck, panted as he looked up at the huge transmission tower in front of him. A cool breeze blew over his sweat-soaked face.
Turning around belatedly, he grabbed Eden’s hand, who was following behind. While pulling Eden with all his might, Pie also jumped up onto the asphalt. The bodies of the two people and the dog who had climbed up from the edge of the cliff were all covered in dirt.
“Haa, ha….”
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Yes. How about Jeong Tae-geon?”
“I’m fine.”
Ha-jin repeatedly caught his breath and looked down. The cliff, which was much more dizzying than he had felt, filled his eyes. Cold sweat ran down his spine at the dizzying cliff.
“Do Ha-jin.”
He raised his head at the call. As soon as their eyes met, Eden opened his mouth as if he had been waiting.
“If it’s okay with Do Ha-jin, I’m thinking of going to the Yongwoon Institute now. What do you think?”
“…….”
“I don’t intend to rush you. If you want to rest a little longer anytime….”
“Woof!”
It was then. Suddenly, Pie barked loudly and pounced on Ha-jin’s body. Pushed by Pie’s weight, his body rolled across the asphalt in an instant.
“Ugh…!”
Ha-jin, pinned under the dog, flailed his arms and legs in a panic.
“What’s wrong with you all of a sudden…!”
He barely pushed off the mounted Pie and struggled to raise his upper body. At that moment, something quickly passed in front of his eyes.
‘What was that?’
Shifting his gaze, he saw something flying like a beast and climbing onto Eden. It didn’t take long for him to realize that the one who had attacked him was a child wearing a training uniform.
Pushed back by the sudden force, Eden took a step back and wrapped his hands around the neck of the zombified child as if to defend himself. He barely managed to block the attack, but the Zombie clung to his clothes like a leech and struggled even more violently. All those scenes were replayed slowly in Ha-jin’s eyes like a broken projector.
There was no time to do anything. At some point, Eden’s body, entangled with the Zombie, was tilting towards the cliff.
“Jeong Tae-geon!”
Ha-jin, widening his pupils, hurriedly got up. At the same time, Pie covered him once again with his heavy body.
“Woof!”
Pie clung to his clothes as if trying to stop Ha-jin from going to Eden. It was already too late when Ha-jin pushed Pie away with all his might. Eden, who had been standing at the edge of the cliff, was gone.
“…Jeong Tae-geon?”
At the same time as the call, a loud crashing sound was heard from beyond the cliff.
“…….”
Ha-jin’s head, which had been emitting hot heat, cooled down. Just like when he found Jun-seok as a Zombie, he felt like all the blood was draining from his body.