By Zephyria 
It was early dawn when they left the bookstore, not even 9 a.m. yet. To avoid the relentless swarm of zombies, the group had no choice but to bypass their original route and take the outer roads.
“Haa… haa!”
Ha-jin desperately fled from the zombie that was fiercely chasing him.
The zombie, with a gruesome appearance of a severed nose and a melted forehead, was wearing a dazzlingly bright blue sleeveless dress. Fresh, bright red blood dripped from its exposed gums and teeth, as if it had just finished chewing on human flesh.
“Kieeee─!”
Behind the hideous female zombie, several more zombies were running, boasting visuals as intense as hers. Just like the Aberrants they had encountered near the reservoir last time, their charging momentum was ominous.
‘No doubt. Something has changed.’
Indeed, lately, they had been choosing to flee rather than directly confronting zombies more often.
Ha-jin hurriedly took Jeong Byeol from Jeffrey, who was not picking up speed easily, and ran, scattering sweat.
“Uncle! Run a little faster! You can do it!”
Whenever his feet threatened to get tangled due to too many thoughts, the child’s cheering voice rang sharply in his ears, jolting him awake.
“Cheer up, cheer up! Do Ha-jin!”
“Hoo…! Byeol, you little rascal, who told you to call your uncle by his name like that, hoo?”
“Don’t talk, just run!!”
Even as his heart pounded, fearing his neck would be torn off by a zombie any second, Ha-jin couldn’t help but smile at Byeol’s cute nagging. He wouldn’t have been surprised if someone pointed fingers at him for being out of his mind.
After a desperate sprint, the group barely managed to shake off the monsters, but they couldn’t catch their breath for a while. Jeffrey, having run on an empty stomach, lay sprawled on the ground, retching. His back, much thinner than when he first came to Korea, kept heaving.
[Hoo… isn’t that a church? Should we take refuge there for a bit?]
Jeffrey, having quenched his thirst with water they brought from the bookstore, gestured towards the right.
Following his suggestion, the group turned towards the church with its towering spire. The surroundings were eerily quiet as they headed towards their destination.
‘What is it?’
A chilling sensation swept past Ha-jin’s neck. Sure enough, as they entered the church lobby, they immediately encountered a group of about six survivors sitting in a circle.
Men of various ages, ranging from their 20s to 40s, glared at the group with sharp eyes. Ha-jin was inwardly flustered by the hostility in their eyes, but he tried to compose himself and opened his mouth.
“Excuse me. Is this….”
Before he could finish his sentence, one of the men suddenly bared his teeth like a hungry wolf and lunged at them. There was no time to prepare. Eden quickly stepped in front of Ha-jin, who had frozen in surprise. He fiercely grabbed the attacking man’s Adam’s apple.
“What the fuck?”
As he uttered a low curse, another man rolled on the floor and charged at them, as if on cue.
And 20 minutes later.
“I’m sorry. I was just hungry, okay? So please, untie me.”
The man sobbed desperately, but Ha-jin tied his hands and feet with rope, his expression stern. Beside him, men covered in white powder were being relentlessly subdued by Eden.
“Please. It’s not like we wanted to be scary to you, sirs…. Please….”
Even as he meticulously knotted the thick rope, the pleas continued. Ha-jin shook his head, shaking his stiff wrists in the air.
“We’ve been through so much ourselves, we had no choice but to strike first, okay? Of course, that doesn’t make it right, but… sniff, if you let us go, we promise we won’t do anything and will leave quietly!”
Ha-jin, his brow deeply furrowed, retorted sharply at the man in front of him.
“Are you calling that an excuse right now? You’re saying you were attacked by others, so you try to kill innocent people?”
Ha-jin recalled what had just happened and clenched his fist tightly, as if in disbelief. The men kneeling before him all wore innocent expressions, as if they were blameless, but he clearly remembered how vile and despicable their faces had been just 20 minutes ago.
The men had ignored Ha-jin’s request to rest quietly and tried to take their belongings by force. In the process, Byeol was pushed back hard, and when the child burst into tears, a fistfight finally broke out.
Eden mounted the man who had pushed the child and threw punches, while Jeffrey swung his hammer wildly in the air, stopping the men from getting closer.
When Ha-jin stepped in to resolve the situation, someone fearlessly attacked Eden from behind with a sickle. It was a truly critical moment.
‘Jeong Tae-geon!!’
Ha-jin, instantly enraged, used a small fire extinguisher lying nearby to strike the back of the head of the man with the sickle. With a thud, the villain dropped the sickle and collapsed to the ground without a sound.
At the same time, someone raised a kitchen knife high and charged at Ha-jin, but the attacker’s attempt was in vain.
‘Kkeuaaak! Aaaak! Someone get this son of a bitch off me!!’
It was because Pie had bared his sharp teeth and pounced on him.
The commotion caused an ominous feeling to stir outside the church. The faint howling of zombies could be heard from somewhere. Ha-jin, to resolve the situation, removed the safety pin from the fire extinguisher he was holding, then,
‘Cough, cough!!’
‘Keuheup…! Kehk, kehk…!!’
Sprayed it directly at the group of survivors. He gripped the nozzle and swung the fire extinguisher menacingly, panting.
‘Everyone calm down before the zombies come!!’
The men, overwhelmed by the constantly spraying white powder, eventually surrendered and desperately shielded their faces. As the chaos subsided somewhat, Eden quickly began tying the villains’ hands and feet with the rope he had brought, and the result was what they saw now.
“We’re sorry! We must have been temporarily insane!”
“We’ve been starving for so long…! We’ve been eating dirt for three days now!”
The ferocity with which they had attacked like demons was gone, and the men huddled in the corner of the bathroom, trembling pitifully.
They begged with tears streaming down their faces, and when no one paid them any attention, they suddenly began to justify their actions, yelling and screaming.
“You know it too! If we don’t rob, we’ll all die! We can’t even get on a plane, so we have to survive like this, what else can we do!”
The man, who was suddenly ranting about airplanes, soon burst into a crazed laugh. Ha-jin watched the swaying black curly hair and decided that he was no longer worth paying attention to, and stood up.
Meanwhile, Eden had found black duct tape in the group’s luggage and meticulously sealed their mouths.
He had no energy left in his body, having wasted so much strength since morning. To finally get some proper rest, Ha-jin and his group entered the nave where the parishioners worshiped.
The ceiling and windows of the central aisle were all ornately decorated with arches, and at the front was a reddish-brown altar with a painting of ‘The Last Supper.’ Ha-jin sat down on a wooden pew, rubbing his back.
Eden naturally took a seat next to him.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No, I’m fine. How about Jeong Tae-geon?”
“As you can see, I’m perfectly fine.”
Ha-jin roughly wiped the beads of sweat flowing down his temples with the back of his hand and sighed deeply.
“I’ve seen all sorts of crazy bastards. At least the guys we met at the Ranch tried to talk, but these guys just tried to kill us out of the blue….”
The image of the villain wielding the sickle at Eden flashed in his mind, and he ground his teeth.
“Were you very surprised?”
“Yeah, well… but it seems like there are a lot of survivors around here.”
The number of survivors they had encountered this morning felt much greater than the total number they had encountered during their previous journey. But like the ones they had just encountered in the lobby, most were filled with wariness and hostility towards strangers.
One boy even spat at Ha-jin, who had asked where they could hide, telling him to give them food before asking such questions.
“And I don’t know if it’s just me, but the zombies.”
Eden nodded as if listening, roughly sweeping Ha-jin’s sweaty bangs back.
“I think they’re evolving. They couldn’t even move if they were too decayed before. Now it doesn’t seem to matter at all. You’ve been feeling it too, right, Jeong Tae-geon?”
“…….”
Ha-jin took his silence as agreement and said as if making a resolution.
“We don’t have much time. If we’re delayed here any longer, it’ll get even harder, so let’s try to get to the Maintenance Depot this afternoon, even if we have to push ourselves.”
“Alright. We’ll try to get to the Maintenance Depot today, even if it’s late.”
Unlike his indifferent reply, there was tenderness in his eyes as he looked at Ha-jin.
“Uncle, I want to look around here. Can I play that piano?”
Then, Byeol, who had been lying on the floor with Pie, shook Eden’s arm. Eden reluctantly stood up at the child’s continued whining.
“I’ll go take a quick look around.”
“Okay.”
As he led the child and Pie out of sight, Jeffrey, who had been sprawled out on the opposite pew, called out to Ha-jin.
[Ha-jin.]
No sooner had he turned his head at the call than a palm-sized paper box flew towards his chest.
“Oh.”
[I don’t need it anymore, so you use the rest.]
The item that fell onto Ha-jin’s lap was a small box containing waterproof bandages. He rolled the crumpled square box in his hand, staring at Jeffrey with a bewildered expression. Jeffrey scratched his chin awkwardly, then turned his gaze away.
“Thank you.”
He replied belatedly, but there was no response. Ha-jin realized that the awkward few words they had just exchanged were all the conversation he had had with Jeffrey in days, and scratched his forehead as well. He waited for Jeffrey’s emerald eyes to turn back to him, but there was no particular reaction, even with his persistent gaze.
If they arrived at the Maintenance Depot today, this might be the last chance he had to talk to him. Ha-jin hesitated for a moment, then stood up from his seat. He quickly took a seat next to Jeffrey, who visibly panicked and sat up from his half-reclined position.
[What?]
Jeffrey narrowed his eyes as if wary of Ha-jin, who had approached him. Ha-jin glanced at Eden and Byeol, who were sitting on the piano in the distance, and whispered softly.
“Can we talk for a bit?”
[What about.]
Despite the colder-than-expected response, he nonchalantly placed his hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder.
“I feel like you and Jeong Tae-geon have been fighting a lot lately, is it because of me?”
[…….]
“What were you talking about? Did Jeong Tae-geon say he was going to stay in Korea with me?”
Jeffrey glanced at Ha-jin’s white hand on his shoulder, then turned his gaze back to the distance. After moving his lips for a while, he sighed and replied.
[Yeah. He was spouting nonsense about going to Neverland with you. But that’s not the only reason I’m angry.]
Jeffrey’s face, which was always innocent and playful, was frighteningly stiff. He continued in a dry voice.
[The worst part is that you two decided on such an important thing and just informed me. Even if such a story came up, shouldn’t you, Ha-jin, have come to me to ask for my understanding?]
It was an unexpected criticism. Ha-jin was momentarily speechless and gaped.
[I’m not your extra. I’m a friend, family, and colleague who has survived this goddamn reality with you with all my might.]
“Jeffrey.”
Ha-jin called his name but couldn’t easily continue, feeling embarrassed. The whites of Jeffrey’s eyes were already a little red.
[Why, if you have a mouth, say something.]
“…….”
[Damn it, did I really have to say all this? Fine, forget about me. What about Jeong Byeol? What about Byeol, who’s suddenly about to be separated from his uncle?]
Jeffrey seemed to barely restrain himself from cursing, but he couldn’t hide the veins bulging on his neck from excitement. As he roughly swept his fallen curly hair back to cool down, Ha-jin quietly swallowed hard.