Chapter 4
Bang! Thwack—!
Two Infected lurking in the bushes collapsed instantly.
The children gasped. I ignored them and raised my rifle again, this time aiming behind us, toward the sound of more Infected drawn by the shot.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three heads exploded, their bodies crumpling to the ground. No misses. In a world where a single bullet was a luxury, you couldn’t afford to waste one.
“Agh! You scared the crap out of me!” Yongcheol shielded the children from the sight of the corpses and snapped at me. “What are you doing? You want a horde to show up?!”
“They won’t. There’s no colony around here.”
“Still…! Look at the kids. You scared them!”
“If a gunshot scared them, they’d already be dead. Now shut up and let’s move. It gets ugly after dark.”
Fortunately, the Infected were sluggish during the day. It seemed they rested, much like humans slept at night, and their advanced hearing wasn’t quite as sharp. That’s why I could afford to be this brazen.
I frowned at the sunset bleeding across the horizon. Turning to the boy, who was still trembling, I asked, “This is the right way?”
“…Yes! J-just keep going straight up!”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. It was painfully obvious he was lying. I kept my gaze on him, lowering my rifle slightly.
“The only Infected I’ve seen on this mountain were the ones I just killed and a couple of half-eaten crawlers. What’s so scary about that you had to jump in front of a moving car?”
“It’s…”
The boy hesitated, then hugged the little girl behind him. “I was afraid. Afraid I couldn’t protect my sister. That she might get hurt.”
It was the perfect answer, one I couldn’t argue with. I faltered. Beside me, Yongcheol chuckled and nudged my arm.
“Hey, why are you being such a jerk to them?”
“Shut up.”
I slung the rifle over my shoulder and pointed to the summit with my chin.
“Let’s go. You lead.”
We had to get there before nightfall. If we didn’t want to end up as dinner.
* * *
“A man of the cloth, huh.”
I muttered the words as a statue of the Virgin Mary came into view over the next rise. Behind it stood a church, perfectly intact, as if it had been spared the apocalypse entirely. I hadn’t seen a church in such good condition in years. Most churches, temples, and cathedrals had been turned into temporary shelters the moment the outbreak started.
The priest at my old church had tried to protect his flock, but back then, none of us knew about the incubation period. We thought we just had to keep the Infected out. We were wrong. People turned from within, they died, they rose again… In the end, I was the one who had to put a bullet in the head of a priest I had once admired.
“Something’s not right.”
That’s why this place felt so strange. Most religious buildings were ruins. This one was pristine. I gestured to Yongcheol.
“Yongcheol. What do you think?”
“It’s D.I… Ugh, whatever.” He scratched the back of his head and clicked his tongue. “What do you mean, what do I think? You see a problem?”
He looked genuinely confused, and I couldn’t help but stare at him like he was an idiot.
“Yongcheol, you’re an informant. Does your brain ever work? Is that head of yours just for decoration?”
“Hey! This isn’t my area of expertise!”
As Yongcheol was yelling, the church doors opened and a man stepped out.
“Who’s there…?”
He was neatly dressed, his hair combed, looking completely out of place in this ruined world. But ironically, the priest’s robes he wore made the whole picture seem strangely plausible.
“G-good heavens. Jun? Is Yeon with you?”
His eyes widened when he saw the children.
“Oh, you’re safe! Thank you, Lord!”
He dropped to his knees and opened his arms. The children ran to him instinctively.
“I was sure you were dead… To see you alive… Oh, thank God. Thank God!”
He hugged them tightly, his voice choked with emotion. As irritating as he was, the sound of Yongcheol sniffling beside me was even worse. I shifted my weight, propping the rifle on my other shoulder.
The man finally noticed us and scrambled to his feet, startled.
“You must be the ones who saved Jun and Yeon! Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. May the Lord’s grace be with you.”
He made the sign of the cross and offered a blessing, his eyes landing on the rosary wrapped around my wrist.
“Oh, you’re a sister!” he said, his face lighting up. “The Lord must have sent you to save them. Thank you.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re a priest?”
He was wearing the full getup, so the question caught him off guard. He gave a tight, awkward laugh.
“Ha, haha. Yes. It feels a bit strange to talk about professions these days, but yes, I am. I do my best to offer prayers of repentance here.”
I unconsciously fiddled with my rosary. My eyes drifted from the skin visible inside his Roman collar, to the pristine church, then back to his immaculate appearance. Finally, I looked up at the sky. It was now a deep, bloody red.
Their time was coming. Night was closing in.
We couldn’t turn back now.
“Ah… this is so irritating. Every single day is a fucking nightmare.”
The decision was already made, but that didn’t make the situation any less frustrating. A headache began to throb in my temples.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you? In front of a priest! Calm down!” Yongcheol scolded.
“Yongcheol. You’re fired.”
“What?” he asked, flustered.
I ignored him. With a sharp click, I raised my rifle and aimed it at the man.
“Answer me.”
I gestured with the barrel toward the man’s neck, to the skin visible just inside his collar.
“Since when are priests allowed to have tattoos?”
The man’s face hardened instantly, his gentle expression twisting into a vicious scowl. A moment later, a guttural shout ripped through the air, a voice so coarse it was hard to believe it belonged to the same person.
“Fuck! We’ve been caught! Fire!”
“Kill the man! Keep the bitch with the gun alive!”
Bullets tore through the air, chewing up the ground at our feet. I dove behind the statue of Mary as rounds ripped into her stone back.
Sorry about that.
“They’re firing like they’ve been waiting for us.”
I’d had a bad feeling from the start. In a world this harsh, it was strange for two children to be left all alone on the street, no matter how scattered and desperate people were. It was strange that they’d ask for help climbing a mountain so conspicuously empty of the Infected. And now, four years after the disaster, it was strange to find a cathedral in perfect condition.
They must have used this place as a base and the children as bait.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen this kind of trap, so I wasn’t particularly surprised. I just had the same thought I always did: the most terrifying thing in this world isn’t the Infected—it’s people.