Walking Daddy

When he saw the blood on my clothes, his eyes widened.

“What’s all that blood? Were there that many zombies?”

“I’m done cleaning up the outside area around the Brain Research Institute.”

“Did you get hurt anywhere? Are you okay?”

"I’m alright. Please have a look at this instead.”

When I handed over the journal and papers I was holding, Tommy looked at them blankly.

"What’s all this?" he asked.

“I found them at the Brain Research Institute. Find out what’s written on these documents and let me know.”

Tommy nodded, and began to go through the documents.

As I looked around, I noticed that the number of survivors had decreased significantly. When I asked Tommy about this, he grimaced and told me what had happened half an hour ago. My mind reeled as I got caught up on what had happened. I had no clue why they would act so recklessly when their lives were at stake.

I sighed.

“Where did they go?” I asked Tommy.

“They followed the tracks.”

“Please wait here for a while. I’ll check on the survivors, then escort you to the research center.”

"That’s alright. Since you cleaned up the area, we can take care of the rest."

“Wait for me, I’ll be back soon. Please go over the documents I gave you.”

Tommy’s expression grew troubled, as if he was unhappy with the fact that I’d asked him to wait again.

“Is something wrong with the lab? I want to hear why you’re holding us back.”

“Can’t you tell, given the state I’m in? I haven’t been able to take care of all the zombies inside the Brain Research Institute yet.”

Tommy looked me up and down, swallowed, and nodded.

“Please come back as soon as possible,” he said as he scratched his head.

I gave him a small bow and ran to the subway tracks. Tommy said that they’d left thirty minutes ago, so if they hadn’t been attacked by any zombies along the way, they should’ve already arrived at Dongchon Station.

The remaining eight survivors at Ansim Station were all young adults, except for the man who seemed to be in his forties. That meant all the children and the elderly had followed Yoon Jeong-Ho to Daegu Airport. I wasn’t sure if they would all be able to make it from Dongchon Station to Daegu Airport on foot.

Even though there weren’t as many zombies near the airport, it would be difficult for Yoon Jeong-Ho and his people to survive if even just ten zombies ganged up on them, since they weren’t properly armed.

Ignorance is bold, and knowledge reserved.[1]

They were leaving Ansim Station even though they weren’t used to fighting.

\'What a stubborn guy. He should’ve just begged me to take him in.’

It wasn’t that they were uptight, or had an attitude problem. It was just that they were too upright, and they needed time to adapt to change.

My blue eyes flashed as I sprinted down the tracks like an arrow. I assumed that he and his people were walking slowly and keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings. I knew I could catch up if I ran at full speed.

After running for a while, I saw a candle shimmering like a mirage at the end of the pitch-black tunnel. The survivors were gathered on the platform of Dongchon Station.

I was relieved to see them. They hadn’t left yet.

As I got closer, Kim Min-Jeong drew her pistol from her side and pointed it at me. It seemed like she got extremely nervous as she heard footsteps coming from the tracks. Fortunately, she didn’t pull on the trigger this time. Instead, she looked over at Yoon Jeong-Ho in surprise. Yoon Jeong-Ho put down the metal pipe he was holding and called out my name.

“Mr. Lee Hyun-Deok!”

The moment I saw his face, my anger boiled over, and I lashed out at him.

“Why are you so reckless?!”

I had mistakenly raised my voice. Yoon Jeong-Ho hesitated for a second as puzzlement flashed across his face, then he looked down at the ground. He was acting as if he had done something terribly wrong, as though he were a criminal.

I furrowed my brow.

“Was it that hard to apologize? What were you planning to do if there were still zombies at Gaksan Station? Why did you bring all these people here when you didn’t even know if there were zombies at the other stations or not?”

“...”

He wasn’t talking back to me like yesterday. Instead, he was now acting like a puppy that knew it had done something wrong, quietly listening to me as I berated him. I let out a deep sigh and continued to nag him.

“Is it more important to earn brownie points from me? Or do the lives of the survivors here matter more?”

“My apologies…”

“Please, please think about what comes first.”

He was the prime example of the saying ‘ignorance is bold, and knowledge reserved’. He was underestimating how strong the zombies were.

Back at Ansim Station, the damaged train had blocked off more than half of the railroad tracks, leaving only a six-meter gap. But beyond the safety of the station, things were different. It was their territory everywhere, and to lead the children and the elderly out had been a careless decision.

When I sighed and massaged my temples gently, Yoon Jeong-Ho grimaced.

"We… We wanted to fight,” he said.

“What do you mean by fight? If you fight out there, even if ten zombies rushed toward you, you wouldn’t last…”

"I\'m not talking about fighting zombies."

“Then what?”

“I wanted to fight against this damned reality.”

I frowned at Yoon Jeong-Ho’s unexpected statement, and his expression grew bitter.

“Do you think we’re afraid of zombies, or of the lethargic everyday life that we’ve been living?”

“...”

“We were more afraid of our reality, which had no future. We hated the reality that we couldn\'t get food for ourselves without Jin-Young, and that we couldn’t go outside by ourselves.”

I slicked my hair back as I listened to him.

Living day by day, with no future to look toward. The thought that the next day didn’t seem to exist, but at the same time, not knowing what to do to change that. I was familiar with that feeling more than anyone, since there was also a time when I’d been stuck in a room with So-Yeon as we waited for a rescue team that never showed up.

Despite all this… He had made a very reckless decision. It would’ve been slightly better if he’d had a clearer plan.

I sighed.

“What was your plan?” I asked him.

“Jin-Young went outside to scout. Once Jin-Young cleared the path ahead, we were planning to follow the path he made.”

“And after that, what were you going to do if my people back at the airport weren’t willing to accept you?”

“...”

Yoon Jeong-Ho remained silent. I had posed the question merely to see if he had any backup plan, but it seemed like my question already felt like a rejection to him.

His lips began to tremble.

"I… Should I get down on my knees?” he said. “Or take off my clothes? Or should I pretend to die?”

Yoon Jeong-Ho fell to his knees in front of me and looked up into my face. When I stayed silent, he immediately started taking his top off. I grabbed his arm and told him to stop. He got all flustered and tried to take his top no matter what. When I yelled at him to stop, Yoon Jeong-Ho yelled back at me with bloodshot eyes.

“Please, I’m begging you to help us! I know you’re strong. I know you can protect us. If you don’t want to protect me, at least protect the others over there. If you don’t want to protect those people either, please, I beg you, at least protect the children for us!”

Then, even Kim Min-Jeong, who was next to Yoon Jeong-Ho, got down to her knees and shouted.

"Please help us!"

"Get up. Don’t do this…”

When I tried to help Kim Min-Jeong up, she fell flat on the floor and refused to budge. She beat her forehead against the ground as she pleaded with me in a voice close to weeping.

“I\'m sorry, I\'m really sorry. I must’ve gone crazy for a second yesterday… I can’t believe I just shot you without even trying to speak with you first… I’m really sorry.”

“I said it was fine. Don’t do this. Please get up.”

“I’ll do whatever you ask me to do. I’ll work really hard… Please, please take us in.”

Her fists were trembling. Looking at her bowed head and slumped shoulders made me feel sad somehow. The other survivors behind her started getting on their knees as well. The children stared blankly at the grown-ups, and their faces grew tearful. Even the quick-witted children could sense what was going on..

I put my head in my hands and let out a sigh. This wasn’t my intention, but desperation made people abandon their pride.

The fear of not knowing when the zombies would attack, the anxiety from the dwindling food supplies, the worry that each day could be the last, and the sense of utter futility of life had all come together, and had been wearing them down every single day.

And I knew that they probably didn’t want to lose the one hope that had come their way.

I continued to remain silent, and Yoon Jeong-Ho bit his lip and spoke up.

"I… I was arrogant. At first, I couldn\'t trust the Survivor Rally Organization. I wanted to keep my distance from outsiders. But I realized what I’d done wrong only after you had given up on us.”

“Get up, then, and we’ll all talk this through. Please get up.”

“What happened yesterday… That has nothing to do with the people here. That was something I did as an individual, not as a leader or representative. So please, please take the others with you.”

I realized that they weren’t going to listen to anything I had to say right now. Even if I told them they could join us, they still wouldn’t believe me. To them… I wasn’t a saint that brought everyone together and accepted everyone.

I was a being that they had to beg to in order to survive. To them, I was at the top of the food chain.

I smacked my lips.

“If you insist… Please talk to Mr. Lee Jeong-Uk at the airport,” I said. “Mr. Lee Jeong-Uk and Ms. Hwang Ji-Hye are in charge of taking in new survivors. ”

"Then… Does that mean you’re willing to accept us?”

“It’s not that simple. Once you all come back to your senses and reach the airport, Lee Jeong-Uk and Hwang Ji-Hye will have the ultimate decision. You will need their permission.”

Only then did Yoon Jeong-Ho, Kim Min-Jeong, and the survivors behind them get to their feet.

Once I led the survivors to Daegu Airport, Lee Jeong-Uk would lead them through the induction process, if and only if he and Hwang Ji-Hye were willing to accept them. However, since Lee Jeong-Uk had told me to speak to the survivors back when I first left for Ansim Station, it was obvious that he’d be more than welcoming to the survivors.

If Lee Jeong-Uk and Hwang Ji-Hye accepted them, they would be known as the good ones, and I—since I had denied them—would be remembered as the bad guy.

But all that didn’t matter, because the people who would live on Jeju Island would be the survivors that made up the Survivor Rally Organization, not me.

I let out a breath, then continued on.

“We’ll be leaving as soon as Mr. Jeong Jin-Young arrives. All of you, collect yourselves and get ready.”

"Yes, thank you."

“Thank me later when it’s over.”

"All right."

Yoon Jeong-Ho nodded vigorously, a determined look on his face, and began taking care of the other survivors.

I knew it was presumptuous for me to decide what was good and evil, but I could answer one thing with certainty. I could tell that Yoon Jeong-Ho was merely clumsy, and that he could never become evil.

I was no different; I was also a person full of questions and doubts. In the past, I’d been suspicious of Kim Hyeong-Jun.

Yoon Jeong-Ho and I seemed to have a lot in common.

* * *

“Tommy, how much longer do we have to wait?”

“Mr. Lee Hyun-Deok said he’d be back soon, so let’s wait a little longer.”

Tommy sighed as he calmed Alyosha’s grumbling. Then, the commander of the Russian troops, who had his arms crossed silently, spoke up.

“I can’t wait any longer. Let\'s head out on our own.”

"No. Mr. Lee Hyun-Deok told me to wait.”

“Since when did he become the commander? I’m your guardian. Don\'t forget that.”

"But… He said there’s still zombies left inside the Brain Research Institute.”

“How many do you think there will be? If they’re street zombies, we can take care of them as well. And it seems like this man named Lee Hyun-Deok has already paved the way. Let’s just go on our own.”

The commander picked up his rifle and got to his feet, and the fifteen Russian soldiers joined him. Tommy waved his hands vigorously.

“Please don’t. There’s no point in going on ahead when he told us to stay put.”

“We don\'t need his help. We just need to go to the Brain Research Institute and restore the power grid, and then we’d be able to run the centrifuge or whatever, no? Am I wrong?”

“But still, we don’t have to take the risk…”

“Weren’t we going to go our separate ways once we arrived at the Brain Research Institute anyway? We just need to make the vaccine, and those people are going to go to an island called Jeju Island, right?”

“...”

Tommy bit his lower lip and remained silent.

The commander was right, but for some reason, he still had an uneasy feeling.

It was hard for him to forget the image of Lee Hyun-Deok when he’d returned, with zombie blood all over his body. And there was something about the documents he had brought back. They had ‘suspicious’ written all over them. The journal and documents Lee Hyun-Deok had given him had nothing to do with vaccines.

The document stated something about increasing the kinetic energy of the virus. Tommy couldn’t help but wonder if the research had been to drastically increase the activity of the virus and bring about self-destruction. The documents were full of research and data that he couldn’t understand.

To him, everything would be much clearer if the Brain Research Institute had samples related to this study. As Tommy was pondering all of this, the commander loaded his rifle.

"Let\'s go,” he ordered.

Tommy stood there, not knowing what to do. The commander grabbed his shirt and dragged him outside.

As Tommy got further away from the platform, he couldn\'t help but recall the last time he saw Lee Hyun-Deok; running along the tracks toward the survivors as he told him to wait there for him.

1. This saying is attributed to Thucydides, an ancient Athenian historian and general. ☜