Chapter 8: Prison.

‘Bang! Clatter, clunk’

I hear the sound of the door closing and locking.

The dark, cramped basement warehouse room where I’m currently trapped.

There’s mold growing in places, and on the floor are a few worn blankets and clothes that could be used as bedding, and one crude plastic chair, and…

“Hello?… Are you… were you also caught and locked up here?”

Three women besides me.

“If you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to…”

‘Shake shake’

First, I need to find out accurate information about this place, so I have to get any information about this place from the people who were here first.

“Um, are you unable to speak?

‘Nod nod’

“I see, my name is Seo Yu-jeong, the sister lying there is Rebecca, she’s a foreign mix. The girl over there is Han So-jeong, what’s your name?”

“Ah, I said you couldn’t talk, right? You can tell me later.”

Being unable to speak is a problem, but I don’t have a name to give.

To say my name when I was a man… it doesn’t really match my current appearance.

“It’s going to be very embarrassing at first, but if you get used to it…”

“…?”

“As you can guess, our treatment here is not very good.

There’s no way to get out of here, and even if we do, I don’t know if we’ll be able to get to another place safely.”

I heard about the approximate situation here from a woman named Yu-jeong who was trapped here.

First of all, this place became a base as a few groups of survivors overlapped in a warehouse complex with a low density of zombies.

In the early stages of the disaster, there was still some humanity left, and they endured each other with the hope that the government would soon rescue them,

But as with any survivor group, the problem began to appear as the situation dragged on.

The government’s emergency disaster broadcasts and the radios that asked about the situation of survivor groups in various places gradually turned into useless burdens that only made static noise,

Most of the food supply sources, such as nearby marts and markets, were either empty or had too many zombies to enter, and a food crisis came.

To make matters worse, around the time the rumor that the regular army had been annihilated spread, the base finally had a commotion.

There was a group that wanted to reduce the amount of supplies going to people who were of no help to survival, such as the elderly, the disabled, and children, or to kick them out altogether, and a group that said that humanity should not be abandoned yet.

It was a natural result, but the group with the superior power, which wanted to abandon unnecessary people, won, and they immediately put it into action.

The people who were no longer needed by the group were kicked out with only minimal supplies, and their whereabouts are unknown.

Most of the people who remained in the base were thoroughly selfish and only concerned with survival, and that’s how the current situation came about.

“Rebecca became like that after resisting the leader, and So-jeong and I came here after being caught while living in a group at the orphanage when things got bad here.”

“The situation at the orphanage was dire, but at least there…”

Here, there was no food given at all, it was really the worst situation.

Only a very small number of people who had even a shred of conscience secretly gave them their share of food,

The boss seemed to be tacitly approving of this, because these people could not be replaced if they died, and it did not harm the community.

“So-jeong wasn’t originally like that either… She’s still young, but I can’t bear to…”

I laughed in disbelief after hearing that.

No matter how bad the situation is…

The fact that humans can become so ugly, and that this situation has happened to me, is really…

‘Clatter… Clunk’

The door opened. And four men came in.

“Okay, which one will we do today?”

“You’re excluded because the boss has something to do with you, Yu-jeong, you did it yesterday. Hmm?..”

I’m bombarded with unpleasant gazes just by looking at them.

Whether it’s lucky or not, I was excluded from that, and what’s left is…

“Our So-jeong hasn’t had fun in a while, right? Today…”

“Ha… Ugh, ah, ugh…”

Seeing So-jeong, who was younger than me, burying her head in her arms and sobbing in the corner, my heart ached.

It was then.

“Hey, stop it.”

A woman named Rebecca, who had been lying in a corner of the room like a corpse without saying a word, got up.

Then she walked towards the men without hesitation.

“Watch closely, this is reality.”

She turned her head to me in the middle and threw a word, then walked out of the room, brushing past the men without hesitation.

The men chuckled as if they had expected it and locked the door familiarly.

What remained was only the sound of sobbing and patting in the quiet silence.

Several hours passed.

Darkness had fallen outside the window, and Rebecca returned with an even thinner face and silently collapsed in the corner again.

So-jeong cried herself to sleep, and Yu-jeong was nodding off next to her.

‘Clatter, clunk’

Yu-jeong got up in response to the sound of the door opening again.

This is a never-ending process, isn’t it? The person who came through the open door was different from before.

‘Thud thud…’

“…?”

And what was placed on the floor was one can of tuna, one chocolate bar, and one bottle of water.

“Um… Thank you, Kim Hyeong-seok ajusshi.”

“I’m sorry for what happened earlier today.”

The man who was locking the door while bowing his head deeply, it seems to be the voice I heard in the car earlier.

“So-jeong, wake up, you have to eat something… Ah, Rebecca-unni…”

Yu-jeong shook the sleeping So-jeong to wake her up, and Rebecca, who had been like a corpse, got up and took only the chocolate bar without saying a word and went back.

‘Crunch’

I watched the two women silently opening the tuna can and sharing it.

“Ah, you can eat with us…”

‘Shake shake’

I’m a zombie anyway, so I don’t need to eat it.

Rather, what I want to eat is…

“Are you really okay?”

‘Nod’

Replacing the answer by nodding, I turned around, leaving the scene of the meal behind.

Behind me, the sound of trying to savor it slowly, even for a little longer, I adjusted while imagining the detailed plans for the future in this place in my head.

That’s how the peaceful night passed.

‘Clatter, clunk!’

“Hey, you come out!”

Now, it’s time to start the plan.