Chapter 9: Torture.

‘Thud thud’

“Walk with your eyes down, don’t even think about doing anything stupid.”

Passing through a dark corridor without electricity, I glanced around from time to time and roughly grasped the geography here.

Should I say that my experience working in loading and unloading helped?

The building currently used as the base by this group is a remodeled logistics warehouse building.

The advantage of being a place with a low floating population even before the zombie incident and the numerous abandoned trucks without owners were strategically placed as barricades to reinforce the weak parts of the defense, creating a kind of fortress.

It is easy to monitor the outside from the inside, and due to the nature of warehouse buildings with almost no windows,

There are almost no areas where zombies can invade from the outside, so it may be the best as a survival camp, but it also has some comparable problems.

The first is expandability. If it was an empty warehouse in the first place, the situation might have been a little different, but if you are faithful to the function of a warehouse, many existing items will inevitably be piled up.

In addition, warehouses are generally high buildings but due to the containers being stacked in layers, they are overwhelmingly designed as single-story buildings compared to tiered buildings such as 1, 2, 3, and 4…

Therefore, unless you take the risk and increase the living space to the outside, you have no choice but to make the most of the limited space inside the building, which leads to internal complexity.

Increased complexity of the internal space creates blind spots, which works favorably for me.

The second is geographical isolation. As mentioned earlier, a low zombie density is clearly an advantage.

However, from the perspective of survival, this area has various difficulties in obtaining the daily necessities needed to live.

Unless this warehouse was previously a food warehouse, it is necessary to replenish a considerable amount of supplies from other areas in order to maintain the group,

To do so, some of the group’s personnel will inevitably have to be outside at all times.

It’s easier for me if there are fewer heads to deal with.

The third is limited entrances. Because the entrance is limited, it is easy to concentrate firepower to prevent zombies from invading from the outside and it is easy to manage.

However, if you think about it the other way around, if you only control the entrance, everyone, both inside and outside, is helplessly isolated.

The internal personnel cannot get out, so they will gradually get tired with limited supplies, and the external personnel, on the other hand, cannot enter, so they have no choice but to wait for the situation to be resolved without any refuge or supplies, or to accept the damage.

There are a few other disadvantages, but they are not useful for my current plan, so pass.

By maximizing the fact that I am a zombie that has not yet been discovered, the structure of the warehouse, and their carelessness,

I have to take care of them one by one quietly like a guerrilla.

First, they have no information about me, so in order to elicit their carelessness in response to their attitude…

‘Knock knock’

“Boss, I brought that girl we found during the search yesterday.”

“Come in.”

I have to be seen as a fragile kid who is thoroughly violated, as they are used to.

“Okay, kid. I’m going to ask you a few questions from now on.

Depending on your answers, you can walk out of this room on two feet, or you can get out on all fours, or maybe you can only stand on two feet that are not intact.

The first impression of the man called the group’s boss is a menacing muscular man in his mid-30s.

“You understand, right? I don’t have much patience, so it would be good to keep that in mind.”

‘Nod’

I could attack in this position, but he’s not the boss for no reason, so he’s definitely not an easy opponent.

Even if I succeeded, it would be too much to handle the attacks of the subordinates waiting outside the room.

“It’s not a very satisfactory answer, but… good.”

But if you think I’m just going to be a victim, that’s not it.

‘Thud’

A wad of paper thrown on the desk, among which the most familiar to my eyes…

“There were a lot of interesting things among the possessions you had, including this map.”

“It seems that you have investigated this entire area quite well, there are no other markings, only Xs.”

I can’t answer that I was a wandering zombie, or that I knew this situation would come someday.

“I don’t remember seeing you before, how much do you know about us?”

There’s no need to deliberately provoke the boss. However, I couldn’t make a growling sound, so…

“A pen?… Wasn’t she not talking, but was she mute?”

If he understood the gesture of pulling the wad of paper in front of me and writing with a pen…

I’ll soon know if she’s really mute or if she’s pretending.

The boss took out a pen with a subtly distorted face and threw it at me.

‘After this situation occurred, I lived in a government shelter and after it collapsed, I wandered around.’

I didn’t know about the existence of this place until I was dragged here,

I made it up with the most realistic content I could think of.

“Hmm… good, so what do you have to say?’

“?…”

It seems that my lie didn’t work, perhaps because he was already used to this kind of thing.

“How long are you going to lie to me, you sh*t!!”

‘Crack!’

He grabbed my left arm in an instant and twisted it as it was.

I’m grateful that I don’t feel pain because I’m a zombie, and I pretend to be in pain as much as possible to match his actions.

If I roll my eyes roughly and shake my body convulsively as if I’m having a seizure due to the broken left arm…

“What? Is she really mute? Hmm… No, just in case.”

‘Snap’

This time, he bends my left index finger back.

As before, I scream silently with my mouth and bang my head on the desk as much as possible, pretending to be in pain.

“Hmm… Is it real? Good, I have to write, so I’ll leave your right hand alone.”

Honestly, I expected this to happen to some extent…

It seems that I will be spending a terrible time in a different sense.

It seems that it’s not enough to tell the truth yet, so next is…

In order to act desperately, I grab a pen in my right hand and scribble wildly on the wad of paper.

‘Please save me, I was wrong, I’ll say anything…’

I can see the corners of his mouth slightly rising. But that’s it.

“Everyone says that, but they’re still playing tricks, so why don’t you bear with it a little more.”

Even if I’m a zombie, it’s not that I don’t feel pain, but it’s not that I’m not harmed at all…

“Hoo… If you had done well from the beginning, it would have been good for both of us.”

A few hours of pain in a different sense passed, and only I, who was a little tired, and I, who was (pretending to be) unconscious, were rolling on the floor.

“Hey!”

“Yes, Boss!!”

“Lock this b*tch up in a separate room.”

“Yes, I know… Uh…”

“What, you want to be like this too?”

“Ah, no. You carry her.”

“Oh.. okay.”

I feel my body floating roughly.

Even I, who am a zombie, am really exhausted, but the plan is successful.

In my vision, carried upside down by his subordinates, only the pen rolling around with the end dyed in a different color was visible.

‘Squeak… Bang!’

Inside an empty container without a single ray of light,

I recalled the red dot that was stamped on the neck of the guy called the boss, who was probably relaxing his tired body now,

I finally smiled slightly in the darkness, thinking of the very small wound that he had unknowingly gotten.

The cornerstone for destruction has been laid, all that’s left is to wait.

The countdown to destruction has begun.