Kyungsoo blinked awake, his dream disintegrating instantly, leaving only a trace of foreboding. Above him, stars twinkled through the wispy clouds, the moon already tucked away in the morning’s early hours. He shifted his hand to his right, searching by reflex, but found only empty space beside him. Again. He sat up groggily, frowning at the empty wooden planks where Chanyeol should have been. The deck had no fresh scorch marks, so Chanyeol hadn’t been awakened by another nightmare. Kyungsoo pressed his hand against the wood, but the smooth timbers were as cool as the night air. There was no telling how long Chanyeol had been gone.

The night was so still Kyungsoo could hear his own heartbeat, the quiet interrupted only by the occasional warble of a lone cicada nearby. It should have felt peaceful, but the silence irritated him like an ill-fitting shirt. He fished the burner phone out of his back pocket, but the screen was empty. No missed calls or monosyllabic messages of warning from their anonymous guardian. And yet, Kyungsoo couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong.

The ancient paper door of the main house slid open with a rasp, and their elderly host shuffled onto the doorstep, fully dressed in his customary hanbok. With slow deliberate motions, he picked up the walking stick resting on top of his shoes, and leaned on it as he carefully arranged his shoes outward. Kyungsoo cleared his throat and the old man paused, blinking his cloudy eyes in surprise.

“You’re awake?”

“I can’t sleep anymore,” Kyungsoo confessed. “Can I take you somewhere?”

The old man straightened as he finished his preparations and pointed uphill, towards the village center. “I heard many people pass by, walking that way.” He began making his way to the gate, his stick tapping back and forth. “Your friend followed them.”

“In the middle of the night?” The gate whined as Kyungsoo hastily pulled on his shirt, and stuffed his feet into his shoes. He scrambled to catch up to the blind man he was supposed to be guiding, the muddy path at his soles. “Is there a storm coming?” That would explain this sense of dread. Another powerful storm might wash this village away completely.

The old man drew in a deep breath through his nose. “The air doesn’t smell like rain.” Kyungsoo took an experimental sniff of the night air. All he could smell was the salty sharpness of the sea. The old man slowed his pace, tilting his ear back toward a house they had just passed. His wrinkles deepened as he listened to a faint sound only he could hear. “Someone is singing a funeral song.”

“Did an elder live here?” Kyungsoo wondered aloud, studying the house. The home was small, but seemed well kept. A few toys were scattered near the entrance, evidence that a family with young children was living there. The old man clasped his hands on top of his walking stick, and bowed his head in respect. Rational Kyungsoo knew the best thing to do was to mind his own business and move along.

Instead, curious Kyungsoo gingerly approached the house. He tried to make his footfalls as quiet as possible so he wouldn’t disturb the household if they were in the midst of a ceremony. As he crept closer, he could make out the broken melody of an old hymn, meant to ease the passing of the dead into the next life. The front door was ajar, the barely audible song filtering through the crack. The feeling of something not quite right skittered beneath his skin, raising goosebumps. He tapped lightly on the aluminum doorframe, the small noise echoing obscenely into the sudden silence.

“Hello?” Kyungsoo whispered, inching the door open, his eyes straining into the dark. “We could hear you from the street. Is everything okay?” When there was no answer, he pushed the door open fully, letting the light from the street lamp seep into the dim interior. Fingers brushed against his ankle, and Kyungsoo jerked away instinctively. After a breathless moment, his eyes adjusted, and the shadows on the floor resolved themselves into the shape of a woman lying on the floor, one hand outstretched.

Kyungsoo patted the wall beside him blindly until a light switch clicked under his fingers. The house fluorescents buzzed to life, illuminating the perfectly normal, un-haunted common room. He sank to his knees by the woman’s side as his eyes darted around the small room, checking for blood, a weapon, any sign of fight. Nothing seemed out of place. The woman’s thin shirt was damp and nearly transparent with sweat, strands of hair plastered to her face and neck. She was practically gray, barely breathing.

“Oh, boy,” Kyungsoo muttered. She was clearly ill, probably with the same flu that had been scything through the village over the past few days. He gently shook her shoulder.

Her eyes fluttered open, but her gaze was unfocused, wandering past Kyungsoo as though he wasn’t there. Tears leaked from her eyes. “My babies.” The words were barely formed, more air than voice, and her head rolled toward the still-darkened bedroom off to the side.

Kyungsoo thought of the toys he’d seen in the yard and rose to his feet to investigate. The bedroom had no door, just a curtain separating it from the main room. He swept it aside to see three motionless, blanket-covered figures on the floor. Two of the outlines were so small. He reached down to pull back the blanket, but hesitated. If the flu had killed these people, prudent Kyungsoo should leave them for the proper authorities. Reckless Kyungsoo whipped the blanket away in one motion, then recoiled immediately. The husband and two daughters were dead— but they hadn’t gone quietly. Both of the little girls had bloody fingernails, and flecks of pink dotted the dried foam crusted around their mouths. They had been dead for hours, rigid bodies arranged in tragically peaceful poses. The husband wasn’t posed like his daughters, just sprawled where he had fallen. The spinal fluid leaking from his nose and ears still glistened wetly, he’d been alive less than an hour ago. His face and arms were covered in deep scratches and tiny imprints of teeth. Kyungsoo tugged his shirt over his nose as a makeshift mask, then retrieved the blanket and re-draped it carefully across the still figures. The wife must have used the last of her strength to cover the bodies before collapsing. They might have died horribly, but at least they could go to the next life knowing they had been cared for. He was sliding the curtain closed on the death-filled room, when he heard the light scrape of the old man’s walking stick against the door frame.

“Wait!” Kyungsoo whirled, a warning about the sickness in the air on his lips, but the sick woman was faster. She lunged at the old man as he stepped over the threshold, sinking her teeth into the side of his leg. He screamed, a thin horrible sound as he fell backwards, flailing. Kyungsoo crossed the distance between them in two steps, and ripped the rabid woman away from the old man. She laid bonelessly where he dropped her, pulpy flesh drooling from .

“Too old,” she wheezed, and then she was still.

The old man was fading fast, his hands clutching the air desperately as his breath rattled in his chest. He grabbed onto Kyungsoo’s shirt when he knelt beside him, clinging, his sightless eyes wide with terror.

“You’ll be fine, harabeoji,” Kyungsoo told him, the reassurances spilling out automatically even though he could feel the life draining from the old man’s body. The bite wound wasn’t even bleeding that much, just a trickle that pulsed with his hearbeat, slower with each passing second. Kyungsoo fumbled his phone from his back pocket and had 119 dialed before he realized what he was doing.

The old man’s grip abruptly loosened on his shirt, his limbs twitching as his last breath escaped with a reluctant sigh. Kyungsoo stared down at the empty husk.

“119. What’s your emergency?”