Nayoung slumps onto the couch, fumbles with the remote control and turns on the television. Sleepovers at Jieqiong’s usually result in her going to bed the last, simply because her energy is mostly conserved and isn’t drained as quickly as the other nine girls. She watches as the television screen flickers, before she lowers the volume to the minimum and surfs over to the news.

 The Korea Times has reported the sudden widespread of flesh-eating humans. Although these humans were initially categorized as cannibals, the recent reports have proven that this is, however, not the case. These humans, suffering from an unknown disease, were seen to have eyes filled with a milky-white substance, obscuring their pupils. Their postures, in addition, differ slightly from humans. While typical humans stand upright, these patients were observed to move with an ungainly shamble, having their knees and ankles bent at awkward angles, with a prominent lean to one side. Although there are no scientific evidences to prove the cause of these flesh-eating humans, it is believed that these humans are the living dead.

With the outskirts of Seoul now infested with an unknown amount of patients, the government has declared a state of emergency. Homes across the state are to receive pamphlets warning them of how to prevent the spread of this disease and what to do if a patient suffering from this disease falls dead and then starts to show life again. Updates will be made to the report as details become available. Citizens are advised to continue to watch television and online new sources for the latest details.

Nayoung switches to another channel when she hears the sound of footsteps approaching. Her feet are resting on the coffee table as she leans back onto the couch, her hair is tied up into a bun and the several loose strands tickle her exposed shoulders. She mentally groans when her eyes land back on the television.

“Cartoon Network?” is all Siyeon says when she plops down beside her. The snicker she hears afterwards proves that her act is being seen through.

“I watch the news,” Siyeon resumes speaking, as the television continues to play on deaf ears, “about the outbreak, living dead and all.”

Nayoung nods slowly, her eyes trailing from the television to the girl beside her. “Do you buy it?”

“It’s the news,” Siyeon throws her hands in the air with a huff, “It’s not like people report about stuff with fabricated evidences.”

An arm reaches for the remote control to turn off the television, and suddenly the atmosphere transforms to one that contrasts with the usual bubbly image of the group.

“You don’t have to hide it from anyone, Nayoung. We’re not kids anymore.”

Nayoung thinks she hears an edge to Siyeon’s voice, thinks she hears a tinge of annoyance that rarely surfaces when the younger girl talks, but she lets it slide. Everyone is restless these days. She gets to her feet and stretches her right arm forward, helping Siyeon up. They make their way to their respective guest rooms, and when Nayoung peeks into both rooms to see eight other girls sleeping soundlessly, she vows to herself to make sure that no harm ever comes into their way.

//

She watches in horror as another body falls limp to the ground, twitching amongst eight other bodies. Bites on their necks, bites on their arms, bites on their legs, Nayoung can only tighten her grip around her shotgun helplessly as she observes the way nine girls start to transform into something hideous and grotesque. Flesh-eating creatures.

She scoots backwards when one of them stands up, trotting towards her. She shakes her head, feels tears streaming down her face, but it only encourages the rest to follow suit, and suddenly she’s surrounded with nine of them.

“No!”

Surrendering her gun, she covers her ears and folds herself into a paper crane, shutting her eyes closed.

“No! Please, don’t! Please, please, please-”

“Nayoung?”

Her forehead is dotted with beads of sweat, and her shirt is soaked throughout. Her breathing is labored, her heart is hammering against her chest and she can hear her heartbeat in her eardrums. She looks around the room, and although it is pitch black, she could make out the sleeping bodies of her members. She slowly heaves a sigh of relief.

A pair of arms circle around her waist, pulling her close, and Nayoung is interrupted from her thoughts. She lets Jieqiong hold her for a few seconds, before she feels a hand being placed over her trembling fingers and another wiping away the sweat on her face.

“Nightmare?”

She hums softly in response, watching as Jieqiong walks over to their wardrobe to pick out a shirt of hers. She pulls her tank top over her head, and changes into the white tee Jieqiong picked out for her. It smells fresh, with the strong smell of detergent, and she feels warm. She allows herself to get tucked in like a little child, her head now resting on the dry side of her pillowcase, and her blanket pulled up to the tip of her chin. When Jieqiong leans down to deliver feather-like pecks on her forehead, she catches her by the wrist.

“Stay with me?”

Her voice is barely above a whisper, afraid that if she speaks a little too loudly she’d wake the other members up, but Jieqiong hears it loud and clear. A cold rush of wind tickles her bare legs when the blanket is momentarily removed, but when Jieqiong slips in to wrap her pair of arms around her waist, Nayoung has never felt warmer.

She feels Jieqiong snuggling her head into the crook of her neck, feels another kiss on her temple, and suddenly her phobia of nightmares is washed away.

“Sweet dreams.”

And Nayoung lets her eyelids flutter close peacefully.

//

Nayoung wakes up to a scream, high-pitched and blood curling - Eunwoo’s. She jolts to a sitting position, and Jieqiong, who also appears to have heard it, spares her a glance.

“What was that?”

Wasting no time, Nayoung scrambles to her feet and sprints out of their shared bedroom with Jieqiong tailing behind her. She hears another one now, a little higher pitched, a little more strangled, and she makes a beeline towards the kitchen. She spots Eunwoo, her brown locks tucked behind her ears, but something is off. Her hands are shaking by her side, and a broken mug lay beside her right foot. Nayoung cranes her neck slightly to peer over Eunwoo, and she sees it. An undead.

Stealthily, Nayoung reaches for the knife on the counter, keeping her eyes on the creature as it growls at Eunwoo, seemingly unaware of Nayoung and Jieqiong’s appearance. Then, Jieqiong inhales her breath sharply, and the creature snaps its head and widens its eyes at them.

It takes a step forward, but not before Nayoung throws the knife, successfully taking the aim at its forehead, between his eyes, and he falls to the ground with a loud thud. The trio watches as it writhes at their feet, and Eunwoo bursts into tears. Jieqiong immediately rushes forward, hushing the other girl with reassuring words, but Nayoung has her eyebrows still furrowed, her ears still perked.

Stepping out of the kitchen, she takes note of the mess the creature has made. Broken windows, bloodstained marble floors, the creature definitely has a low sense of intelligence when it comes to hunting its preys. And if one of them managed to make it way here, Nayoung is certain that there are others.

She walks into their shared bedroom, and by now, the other members are up and awake. In her room, Sungyeon and Yewon are huddled together, and Yebin is gathering their things. Nayoung signals for her to continue, the house is indeed not safe anymore.

She walks over to the other room, sees Kyungwon calming down a traumatized Kyla, while Minkyung is looking at her questionably.

“Is e-everything okay?” Minkyung asks, and while her face remains calm, is shaking as she talks.

Nayoung nods, trying to exhibit a tough demeanor, but then she notices the absence of one of the girls.

“Where’s Siyeon?”

Minkyung looks at her like she’s shocked, her face is pale and is agape. “Wasn’t she outside with Eunwoo?”

Nayoung dashes outside. She takes a double check in the other room - no signs of Siyeon. She walks back out to the living room, and although Jieqiong has successfully calmed Eunwoo down, again, there are no signs of the missing girl. Nayoung makes her way to the bathroom.

Siyeon shrieks when the bathroom door is being flung open, and Nayoung stops in her tracks when she sees the younger girl aggressively washing her hands. She lets her eyes trail down, and at the hem of Siyeon’s sleeping trousers, she spots red liquid dripping from her ankle, pooling at her feet.

“It’s not my blood!” Siyeon immediately cries out in defense, lifting her pants to reveal the absence of bite marks, and Nayoung exhales slowly. She hears the other girls panicking, so she grabs Siyeon by the wrist, but the younger girl doesn’t budge.

“I’ll meet you outside when I’m done cleaning.”

Nayoung has her suspicions, but she doesn’t pry. She walks out to see the other eight girls huddled together, and she leads them to escape through the window. Peering through the broken windows, she spots a group of undead, no more than five of them, robotically knocking their heads against the front door. Nayoung directs for Yebin to hop out first, and subsequently, each of them follows suit.

“Hey.”

Nayoung tenses when feels a tug at her sleeve, but relaxes when she realizes it was Siyeon. She pats her lightly on the back.

“Go.”

Dressed in their sleeping clothes and armed with nothing except for a few knifes, they squint their bleary eyes and make their way to nowhere in particular.

//

As their hands are clammy with sweat and their hearts are pounding against their chests, they let their legs walk them through the dark night, where the eerie silence is accompanied with the absence of the moon, and they can barely see through the wisp of fog.

The dead leaves rustle and crunch quietly as they step on them, and their breaths are shallow as they try to steady their breathing. Ever since their escape from Jieqiong’s house, there has been no signs of attack, thankfully, but seeing the dried blood on the pavement and the several dead bodies scattered on the paths as they walk, all of them knew better than to let their guards down.

Travelling aimlessly without any strategies, not to mention the lack of supplies, is like playing Russian roulette with uzis – it’s just a bad idea. They have been alternating between roads and forests now, but whenever they ventured into the forest, they never dared to go too deep, in case they lose their ways or bump into a large group of undead without having sufficient weapons to fight back. They mostly stayed on the roads, but even as they do, the roads are not much safer either.

Nayoung continues to take the lead with the other nine members following closely behind her. They take a new road now, but the emptiness of the place sends a chill down her spine. A silent, cool breeze lifts the dust from the road, shrouding the world in a copper haze, and there are barely any footprints around, barely any tire tracks to scar its surface, and it’s almost as if there are no evidences of the existence of the outside world.

Nayoung feels a body pressing close to hers, and she turns slightly to see Jieqiong clutching the sleeve of her pullover. She offers her a smile, and gets one in return. Nayoung swivels her head around to check on the other members, and although their faces are all plastered with mixtures of worry and fear, they are all fine.

Nayoung looks over across the street, and as she cups her hands around her eyes and squints, she spots a small house. She knows it’s wrong to trespass into people’s houses and simply steal their stuff, but at times like these, morals and principles probably don’t exist anymore. And to put it bluntly, the owner of the house might even be lurking somewhere else, waiting for preys to set their teeth on.

“I’ll go over to that house to have a look while all of you stay put here, understood?”

The rest of the girls nod in silence, but when Nayoung slips her hand into her pockets to grab hold of the knife, Siyeon steps in front of her.

“What are you going to do?”

She swallows thickly, and tries to come up with the best way to phrase her sentence. “I’m getting supplies that we need for our survival.”

There is a look of disapproval from the other girl, but she doesn’t try to argue otherwise. She steps aside, but this time, Jieqiong stops her instead.

“You’ll be safe, right?” she asks quietly, the cold wind making her long, black hair cover half of her face. Nayoung smiles and nods slowly, brushing her fingers through Jieqiong’s hair such that they are combed back in place. She feels a squeeze on her palm, before she takes off to the other side of the road.

//

The door makes a creaking sound as Nayoung pushes it open, and the rusty hinges squeal like fingernails on a dusty chalkboard. She tries to hold back from coughing, making sure her grip around her knife is tight as she holds it slightly above her hips.  She walks on tiptoes, eyes scanning the living room for signs of living. She tries to ignore the rapid palpitation of her heart, but when she hears a loud thud coming from inside the room, she clasps her free hand over to muffle her scream. Instinctively, she squats behind the kitchen counter.

A man staggers into view, hands outstretched and face sunken in. His mouth twitches, and the smell of his rotting face makes Nayoung’s stomach churn as she tries to suppress the urge to throw up, but she finds herself unable to peel her eyes away from his ghastly towering features. He has a bite mark at the base of his neck, and Nayoung remains crouched at her position, deciding between two options – fight or flight.

Clutching her knife, Nayoung is about to stand and brazen it out when she catches sight of the larder door. The wood creaks and judders against the frame as she pulls it open, but the man is currently busy stumbling over his own feet and grunting in the process to notice. She throws herself inside and shuts the door. She hears the man holler for help, hears the horrifying sound as he transforms from human into a terrifying creature, but she stays still. At times like these, she learns to prioritize, learns to keep to her main goal. She shuts her eyes, hearing how jagged her breathing is, hoping it isn’t too loud.

When the sound subsides, it is instead replaced with low grunts and heavy footsteps. Nayoung opens her eyes and takes a look around the room. She thinks quickly, grabbing all the beef jerky left and dumping them inside her backpack, before she slings it over her shoulder. She makes her way to the front door slowly, trying not to attract the attention of the undead, while she picks up a couple of daggers and pistols at the nearby shelf.

Once she’s had all of them in her pockets, she takes one of the rifles in her hands, aims it at the back of the man’s head, and shoots. He falls to the ground face first, staining the floor with a dirty red color. She sneaks out of the house, makes sure there aren’t any more of them nearby, before she crosses the road to the other end where it leads to the forest.

Jieqiong is the first to run to her, seizing her by the wrist to crush their bodies against each other’s. Nayoung feels Jieqiong lean down, the latter’s head heavy on her shoulder, but she relaxes into her touch. The other members start to throw themselves into the hug, and Nayoung can’t help but feel her heart swell.

“We’ll do fine,” she says when they start to detach themselves from the hug and when she finally gets to breathe, “I’ll make sure we do fine.”

She s the bag to distribute the weapons, but she keeps the food and bottles in her bag.

“Can you manage?” Kyungwon asks, her eyes filled with concern.

Nayoung pats her head with a reassuring nod. She looks into the forest, and thinks that maybe, they could find a solution there. She looks back, and sees the nine other girls waiting for her cue as they look back at her with admiration. She cracks a smile, the widest one today, and clears .

“We ready?”

//~//

A/N:  I apologize for taking such a long time to update this, I got a little too absorbed while catching up on Unpretty Rapstar 3 lol (I didn’t get to watch it when it aired) and I just want to say I love Jeon Soyeon so much, that kid is amazing (that kid is my age lmao). And do check out IOI’s last song if you haven’t, it’s so so beautifully written and composed (Jihoon boy is a genius). I can’t listen to the song without having my eyes b with tears lol.

Lastly, I hope the first chapter was decent. The initial plan was to start the series with the girls in the midst of the apocalypse, but I thought it’d be a little more interesting to include the situation prior to their journey (to god knows where). Comments are always appreciated! Thank you all for waiting and reading (: