The office that Jong Kook’s group was hiding in was, unbeknownst to them, right next to the southern entrance that Gary’s group had just fought its way through. When Gary had fired those shots, it startled everyone in that office and woke up little Dream, who was now screaming at the top of his lungs.

Ji Hyo didn’t know what to do. She bounced the baby in her arms and tried shushing him, but the baby’s shrill cry only got louder.

“He’s probably hungry,” Kwang Soo said. “When was the last time he ate?”

Ji Hyo shrugged, a worried look on her face.

“Babies that age don’t eat, Kwang Soo-yah,” Jong Kook said. “He needs milk.”

Kwang Soo looked at Ji Hyo with a suggestive grin.

Ji Hyo looked back curiously. “What? You think because I’m a woman I can just produce milk like that?”

Kwang Soo shrugged. “Can’t you?”

“Aish, Kwang Soo-yah,” Jong Kook said. “Don’t you know anything?”

“How am I supposed to know how that works?” Kwang Soo asked. “I don’t have kids. I… I’ll never have kids…” His voice trailed off now as he sighed.

Jong Kook and Ji Hyo both looked at each other with pained expressions and shared sadness over Kwang Soo’s situation, but the baby was still crying and they knew they needed to refocus their attention on quieting Dream before every zombie in that stadium began making their way to that office.

“We can’t stay here,” Ji Hyo said.

Jong Kook nodded. The only reason that he had pushed them into this office rather than looking for an exit was because he had wanted to find a safe place for them to hole up while he returned to the field to find Byul’s body. But Ji Hyo had since talked him out of that. She had said that Haha would be grateful that they had saved Dream, and that keeping that baby safe should be his priority now.

Kwang Soo walked to the door. “I’ll go first, hyung,” Kwang Soo said. “It doesn’t matter if anything happens to me, right?”

Ji Hyo reached for Kwang Soo’s hand. “You can’t think that way,” she said, holding back her tears.

Kwang Soo nodded and then slowly pulled the door open and hobbled out, keeping his weight on his good leg as he checked out the hall. When he peeked around the corner, he saw the southern entrance, the sunlight lighting up that end of the hall. There was a pile of bodies on the floor, partially lit by that light, but no zombies in sight. He now returned to the office and quickly gestured for Jong Kook and Ji Hyo to come out.

When all of them turned the corner and reached the entrance, they stepped over the three zombies on the floor that Gary had shot and walked around what remained of Ryeowook, not recognizing the idol or understanding what had happened there. All they knew is that whatever had happened at that entrance was over, and the way out was clear for them. 

Gary’s group was long gone by that time. He had led the two remaining Super Junior members, Donghae and Siwon, and the two remaining EXO members, Suho and Kai, to Woldeukeom-ro, the same major route that the RM and YG groups had driven to get to the stadium. All of the lanes were still blocked with cars, but now that they were on foot, they were able to get around the cars easily. Gary and Donghae had plenty of energy, but Siwon had begun falling in and out of consciousness from the bite to his hand, and Suho and Kai were still exhausted not only from all the running, but also because they hadn’t eaten or slept in days. The rescue center had been their one hope, and now that it was gone, they felt defeated.

“We should stop,” Donghae said, nudging Gary.

Gary pulled on the leash for Caesar to stop and then looked around at the traffic jam they were standing in the middle of. They had been squeezing past the many cars, unable to see far in any direction because of all the congestion. “Stop where?” Gary asked.

Donghae nodded over to the blue city bus just in front of them. “We can keep low in there and rest a while,” he said.

Gary glanced back at Suho and Kai, both pale and still somewhat in shock over everything that had happened. Behind them, Siwon was holding his bandaged hand. Siwon had been staying strong for so long, but his calm façade was slowly cracking; he was obviously in pain. Seeing this, Gary called the others over and told them the plan.

The boys pried open the bus door and quietly made their way onto the bus. Gary quickly glanced around to check for zombies, but all that he could see were suitcases, purses, and personal items scattered across the seats, seemingly left behind by passengers. From the looks of things, it appeared that the passengers had left in a hurry. Following Caesar, the boys got on their knees and crawled down the aisle to keep out of view of the windows, lest a passing zombie see them.

As Suho, Kai, and Siwon passed out on the seats, Gary and Donghae searched through the personal items for anything useful. The dog, too, sniffed around.

“Got some rubbing alcohol here,” Donghae said, pulling a brown bottle from a plastic bag full of medicine inside one of the suitcases. “And bandage wrap,” he added. Gesturing toward Siwon, he said, “We can get that bloody shirt off his hand and try to wrap it with this.”

Gary nodded and continued searching through the purses a few seats down. The last one he checked was full of food – a plastic container full of kimchi, two bags of chips, and some dried squid. Just as he was about to tell Donghae of his find, he saw Donghae holding up bottles of water.

“Found this, too,” Donghae said.

Gary smiled. Between the food and medicine they had found, and now water, it was almost too good to be true.

While the tension in Gary’s group was lessened somewhat, the tension in CL’s group had grown considerably. They had managed to escape the stadium at the northern end and were walking along a secluded terracotta-colored stone patio in the back of stadium, an empty expanse seemingly free from zombies. Dara and Bom were still close together, holding hands, trying to stay alert for any danger around them, while Seungri now walked beside CL in front. But CL hadn’t spoken to Seungri since he pushed her during the attack on Mir. She didn’t understand why Seungri had done that, why he had tried to stop her from helping Mir. She was angry with Seungri and she let it show.

Seungri knew that she was mad but didn’t know why. In his mind, he had saved her. It could have been both Mir and CL bitten during that attack if not for him.

Dara and Bom had noticed that the distance between CL and Seungri had grown, even the physical distance, with the two now walking at least a car’s length apart from each other. This, in contrast to how close Dara and Bom were, huddled up beside each other, bonding in their shared pain over not knowing where G-Dragon and T.O.P. were. The hope that the boys were still alive was the only thing keeping the two girls sane right now.

The four of them walked quietly past the patio area and followed the walkway alongside an outside football field out back.

Seungri looked over the green turf of the fenced-in field as they walked past, thinking about how strange it looked empty. He had become so accustomed to seeing cots everywhere that to now see an empty field was somewhat surreal. “I wonder why they have another field back here,” Seungri said, hoping to start conversation with CL.

CL didn’t answer. She just looked straight ahead and continued walking.

For the next few minutes, as they continued walking alongside the practice field out back, Seungri tried to think of ways to approach her, to say something that would incite a response. But he couldn’t think of anything. Growing more frustrated, he ended up saying, “I don’t know why you’re mad. If anything, you should be grateful.”

CL now flashed him a look full of ire. “Grateful? Grateful for what?”

Seungri was completely confused now. “I… I saved you!” he said.

CL’s mouth fell open. “Is that what you think? You think you saved me? You didn’t save me. You pushed me. And because of that, Mir is dead.”

Seungri was speechless. He didn’t know what to say. How could she see the situation so differently from the way he saw it? He tried to explain his side now. “I pushed you to save you,” he said. “I saw that zombie about to bite you and… I didn’t even think, I just had to do something.”

“That’s right,” CL said. “You didn’t think.”

They continued walking, now almost near the end of the field. They could see the World Ball up ahead, that sculpture rising high above the trees, marking the northern end of the stadium property where it bordered the surrounding city streets.

The quiet and lack of zombies had lulled them into a sense of safety. They should have been concerned with the fact that a major street was just ahead, a street likely filled with zombies, but CL and Seungri were both still rehashing that scene with Mir over and over again in the minds, and Dara and Bom had yet to stop thinking about G-Dragon and T.O.P.

“You know I wrote that letter, right?” Seungri asked, largely out of desperation.

CL suddenly stopped walking and closed her eyes. She nodded.

“Then you know how I feel about you,” Seungri said. “And if you can understand that, then you have to understand how I felt when I saw that zombie about to bite you. You’re right – I wasn’t thinking, not about anything but you.”

CL looked at him and sighed. She could see the pain on his face, his thick eyebrows arched in sadness and confusion, his puppy dog eyes yearning, seemingly, for her approval of him, of what he did. She definitely felt something for him. She didn’t know if she felt as strongly about him as he obviously did her, but there was something there, something that had been brewing between them for a long time. Was it love? She didn’t know. But she cared deeply for him. That much she did know. Not wanting him to be hurt any longer, she reached for his hand.

Seungri smiled and accepted her hand, feeling a great sense of relief.

The four continued walking, now nearly upon the end of the fenced-in field where the path that they were taking would soon end at the sidewalk of that major cross street, World Cup Buk-ro. They caught a glimpse of that street ahead, the greenery on both sides blocking the view of much else, but that glimpse had been enough to stop all of them from going any farther. They could see the passing zombies, the walking corpses staggering down the sidewalk and street. There weren’t a lot of them, not the hundreds that they had encountered at the stadium, but there were still more than the four of them could handle, especially as they only had one weapon – the gun that CL was still carrying.

“What should we do?” Dara asked, inching closer to CL and Seungri in front of her.

CL shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.

G-Dragon’s group had outrun the horde that had chased Daesung and Lee Joon out of the stadium, had made it past the zombies in the parking lot, and was now following the scenic bicycle path that bordered the stream as they headed south, the complete opposite direction that CL’s group had been heading.

“I don’t know how long this path is,” G-Dragon said. “But if we stay close to this stream, it should lead us down to the river. And then we just need to find a way to cross that river so we can get to the marina.”

“If we find a boat on this end, we won’t have to go to the marina,” T.O.P. said. “We can just go straight to the island.”

G-Dragon quickly shook his head. “No, we’re not changing the plan. The girls know about the marina. They know that’s the backup. The only chance we have to see them again is if we stick to the plan.”

“Ji Yong-ah, you need to start preparing yourself for the reality that they might not have made it out of there,” T.O.P. said. Since they had begun walking that path, T.O.P. had been fighting that very reality, trying to hold onto the hope that he would see Bom again. But the more they walked, the more that hope had dwindled, and he was then faced with having to deal with the worst possibility – that she was gone, that all the girls were gone, all but Minzy, of course, who had been walking with Daesung behind them.

Minzy had already explained to Daesung what had happened to Bora. Daesung had cried and Minzy had held him close. Since then, they had been walking quietly, following G-Dragon and T.O.P. in front, with Thunder and Lee Joon rounding out the group in the back. But when Minzy heard T.O.P. talk about the possibility of the girls being dead, she suddenly spoke up. “They’ll make it,” she said. “Don’t doubt that, please.”

T.O.P. looked back at her and nodded. He wanted so much to believe that, as did Thunder, who had felt terrible about urging them out of there even at the cost of his sister. But he had been right. If they had turned to go back into the stadium, they would’ve run straight into the horde that was chasing Daesung and Lee Joon out. Who knows what would’ve happened during that clash.

As Thunder was thinking about this, Lee Joon nudged him. “That song we were about to sing…” Lee Joon began to say.

Thunder waited. “Yeah?”

“You don’t see the irony?”

Thunder didn’t understand. “What irony?”

“We were about to sing ‘One Better Day.’ We had picked it to give everyone hope, remember?”

Thunder understood now, remembering how the squeal of the speaker had stripped away that hope instantly. No one on stage had known at the time why the music had cut out like that. But knowing what they did now, Thunder realized that the soldiers in the soundroom were probably attacked at that exact moment the song was about to start. “I don’t want to think about that anymore,” Thunder said. “Who cares about that song anyway. MBLAQ doesn’t even exist anymore.”

Lee Joon wanted to tell him not to think such things, that MBLAQ wasn’t dead. But he knew that Thunder was right. MBLAQ was dead the moment Seungho sacrificed himself for the group long before they ever got to the stadium. And now, with G.O. gone and Mir likely dead, too, there was only him and Thunder left. And who knew how long would they last.

Jae Suk and his family were the only ones who had not yet made it outside. They were still hiding in the storage closet in the interior of the stadium, afraid to leave. Jae Suk kept reminding himself of what he had realized earlier, that soon, once the food supply ran out on the field, the zombies would return to the interior in search of more. He knew that he had to get his family out but he didn’t know how. They had nothing with which to protect themselves.

But then he remembered how he had been trapped in that food pantry in the YG building with Haha and Gary when this all started. He now stood and looked around at the shelving in the storage closet, preparing to rip those shelves out of the wall and use them as ramming tools in much the same way he had that day in the YG building. But what he found on those shelves was better than the shelves themselves: gardening tools.

“Yeobo,” he said, “come here and look at this.”

Kyung Eun gently eased herself from underneath their little boy, who had fallen asleep, and then stood up to join Jae Suk at the shelves on the far wall.

Jae Suk handed her a small trowel and then saw a bunch of shovels in the corner. He grabbed the biggest one and then turned back to look at her. “They must use these to take care of the field, or the greenery around the stadium.”

“You think we can get out of here?” Kyung Eun asked, holding the small spade in her hands.

Jae Suk nodded. “We have to try,” he said. He looked at their little boy sleeping on the floor. “You just hold him and stay behind me.” He gripped his shovel tightly in his hand and watched as Kyung Eun picked up the sleeping boy. She held the boy with one hand and held the spade out with the other, trying to prepare herself to stab any zombies that came near her.

When they were ready, Jae Suk slowly opened the door. They were just down the hall from the office that Jong Kook’s group had left only an hour or so before. Beyond that was the southern entrance, but Jae Suk didn’t know this. He looked down both ends of the hallway, not knowing which way to turn. Ultimately, he decided to turn in the direction of the office. “Stay close behind me,” he reminded Kyung Eun.

His wife nodded, trying to hold her boy tight in her arms while keeping that spade ready.

They crept down the hall, hearing the echoes of growling zombies all around them but not seeing any yet. Their line of sight was short because of how dark it was in those passageways, everything covered in shadows. They continued to move slowly, but then Kyung Eun thought she heard something behind her and stopped to turn around.

A slew of zombies had been stumbling out of an adjacent hallway, having seen the small family pass by. Because Jae Suk and his family had walked so slowly, the zombies had time to catch up and were now nearly upon them.

Kyung Eun clutched onto Jae Suk, trying not to scream. Jae Suk quickly turned and got in front of her, holding that shovel high at his side now, ready to defend his family. But suddenly, he heard shots ring out and the zombies standing before them began collapsing one by one. When that last body hit the floor, Jae Suk saw two soldiers standing there. It was Se7en and Rina.

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7!” Jae Suk yelled out.

Se7en smiled and gave Jae Suk his pistol. “I’ll get another gun later,” Se7en said, leading them to the southern entrance. “Just get your family out of here.”