Gary and Thunder had helped the sisters out of that rowboat and had transferred them onto their blue fishing boat, where, after realizing that the girls were dehydrated, they now helped them drink water from the jugs.

The girls’ voices were nearly silenced from their parched throats. But after drinking some water, the younger of the two managed to speak. “Sang Hyun-oppa,” she muttered. Her head was in Thunder’s lap, shaded by his upper body, and she looked up at him then, thinking that, with the small glimmer of that early evening sun behind him, he looked very much like an angel. “I haven’t seen you in so long,” she said.

Thunder couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Krystal. A few years ago, they had hosted a music show together called The M-Wave, but they were somewhat awkward together, as they were both nervous about hosting and didn’t know each other well. Since then, they’d seen each other around a few times but had been too busy with their careers to maintain much of a relationship.

At the other end of the boat, Krystal’s older sister, Jessica, had been resting her head against Gary’s chest as she limply petted the dog. Gary was trying to get Jessica to drink more water, but each time she tried to sit up to drink she felt too weak and fell back against Gary’s chest again.

“It’s okay,” Gary said. “I’ll help you.” He tried to situate himself so that Jessica was at a tilted position and then held the jug up for her, but much of the water spilled down the sides of and neck as she tried to drink. “Aish, sorry,” Gary said, as Jessica nearly choked on the water.

Jessica coughed out the water and then looked up at Gary. “Stress!” she said.

Both of them started laughing then. For Jessica, this was the first time she had smiled in a long time, nevertheless laughed, and so her laughter came out somewhat desperately, like this bottled up raw emotion that felt so good to finally release.

Gary blushed, thinking back on when they were paired together in that Running Man episode so long ago. They’d had a good time together on the show, playing up that “stress” bit, and had stayed in contact for some time afterward. Jessica had even gone to a few Leessang concerts since. But that was another world. Back then, he could never have imagined that he’d be sitting with her now in this boat, along with Thunder and Krystal, in the wake of a zombie apocalypse.

“What happened to the two of you?” Thunder asked.

But before either sister could answer, they all heard the engines of the three other fishing boats approaching. Jong Kook, Ji Hyo, Jae Suk, and Kyung Eun were in the nearest fishing boat with the children. Upon seeing the two girls, their mouths collectively fell open.

“Aigoo,” Jae Suk said, feeling his eyes sting with tears. Just when all hope seemed to be lost, they had stumbled upon these two girls lost in the water. This, to Jae Suk, was a sign that all was not lost. There was still life out there. “Where’d you girls come from?” he asked.

The other two boats, one carrying G-Dragon, Dara, T.O.P., and Bom, and the other carrying Seungri, CL, Daesung, and Minzy, now pulled up alongside the others, forming a cluster of blue fishing boats in the middle of that inlet.

Jong Kook had hoped that the water would last the group for some time, but as he peered into Gary and Thunder’s boat, he saw that the jugs were only half full. And then he realized that, with the addition of these two girls, they’d never be able to fit everyone on Hyun Suk’s boat. They had barely fit before. He hated thinking like this, to be so cold in his calculations, but he needed to be. It was just the way his mind worked, always strategizing, always trying to solve problems.

The others weren’t thinking like that at all. Instead, they saw the discovery of the sisters as nothing short of a miracle. Not only had they found survivors, but they had found these two particular survivors, two girls that they all knew: Krystal of f(x) and Jessica of Girls’ Generation.

Everyone was too shocked to speak and just sat there as the noise of the idling engines filled the air.

Jong Kook took that quiet moment to lead. “We need to head that way,” he said, pointing north past the bridge that connected Sido to Sindo. “Try to go the same speed and stay together,” he said. “With any luck, we’ll get to Hyun Suk-ssi’s boat before dark.”

The four blue fishing boats sped north up that inlet between the islands, sometimes running parallel, sometimes proceeding in more of a staggered formation. Everyone had tried to talk with each other at first, but the noise of the engines and distance between the boats made that somewhat impossible, and so they instead talked only with those in their own boat.

Jessica and Krystal had begun telling Gary and Thunder of their experiences leading up to that moment the boys had found them in the water. It was hard for them to talk about it, as much of it was painful, but at the same time, they wanted to share their story.

They said that, on the day of the outbreak, they had been just south of Sido at Incheon International Airport, waiting for a flight to San Francisco so that they could spend a few days visiting with family.

“I can’t even remember how it started,” Jessica said.

“Screaming,” Krystal said. “That’s the first thing I remember. The screaming.”

Jessica nodded, remembering now the awful sound of that screaming. She swept her long golden brown hair from her face, her dark roots showing, and told Gary and Thunder how, at first, she had thought it was a bomb threat or some other security issue.

“Then we saw everyone running,” Krystal said.

The girls had decided to run with the others, not knowing what they were running from. They made it to the eastern end of the International Concourse, where they and a dozen or so other people had no choice but to stop, as there was nowhere to go from there. The concourse ended at Gate 101.

“We were just standing there,” Jessica said. “There were all these people just trying to figure out what was happening. And then…”

“And then we saw what everyone was running from,” Krystal said. “We saw these… people… they were covered in blood and there were, like, pieces missing, like chunks bitten off of them.” Krystal shivered at the memory.

Gary and Thunder both nodded and closed their eyes, remembering what it was like to first see the zombies.

Jessica reached down to pet Caesar again, finding comfort in the dog. “There was this tall white woman from Denmark in our group named Sam. It was her idea to try the passageway that led from the gate to the plane.”

Gary and Thunder continued to listen as the girls told them how, after boarding the empty plane, Sam barricaded the door to keep the zombies out, and how they then waited inside that plane for hours listening to the grunts on the other side of the door.

“Those hours turned to days,” Krystal said. “I don’t know how long we were there. If it wasn’t for this Filipino girl named Lala, I don’t think we would’ve survived. She was just so friendly, so hopeful. She kept telling us that we’d be all right.”

“It was Lala’s idea to find the food and drink cart,” Jessica said. “That’s how we survived so long.”

Both girls stopped talking then as they remembered Sam, Lala, and the others, all of whom were now dead.

“It’s okay if you can’t go on,” Thunder said, putting his arm around Krystal. “I know how painful it is to remember it. We’ve had some horrible things happen to us, too.”

Krystal peered into Thunder’s eyes, thinking that the maknae she knew from so long ago looked much older and stronger now. “Is the rest of MBLAQ gone?” she asked.

When Thunder nodded, Krystal began crying, not only for MBLAQ, but for everyone. She held her hands to her face, her long black hair falling around her.

Jessica glanced between Thunder and Gary. “Have you seen any other SoShi girls?” she asked.

The boys shook their heads.

“You haven’t heard anything?” Jessica asked, trying to hold back her tears.

For a while, they just continued speeding along the inlet without saying anything. Thunder had his hand on the tiller, steering that boat so that they stayed close to the others. The only hint of the sun was a streak of purplish orange low on the horizon, the land on either side growing dark.

“We thought we found safety, too,” Thunder quietly said, breaking the silence. “Just like you girls found that plane, we found a place, too, a stadium full of other people.”

“Did you have food?” Jessica asked.

“Yeah,” Thunder said.

“Then why’d you leave?”

Thunder looked over at Gary and then back to the girls. “It… it wasn’t as secure as we thought.”

“We ran out of food,” Jessica said. “If it wasn’t for that, we could’ve stayed on that plane. But we had no choice. We stayed until we were nearly starving and dying of thirst.”

Krystal stayed quiet, reliving the experiences in her mind as Jessica then told the boys about how they had run from the plane and through that airport with their small band of survivors, trying to fight off the zombies while losing so many people on the way.

“We just kept running,” Jessica said, nearly shaking now. “So many people were being torn from us. It was crazy. But I just kept holding onto my sister’s hand and running as fast as I could.”

Krystal now reached for her sister’s hand. “In the end, it was just me, Jessica-unni, Sam, and Lala,” she said. “We were out on the runway, trying to find a way out of there. But there were zombies everywhere and we were just so weak. None of us had eaten or drank anything in days and we had just run so fast and so far…”

“Sam and Lala saved us,” Jessica said. “They saw the rowboat and pushed us toward it. We saw these islands and thought we could all row here and be safe, but the zombies, they… they got Sam and Lala before they could get in the boat with us…”

“You’re okay now,” Thunder said.  

Krystal cuddled up close to Thunder, feeling so safe in his arms. He was her savior and she would never forget that.

“But these islands aren’t safe?” Jessica asked. “It’s happening here, too?”

Gary sighed. “We had a place here,” he said. “It was really nice for a while. Almost normal.” As he looked at Jessica, he thought about what Ji Hyo had asked earlier, about what type of life they could possibly have at sea. He wondered now if it would be possible to reclaim their home, to take a stand against those zombies and fight for their right to live.

Night had fallen by the time the four boats reached the end of the inlet. It was dark but they could still make out the curve of the land mass to their left, which they followed around now in search of the house.

Jong Kook was angry that the boats weren’t able to go as fast as he had hoped they would. Earlier, he had realized that, in their haste, they had left the food behind. He was hoping that they’d return to the house while there was still some light out so that he could see how many zombies were still onshore and possibly venture into the house to grab the food and other supplies if he had time. But now that it was dark, he knew that mission would be too dangerous.

Jae Suk’s boy had been restless for a while, and as they neared the Full House house now, he began throwing a tantrum. He was normally well-behaved, but that poor boy had been through so much at his tender age. Kyung Eun knew that he was overtired and cradled him now as she began telling him a story that she made up as she went along.

“There was once a little boy named Ji Ho,” she said. “He had been having a bad dream about monsters. It wasn’t real but the little boy didn’t know that. He didn’t know that it was just a bad dream and that, soon, he would wake up and find that everything was okay, that his appa and omma were just fine and that… and that they were so proud of him for being such a good little boy–”

“Shh,” Jong Kook said, standing up in the boat now. He didn’t mean to be curt with Kyung Eun, but he thought he saw something in the water ahead. He could barely see through the darkness, but there was definitely something cutting through the horizon. He turned off the ignition now and yelled back at the other boats to do the same.

G-Dragon cut his engine and looked at Dara, T.O.P., and Bom beside him, wondering what was happening. In the boat next to them, Seungri, CL, Daesung, and Minzy did the same. Gary and Thunder were the last to turn off their engine, and when they did, they realized that they could hear another engine in the distance, something much more powerful than their small fishing boat motors.

They once again clustered together, each holding onto the edges of the boat next to them so that no one drifted away. They floated there for a while, too scared to speak. Minutes passed and the engine noise got louder. They could discern a shape of something big coming their way. Still, they didn’t say a word, not even a whisper. They knew it must be people ahead in that big boat, but they didn’t know what sort of people they were dealing with.

Suddenly, a bright light beamed from the big boat onto the shore. It was some sort of spotlight that completely lit up the beach in front of the Full House house, revealing the hundreds of zombies still roaming about in search of their elusive prey.

Those sitting in the four blue fishing boats stared at that spotlit section of land, following the light as it slowly streaked left to right along the shore as if surveying the property. It was eerie to see the zombies all stop and stare back at the light, their gray faces blank, their bodies still.

Jong Kook looked back at the boat from which the light was emanating, trying to make out something other than its shadowy outline, but the light was too bright and so he just continued looking at that spotlit section of land along with the others, anxious to know what, exactly, was happening.

At that moment, a sudden onslaught of bullets ripped through the air, the explosion of machine gun fire so thunderous that everyone in those small fishing boats instinctively dropped low and covered their ears. The sheer volume of fire was incredible, just layers and layers of noise from a seemingly endless artillery. The ear-splitting nonstop discharge of ammo lit up the night sky and filled it with smoke. It was like being at the epicenter of a fireworks display – just utter chaos.

When the blasts finally died down, Jong Kook looked up and saw that the spotlight was still slowly sweeping left to right in its survey of the shore, but now instead of the zombies that once stood there, there were only piles of bodies. Every now and then, when something onshore would move, another hailstorm of bullets would ring out, followed by another search of the spotlight, until all was finally quiet and still.

Out of that silence, little Dream let out a long shrill cry and, immediately, the spotlight swung around from the land and shone right onto that cluster of blue fishing boats in the water.

Everyone shielded their eyes from the blinding light beaming down on them, their hearts nearly erupting out of their chests. They sat there, all waiting for the machine gun fire to rain down on them, completely convinced that this was their end.

But instead, they heard a familiar voice call out. “Yah, Ji Yong-ah! Is that you?”

It was Papa YG.