█ Chapter 6: Emergency

Jongin wasn't sure how far or long they had ran; all he knew was that the scenery had changed from greens to grays, the trees slowly devolving into manmade constructs. They entered the city just as the skies darkened, but it hadn't been Jongin or Sehun's first time reaching what was left of the place they once called home.

The streets had been evacuated, leaving nothing but a ghost town of a thriving place named South Korea's capital. Jongin remembered like it was yesterday, how he had complained to his friends about there being "too many damn people" in a tiny city; now, he wished he hadn't thought so pessimistically of civilization. Of people.

It had been a few weeks since he and Sehun had gone back to the city, but the place was even more deserted than before, with not a single survivor in sight. The streets were lined with corpses and abandoned cars, every surface tagged with "searching" signs made for people who had never gotten to reunite with their loved ones. As Jongin walked across an empty street, he passed by a minivan driven up to the curb and saw the dusty windows etched with the words "Find me in Namsan."

He wondered if the recipient of that message had ever reached Namsan, let alone saw the note written on the minivan's back window. In anger, he swiped his palm across the dirty window and smudged the words. It was foolish to hang onto that string of hope and find yourself disappointed and screwed over.

"Stay close," he whispered to Minseok, Kyungsoo, and Sehun, also spotting Coco tagging close to Kyungsoo's heel. For a dog, Jongin thought Coco was extremely obedient and well-trained; that was coming from someone who wasn't very fond of animals.

It was when he gave the order that Minseok stepped forward, shoving Jongin against the brick wall. "What the hell was that for?" Minseok snarled. "You didn't have to do that, he was looking out for you, damn it!" It was obvious that he was trying to keep his voice down as low as possible so the biters walking around wouldn't detect them.

"I had to," Jongin responded, meeting Minseok's tearful gaze. "You knew that, too. Otherwise, you wouldn't have left him for dead." As soon as the words left his lips, he felt his own eyes b with tears. "Damn it, I didn't want this," he whispered. The last thing he wanted was to murder his own best friend in cold blood, but he had known the instant he was reunited with Zitao and Minseok that his friend had gone astray. The world had changed him for the worse and he simply couldn't wait for a tragedy to happen, nor could he allow Zitao to be the one with someone else's blood on his hands. If Jongin died, he knew he would have to beg for his friend's forgiveness, but, as of right now, he was already repenting for it by choosing to survive. He inhaled sharply. "I wanted all of us to go home, together. 's not the way it used to be."

Minseok's fingers loosened and his hands fell away in defeat. Deep inside, he also knew that Jongin was right, even if his actions hadn't been justified, nor made him any more righteous than Zitao.

"You didn't know him at all," Minseok seethed. "You don't know anything about what he and I went through, what sacrifices he made to find you." Minseok's gaze lowered to the toes of his worn-out high tops. "He might have changed, become more ed up in the head, but he cared about you."

Jongin couldn't doubt that. No matter how stoic or aggressive Zitao had been, the guy always had his own ways of expressing that he cared about his friends. Whether those examples meant fighting a bunch of other bullies back-to-back with Jongin, or simply sitting beside him in the police station after the two had been beaten black and blue, Jongin had always known.

Zitao had his ways of showing he cared, and so did Jongin.

"I cared, no, I care about him, too," Jongin said. "I did what I had to before he'd lose himself."

"Hey, guys?" Sehun whispered behind the two, obviously trying not to interrupt their heated conversation, but also attempting not to die. He jerked his thumb towards a group of biters limping in their direction. "We gotta go."

When the group steered towards the subway terminal closest to where they were standing, Kyungsoo grabbed Jongin by his sleeve since one of his arms had been constrained in a sling. "No," he said. "The subway's too crowded, there's going to be a bunch of them down there and we'll be trapped."

Well, that was brilliant. It certainly paid off to have someone with a brain functioning as well as Kyungsoo's did, even under great time pressure. If Jongin had blindly led his "group" into that subway terminal, they certainly would have been caught in the middle with a slew of zombies coming at them from both sides. Jongin briefly wondered why he hadn't even thought of the possibility that the subway stations would be packed; after all, Koreans relied heavily on the subway transportation system. Many survivors would have tried to use the underground passages, like every other survivor-turned-zombie.

"Yeah," Jongin said breathlessly. "Thanks."

They zipped through the back alleys where there were less biters to take out, and Jongin immediately regretted not stealing Zitao's machete when he had the chance. A sharp weapon certainly would have come in handy. Instead, he grabbed a plank of wood leaning against the brick wall and used the strength he had left to bash any zombie heads in.

The plank of wood wasn't sharp, so it was getting increasingly harder for Jongin to use it as a weapon; however, it was better than the hand-sized pocket knife he had.

When they came to a clearing, Kyungsoo pointed to a medical clinic across the street.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Jongin pressed an arm to Kyungsoo's chest. "You said it yourself, we need to avoid overpopulated places. A hospital is the place for the dead."

"We need supplies," Kyungsoo said. "If we're passing through, we might as well stock up on food and medical equipment." He tugged down his hood and stayed by the front steps to peek through the door, checking beforehand for any biters that might be in the vicinity. "I volunteered here once," Kyungsoo randomly confessed, stepping through the door frame that was missing its glass panels. "I know where they keep their food supply."

Despite Kyungsoo's encouragements, Jongin couldn't believe this was happening, that he was willingly stepping into a hospital probably infested with undead patients and more. He had a gut feeling that this supply run was going to be their last. He knew it.

He followed Kyungsoo, but stopped when he turned and saw Sehun standing on the front steps, looking as pale as a sheet. "Hey," he reassured him. "It's gonna be fine, just stick close to me."

"I just don't... have a good feeling about this," Sehun whispered.

"Hell, we all don't," Jongin muttered, feeling a little bit more at ease as Sehun stuck close to his side.

Jongin honestly wasn't sure what Kyungsoo was expecting to retrieve from a medical clinic that looked empty already, like it had been breached and pillaged by other survivors thinking of the hospital the same way they were: a supply jackpot. Surprisingly, Kyungsoo managed to scavenge for things others had left behind in drawers and cupboards, taking anything and everything from rolls of bandages to bottles of outdated painkillers.

The biters they found were crippled, making them easy to take out. Soon, they had an orderly routine going on where Jongin would open the doors, Minseok would take out the biters, and Kyungsoo and Sehun would forage for supplies. Everything was kept in a pillowcase Kyungsoo stole from one of the recovery rooms, but the group took a few more, just in case.

"Syringes?" Jongin asked in that I-asked-but-I-don't-want-to-know way when Kyungsoo swiped a couple of vials from a medicine cabinet with packs of unused syringes.

"You think antibiotics only come in pills? Someone took all the tablets but they left the good stuff; the stuff that works fast."

"You know this, how?" Jongin asked sincerely this time, trying to read what one of the vials read. All his brain translated was a bunch of medical mumbo-jumbo.

"I said I was a medical volunteer," Kyungsoo answered.

"Nurse?"

"Something like that."

Once they had scrounged the entire first floor for medical supplies and took out a few biters along the way, Kyungsoo told the group that the emergency food supplies had been kept in a storage compartment on the second floor. While others might have stolen what was available in the cafeteria, he was hopeful that they might have missed the better gold mine of long-lasting food kept tucked away for emergency situations.

Now standing along the row of recovery rooms, the group fell into their systematic routine, only to stop at a room labeled '107' in faded lettering. Sehun stopped Jongin from opening the door.

"Wait," Sehun whispered, but Jongin ignored the way Sehun's throat choked up when he pried the door open, to find a biter strapped to a bed inside. The biter, unlike others, was entirely in one piece, although its skin showed signs of decay. Its long black hair was practically peeling away from the biter's diseased scalp. The moment Jongin saw it gasping and snapping its jaws at them, he wanted to put it down immediately.

"No!" Sehun rushed between the biter and Jongin with his arms stretched out. "Please don't. It's my mom, Jongin, please don't." The grief was written all over Sehun's face, the tears staining the boy's fair features. "Please don't hurt her."

Jongin lowered the wooden plank he held in his hands and stared at Sehun for a while, not knowing what to say or do. What was he supposed to do? How could he reassure someone who even felt sympathy for the vicious undead, that his mother was no longer living? "Sehun," he said.

"No," Sehun shook his head. "She's not d-dead."

Jongin vaguely knew of Sehun's family. Sehun had never opened up to him about his parents, so Jongin hadn't pried, but he knew from bits and pieces of their scattered conversations that Sehun had been taking care of his hospitalized mother before all of this. To think Sehun had never given up hope after all of that made Jongin's heart ache even more. "Sehun," he made up his mind to do the better thing and put Sehun's mother out of her misery, for Sehun. "I know you can't do this, I'll do it for you."

"No!" Sehun screamed, and Kyungsoo pressed a hand over his mouth so he wouldn't attract more biters. Minseok helped restrain Sehun while Jongin had to look Sehun's mother in the eye, apologize, and impale her head with the block of wood.

He knew, from then on, that Sehun would probably hate him for a few days, but that was fine. This was just one of those things that was "best" in the long run, for both Sehun's mother and Sehun. Jongin certainly could have taken care of the matter a better way, but if not now, there wouldn't be a next time.

As the group left the room, Sehun insisted that he stay for a few minutes longer to feel some sort of closure with his mother. Jongin agreed to stay behind, so Kyungsoo and Minseok went off to search for the storage compartment.

The light at the end of the hallway flickered on and off, recreating some scene from a terrifyingly realistic horror movie. Kyungsoo and Minseok were in one of those scenes where something awful was bound to happen. Even Kyungsoo who usually looked so fearless looked like he was going to piss his pants, while Minseok flinched every two seconds when his own shadow scared him.

At least, they made it to the storage room and Kyungsoo signaled for Minseok to follow his lead as he squatted down and began rummaging through the metal bins. Nothing.

"Someone must have found them," Kyungsoo mumbled.

"Maybe the zombies are on a human diet. Get it?" Minseok snickered softly.

"Jongin has lovely friends," Kyungsoo sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

Kyungsoo moved down the narrow aisle to search for the supplies elsewhere, but he and Minseok stopped dead in their tracks when they heard a loud clatter in the same room they were in. Despite the room being completely caped in black, Kyungsoo managed to find a screwdriver on one of the tables and held it up to the unfamiliar male cornered at the end of the aisle.

"All good things, all good things," the stranger smiled. "I, um, I really have to get these to my friend, we haven't eaten in days, I, just, please, come on, put the screwdriver down for a second, man, you're scaring me."

"Don't. Drop. The. Cans," Kyungsoo warned, staring at the boy. "What's your name?"

"B-Baekhyun. Byun Baekhyun."