Jong Kook, with his hand tightly wrapped around Ji Hyo’s arm, ran so fast up that shore that he nearly dragged Ji Hyo along. By then, the threat was far behind them but he didn’t stop running until Ji Hyo practically begged him to do so.

“Please, Jong Kook-ah,” she pleaded, out of breath.

Jong Kook slowed to a stop and bent over, panting from the exertion. He thought about the others then and quickly turned around to make sure that everyone was there. G-Dragon, holding Dara’s hand, was a little ways back, their arms somewhat lifelessly swinging from exhaustion as they jogged to catch up. Behind them were T.O.P., Bom, Seungri, and CL, all of whom had already stopped running and were looking back down the shore at the bridge from which they had narrowly escaped, their eyes desperately searching for the rest of their group.

Jong Kook began walking back, passing G-Dragon and Dara and then standing alongside T.O.P., Bom, Seungri, and CL, realizing then what they already had – that the others were nowhere in sight. “No…” he quietly said, his gaze focused on that wall of zombies still pouring down in the distance. “No,” he said again. “No, no…”

Ji Hyo put her hand to , her eyes wide as she stood there, frozen.

G-Dragon and Dara had turned around by then and were staring at those that had survived as the faces of those not there flashed inside their minds. Thunder, Krystal, Gary, Jessica, Daesung, Minzy …

Dara began to cry. “They’re not dead,” she said, shaking her head so quickly that her tears sprinkled from her eyes. “No, they’re okay. They’re okay…”

Everyone began to cry then, all holding each other and staring down that shore, all except for Jong Kook, who began looking around in all directions, inherently resorting to strategizing. He couldn’t handle feeling vulnerable, desperate, or lost. He needed to do something to fix the situation.

With his back to the water, he stared up at the land, up past the yellow brush and green trees, up past what appeared to be railroad tracks running along the base of Mt. Eungbong, and then up Mt. Eungbong itself. The hill was covered in light greenery with some visible rock surfaces. It would be a steep climb, Jong Kook realized, but not impossible. He knew that if the others were alive, they wouldn’t last for much longer, and that he needed to find them immediately, which would be possible if they were atop Mt. Eungbong. With that vantage point, they’d be able to see the entire shoreline including, most importantly, the other side of that bridge.

He walked toward the greenery and then, without explaining himself, quickened his pace and began to tear his way through the brush.

“What are you doing?” Ji Hyo asked. “Where are you going?” When Jong Kook didn’t answer, she hurried to follow him.

The others now hurried to follow, too, not wanting to be left behind.

He made it up to the railroad tracks, taking a brief moment of respite on that last stretch of flat land before the climb. He turned to look south, seeing that the tracks ran down the shore and under the highway bridge where they had lost their friends. He then turned north, hoping to see where the tracks led, but as he looked up ahead, he thought he saw what appeared to be figures in the distance – a dozen dark figures, if not more, all walking along the tracks. He blinked hard and shook his head, and when he opened his eyes again, they were gone. He squinted, thinking that he must be traumatized and seeing zombies even when they weren’t there.

By then, the others had caught up to him on the tracks.

Jong Kook, trying to salvage his sanity and prove to them that he was thinking logically, explained his plan to climb that hill so that they could stand atop it and locate their friends on the shore below, and then find a way to climb down so that they would land on the other side of the bridge, hopefully evading the highway zombies.

“You think they’re really still alive?” Bom asked. She wanted so badly to believe that, but the odds seemed stacked against them.

Jong Kook nodded. “I have to believe that,” he said. He looked back up at the steepness of the hill and then glanced back at the group. “Pack your weapons. You’re going to need both hands to climb.”

Everyone did as he said and then followed him as he walked down the tracks a bit farther until he found a way up that didn’t seem as steep. They then formed a single line behind him as he began gripping onto the brush and digging his feet into the earth, slowly ascending up Mt. Eungbong.

The climb wasn’t that difficult at first. They were following a deep indentation in the hill, which provided enough of a slant for them to almost walk up in spots. But soon, the side steepened into an almost vertical wall with no brush to hold onto. There was only the hard rock of that mountain and no feasible way up it without climbing gear.

Realizing this, Jong Kook began to shimmy over, sidestepping across the hill until they passed the rock formation and found another grassy indentation to climb up. Occasionally, he would look back down at the others, checking to make sure that they were all there. He couldn’t handle the thought of losing anyone else. He already felt the heart wrenching burden of a leader who had left behind nearly half of his group and knew that if he lost any more, his sanity would be lost along with them.

After some time on that hill, he managed one last swing of his arm and pulled himself atop the summit. He collapsed at the top for a second, breathing hard beneath that black sky, before reaching back down to pull the others atop, too, one by one.

When Jong Kook finally pulled up Seungri, the last member of the group, they both labored to stand, panting a bit, and then noticed that everyone else was standing with their backs to them at the other side of the summit, staring westward. Jong Kook and Seungri began walking over to them, passing the traditional Korean gazebo and spotting a paved road that led from the summit down the back of the hill. The road wouldn’t have done them any good to get up the hill, as they had been on the other side earlier, but it was a possibility for getting back down. 

As they neared the others, their eyes widened when they saw what everyone else was looking at: the entire city of Seoul aflame under that black sky. The sight was nothing like what it had been from the boat. On the boat, they had only caught glimpses. But there, atop Mt. Eungbong, they saw the extent of the destruction. It looked like a volcano had exploded, its lava drenching the entire valley. The fire spread so high that it had completely engulfed the city streets, the smaller buildings unable to even be seen under the fiery mass. The only buildings that could be seen were the skyscrapers, the tops of which raged with thick smoke that merged with the black miasma above them.

“How did this happen?” CL quietly asked. She remembered that when they had first escaped the YG Building months earlier and were in the vans en route to the stadium, they had seen a fire spread from a burning storefront to the buildings nearby, the windows of one of those buildings blowing out just as they were passing it. She didn’t know how the fire had started, but she did know that it had spread quickly and viciously. She supposed now that without anyone to put the fires out, they could have continued to spread, likely producing explosions when in contact with gas lines that would then further fuel the blaze.

T.O.P., his eyes scanning the valley, had a different idea. “You think they bombed the city?”

“Who?” G-Dragon asked, looking up at him. “Who would do that?”

T.O.P. shrugged. “Maybe our government. Maybe another country. I don’t know. Maybe when the infection got out of hand, they thought that was the only way they could stop it. Probably thought they had no choice.”

Ji Hyo looked down directly below, noticing that the buildings there and those just beyond were as of yet untouched. She couldn’t help but feel fortunate that their boat had sunk on that eastern side of the city rather than somewhere further west on the Han where they would’ve been stranded on the burning shores.

Jong Kook began walking backwards away from the sight. “We need to… to find the others,” he said, as he turned around and headed back to the other side of the summit.

Everyone else quickly snapped out of what felt like a trance, staring at that hellish scene, and then rushed over to join Jong Kook as they now all looked down the other side of the hill, surveying the shore.

Down below, to the right somewhat, they could see that the bridge, once full of zombies, had fully emptied onto the shore. They all walked south across the summit a bit so that the bridge was directly below them as they scanned the myriad bodies crowding that part of the shore, searching for some sign of their friends.

Jong Kook was searching for a pile. He didn’t tell the others this, but he knew that if the zombies had swarmed one or more of their friends, they would have likely all piled atop that person in their feast. His body was so tense as his eyes searched that he felt as if every muscle was strained, but that pain lightened somewhat when he didn’t see any piles. The zombies were mostly standing around, some walking further south down the shore.

Everyone, thinking the same thing, then walked further south across the summit, hoping to see their friends down the shore, running perhaps, hopefully safe. But what they saw instead, climbing up that side of the hill, was Thunder, his arm clawing at the top just as the others approached.

Dara clutched her chest, feeling just like she had months earlier when Thunder, whom everyone had presumed was dead after he had jumped from the Seongsan Bridge, emerged from the river in much the same way that he was now emerging from the depths of that climb – with one arm reaching up in an attempt to pull himself to safety.

When she saw the others now pull Thunder atop the summit, she ran over to him, her eyes full of tears and her emotions spiraling out of her. She didn’t know if she wanted to hug him or yell at him, and so she kind of did both, her arms wrapped around him as she scolded him. “Why do you keep doing this to me?” she cried. Hugging him even more tightly now, she said, “I hate you so much you… you dog poop. So so much.”

The others were now tearfully pulling up Krystal, and then the next climber, and then the next, until their group was once again intact. Their reunion atop that summit was full of both joyful and anxious energy as everyone hugged tightly and cried.

Gary explained to them how they had run so far south along that shore that they had finally reached the end of the highway horde and took that opportunity to cut right behind those zombies, across that highway, and up Mt. Eungbong, where they thought that if they could just reach the top, they could then climb back down the other side past that bridge. As he looked at Jong Kook and the others now, he laughed a little at the craziness of it all.  “We really didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. “We thought that by the time we climbed up and then back down on the other side, you’d be miles up the shore.”

“We wouldn’t leave you,” Ji Hyo said.

Gary choked back his tears, thinking about how he should have known that they would come back for him, just as they had at the marina months earlier. He tightened his grip around Jessica’s waist, feeling so much love atop that summit that it pained him.

“Can we just go home?” Bom asked, as she looked at the others. “We can’t survive this. This is just… too much.”

Everyone stared at each other, some afraid to speak up, some not knowing what to say.

Minzy breathed in deeply as she glanced down at Bom beside her and then over at Daesung, who was standing near the other Big Bang boys. “Maybe she’s right,” Minzy said. “We’re so lucky to all be alive right now. I can’t imagine our luck lasting much longer.”

Just then, their luck did in fact seem to run out. The dozen or so dark figures Jong Kook had thought he had seen earlier walking down that railroad track were not zombies or figments of his imagination. They were part of an army of civilians who had managed to survive these past two months in the hell that was Seoul. When they had seen Jong Kook and the others on the tracks, they followed them up to the summit where they now sprung their ambush, surrounding them with guns drawn.