Wake up. Wake up.

Jong Kook could hear his mother but couldn’t see her. “Omma?” He opened his eyes as a sudden wave of pain swept over him. His head was throbbing almost unbearably and the taste of blood in his mouth made him wince.

At first, he couldn’t even register what he was seeing. The world appeared upside-down. And then he realized that he was, in fact, upside-down, hanging from his seat belt. The truck had been blown away by the explosion, rolling twice before sliding on its roof across the pavement. He stared at the upside-down world beyond the shattered windshield, seeing zombies – on fire – shambling toward the truck. “Oh my god,” he said, panicking now as he tried to unbuckle the seatbelt. He looked over at G-Dragon hanging by his seatbelt in the driver’s seat. “Jiyong-ah! Wake up!”

G-Dragon slowly came to but couldn’t see. His vision was blurry.

Jong Kook unbuckled his seatbelt and fell from his suspended seat.

G-Dragon looked around, trying to understand what had happened, and then he, too, saw the fiery zombies approaching and reached for his seatbelt in a panic.

Jong Kook wiped the blood from his mouth and tried to crawl toward G-Dragon to help him out.

“Forget it, hyung!” G-Dragon yelled, pushing him away. “Just go check on everyone in the back!”

The fear of Ji Hyo being injured overwhelmed him as he grabbed his K2 and crawled toward the passenger-side door, wrestling with it to get it open. The door creaked and crunched open just enough for him to squeeze out. The smoke outside hit him immediately and he reeled over in a throat-ripping coughing fit. He was so dizzy that he could barely stand, much less aim, and the shots he then fired at the approaching zombies missed almost all of them. He wiped more blood from his mouth and forced himself to stand, focus, and aim, managing then to take out the nearest zombies to the truck. Knowing that there wasn’t a lot of time, he ran down the length of that massive truck to the rear, having never felt as weak and as helpless as he felt in that moment. 

Before he even reached the back of the truck, he could already see a body lying on the ground. He shambled toward it, unable to keep his balance, and saw that it was an ahjumma. He turned then and noticed that the rear door of the truck was partially open and bent up somewhat twisted-like. The ahjumma must have been thrown from the truck when it careened across the street, he realized. “Ji Hyo-yah!” he yelled, as he peered into the blackness in the back of the truck. “Ji Hyo-yah!”

He heard mumbling from inside and crawled into the back, pulling out the first body within reach. It was Gary. “Gary-ah, wake up!” He slapped Gary’s cheek but to no avail. He was unconscious. Not knowing what else to do, he dragged Gary’s body out of the truck and left him on the street before diving back in for the others.

Thunder saw the flickering reflection of the flames outside through the opening of the rear door and watched as Jong Kook pulled out Gary. It took him a moment to realize what had happened, but once he did, he sprang into action, looking first for Krystal and helping her out of truck before assisting Jong Kook in getting the others out. Working together, they pulled out two uninjured ahjummas, and then three more.

By then, most everyone else had snapped out of their shock. Dara, somewhat dazed, crawled out of the back. T.O.P. and Bom followed, as did CL and Seungri, and then Daesung and Minzy.

“Get me out!” Jessica screamed. “Please, help! My leg!”

Taeyeon, still inside the truck, heard Jessica screaming and went over to her. It was still quite dark inside that cargo area despite the door being partially opened, but she could clearly see that Jessica’s right leg was broken. Some light was reflecting against the white of Jessica’s shinbone, which was protruding from a bloody hole in her jeans. “I need help here!” Taeyeon yelled.

Jong Kook and Thunder crawled inside and dragged Jessica’s body out, setting her carefully down on the street.

Krystal ran to her older sister’s side but didn’t know how to help her. “What do I do?” she cried, staring at the exposed bone.

Ji Hyo was uninjured but was trapped inside underneath the weight of two dead ahjummas. The rest of the surviving ahjummas inside had been trying to pull their dead friends off Ji Hyo and, with one final heave, finally managed to free her before dragging the two corpses out to the street.

Jong Kook’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of Ji Hyo emerging from the truck. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Ji Hyo shook her head. “I’m okay,” she quietly said.

Taeyeon walked over to the bodies lying on the street. The ahjumma who had been thrown from the truck was sprawled on her side next to the two others they had just pulled from the back. Before Taeyeon could even process their deaths, she caught movement just to the right of her and turned to see a few zombies heading toward the truck. Their bodies were charred and were each ushering out a funnel of black smoke. Taeyeon searched the street around her, found a machine gun, and began shooting not only at those zombies, but at every other zombie surrounding them. When she ran out of ammo, she threw the machine gun down and picked up another one, resuming her attack.

Some of the remaining ahjummas joined her and together they quickly eliminated the immediate threat around the back of the truck, the noise of the machine gun fire dying down afterwards, leaving everyone to hear only the crackling of flames from the burning gas station across the boulevard.

“We need to get out of here!” Dara screamed. “Where’s Jiyong-ah?”

G-Dragon had just made his way around the truck, approaching her at that very moment.

“Oh my god, I didn’t know what to think when I didn’t see you,” Dara cried, throwing her arms around him.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” He kissed her somewhat messily and pulled away then to survey the scene, seeing that his friends were alive but stunned. He caught sight of Jessica trying to hobble away on one leg with Thunder and Krystal on either side of her, both of whom were acting as crutches as they tried to support her weight. And then he noticed where Jessica was heading, having spotted Gary on the street next to the three dead ahjummas.

“Is he dead?” Jessica asked. She bit her lip to hold back the emotions surging within her at the sight of Gary so limp and lifeless. “Are they all dead?”

Ji Hyo knelt down beside each body, checking their pulses. “Gary’s alive,” she said. “But barely.”

“We gotta go,” CL said, seeing more zombies coming at them in the distance. They were moving more slowly because of their burning bodies but were still moving nonetheless. Their skulls were not yet melted, their infected brains still intact.

Jong Kook lifted the unconscious Gary and threw him over his shoulder. “Take what weapons you can find,” he said, glancing around at all of them. “Leave everything else.”

Another burst of flames shot up from the gas station and everyone saw then that the fire was slowly spreading to the nearby buildings. The entire boulevard looked like a warzone congested with black smoke and white ash, and littered with burnt trash that was swept up by the wind.

“We can’t stay on the street,” Minzy said.

Thunder repositioned Jessica’s arm around his shoulder. “Well, we can’t go far, not like this,” he said, gesturing toward Jessica’s leg.

One of the ahjummas pointed to the buildings down the other side of the boulevard from the burning gas station. Most of the buildings on that side were partially collapsed from previous fires, but there was one down the way that was still standing and seemingly undamaged.

Jong Kook nodded and, with one hand holding Gary over his shoulder and the other clutching his K2, began leading the way, shooting at the zombies emerging from the black smoke around them as they hurried down that main boulevard.

The remaining ahjummas, now numbering eight, encircled the group just as they had before, acting as an outer line of defense. Taeyeon didn’t want to see any more ahjummas die and tried to pull them inside the group, but the ahjummas kept pushing back, thinking only of protecting Taeyeon and her friends.

Three of the ahjummas had taken up the rear, being careful to protect Thunder, Jessica, and Krystal, none of whom had any weapons and were moving rather slowly because of Jessica’s injured leg, but the thick smoke limited visibility and the ahjummas didn’t see the zombies that then emerged from behind some rubble on the street, not until the zombies were already upon them.

The zombies had blended in with the surroundings, their charred black bodies like camouflage amidst the dense smoke, and when they tackled the ahjummas, burying and smothering the women beneath their burnt bodies, it was like they had then camouflaged the ahjummas, making them essentially disappear.

Jessica leaned against Thunder on one side and Krystal on the other as she tried to limp her way faster down the street, having no idea that the ahjummas behind her were gone. All she could think about was how badly she was injured and how no one in the group had medical training. There was no hope for her, she thought. She was dependent on them just to help her walk, and because of that, she was slowing them down. As she continued to do her best to hobble down the boulevard, she looked over at Krystal beside her, who was panting underneath Jessica’s weight. Seeing this, Jessica felt incredibly pitiful and thought about just stopping and pushing Thunder and Krystal away, willing to sacrifice herself for their survival, but just as she was thinking this, everyone suddenly stopped running, the entirety of the group coming to a halt.

“What’s wrong?” Jessica asked.

Those at the head of the group had seen what the others in the back could not. In front of the building to which they had been running – the Samsung building with its silver façade and green-shaded windows – was an immense horde of zombies blocking the entrance, some of which were so badly burned that their faces had melted down to the bone with their eyeballs protruding out from the sockets.

If the group had been fully armed, they might’ve been able to take down a horde of that size, but there hadn’t been enough time at the truck to find all the weapons. Only half of the survivors had guns. The others had melee weapons or had nothing at all.

“There!” G-Dragon yelled, pointing around the side. The neighboring building had collapsed into a pile of rubble, but its trestle-like steel framework was still standing, having fallen at somewhat of an angle against the side of the Samsung building like a ladder. “We can climb up there!” G-Dragon yelled.

There was no time to weigh the dangers of that climb. It was either take that chance or continue running down the street hopelessly.

Jong Kook shifted Gary’s body on his shoulder, his back pained by the weight, and steered everyone around the zombie horde to the rubble of the neighboring building. “Go up in pairs and hold onto each other!” he yelled. “That thing might collapse at any minute!”

G-Dragon and Dara clambered up the hill of rubble and through the dusty ruins first, the brick and glass everywhere scraping their legs. They soon made it to the base of the framework and began climbing up the steel bars, being careful with their footing so that they didn’t fall.

“Don’t look down,” G-Dragon said. “Just keep looking up.”

Dara did as he said, focusing only on the open windows of the Samsung building high up above them. Even though the framework was at a slant leaning against the Samsung building, it felt more like a vertical climb and she was terrified with each step she took up.

While Jong Kook ushered the other couples up the framework, he tried to figure out how he would be able to make that climb while holding Gary, and how Jessica would make the climb without use of her right leg. But before he could come up with a plan, he saw that the zombies had followed them around the side and were just starting to make their way over the rubble toward them.

Taeyeon and the ahjummas had been standing in a semicircle around the framework, knowing that the zombies would be coming for them, and once they saw those dead bodies clawing atop the rubble, they began taking them down, one by one, aiming for clean head shots so as not to needlessly spend what remained of their ammo.

By then, G-Dragon and Dara had reached the top of the framework and had climbed into one of the open windows. The space inside seemed to be an office with rows of desks set off by partitions, all of which was covered in two months’ worth of ash that had blown in through the open window. G-Dragon quickly checked around, making sure that there were no zombies hiding and that the space was safe before returning to the window and urging the others to climb faster.

T.O.P. and Bom were straddling the framework just below the open window. They had stopped, with Bom too scared to try to reach up and pull her body inside.

“Bommie, come on,” Dara said, leaning out of the window now and extending her hand. “Just reach up and grab onto me.”

“I can’t,” Bom cried. “It’s too high.”

T.O.P. shimmied across the steel bars to where Bom was and held her by the waist. “I got you, okay? You’re not going to fall. I promise.”

Bom squeezed her eyes closed and bit down on her lip. “Okay, okay,” she quietly said, trying to muster her bravery.

Meanwhile, six stories down on the ground below, Jong Kook had just set Gary’s body down on the rubble to join the fight against the approaching zombies. He thought that if they could just be rid of the zombies, that they’d then have the time to figure out another way to get Gary and Jessica inside the building, but the zombies never stopped coming. The hill of rubble that they were standing on soon became layered with the bodies of the zombies they had killed, atop which more zombies were now climbing. For every ten that they killed, ten more would then emerge. There seemed to be no end in sight.