Hyun Suk stood over the sink in the bathroom upstairs, splashing water on his face. He looked at himself in the mirror, thinking that he looked much older than his years.

Some of the guests were already downstairs. A few had come early to help Eun Ju with the cooking, during which time Hyun Suk had stayed upstairs, pretending to be busy. But he wasn’t busy. After the phone call, he had lain on his couch in the study, trying to figure out how he was going to tell the others about the conversation he’d had, and now he was just playing the avoidance game, hoping to drag out the time. He didn’t think that he could come downstairs and try to socialize while waiting for the others to arrive. It would be too awkward, too forced. Might as well wait ‘til everyone gets here, he thought.

But soon, the others did arrive, and he had no choice then but to go downstairs and join them.

As he climbed down the stairs, he saw G-Dragon climbing up.

“Ai, there you are, boss!” G-Dragon said. “Will you please tell Tabi to stop being mad at me?” He gestured over to T.O.P., who was sitting with Bom on the couch in the living room and coldly staring at G-Dragon. “Look at him sitting there with those evil eyes,” G-Dragon said.

“What did you do to him?” Hyun Suk asked.

“Who, me? What makes you think I did something to provoke that beast in him? He’s just being all pissy for no reason.”

“Really?” Hyun Suk sarcastically asked. “For no reason at all?” He continued walking down the stairs, brushing past G-Dragon.

G-Dragon, following him, said, “Okay, well I kind of had this bet going…” His words trailed off when he saw that he had lost Hyun Suk’s attention.

Hyun Suk made his way through the living room, nodding hello to everyone gathered inside, and walked to the kitchen where his wife, Eun Ju, was passing the last dish to Ji Hyo to set down on the long dining table. Jong Kook was standing in the corner with baby Dream propped atop his shoulders, talking with Se7en. Hyun Suk was about to walk over to him, thinking that he would pull Jong Kook outside to talk with him first, but then decided against it. He looked too happy chatting with Se7en about his week.

Everyone looked happy, in fact. Hyun Suk looked around at their smiling faces, wondering then if he should even tell them at all. Maybe they could just stay on this island just as they have been, he thought, without ever knowing about the phone call that he had just received.

But then Hyun Suk glanced back to the living room and saw T.O.P., the only unsmiling face in that crowd. T.O.P. was still mad at G-Dragon, having found out about the bet on his life, but Hyun Suk didn’t care about that. He was staring at T.O.P. not because the young man looked unhappy, but because Hyun Suk knew that although it would be painful to keep the phone call a secret from everyone, it would be nearly impossible to keep it a secret from T.O.P., as it was Lieutenant Colonel Choi, T.O.P.’s dad, who had called earlier.

“Yeobo, why don’t you get everyone to the table,” Eun Ju said, nudging Hyun Suk. Hyun Suk nodded and glanced around at the crowded room, the sounds of their conversations overwhelming him. He cleared his throat. “Let’s all head to the table,” he said, his voice rising above the others.

Usually, after everyone was seated, Hyun Suk would say a few words before they began eating. But as everyone gathered around the table now, they didn’t look over at Hyun Suk standing at the head of that table in expectation of his speech; instead, they looked at the empty seats down at the other end.

“Who’s missing?” Daesung asked.

Everyone looked around.

“Jae Suk… and his family,” CL said, somewhat alarmed.

Eun Ju set a bottle of soju down on the table. “I’m sure they’ll be here any minute,” she said.

Hyun Suk wanted to wait for Jae Suk and his family to arrive. He didn’t want to have to repeat what he was about to say. But he also didn’t know how much longer he could keep this information bottled within him.

A few people whispered about the last time they had seen Jae Suk, Kyung Eun, and their boy Ji Ho, but they weren’t too worried, as zombie sightings were rare in this part of the island. Most of the recent sightings had been in the southern half of the island, near town. Still though, Jae Suk and his family had never been late to the Thursday night dinners before.

Jong Kook stood up. “I’ll go take a quick jog down the road, see if they’re on their way.” He was about to turn to leave when Hyun Suk told him to stop.

“There’s something I need to say,” he said.

“It can wait,” Jong Kook said. “I’ll be right back.”

“No,” Hyun Suk said. “No, I don’t think it can wait.”

Jong Kook slowly sat back down in his chair, his eyes centered on Hyun Suk. Everyone else now turned to look at Hyun Suk, too.

Hyun Suk had been standing at the head of the table, like a CEO about to address a board meeting, but the weight of what he was about to say was too much and he leaned forward then on the table, holding onto the edge of that surface and breathing in deeply.

“Earlier today, I received a call on the satellite phone,” he said.

Everyone’s eyes widened, their mouths slightly agape.

Hyun Suk stared at T.O.P. “It was… your father who called.”

T.O.P.’s mouth slowly closed, his lower lip protruding a bit, as if he was about to cry. Indeed, he could feel the tears forming already. The last time that he had seen his dad was back at the stadium, when that rescue center was still standing. They had shared a brief but emotional moment together – embracing, as father and son, for the first time in years. But then, like always, his dad had to leave just as quickly as he had arrived, always serving his government first, his family second. T.O.P. was shaking now from this news that his father was still alive.

Bom, sitting beside T.O.P., put her arm around him and rubbed his back.

“Prime Minister Jung Hong Won is dead,” Hyun Suk said. Looking at T.O.P., he said, “Your father found Hong Won’s phone, saw my number programmed in it, and was calling to see if you were with me, if you were alive and safe. When I told him that you were here and that you were safe, he passed along some information, some important information.” He looked now at everyone else around the table. “Not only is Jung Hong Won dead, but President Park Geun Hye is dead, too. Nearly everyone in the government is dead.” Hyun Suk sat down now, his legs too wobbly to stand on anymore. His chair creaked beneath him, the only sound in that silent room. “There’s a base, Camp Stanley, just north of Seoul. It’s a U.S. base. It’s secure. What’s left of the military and civilians… they’re all there.”

Everyone at the table now erupted in whispers.

“Are they going to come for us?” Jessica asked. “Did you tell them where we are?”

Hyun Suk could see the mixture of emotions stirring at the table and put his hand up now to quiet them. “No one is coming for us,” he bluntly said. “But–”

“What do you mean they’re not coming for us?” Seungri asked. “Why wouldn’t they?”

Hyun Suk looked over at T.O.P. again, his voice low. “Your father, he said that as badly as he wants to come get you and everyone else, he can’t.” Turning to the others, he said, “There are strict orders: no rescue attempts.”

The whispers at the table crescendoed into loud talk then.

“They’re abandoning us?” Gary asked.

“You have to understand, this is a U.S. base,” Hyun Suk said. “The U.S. is providing supplies to the base, air dropping food, water, medicine… but because of that support, and because it’s their base, they have a large say in how it’s run. They don’t want the people there to sacrifice fuel for rescue attempts. They want them to save what fuel they have for when they receive confirmation that the U.S. or other unaffected countries will open its borders to them. They’ll need that fuel then, to get everyone on the base out.”

“The U.S. is unaffected then… by the outbreak?” Thunder asked.

Hyun Suk nodded. “There are a lot of countries unaffected, mostly the ones separated by a lot of ocean. I don’t know which ones or how many. I just know what Lieutenant Colonel Choi told me, that most countries aren’t willing to take the risk of letting any survivors in. Everyone is scared of the infection. Only the U.S. and Australia are considering it.”

No one said anything. All were trying to process this information, trying to make sense of it.

“So we need to go to the base,” G-Dragon said. “Is that what you’re saying? We need to go back to Seoul?”

“That’s crazy,” Dara said. “We’ll die. We barely got out last time.”

Hyun Suk was about to say something, but everyone began talking over each other then, most thinking that it was ludicrous to even consider the idea of leaving Sido.

“We’re safe here,” Minzy said. “We need to do more work here, build up those barricades better, but we’re safe here.”

“That’s right,” Eun Ju said, staring at her husband. She was somewhat angry that he hadn’t talked with her first about this, before everyone got there. “Think about the children! They can’t possibly survive the journey.” She looked down at little Yoo Jin and Seung Hyun sitting beside her, both of whom were too young to understand what was being said. “And the baby,” Eun Ju said, looking over at Dream cradled against Ji Hyo’s chest. “We can’t risk–”

Eun Ju was interrupted then by Jong Kook. “Let’s say that the U.S. does agree to take in the people at the base. Why can’t Lieutenant Colonel Choi just call us when the negotiations are settled and then we sail to the States ourselves? That way we don’t have to risk anything.”

Hyun Suk shook his head. “What you’re proposing is exactly why the other countries are scared. They don’t want people from affected areas showing up at their shores. This is a one-shot deal. The only reason the U.S. and Australia are considering accepting the people on the base is because of the scientists there. They’ve been working on a cure.”

“A cure?” Krystal asked. “How could that work? They can’t turn those things back into people…”

“Maybe the cure is more like… a vaccine,” Se7en said.

“Or maybe it works right after someone’s been bit?” Rina asked. “Before they turn into a zombie?”

“I don’t know how the cure works,” Hyun Suk said. “I only know this… that either we stay here on this island for what could possibly be the rest of our lives, isolated from the rest of the world, or we try to get to the base in time to have a chance to rejoin the rest of the world… to live a normal life.”

Silence filled the room. No one talked, no one moved. And then, suddenly cutting through that silence, there was a loud pounding upon the front door, startling everyone inside. Hyun Suk stood, as did a few others, all staring at the entranceway. The door slammed open then. Kyung Eun, holding her son in one arm and her gun in the other, frantically made her way inside.

“Is my husband here?” she asked, her voice shaky and her eyes darting around the room. “He never came back today. Is he here?”

Everyone stared at her, too scared to answer.

“Someone tell me where my husband is!” Kyung Eun yelled.