T.O.P. breathed in deeply as he listened to the long rings of his call to his father blare against his ear. As he waited for an answer, he kept imagining the other end of that line. Did his father still have the satellite phone? Was he still alive? Did the base even exist anymore? Maybe Camp Stanley was overrun by zombies and the phone to which he was calling was lying in a pile of rubble encircled by the undead, all drawn to the noise of those endless rings.

But then the rings stopped, interrupting T.O.P.’s thoughts, and static crackled through the speaker. T.O.P. instinctively straightened his posture at the sound of his father’s voice on the other end. “Dad?” he asked, trying to hold back his emotions. “It’s me, Dad.”

Everyone around T.O.P. all leaned forward when they heard him speak, unable to believe not only that the phone was still working, but that their call had been answered.

“Seunghyun? Son, is that you?”

“Yeah, I… I know you have your orders. I know they said no rescue attempts. But, Dad… we’re in real trouble here and I don’t think–” He was going to explain how they were trapped in that building surrounded by zombies both inside and out, with no guns and no food, but Lieutenant Colonel Choi suddenly cut off his words.

“Tell me where you are, son.”

T.O.P. bit down on his lips and squeezed his eyes closed. Throughout his entire life, his father had been a military man first and a family man second. Was he finally, after all this time, putting his family first for once?

“Son? You still there?”

“Yeah, Dad. I’m still here.”

“Listen to me. Things are moving fast around here. We’re not going to be here much longer. And when this base is gone, this military… and this country… are gone along with it. Do you understand?”

“What are you trying to say, Dad?”

“I’m saying to hell with my orders, son. Tell me where you are so I can come get you.”

T.O.P. breathed in deeply and squeezed his eyes closed again as he smiled.

The others in the room, who could only hear that half of the conversation, looked around at each other and then back at T.O.P., trying to interpret his expression.

“We’re just north of this industrial area in Yong-dap dong. It’s a… the Samsung building–”

“Cheonho-daero!” G-Dragon yelled. “Tell him it’s right off Cheonho-daero!”

“Off the main street, Cheonho-daero,” T.O.P. said.

Everyone excitedly clapped and cried and hugged and laughed, so stirred by their emotions and the thought of being saved.

Lieutenant Colonel Choi could hear them in the background. “How many are with you?”

T.O.P. glanced around the room for a quick headcount. “Fourteen,” he said, realizing then that they were left with the same number with which they had originally set out on this journey, with Taeyeon in Jessica’s place.

“There’s an American bird here that can take exactly fourteen,” Lieutenant Colonel Choi said. “I won’t be able to sneak out to the airfield until it gets dark out. Can you make it another two hours there? Can you get access to the roof?”

“Yeah, yeah,” T.O.P. said. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”

There was a pause in the conversation then, a bit of static rippling through.

“I love you, son. I know I haven’t been the best at showing it, but…”

T.O.P. breathed in deeply. “I know, Dad. I love you, too.”

“You hold tight, son. Stay safe and I’ll see you soon.”

Everyone talked loudly over one another, their voices a chorus of excitement over their imminent rescue, but also of worry over how they’d get to the roof.

“You think they’re still out there?” Bom asked, referring to the zombies in the stairwell.

“It’s been like two hours since we barricaded that door,” Dara said. “We haven’t heard anything. Maybe they left?”

“We can’t assume that,” Jong Kook said. “If we remove those desks and open that door, we have to be prepared for whatever’s waiting. There could be less of them out there now, or… there could be more.”

“How are we going to get past them without any guns?” Daesung asked.

“I still have my hammer,” Seungri said.

G-Dragon held up his crowbar then. “This is all I have,” he said.

“I’ll go first,” Taeyeon said.

Everyone looked at her.

Krystal sighed. “Unni, you don’t have to–”

“This isn’t a suicide mission,” Taeyeon said, trying to quell their assumptions. “I’m not looking to die here. I wouldn’t waste Sica’s sacrifice by just giving up.” She held out her arms, reminding everyone of the knives attached to her wrists and elbows. “I’m only suggesting I lead the way because I’m the most prepared.” She stood up then and gestured for everyone to do the same. “Whoever else has a weapon should stay right behind me, getting the zombies I can’t. The rest of you can follow.”

“We should have one person with a weapon at the back of the group, too,” Jong Kook said.

Ji Hyo grabbed the butcher knife laying on the floor beside her and stood up, joining Taeyeon. “I’ll take the back,” she said.

The others then stood up, too.

“Are we doing this right now?” Thunder asked. “Shouldn’t we come up with a plan first?”

Jong Kook looked toward the other end of the room at the dusty conference table and then walked over, grabbing one of the chairs. “We just need to get up that one flight of stairs,” he said, as he returned to the group with the chair in his hand. “There was that damage to the roof, remember? That hole directly above the stairwell? That’s how we’ll access the roof. We’ll use this chair to give us some height so we can climb up there.”

“My dad said he can’t even leave for another two hours,” T.O.P. said.

Jong Kook shrugged. “No sense waiting down here,” he said. “If we wait, we might miss him.”

Ji Hyo nodded. “Everybody ready?” she asked. Although she posed that question to all of them, she kept glancing over at Gary, to whom her question was really directed. She was worried about him. He hadn’t said much since asking about Jessica earlier and hadn’t even shown any sort of emotion upon hearing that they would be rescued. “Gary-ah, you okay?” she asked.

Gary looked up at her, nodded, and then looked back down.

“Okay, let’s go,” Jong Kook said, holding that chair with one arm and ushering everyone out of the conference room with his other. “Stay close together. If you don’t have a weapon, stay in the middle of the group.”

They emptied out into the hall and walked down to the barricaded stairwell door. Jong Kook made his way through the group and picked up the top desk, feeling his strained muscles burn as he slowly set it down out of the way. He then began sliding the bottom desk back from the door, but the desk’s metal base screeched loudly against the floor and everyone then began to hear the echoes of groans and grunts resounding on the other side of that unhinged door.

Taeyeon held her hand to the door, about to push it open, but stopped for a moment to take one last look at the group behind her.

Everyone breathed in deeply and nodded, letting her know that they were ready. Krystal met Taeyeon’s gaze and, as she looked at her, she was reminded of the Taeyeon she once knew – that short, funny girl with that loud laugh and that brilliant voice. But then, just a second later, she saw Taeyeon’s expression change. It was like the moment Taeyeon pushed that door open, she transformed into the crazy JummaTaeng. Her eyes went cold and she began wildly stabbing at the surrounding zombies, her wrists and elbows flying through the air around her as if she was some sort of insane music conductor directing an orchestra of carnage.

There weren’t as many zombies as there had been before and everyone managed to traverse that tenth floor landing rather quickly. G-Dragon and Seungri stayed at the sides of the group, protecting those without weapons in the middle, while Ji Hyo rounded out the group in the back, slashing at the few zombies left that were following them up the stairs.

Jong Kook joined Ji Hyo at the back of the group and held the chair out to push against the zombies. “Yaaah!” he screamed, as he rammed the chair forward, sending the zombies tumbling down the stairs. He and Ji Hyo then ran to catch up with the others.

The others were at the top landing, standing beneath the gaping hole in the roof, the dark sky looming above and the ash pouring down so heavily upon them that they were all soon covered in that gray dust.

Jong Kook promptly set the chair down and then yelled for everyone to climb. One by one, they quickly stepped up on that chair and grabbed onto the rim of the opening, pulling themselves up to the roof and immediately covering their faces from the ash-filled sky. Once up there, everyone crawled away from the opening, but they didn’t go far. It was nearly impossible to see anything atop that roof with that ash so thick around them.

“Try not to breathe it in,” Ji Hyo said, as she pulled the collar of her shirt up to her nose.

Taeyeon still had her surgical mask hanging from her neck, but she took it off now and passed it to Krystal. Bom had the mask that one of the ahjummas had given her back at the warehouse, and she pulled it out of her pocket now to wear. The others, following Ji Hyo’s lead, resorted to using their shirts as a filter.

They were stranded on that roof with limited visibility and the wind blowing strong, and with nothing to do but wait for hours until T.O.P.’s father would come for them.

The zombies that Jong Kook had pushed down the stairs had since reached the top landing. Their growls echoed out of the hole in the roof, reminding the group that if something happened and T.O.P.’s father didn’t make it, they were truly stuck up there. It would be the end for them.

Everyone sat quietly, listening to the wind pick up the hellish voices of the zombies below, not knowing what to do or what to say. All of their initial excitement over being rescued had dissipated in this slow wait for that rescue to actually happen. Doubt soon filled them.

Jong Kook sensed the low morale and couldn’t help but feel that it was his fault. He hadn’t expected to get through those zombies in the stairwell so quickly and felt bad now for rushing them all to the roof. “I know this isn’t the best situation we’re in now,” he said, his voice muffled by his shirt, which he held over his nose and mouth to block the ash-filled wind. “But this is it. This is the end. We’re going to be saved.”

Some nodded, others continued to sit huddled together, their heads down as they waited. Time passed like this, with these fourteen survivors sitting on the roof of that building exposed to the elements, waiting silently for hope from above while continuing to hear the growls of the zombies from below.

They thought about the journey they had endured and about the people they had left behind, and they all wondered as to what would happen next. Would they sit there forever, covered in dust until they just withered away and became dust themselves? Or would they be saved? And if they were saved, then what?

The sky grew darker and darker. No one knew how much time passed. Hours were as lost as days in this world. But eventually, hope did come for them. At first, it was just a distant sound, a deep rumble layered with a rhythmic beating of air from the rotors. Then, parting the darkness, the Black Hawk appeared, the whirring of those rotors so loud and so forceful that everyone had to at once cover their ears from the noise and cover their eyes from the swirling ash ripping through the air.

“Come on!” T.O.P. yelled, leaping to his feet. The others, momentarily stunned, soon followed, all running toward the helicopter as it slowly set down at the far end of that roof.

While the others ran toward the main cargo doors along the side of the helicopter, all piling inside, T.O.P. ran to the front and joined his father in the cockpit.  

Lieutenant Colonel Choi immediately reached over and pulled his son into his arms, squeezing him so tightly that T.O.P. could barely breathe. His father had hugged him like that only once before in his life, just two months earlier when they had briefly met up at the World Cup Stadium rescue center.

When they parted from their embrace, Lieutenant Colonel Choi glanced back at those in the cargo area. “Everyone okay back there? Make sure you’re strapped in tight.”

They all nodded, too shocked to speak.

As the helicopter slowly lifted back in the air, everyone anxiously squeezed their eyes closed.

Dara, who hated flying, grabbed G-Dragon’s hand. “Ai!” she screamed, feeling her stomach tighten.

“Yahoo!” G-Dragon yelled, his excitement overpowering his initial shock.

And just like that, they set off, the Black Hawk safely carrying them above the remnants of Seoul, over the destruction and the doom and the streets flooded with fire… to the last bastion of humanity left in the country.