Second Lieutenant Johnson, the twenty civilians, and the five Winner boys made their way down the stairs to the lobby of the civilian barracks. As they neared the front doors, they could see a figure just outside that entrance slowly rise to his feet, but the opaque glass of the doors made it difficult to discern whether this figure was a survivor or a zombie.

As he reached to pull open the doors, Second Lieutenant Johnson held his pistol out, ready to fire. But when he saw the boy who was standing on the other side – the boy who, just twenty or so minutes earlier, had been left in the care of First Lieutenant Smith – his hand began to shake and he found it difficult to follow through with the shot.

Everyone in the group stared at the Jimin zombie with its pale white face and dark, dead eyes. The flesh from its neck to its shoulder was ripped open and raw, covered in blood and oozing yellowish infection. Suddenly, the zombie jerked forward, lurching at the group in jagged movements, and Second Lieutenant Johnson then took the shot, sending a bullet straight between its eyes.

“Let’s go,” Second Lieutenant Johnson said, trying to remain calm. He began running from the civilian barracks, his group following close behind while trying to dodge the dead bodies scattered across the grass, knowing that they could turn at any moment. Despite the size of their group, they managed to stay out of sight of the small clusters of zombies all around them, largely due to their quick pace and strategic maneuvering, using the nearby buildings as cover rather than running out in the open.

By that point, all of the soldiers pushing forward in the chaos of the surge were long gone, having killed as many zombies as they could on the way to the airfield. All that was left were the dead on the ground and the remaining undead shambling around. There was no more gunfire, no more screaming, no sounds at all… until out of nowhere, they all heard a low rumble, like a massive vehicle heading their way.

It was the transport bus.

After Colonel Matthews had called for the surge and evacuation on the radio, he had sat in his office for a while, ruminating on his orders. He knew that sacrificing the few to save the many was the right call, as it was either get most to the plane now or none at all, but he still felt burdened by the decision. Because of this, he had pushed away his junior officers when they had begged him to come with them to the plane, deciding instead to stay behind, like a captain going down with the ship. But after a while, he realized that he was not the type of man who could wallow in self-pity, and he decided then to get up and take one last brave action.

Knowing that people would be left behind, he hopped in the driver’s seat of the transport bus and made it his mission to pick up any remaining soldiers and civilians he could find, hoping to either take them to the plane if there was still time or to find safety elsewhere and just… survive.

When Second Lieutenant Johnson’s group saw the transport bus heading their way, they all stared in shock until the realization that they were saved suddenly swept over them. After the bus braked to a stop and the doors creaked open, the group was even more shocked to see that it was Colonel Matthews driving, particularly Second Lieutenant Johnson, who then stood at attention and proudly saluted Colonel Matthews.

Colonel Matthews saluted back and yelled for everyone to hurry on board. When the last civilian had climbed into the bus, he pressed down on the gas and floored his way across the grounds. “There might still be time to get you all to the plane!” he yelled, his powerful voice rising well above the loud rumbling of the engine.

The civilians all cheered, but the Winner boys then thought of their seniors left behind. Jinwoo, taking it upon himself to ask about going back to the barracks, began to make his way up the aisle of that speeding bus, but he didn’t get far. The bus suddenly screeched to a halt, and Jinwoo was thrown forward up the aisle, his elbows and hands scraped up by his fall. As he brushed himself off and stood back up, he peered out of the windows and saw why the bus had stopped.

Standing outside was First Lieutenant Smith’s group – Himchan, Yongguk, Daehyun, Jackson, and V.

Jinwoo made his way back down the aisle to allow them to board and saw that they were all quiet and shaken, but none more so than V, whose blood-splattered face was still quite blank, his eyes unblinking.

Because the Winner boys had just come face-to-face with the Jimin zombie, they understood immediately why V looked the way he did, and they all fell quiet then, too, not sure if it would make things better or worse for V if they told him that Jimin had been put down by that single gunshot.

Jackson sat down beside V and closed his eyes as he rested his head against the back cushion of the bus seat.

Himchan, Yongguk, and Daehyun sat down, too, their thoughts centered on Youngjae, hoping that wherever he was, he was safe.

Youngjae was trailing behind Thunder and the five EXO boys, unable to keep up. They had been running so fast for so long that Youngjae felt as if his heart was about to burst. He had to stop. He had no choice. As he slowed his pace, he tried to call out to the others to wait, but his throat was so parched that he couldn’t even speak.

Thunder happened to glance back at that moment and when he saw Youngjae hunched over, trying to catch his breath, he stopped and then called for the EXO boys to do the same.

Just ahead of Thunder were Xiumin, Lay, and Chen. Their hearts were racing just as fast as Youngjae’s, and so they were quite thankful for the break.

Kris and Tao were the farthest away, at the head of the group.

“Come on, Youngjae!” Kris yelled. He looked back in the direction they had been running, hoping to spot the airfield and point that out as some encouragement to everyone else, but all he could see were the brick buildings of the base and dozens of zombies scattered about on the grounds. There were sounds of gunfire somewhere off in the distance and he wondered if those sounds were coming from the airfield, but his thoughts were quickly brought back to the fact that his group was currently at a standstill. Before, when they were running, Kris hadn’t been scared of the zombies, knowing that the zombies were too slow to catch them. But now that they had stopped, he felt a sinking fear in his gut and grew anxious to leave. “Come on!” he yelled again. “Let’s go!”

Youngjae leaned up against the corner of the nearby building, trying to swallow what little saliva was left in his mouth. He swore that he could hear his heartbeat throbbing through his chest, the thump thump thump so fierce. He tried to calm his heartbeat by breathing in deeply and then exhaling slowly, his eyes closed as he focused on his breaths, but then he heard what sounded like someone else’s deep breaths near him. He instinctively turned around, not knowing that what he was about to see would be the last image he would ever see – that of a maggot-ridden face and a sudden gaping mouth with strings of bloody flesh from its last victim clinging to its teeth. The zombie’s jaw nearly unhinged in anticipation of its kill, its top teeth digging deep into the bridge of Youngjae’s nose as its bottom teeth came up just under Youngjae’s chin.

Youngjae screamed but his voice, along with his face, was swallowed by the zombie.

“No, no no!” Thunder yelled.

It happened so fast that Xiumin, Lay, and Chen, all of whom had closed their eyes for just a moment as they, too, tried to catch their breaths, didn’t even see the attack, not until they heard Thunder scream out.

One minute, Youngjae was alive, and in the next, he was dead.

“Goddamnit, let’s go!” Kris yelled. He could feel the bile rising in his throat from witnessing such a horrific sight, and tried now to swallow it down. “Come on!”

“Hurry!” Tao yelled.

Even though he knew Youngjae was gone, Thunder wanted to run to him and pull his body away from the zombie to save it from desecration, but when he noticed other zombies begin to emerge from the back of the building like buzzards drawn to the fresh kill, he knew then that Kris was right. They had to get out of there… and fast.

The six boys ran and ran and ran… knowing that they could never stop again, not until they reached the airfield. But there was some hope. The sounds of gunfire that Kris had heard were growing exponentially louder, and eventually, just after they made their way past the last of the base buildings, they could see the source of those sounds.

There were a dozen Black Hawk helicopters lined up along the main airstrip, but only one large passenger plane. Encircling that plane were nearly twenty soldiers all firing at the surrounding zombies. A few of those soldiers saw Thunder, Kris, Tao, Xiumin, Lay, and Chen running toward them, and they quickly broke from the circle to help the young idols to the plane.

G-Dragon’s group, meanwhile, was heading in the opposite direction of the airfield. Armed only with the makeshift weapons they could find in the rooms on the idol floor – Seungyoon’s guitar, a toilet plunger, and a few metal spokes of a broken bunk bed frame – they had left the civilian barracks and were now trying to stay close to cover and avoid what zombies they could on their way to the dining facility, where they believed Bom to be.

“You sure she had dish duty?” Dara asked.

“Yeah, that’s what she said,” T.O.P. said.

“Where are all the soldiers?” Minzy asked, her voice a soft whisper.

They stood in the shadows of a nearby building and surveyed the open base grounds around them, seeing only the slow, shambling movements of zombies scattered about. The base seemed to belong to the dead now.

“Let’s just keep going,” G-Dragon whispered. He clasped his hands around the neck of Seungyoon’s guitar, holding it like a bat with the body of the guitar high up in the air. Seungri, at the back of the group, wielded the plunger. The others each carried one of the metal bunk bed spokes.

The dining facility was within sight up ahead on the path, but their eyes were instead drawn to a dead soldier’s body sprawled on the grass just off the path next to them… with a machine gun still in his hand. T.O.P. quickly tossed his metal spoke aside and grabbed the gun from the dead soldier’s hand, sending an immediate sensation of newfound security rushing through the group. They moved more confidently and quickly now, knowing that they weren’t as defenseless.

The door to the dining facility creaked open. It was quiet inside, seemingly abandoned. They kept their steps light so as not to make any sound and kept their backs against the wall to avoid the chance of a zombie sneaking up behind them, but after five or so minutes of exploring without seeing anything – no sign of life… or of death – they began to get impatient and it took every ounce of restraint to keep from just yelling out Bom’s name.

They had checked the mess hall, the kitchen, the food pantries, and every other space they could… all to no avail. Bom wasn’t there. No one was there.

“We have to go,” G-Dragon quietly said, glancing between T.O.P. and the front entrance they had just returned to.

Minzy slipped her hand between the door and the jamb as she held the door ajar, waiting to open it.

“I’m not leaving without Bom,” T.O.P. said.

“We can’t just stay here looking in the same rooms over and over,” G-Dragon said. “We have to get to that airfield before the plane leaves.”

“Maybe she’s at the plane already,” CL said.

“And maybe she’s not!” T.O.P. said, his deep voice rising with his emotions. “Maybe she’s stuck somewhere, lost somewhere. I promised her I’d never leave her. I need to keep that promise. I need to–”

Minzy screamed. Everyone turned and saw that her hand, which was still wedged between the jamb and the door, was being pulled on by whatever was outside. Daesung immediately grabbed her by the waist and tried to pull her back inside. At the same time, CL yanked the door open, revealing the grotesque zombie outside just as it bared its teeth and bit down on the meaty portion of Minzy’s palm.

T.O.P. screamed out as he swung the machine gun up and pulled the trigger, the spray of bullets hitting the zombie in its chest, shoulders, neck, and then finally, in its head. The zombie collapsed to its knees, landing there for a moment before falling forward, face down.

Even though Minzy’s hand was free, she held it out in front of her as if frozen, her eyes wide as she stared at the bite mark and the blood, the droplets streaking around the curve of her hand and then plummeting to the floor like thick tears.

No one said anything. They were all in shock.

Like the rest of them, Daesung was in shock, too, but only for a moment. In that moment, even though it was just seconds, he had this sudden understanding of his life. All this time, he had watched others rise above the chaos with their sense of humanity – and even their sense of humor – intact. He hadn’t understood why he wasn’t able to do the same… until just now, when he realized, simply, that he was in charge of his life and how he lived it. He had every reason to feel depressed and weak and helpless, but he didn’t have to succumb to those feelings. If he could just let go of them, he could be strong, too. And there was never a more important time for him to be strong than at this moment.

Remembering the door marked Quarantine: Restricted Access that he had seen in the medical clinic just before they met with the counselor, he suddenly ripped off his shirt, tore a strip of the thin cotton fabric from it, and wrapped it around Minzy’s wound. Then, he picked Minzy up, holding her in his arms close against his bare chest, and looked at the others. “We need to get her to the clinic,” he said. “Right now.”

G-Dragon, still in shock that Minzy had been bitten and now taken aback by Daesung’s sudden leadership, began stuttering. “The… the clinic… why?”

“The cure… they’re working on it there. I saw where the lab is. If there’s any hope for her, that’s where it is.”

The others, with tears in their eyes, agreed.

T.O.P., his worries about Bom now supplanted with his worries about Minzy, breathed in deeply and raised the machine gun up to a firing position again. “I’ll lead the way,” he said, as he stepped over the zombie in the doorway and headed outside.

Everyone followed and began to head back the way they had come. There were more zombies out on the grounds than there were before, and although the machine gun kept the dead at bay, the noise simultaneously drew more their way. By the time they made it back past the civilian barracks and started up the path to the medical clinic, a horde had assembled and was now in slow pursuit of their prey.

Daesung paid no mind to the horde behind them. His thoughts were centered only on carrying Minzy to safety.

Minzy cried against his chest, unable to accept that she had been bitten. Back on Sido, she had made a promise to herself that if anything ever happened to her, she wouldn’t break down and leave this world as a defeated victim. She would instead leave on her own terms, killing herself if need be. But saying something and doing something were two very different things, and she realized now that she was not quite the badass she imagined herself to be. She couldn’t hold back her feelings and put on this stoic front, pretending that everything was okay… because everything was not okay. She didn’t want to die.

When they reached the clinic, Daesung, out of breath, set Minzy down near one of the ambulances parked outside and then ran to the door. G-Dragon followed him.

CL and Dara both kneeled beside Minzy, looking after her.

T.O.P. and Seungri, meanwhile, kept watch on the approaching horde.

Daesung yanked on the handle but the door wouldn’t open. It was locked. G-Dragon threw down the guitar he was still holding and pushed Daesung aside to try the handle, too, but no matter how much force he used, there was nothing he could do to open it. Angry, he resorted to pounding on the door.

“Move!” T.O.P. yelled. He lifted the machine gun, thinking that he would just blow the door open, but when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. There was no ammo left. He cursed and threw the gun down, his heart racing as he saw the zombies getting closer.

G-Dragon and Daesung ran over to where T.O.P. and Seungri were standing and stared at the zombies coming for them.

Daesung breathed in deeply. “Take the ambulance to the airfield,” he said. “I’ll stay behind with Minzy.”

“What?” Seungri asked. “We can’t just leave you!”

“You’re not leaving me behind,” Daesung said. “I’m staying behind. There’s a difference.”

“Why can’t we all go?” CL asked. She looked down at Minzy for a moment and then back at the others. “We can take her to the plane. Maybe the scientists are there already and can help her.”

Daesung shook his head. “They’re not there. They’re inside. They have to be. Think about it… if they left, why would they have locked the door behind them?” He looked back at the entrance. “Someone is protecting something in there.”

Minzy started crying again. She hated that she was crying, but she couldn’t help it. The thought of her friends leaving, of Daesung staying, of her dying… it was just too much for her to bear.

Daesung dove to his knees in front of her, his hands reaching for her face. “Shh,” he said, as he wiped her tears.

“Go with them,” Minzy cried, standing up now as she tried to push Daesung away, but he refused and only held her more tightly.

Seungri kept glancing between the horde and the plunger in his hand. “Erm, guys? We can’t stay here,” he quietly said. “We need to… to do something…”

“You need to go now,” Daesung said. “I’m serious. If you want to live, you need to get in that ambulance and go.”

“We can’t just… we can’t just go,” G-Dragon said, his voice cracking.

“I love you all. You know I do.” Daesung choked a bit on his tears. “But that’s why I need you to go. I’ll find a way in there and get Minzy to that cure. Don’t worry about us. Please, just go.”

The growls of the zombies were getting louder, not just from the horde that had been following them, but from other zombies coming from all directions. They were slowly being surrounded.

G-Dragon bit down on his lip and wrapped his arms around Daesung. For the first time since this all started, he cried, his sobbing muffled by Daesung’s shoulder. “I love you,” he said.

The others gathered around Daesung and Minzy, holding them and crying, too, as they said their goodbyes, but the growls and the shambling footsteps all around them reminded them that there was little time left and they soon hurried to the ambulance.

G-Dragon panicked for a moment when he didn’t see the keys, but then he flipped down the visor and the keys fell directly into his lap. He looked at T.O.P. beside him and at CL, Dara, and Seungri in the back, and then turned the key in the ignition, hearing the ambulance roar to life. “Hold on,” he said, as he shifted into reverse and slammed his foot down on the pedal, running over a few of the closest zombies.

As they sped away, T.O.P. looked at the side mirror, watching Daesung and Minzy fade in the distance as the zombies continued to encircle them. That image stayed with him for the duration of their ride across the base grounds to the airfield.

Any zombies in the way of that ambulance were run down and literally grinded up – the body parts rolling around the rims of the tires and being flung off in all directions. They sped through all of it, determined to get to the plane, and eventually, they saw the airfield up ahead with its dozen Black Hawks lined up and that one passenger plane… still there and idling loudly.

“They didn’t leave yet!” Seungri yelled.

When the other survivors had made it to the airfield, they had been greeted by twenty or so soldiers that had been outside defending the plane from the zombies. But those soldiers had since boarded the plane. Only one soldier was still outside. He was standing atop the mobile stairs that led up to the plane door and was about to step inside the cabin when he heard the ambulance coming.

“Tell the pilot to wait!” the soldier yelled. “We got more survivors!”

G-Dragon steered the ambulance as close as he could to the plane steps and then rushed everyone out. They were helped up the stairs and onto the crowded plane by the soldier, and when they saw the soldier close that cabin door behind them and heard the plane begin gearing for takeoff, they realized just how close they were to missing their ride out of there.

At first, they could only see soldiers and civilians packed into the plane, but as they squeezed down the aisle, they started to see some of their friends toward the back.  

Kris, Chen, Xiumin, Lay, and Tao were the first to greet them. While they were excited, they couldn’t help but be disappointed that Luhan wasn’t with them.

“You didn’t see him?” Kris asked.

“Or Taeyeon-ssi?” Lay asked.

G-Dragon shook his head.

Himchan, Yongguk, and Daehyun had already been told that Youngjae had died, and so they had no expectations for who might arrive, but they were surprised that Jong Kook, of all people, hadn’t made it.

“Sparta’s not with you?” Yongguk asked.

“Or Ji Hyo-ssi?” Himchan asked. “Or Gary-ssi?”

G-Dragon again shook his head and continued leading his group down the aisle. He said hello to Jackson and V and then caught sight of Thunder.

Thunder ran to hug his sister and to greet everyone else. He noticed that Krystal wasn’t with them and gulped down his pain. But then he also noticed other people missing. “Where’s Daesung and Minzy?” he asked.

Before anyone could answer him, they all heard some commotion and saw Jinwoo, Minho, Seungyoon, Seunghoon, and Taehyun nearly trampling over the other passengers as they rushed to greet their seniors.

“We thought you weren’t going to make it!” Taehyun said.

“You didn’t find Bom?” Seunghoon asked.

T.O.P. felt his heart about to seize. He had been hoping that Bom was on the plane. To now hear that she wasn’t made him crazy. All he could think was that he failed her. He had let her worst nightmare come true – her nightmare of him leaving her. And then an even worse thought came to him… that perhaps Bom was dead.

Bom was in the dark. The flashlight provided only a tiny stream of illumination, enough to see a mere sliver of the tunnel she was traveling down. She knew she was moving slowly, too slowly, but she was too scared to go any faster. She didn’t like being in the dark by herself. Every little sound she heard terrified her and immediately made her think that there were zombies down there, even though she knew how unlikely that was. Lieutenant Colonel Choi had told her that there were only two access points – from the basement of the medical clinic, where she had entered, and through a hatch door that opened out to the airfield, where she would eventually exit. The more she walked, though, the more it felt like the tunnel would never end, and her paranoia began getting the better of her. She didn’t know how long she had been down there but it seemed like hours, and she wondered then if perhaps she had missed the hatch somehow and was now traveling down an extended part of the tunnel that no one knew about.

Just as she was thinking about this, she began to see light ahead. And she realized then that this was her dream. She had always been a superstitious person, believing in signs and charms and especially fate. What was happening now, being in that tunnel alone in the dark, was her fate. It was destined in her dream. She was nervous, though, about what awaited her out there in the light. She had always awoken from the dream just before opening that door. There was no telling what was on the other side… but she was about to find out.

The hatch door looked like a small metal porthole, like something one would find on a submarine, but it wasn’t quite sealed, as the light was able to penetrate the gaps, outlining it entirely and making it seem almost ghostly or mystical in some way. When she pulled it open, she didn’t see anything at first, only the blinding light of day. But after she stepped out, closed the door behind her, and walked a few paces forward onto the hot pavement of the airfield, she saw zombies… everywhere. She had stepped out of that door built into the mound of earth behind her right into an open airfield filled with the undead.

She looked around, her eyes searching for the plane, but she didn’t see anything… not until she looked up and saw the plane high in the air, so far away, the sound of its engine just a low, fleeting rumble. She in her lower lip, biting down on it hard as she tried not to cry and to instead convince herself that she should be happy… because if her dream was true, then that meant T.O.P. was on that plane, and that he was safe.

She, however, was not safe. The zombies had spotted her and had turned from their endless wandering to now pursue her. She stood there, looking at all of them, and then she looked down at the gun in her hand and thought about ending herself. But she wouldn’t just be ending herself, she realized, as she placed her hand on her belly. She had a baby to think about now. She couldn’t give up on herself, knowing that it meant she was also giving up on providing a life for her child, and so  instead of aiming the gun at herself, she aimed it outward, prepared to fight.