The conversation around the dining table immediately ceased when everyone saw Gary, Krystal, and Minzy walk in.

Ji Hyo, noticing that Jong Kook wasn’t with them, stood up from the table, her hand slowly rising toward . “Jong… Jong Kook-ah’s not with you?” she asked.

“He’s outside, Ji Hyo-yah,” Gary said. He glanced around the room, checking to see if Kyung Eun or her boy were there. When he didn’t see them, he looked back at Ji Hyo and at the others around the table. “He’s… burying Jae Suk-ah.”

Ji Hyo now brought her other hand to , her eyes wide at the news. Those sitting around the table all lowered their heads. Some began to cry.

Gary thought that he could never feel as lost as that day back in Seoul when the stadium was attacked and he was left wandering alone throughout the city, believing that everyone he knew and loved was dead. He had gone somewhat crazy back then, feeling as though he was stranded in a perpetual state of hopelessness and surely facing death. He had accepted death back then, almost wanted death back then. But it had spared him, and when he saw Jae Suk’s family in trouble at the marina, he believed that he had been spared in order to sacrifice himself so that Jae Suk’s family could live; however, death didn’t seem to want Gary’s sacrifice. It let him live a second time, and Gary couldn’t help but find some meaning afterwards in all that had happened.

But now, standing in the doorway and delivering the news to everyone that his sunbae was dead, he realized that there was no meaning to anything that had happened. He had saved Jae Suk back then, but for what? For him to just die two months later? Thinking about this, Gary felt that same sense of despair that he had felt on the road. It was like before, that same mix of utter hopelessness and apathy toward whatever would come next. He couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t even handle just standing there anymore, seeing everyone’s sad faces.

And so he turned to leave, knowing that although his mind was a mess, his body was not, and that if he was going to be useful at all that night, it would be outside with Jong Kook, laboring in that mechanical and mindless repetition of shoveling dirt.

Just as he was about to open the front door, he heard Jessica call out to him. He turned and saw her standing at the table, staring at him with tearful eyes. They had gotten close these past two months. Gary didn’t know if it was love, but it was something.

“If you’re going out there to shovel, I’d like to help,” Jessica said. She could see the pain on Gary’s face and wanted to be there for him.

“There are extra shovels in the shed out back,” Hyun Suk said.

The shed had once been a small store called the Full House Mart back when the house was a tourist spot, before the typhoon had destroyed it. When Hyun Suk had the house rebuilt, the mart was still standing but was empty. He used it now as somewhat of an armory where all of the extra weapons were stored.

“I want to help, too,” Ji Hyo said. Unlike Gary, Ji Hyo felt the weight of Jae Suk’s death not on her mind but on her body. She could think clearly, her mind was strong, but her legs felt weak and her heart was heavy. Still, despite the physical weakness she felt, she wanted to help bury him. It was the best way she knew to honor her dear friend.

After Gary, Ji Hyo, and Jessica left, Minzy and Krystal joined the others at the table and sat with them in silence for a while, all thinking about Jae Suk.

That silence was broken by the sound of Eun Ju’s footsteps down the stairs. “I finally got Dream to sleep,” she said, upon entering the dining room. “The rest of the children are sleeping, too–” She stopped when she saw Minzy and Krystal sitting with the others. “You’re back? Did you find him?”

No one answered her. No one knew how.

Eun Ju looked around at all of them, noticing that no one was making eye contact with her. They were all looking down or away, all quiet. She knew what that meant and breathed in deeply then, trying to let that news pass right through her before it had a chance to sink in. She didn’t think that she could handle the grief. But then she thought of Kyung Eun and how that poor woman would handle it. Just a moment ago, after Eun Ju had put the children to sleep, she had gone down the hall to check on Kyung Eun, who was resting in one of the spare bedrooms, still dazed and not speaking much. “When are you going to tell her?” Eun Ju asked.

“Let her rest for a little while longer,” Hyun Suk said.

“Let her rest?” Eun Ju was dumbfounded. “If something happened to you, I’d want to know right away. I wouldn’t want people to… to let me rest.” When no one responded, Eun Ju grew flustered. She pulled out a chair, sat down with a heavy sigh, and said, “Well, at least there’ll be no more talk of leaving now.”

Hyun Suk looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

Eun Ju looked around at the others and then back at her husband, wondering why he seemed so perplexed by what she had said. “You’re not still thinking about that plan of yours, are you?” she asked. “After what just happened?”

“What just happened is exactly why we need to leave,” Hyun Suk said. He pulled his black cap down lower on his face and added, “I’d rather die out there trying than die here having not tried at all.”

Eun Ju’s mouth fell open. She looked around at the others, hoping to try to read their faces. “All of you want to go?” she asked, her voice cracking somewhat. “We’ve been here two months without any trouble! Jae Suk-ssi… his death… this is just a sign of things to come if we leave! One death here… but if we leave, it will mean all of our deaths!” She was frantic, her words not exactly coming out right. She couldn’t think straight.

“Can someone pass that soju over here?” Seungri asked.

“Sido isn’t safe,” Bom quietly said. “This just proves that.”

“Sido is safer than Seoul!” Eun Ju said.

“You’d be more prepared than before, Eun Ju-ssi,” Se7en said. He remembered how scared Eun Ju had been when he had first started training her. Although she still needed some training in hand-to-hand combat, she had become quite good with guns.

Rina nodded. “We have plenty of guns and–”

“Guns just attract more of them,” Eun Ju said.

“I think… I think I want to stay, too,” Minzy said.

Daesung looked over at her. “What? But Min…”

“Minji, no…” Dara said.

“Remember when this all started and we were at the YG building and everyone wanted to leave?” Minzy asked. “I wanted to stay there, remember?” She looked over at T.O.P. “But you said that it was too dangerous with what had happened to Haha and Youngbae. And I kept saying that it was more dangerous out there on the streets.” Looking at all of them now, she said, “This is the exact same conversation we’re having now. Don’t you see? We lost someone today and now we’re thinking about putting ourselves in an even worse situation because of it. If we had just stayed at the YG building, then… then…”

“Then we’d probably all be dead right now,” T.O.P. answered, bluntly.

“You don’t know that,” Minzy said.

“Someone pass that soju, please?” Seungri asked again.

Minzy thought for a moment and then quietly said, “If we stayed there, then we would’ve been closer to that base than we are now.”

“If you’re staying, then I’m staying,” Daesung said.

“Daesunggie, don’t be stupid,” G-Dragon said.

“All right, let’s just try to calm down,” CL said, glancing at G-Dragon. She breathed in deeply and then looked over at Eun Ju. “You’re right. This island is safer, even after what happened today. It doesn’t compare to what would be waiting in Seoul. But, Eun Ju-ssi, think about the children–”

“I am thinking about the children!” Eun Ju interrupted.

CL held up her hand. “Listen to me for a moment. Let’s say we make it even safer here. We fix the barricades. We completely clear this island of every last zombie. But then what? We get older. The children get older. Those children… they’ll grow up having never been part of a society. They’ll never know what a school looks like, they’ll never have the chance to meet others and fall in love and live a normal life. And then, when we’re all old and eventually die, they’ll be here alone, just to grow old and die, too.”

“But they will grow old,” Eun Ju said, the tears falling down her face now. “Here, they’ll live. And maybe someone will come get us eventually. I don’t know. But I do know that if we leave, there’s no way they would make it. I can’t let that happen. I’m a mother. My job is to protect my children.”

Hyun Suk rubbed his eyes and stood from the table then. “We’re talking without knowing all the facts,” he said. “We need to find a map. We need to know exactly what it is that we’re considering before we talk anymore.” He pushed his chair aside and made his way around the table. Everyone watched him leave.

Seungri got up then and walked to the other end of the table. He grabbed the bottle of soju and then returned to his seat, where he poured himself a full glass.

Krystal, sitting across from him, gently pushed her empty glass forward, gesturing for him to pour her some, too.

Thunder then pushed his glass forward as well, as did all the others, one by one.

Outside, Hyun Suk walked around the house and saw Jong Kook, Ji Hyo, Gary, and Jessica digging in the dark. The only light they had to guide them was the full moon over the sea and the flashlights that were angled on the ground around the burial site.

Hyun Suk stopped and paused over Jae Suk’s body, feeling a great foreboding fear. It was like he could feel his own death creeping close. Maybe Eun Ju was right, he thought. Maybe it would be stupid to risk all their lives when they had the chance here to fortify this island and live in peace – alone, but alive.

Jong Kook, shirtless and standing knee-deep in the hole they were digging, wiped his brow and looked up at Hyun Suk.

“I’ll see if I can find you better lights,” Hyun Suk said.

Jong Kook nodded and continued digging.

Hyun Suk breathed in deeply as he stared once more at Jae Suk’s body and then continued past the burial site to the shed. He had remembered seeing an old yellowing map of Seoul taped to the inside wall of that former store before he had converted it to an armory. He hoped to retrieve that now so that everyone inside would be able to have a more informed conversation.

After ripping the map from the wall of the shed, he grabbed a few lanterns and some gloves for the group outside and then returned to the group inside, all of whom were silently drinking around the table.

Hyun Suk saw that their glasses were filled with soju and that their eyes were red and tired. He wondered if perhaps they should resume their talk in the morning after everyone rested, but he assumed that they would have some sort of service for Jae Suk in the morning and that everyone would likely once again sit around this table with glasses filled with soju and eyes that were red and tired. It made no difference, he realized, if they talked now or then. Jae Suk’s death would be on their mind either way.

He lay the map flat before him on the table. G-Dragon, sitting at his right, and Thunder, sitting at his left, stood to peer over Hyun Suk’s shoulders at the map.

Hyun Suk rubbed his eyes again and pointed to Sido. “Okay, we’re here,” he quietly said. He then ran his finger up from the Yellow Sea, following the Han River as it traveled between Ganghwado on the left and the mainland on the right, curving around to where it parted Seoul. “We can stick to the river for as far as we can,” he said. “We’ll be safe on the boat.” But his finger stopped toward the right corner of the map piece, just between the more populous halves of Seoul. The river continued eastward, but they would need to journey far north of Seoul to Uijeongbu, where Camp Stanley was located.

“How far from the river to the base?” Se7en asked.

Hyun Suk bit his lip. Too far, he thought.

“Wait,” Thunder said, slowly pushing Hyun Suk’s finger aside. The map was dirty and faded, but he could see a thin blue line that split off from the Han and traveled north.

Hyun Suk saw the inlet, too. It looked like a narrow waterway that ran alongside Highway 61 all the way north to Uijeongbu. He let out a breath of relief, smiling now at the others. “We never have to step foot on land,” he said. “At least, not in Seoul.”

The others stood from the table and walked over to look at the map, all crowding around it and trying to peer over each other.

“The yacht is too big for that inlet I think,” Thunder said. “But we can take the cabin cruiser.”

“We can’t all fit on that boat,” Dara said, thinking back on the cramped conditions they had endured journeying on that boat to Sido two months earlier. Her face covered in worry, she said, “There were only… what? Fourteen of us when we took that boat here?”

“About that,” G-Dragon said.

Hyun Suk rubbed his chin. Dara was right. The others had come to Sido on the cruiser. He and his family, along with Se7en and Rina, had come on the yacht. And Jessica and Krystal had been found later, on the rowboat.

“How many are we in total now?” Bom asked.

“Twenty, I think,” T.O.P. said. “That’s without the kids.”

Hyun Suk sat down and pushed the map aside, feeling what small amount of hope he had gained begin to fade. “We can’t all fit on the cruiser. We’d… we’d have to take separate boats, I guess.”

“We have the small fishing boats,” Krystal said, referring to the blue boats they had found on the eastern shore of Sido that day Gary and Thunder saw the sisters out on the water.

“We’d need a lot of fuel to power all those boats,” Daesung said. He looked at Minzy. Hoping to restore her confidence in the plan, he said, “But we can do it. It’s not impossible.”

Minzy shrugged. The plan didn’t seem as dangerous as before.

Even Eun Ju, who had initially been the biggest protestor of the plan, seemed to loosen a bit, opening herself to the idea.

The only one that wasn’t amenable to the idea was Kyung Eun. She had been listening to them talk this whole time from her room upstairs. She had heard everything. She knew about her husband. She knew about the base. And she knew that she didn’t want to go. “I’m not leaving,” she said.

Everyone looked up from the map, seeing Kyung Eun standing in the entranceway of the dining room. They hadn’t even known that she was awake, much less that she had been standing there.

CL began to walk over to her, but Kyung Eun put her hand up as if pushing her back. “I don’t need comfort,” she said. “What I need is my little boy to stay alive. I don’t care how safe that waterway looks. If my husband’s death can teach us anything, it’s that things are never as safe as they seem. Those things… they’re everywhere, they’re brutal… and they…” She couldn’t continue. Her body collapsed into a nearby chair, her hands covering her face as she finally let loose her tears, having held them back all this time.

CL walked to the end of the table and sat down next to her, trying to console her, but Kyung Eun quickly snorted back her tears and pushed CL away again.

Whatever confidence Eun Ju had in the plan now seemed to disappear with what Kyung Eun had said. “She’s right,” Eun Ju said. “We don’t know how safe that inlet is. Maybe it’s blocked. Maybe it’s filled with bodies. We have no idea what the condition of the city is now. For all we know, it could be…”

“All up in flames,” Kyung Eun said, as she slowly stood up and looked at the others. In an eerily calm voice, she said, “Going there would be like going to hell.” And then she left the room and returned upstairs, leaving everyone speechless.