Everyone sat quietly, packed and ready to go, as Jong Kook studied the map one last time. He was trying to make sense of the highways. It seemed that the highway next to them was not Highway 61, as Jong Kook had thought. Highway 61, which was the route that followed the water all the way to Uijeongbu, crossed over the water and ran up the other side – or would have crossed, had the bridge not collapsed. According to the map, the highway beside them crossed, too, at the next bridge, Yongbigyo. This was a good thing, he realized. If they could just make it past Yongbigyo Bridge, then their side of the water would no longer have a major route running alongside it, at least until the highways crisscrossed again.

“Something wrong?” G-Dragon asked.

Jong Kook shook his head. “Actually, I think we might be okay,” he whispered. He tried again to look north to get a better view of the way ahead but, even though it was mid-afternoon, the skies were still dark from the raging fires west of them, limiting their visibility to only that which was immediately nearby. To his left, he could see Mt. Eungbong, which was more of a large hill than a mountain, but was big enough to block their view of the burning city beyond. The top of the hill was lost in the black fog blanketing Seoul, but Jong Kook could see the zombie-packed highway that ran alongside the base of the hill and confirmed that, just like the map depicted, it crossed the water at the next bridge. 

For now, he thought, the trees and thick brush between the shore and the highway should provide enough cover. So long as they were quiet, they should be fine. “Okay,” he said, as he gestured toward G-Dragon and the rest of the group. “Let’s go.”

They walked up the shore with their backs hunched and their melee weapons in their hands, not daring to speak lest they be heard.

Gary and Jessica, at the rear of the group, tightly clasped their hands together as they walked, their gaze centered on the others in front of them. Jessica was trying to stay alert and focused, but she kept thinking about her decision to leave Sido and was full of regret. She would’ve been safe there. They all would’ve been safe there. Gary was thinking about this, too. He had agreed to the journey because it seemed feasible with the waterway connecting Sido to the base and because Hyun Suk had said that they would never have to step foot on land. Gary himself had repeated those words to Jessica when she was scared earlier on the cruiser. He had told her not to worry, that they would never have to get off the boat. He looked at her now, feeling as though he had failed her. She returned his look, her eyes wide and full of fright. Realizing that there was nothing he could do to assuage her fears, Gary sighed and stared ahead again as they continued to follow Thunder and Krystal walking just in front of them.

Thunder was carrying the mini bow that he had carved and had a quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder. He was confident in his ability to survive, knowing that his weapon had the benefit of range in that he would be able to shoot with some distance between himself and the zombies, whereas the others would only be able to fight with their knives and other melee weapons once the zombies were already upon them. His only regret was not carving more bows so that everyone else would be as equally equipped. At the time, he had thought that the guns would be sufficient and didn’t think that they’d ever be in the situation they were in now.

Krystal, walking beside him, eyed the bow he was carrying. She knew that he had won the archery contest in the Idol Athletic Championships back in January and had seen him practice with the bow on Sido, but to see him like this, using those skills now in a real life and death situation, was somewhat surreal. She couldn’t help but think about how much their lives had changed in just a few months’ time. Although she had trained on the island with Se7en and Rina, and with Thunder in personal lessons, she wondered if she really had the skills necessary to survive.

Walking ahead of her was Daesung, who was thinking the exact same thing, particularly after the close call he’d had in the water. That experience had shaken him and made him quite doubtful that he would live to see the base. Out of everyone walking along that shore, he was the least skilled with guns, and although he was slightly better with melee weapons, he lacked the confidence now to fight.

Minzy seemed to sense his worry and grabbed ahold of his hand. She studied his forlorn face and, when their eyes met, she nodded, trying to let him know that she understood without having to say the words. Daesung nodded, too, and grabbed her hand more tightly as they continued walking.

While those three couples walked in somewhat of a paired formation, the others ahead were scattered in the brush.

G-Dragon and Seungri had stopped and were looking through the brush to the zombies where they saw that the guardrail alongside that highway had given way to a tall fence.

“Hyung, come here,” G-Dragon whispered, trying to get Jong Kook’s attention. He pointed toward the highway. “Look, they can’t even get us anymore. Not unless they can climb that fence.”

Although the situation with the fence looked promising, Jong Kook didn’t want to get his hopes up. He had been surprised by the zombies in the water and knew that anything was possible. Would the zombies know how to climb that fence? He wondered as to the limits of their intelligence. Earlier, when the zombies had jumped off the bridge and into the Han, they seemed to be more scrambling up toward the boat rather than actually swimming. And later, when the zombies were stuck in that debris underwater, they seemed incapable of freeing themselves. Perhaps they weren’t as smart as they seemed. Still, Jong Kook didn’t want to take that chance. “We should still be careful,” he whispered. “Even if they can’t climb, they might be able to break through if enough of them rattle that fence.”

As they continued on, Jong Kook kept an eye on the highway. The route was just beginning to ascend in its bend eastward away from Mt. Eungbong to where it would pass directly above the shore and cross over the tributary as Yongbigyo Bridge. The fence, as G-Dragon had pointed out, was indeed tall enough to block the zombies, but Jong Kook was still worried, particularly as he had no weapon with which to defend himself other than the K2 in his hand, which he considered a last resort. But then he thought that perhaps the guns were actually best for this situation. If the zombies somehow managed to get through that fence and fall onto the shore, they would quickly swarm their group. There was no way that their group would survive in hand-to-hand combat with a horde that big. In that worst-case scenario, the noise of the gunfire would be a trivial concern. The K2s might be the only weapon capable of getting them out of that mess.

Just as Jong Kook was about to turn to tell the others to unpack their assault rifles and have them ready just in case, he noticed that the fence G-Dragon had previously pointed out seemed to suddenly and inexplicably end. He stopped dead in his tracks, startling the others following close behind.

“What is it?” Ji Hyo asked.

Jong Kook could only point ahead at the bridge. Everyone then saw that the fence ended, leaving only that guardrail as a barrier, which couldn’t have been more than waist-high. If the zombies saw them now, they would surely be able to jump from that bridge, just as they had done earlier.

Ji Hyo turned to those in the back of the group and put her finger to her lips while Jong Kook gestured for everyone to get down, but there was really nowhere to hide anymore. Before, when the highway was running alongside them, they had the brush as cover. But now that the highway had become Yongbigyo Bridge, passing right over the shore, they were practically out in the open.

T.O.P. and Bom were crouched low and staring up at that bridge, watching that mass of undead slowly stagger across in somewhat of a jerky disjointed gait with their arms bent awkwardly and reaching out, as if in endless pursuit of food. Bom cringed at the sight and squeezed her eyes closed, unable to look anymore. T.O.P. put his arm around her and pushed her even lower beside him, the two now nearly lying prostrate atop the ground.

CL, who was the farthest out from the group, was also lying on her stomach. She had just thought to unpack her K2 from her bag, realizing what Jong Kook had, that the knife in her hand wouldn’t hold up against the horde if they caught sight of their group and fell from their bridge to get them. She lay on the ground now like a sniper, aiming her K2 up at that bridge.

“What are we going to do?” Ji Hyo asked. She was crouched next to Jong Kook and was blankly staring at him. “Should we just wait here ‘til they pass?”

Jong Kook scanned the bridge but didn’t see an end to the horde. “No, we need to move,” he whispered. “If we can just make it under that bridge, they won’t be able to see us.”

Ji Hyo nodded and now gestured for the others to begin crawling forward.

CL abandoned her sniper stance and joined everyone else as they began slithering across the ground, using their hands and feet to drag their bodies slowly across the dirt and rocks of that shoreline.

Because they were crawling on the ground and not looking up, they didn’t notice that one of the zombies on the bridge had stopped, having spotted the movement on the shoreline, and was now leering over the guardrail, its diseased eyes squinting at its dinner.

Dara was crawling alone, as G-Dragon was still up ahead by Seungri. She was struggling, her bare arms red and burning from being scraped by the coarse dirt. As she stopped for a moment to examine her arms, which were speckled with embedded gravel, she heard a sudden splat beside her and saw a zombie on the ground lying in a clumpy puddle of blood. Its body was mangled from the fall – its face was smashed in and one arm was bent backwards behind it, the forearm dangling from a dislocated shoulder. But despite its injuries, it managed to stand and shamble toward her.

Dara tried to hold back her scream as she tightened her grip on the knife in her hand, hoping to kill it quietly and keep moving.

G-Dragon jumped to his feet and rushed over to Dara just as she stabbed the zombie in its head. He breathed out a sigh of relief and grabbed her hand, sorry to have left her behind, and then looked up at the bridge to see if they had been spotted. Indeed, they had. The sound of that zombie’s body hitting the ground had alerted the rest of the zombies on the bridge and they now began to cram up against the guardrail, looking down at the shore.

One of them fell from the bridge then and nearly exploded in front of G-Dragon and Dara from the impact. Its legs were severed entirely and an arm was hanging off, and yet it still crawled toward them, unfazed by the fall and focused solely on its food. G-Dragon swung his crowbar like a golf club, decapitating the zombie, the head sailing through the air and ricocheting down the shore. He almost laughed at the sight but was reminded of the seriousness of the situation when he saw another zombie fall from the bridge. And then another. And another. It was like an air assault. Zombies were dropping down all around them like cannibalistic bombs.

“Run!” Jong Kook yelled.

Everyone scrambled to their feet, trying to dodge the zombies falling from the sky. Most of the zombies landed with significant injuries but still got up to chase them in somewhat of a slow but forceful pace. Others splattered upon hitting the shore, becoming nothing more than a crushed torso and head, but even the ones that were debilitated like that were chomping away on the ground, hoping to catch something with their teeth.

Those at the head of the group managed to run past the falling zombies, under the bridge, and out the other side, where they continued to sprint along the shoreline. But those at the tail end – Daesung and Minzy, Thunder and Krystal, and Gary and Jessica – didn’t have enough time to get past what was now a cascade of zombies falling from that bridge, like an impenetrable and endless waterfall. It was as if the bridge itself was emptying out upon the shore, the bodies just raining down upon them.

With no way forward, the three couples had no choice but to retreat and run back the way they had come.