TW: There's a paragraph, which contains well...blood. It's in the third part of the story when Yoongi meets a new character and their story is being told. It's like 1-2 paragraphs. There are also death mentions, but you probably already figured that.

Hii!

I hope you like this chapter! It's really long considering how I don't know how to write anything more than 2000 words... It just came out like that..

P.S. the story is not linear from this point on

They have been driving through the woods for over two hours. The car cannot reach more than a hundred kilometres per hour and they are driving on a pretty ty gravel road, so they could not move at full speed even if they wanted. They are at least half the way there, but nobody was rushing. Yoongi still felt confused about what happened to Seulgi to just collapse like that.

The road has been oddly free of zombies, so Yoongi takes out his journal (or as he liked to call it – his memoir). He doesn’t want to think about his friends now. He just needs to write. For the future generations if not for his own emotional health. He does not exactly know what to write but he decides on something basic, to get his mind off Byulyi, and takes his pencil out. It does not really matter if the writing will not be that comprehendible, because he will rewrite everything into a book with blank pages he found when he was rummaging through old books in a bookstore they were looting.

“I can’t exactly remember us finding the university, because I was only four years old, but my grandma always tells me that when they had just found the community it was small. Maybe 200 people, not more. Everything was just starting off. People were trying to figure out how to live in such communities making their own everything, because they lived as if camping earlier.”

“It was difficult at first, everyone was so different. There were a few things that helped them survive, first was how lucky they were to find some engineers, teachers, chemists, doctors, trained military people and even farmers in their community or on looting missions. Second, was a huge university library they found near the university building they lived in. It was full of books about anything ranging from how to make solar panels to dictionaries to various works of fiction.”

“The knowledge that we had led us to building a community. We built our own ways to generate electricity. We found cars which were repurposed to run on electricity generated by solar panels, because it was too hard to find fuel they have used before “the end” happened. We taught the children what we know about the world. But we were just lucky.”

“I was lucky. When I got here it wasn’t a new start for me. I was a child when it all started, it wasn’t easy for me, because this is my world. I didn’t have to adjust to any changes, because I grew up here. While growing up I didn’t need to lose friends to the disease, but I lost a lot of them to other things. The only person I actually lost was my mum, but I was only six years old. I cried a lot back then, but I couldn’t got over it. To be honest, I can’t even remember her that well and I guess her death doesn’t really bother me, since I don’t think I could’ve done anything to help her. People would call me heartless for that, but it’s not healthy to grieve my whole life.”

“Our generation understands the inevitability of death and mostly accepts someone’s death after a short time. I think that this has helped our current situation to improve immensely. In fact, the reason we are rebuilding the mall we found a few months ago is because our population started growing rather rapidly. The rooms were starting to get stuffy and the land less fertile. At least half of us needed to move and we’ve found a perfect place for that.”

“We’re still going to be one community though; we’ll still need to move in-between the university, its library and the mall.”

Yoongi suddenly feels the car come to an abrupt stop. He puts his journal and pencils back inside his bag. He can only look through the side windows, since he’s sitting in the back. Looking through the window Yoongi sees vast grass fields and an edge of a brick fence. He sighs when he hears a familiar voice yelling something what sounds like “Open the gates, they’re here!”

“Well, this is gonna be an adventure…” Yoongi mumbles, rolling his eyes.

One moment Byulyi is waving goodbye to Yoongi, who is leaving for the expedition. The other, she feels Seulgi’s grip on her waist loosen as Byulyi sees her grab her head with both hands and collapse. Byulyi suddenly forgets everything in this world as she rushes to Seulgi. Byulyi checks her girlfriends pulse, only to see that there is none. Tears swell up in her eyes, she can barely see anything, she starts hyperventilating and shaking Seulgi’s lifeless body.

“This can’t be happening.” Byulyi thinks. “She can’t just die! SHE CANNOT BE DEAD!” she is screaming now. Byulyi’s heart is beating so rapidly it is physically hurting and she feels like she will soon suffocate. She cannot stop sobbing, holding Seulgi in her hands and hiding her face in the creek of her girlfriend’s shoulder.

Taehyung, despite Byulyi’s kicking, rips her away from Seulgi’s body. Byulyi gives up, sitting on the ground, she cannot feel anything anymore. She cannot even feel her own loud sobbing, while the tears are pouring out of her eyes and wetting all her clothes. Byulyi watches Taehyung cover Seulgi with his sweater, lift her limp body from the ground and head for the infirmary.

Byulyi just sits there, hugging her legs and rocking back and forth as people pass her, getting on with their daily tasks. Nobody seems to even notice her. It is not an unusual sight to see someone in a position like that. People die all the time here and nobody cares anymore for people, whose loved ones died. It is nearly daily that something like this happens and everyone knows that this is not their business, others will take care of that person, it is not their job to do that.

Thinking about how her shift starts only after two hours, Byulyi gets up. She still cannot see anything through her tears, but she knows the way by heart so it is not that hard. She climbs up the ladder to the roof, feeling a bit unstable. The roof, among all the solar panels, is where she always goes, when she wants to think, or cry for that matter.

Byulyi sits up at her usual place on the edge of the roof. Nobody can see her there and it is relatively safe, as there is another building not far below. She comes here nearly every day, to think about her life. Sometimes she just silently stares at the sun setting over the ruins of what she thinks was called Seoul, wondering about all the lives that were lost when the pandemic hit. It must have been so terrible to experience whole societies crumbling in front of your eyes. Byulyi thought about that and felt happy. She had decided long ago that she is glad that she practically cannot remember anything from that time. Only bits and pieces and even those are too vague for Byulyi to understand how she felt then.

However, most of the time, when Byulyi is on the roof, she spends talking to herself about her day. It is like her own, non-written diary. Today she feels completely numb, as she tries to wrap her head around the idea that she has just lost Seulgi. Byulyi thinks that nobody can hear her, but little does she know that a certain engineer has, in fact, noticed her and now comes here to carry out, definitely too frequent, random solar panel check-ups.

The engineer has been doing this for almost over a year now, checking up on the interesting, pretty girl on the roof and trying to muster up the courage to talk to her. This time is not an exception either. Yongsun comes up to the roof for her (now) regular solar panel check. This time she is confident she can strike up a conversation with the cute girl. Yongsun can finally ask her name and stop referring to her as ‘the girl on the roof’, because Wheein and Hyejin are starting to doubt that ‘the roof girl’ is even real. After Yongsun checks the solar panels, she heads towards the usual spot in hopes of managing to summon up enough confidence to finally approach the girl.

“God damn it, Yongsun, you’re a grown- woman… you shouldn’t be scared of a person, who hasn’t even done anything to you!” she thinks, to boost her self-esteem while walking there.

Yongsun reaches the ‘special spot’, raises her head and comes to an abrupt stop. She can only see the back of ‘the roof girl’, but it is obvious she is crying from how she is trembling. Yongsun stands in place some more only to hear the ‘the roof girl’s’ sobbing get louder.

 “You’ve said you’d talk to her today.” Yongsun mumbles to herself. “I know she’s crying and it’s very unusual…” she tells herself, thinking about how she has only seen ‘the roof girl’ laughing to tears with her friends, the few times she caught a glimpse of her in the canteen.

Yongsun spends the next few minutes debating with herself and trying to plan out every possible way all of this might turn out. “Well, it’s either now or never…” she decides and marches down towards the girl sitting on the edge of the roof.

Yoongi steps out of the van as soon as they enter through the gates. He watches Son Gain as she excitedly climbs down the watchtower. If Yoongi did not know, he would not notice the slight limping in her walk as she strides up to the crew. Gain cut her leg (well, nearly), when she realised she had a tumour there. She was not scared of admitting that she will ‘die’ from it just as her parents did at the beginning of everything, oh no! Gain just thought that if the cancer progression is already slower for her, she might as well slow it down even more. So when she felt something weird in her shin about two years ago and Yoongi’s grandma diagnosed cancer, Gain decided that the metastasis will be slowed down if she got rid of the whole left leg up to her knee. She could not give up after all this time. She had gone so far, she the only way she was going to go down was ‘guns blazing’, Gain decided.

One thing led to another and Gain was sitting on the operating table in the infirmary, biting down on a huge piece of cloth, tears swelling in the corners of her eyes as Min Yoongi’s grandmother saw Gain’s leg off, while Yoongi and a few others that worked in the infirmary was dealing with the excessive bleeding. To be honest, everyone was amazed how Gain was still conscious after the operation, considering she was only given a very small amount of strong analgesics that the chemist managed to synthesise with limited resources.

When Gain finally approaches the crew she smiles, greeting each of them, her glance staying on Yoongi's eyes a bit longer. He wonders if he notices a glint of sadness in her eyes, but dismisses it thinking he is just imagining things. Yoongi's relationship with Gain was always complicated. They trust and respect each other deeply, nonetheless, they do not seem to get along very well. Gain and Yoongi argue every chance they get. From the side, they always look like one is going to kill the other soon, since both of them are incredibly stubborn and neither wants to admit they are wrong.

Underneath all that, however, they are good friends. Do not get me wrong, they still fight like dogs. Passively at first, smiling as a warning to not 'go there' through their teeth and then basically throwing punches a moment later. Son Gain and Min Yoongi just have too different the personalities to get along like normal people do. Despite these fights they have, they know one another very well. Gain knows one makes Yoongi tick, while Yoongi has the honour of knowing Gain's whole life story. They basically share their deepest secrets and if you are very close to both of them you would probably be convinced they are best friends. And you would probably be right.

Gain retreats to a few metres from the group and starts talking.

“As you’ve all been in informed, you'll be here for two whole months. Since we still have lots of work to do and it's all different, you'll be assigned roles according to your abilities and preferences. You'll start working the day after tomorrow, when the other groups leave back for the main living grounds. You have one day to look around the area.” Gain subtly sighs as she shifts from one leg to another. Yoongi can see her eyebrows briefly scrunching up, as if Gain suddenly forgot what she wanted to say, until she continues a moment later.

“The dinner for you is when the main clock on that wall shows 11 pm in the first floor, southern hall” she says pointing to a huge clock, seemingly powered by solar panels, just as most of the things here. “That’s more than an hour from now, so Wheein here can show you to the room complexes on the fourth floor. You can pick any free room you want there. That’s all for now.” Gain finishes explaining and waves everyone off simultaneously starting for the gate.

Yoongi, finding the ‘great leader’ Gain’s speech extremely unusual, ditches the group going for the room complex and tries to catch up with his friend.

“Haven’t seen you in a while.” Gain says with a smirk, as if she already knew Yoongi would go after her.

“Five months, to be exact…” Yoongi answers, “We left for the looting expedition and then, when Tae and I finally came back, you were already gone.”

“Well, I don’t know what else you want from me. I asked Jea to tell you that I found a perfect place during my last expedition for food, but they didn’t let me check it, since it was too big for us three to loot. Hell, we even checked whether the building was still usable, while you were gone. We just had to start the construction as soon as possible.” Gain nervously ran her hand through her hair. Yoongi found it weird how irritable she has been since they arrived. Though he decided that it would not be very tactful to straight-out ask her.

Yoongi was suddenly distracted from his thoughts by Gain’s voice. “You coming in or not?” She was standing at an open door that led to a small wooden shack near the gate. Yoongi did not notice the door, nor the nearby windows before. He thought that the shack was only so that the guards could have firm, high ground from where they could observe the surroundings of the gate.

Yoongi’s eyes go over the interior of the shack. There is a huge wooden table covered in maps and papers, with at least 18 chairs around it. Suddenly he catches a glimpse of an empty plate and a mug on the table as well as a bed in the far left corner of the shack.

“Do you live here?!” He exclaims.

Gain sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose as she sits down on one of the chairs, finally extending her prosthetic leg. “And you have a problem with that? I sleep here, because I constantly have business with the guards. It’s more convenient than them looking for me in an area of a hundred hectares.” She seems unusually annoyed.

“So…anyway, how’s your leg?” Yoongi asks, feeling awkward. He has not seen Gain so worked up since she had to learn how to walk with her wooden prosthetic, but kept falling everywhere for a few weeks.

“I’m sensing there’s something else you want to ask. You’ve been looking weird at me since I’ve first started talking.” Gain retorts at Yoongi’s poor attempt at ‘small-talk’.

Yoongi sighs. Gain can see right through him, there is no point in hiding what he wants to say. They talk about everything.

“You wanted to ask about why I seem so stressed, didn’t you?” Yoongi gives a slight nod as Gain continues. “I don’t know what’s happening, to tell you the truth.” She says under her breath, her face relaxing from its annoyed state. “I’ve been like this for a few weeks now and, to be honest, I’m fearing the worst…”

“You mean?..” all of the usual coldness is gone from Yoongi’s face when he talks to Gain. Right now it is replaced by empathy, as if he knows what his friend will say.

“I’ve not been myself, it’s been hard for me to make decisions and so on… what else could it be? I didn’t think it would catch up with me this fast, though.” Yoongi has never seen Gain this miserable. She seemed like she was letting down everyone, Jea, Narsha, Yoongi and, most importantly, herself.

“Does anyone else know?”

“I’m planning to tell the captain of the guard tonight. I called him here, since he’s not on duty tonight.” Gain’s face suddenly lights up in a fake smile. It is a sign that Yoongi should not try to get more information for the time being. “In the meantime, do you want to help me put the groups together?”

Yoongi agrees and they spend the next hour grouping the arrived people according to their abilities and discussing their possible tasks.

“Before we go eat, Yoongi, you know that you’re probably the most competent out of all of these people? In close range combat, I mean.” Gain says calmly, now she seems more like herself. “I was thinking of forming a new resource group to a nearby brick factory, which I’ve recently found on the map. The previous one that made wooden boards is completely used up. Even the building isn’t there anymore. The new one isn’t scoured yet, so it also might be full of zombies so…”

“What are you getting at?” Yoongi interrupts, impatient, as his stomach is starting to growl.

“I think you should be the one lead the five-person group to the new factory to get supplies.”

Taehyung passes the field with Seulgi’s limp body in his hands and heads for the infirmary. Her lips are already blue, but her body is not completely cold yet. Her eyes are still open and Taehyung sighs looking at them. He does not exactly know how to close them, so he is left with Seulgi’s dead stare directed at his face. Seulgi is not very heavy but the fact that her body is dead, so she is not holding onto Taehyung makes it hard to carry her.

Taehyung walks down a dark hall and kicks the door to the infirmary open. It is probably the only room in the whole university where the light is constant even when the sun has already set.

“I’ve got a body.” he states nonchalantly.

A girl with a heart-shaped face he has not seen before comes up to him and inspects the body instead of Yoongi’s grandma.

“There’s no wounds? How did you kill it then?” she asks, probably thinking it is a dead zombie Taehyung brought for Yoongi’s grandma’s experiments. It was hard to find those who had healthy bodies, so when they did the bodies were immediately brought to the infirmary for testing.

“I didn’t. One minute she was standing there, saying goodbye to the group that was leaving, the other she, she grabbed her head and collapsed.” Taehyung talks in a monotone voice like he just turned the switch to turn off his emotions. But in reality, Taehyung was used to not reacting to things like that. He would just bottle-up his feelings until he can let them out to someone who can bring themselves to care. In this case, Yoongi is not going to be back for at least two months and he will have to be a shoulder to cry on for Byulyi, so he cannot exactly use her.

As Taehyung lays Seulgi’s body on the examination table, the girl who greeted him goes into the back, towards the laboratories, to get Yoongi’s grandma. Taehyung sits there for a while, waiting and trying to push the ball in his throat downwards as he thinks about how devastated Byulyi probably is.

“And what about Yoongi? Has he seen Seulgi collapse?” Taehyung hopes he did not or Yoongi would be very worried for Byulyi, she is like a sister to them after all. They grew up together, being trained by Byulyi’s parents, and taught basic math and reading Tae’s mum, while Yoongi’s grandma told them stories about the world before what she called ‘the end’.

“Hello, TaeTae, how’s my favourite story-teller?” Taehyung is suddenly woken up from his thoughts and momentarily forgets the dead body behind him as he sees Yoongi’s grandma waddling into the main room and towards the examination table.

“Ah… Grandma Yoona! I’ve missed you so much!” Taehyung says, smiling his signature square smile. He remembers the times he would come back from practice outside the fence or reading class and excitedly tell Yoongi’s grandma about his day, while she mixed all kinds of weird liquids together in the lab.

“Have you finally changed your mind in helping me with the chemistry part of medicine or do you have something else to show me?” She smiles warmly, pretending not to see the cooling body behind Taehyung.

Taehyung’s smile disappears and he remembers how much happened in the last hour. His face immediately goes stone cold.

“Seulgi, Byulyi’s girlfriend. She just suddenly grabbed her head, collapsed and died. I don’t know what happened.”

“You know we don’t have the tools that would be appropriate or anything to spare to get a sure diagnosis. If you want answers, I can only guess from the symptoms that it was a haemorrhagic , but I don’t for sure or what could’ve caused it. If she was showing weird behaviour it might’ve been a tumour in her brain or, for all we know, it could’ve been genetic. Does she have any family here?” Yoongi’s grandma asks, scrunching up her eyebrows in concern.

“No. She came here with her dad, but he died after like a month here.”

 “At least we won’t have to break the news to anyone from her family. Her death won’t cause that much pain.” Yoona sighs with relief, but as she continues her face contorts into something akin to grief and concern. “Now, you should probably go find Byulyi if you can. I know she plays strong, but she never deals with stressful situations. She’s probably hiding, crying somewhere…poor thing…”

“She will want to know what happened.” Taehyung nods and starts to leave the infirmary, letting workers to deal with the dead body as they always do, until he is stopped by something grabbing his wrist tightly. He turns around, tears already b in his eyes. The girl with the heart-shaped face is behind him, smiling warmly.

“We’ll be burying her at about 6 pm, when people have eaten dinner. You can come say goodbye. And if your friend wants to see her for the last time, she can come here until about 4 pm, that’s when Minho comes here with our herbs and…” she hesitates and Taehyung prepares himself, because he knows what she’s going to say, he has spent enough time experimenting here and at the laboratory to know the routine. “…and the body bags from the storehouse.” She smiles a concerned smile and lets Taehyung go.

Taehyung goes on to look for Byulyi in her favourite places. “She never handles stress well…where does she go when she’s stressed?” Taehyung tries to remember where Byulyi could have went, because she certainly did not stay and cry in the middle of the field by the fence. “Or did she?”. Taehyung decides to check that, because “what if?”.

After looking around there and then, for some reason, in every bigger tree, he heads for Seulgi and Seungwan’s room. “I mean, there is a possibility she’s there, right? She goes there when she’s stressed sometimes. Maybe she’ll want to go there to mope over Seulgi or something…”.

Taehyung opens the door to the room. There’s no one there, except for the note that seems to be scribbled recently on the blackboard in the room.

“We need to talk -.-

find me in the kitchens as soon as you see this

-SW :)”

 Taehyung reads and takes a mental note to inform Seungwan about Seulgi. He feels a bit awkward to have taken the responsibility to give out the news about Seulgi, but he drops that thought as he remembers that Byulyi is probably crying alone somewhere.

Taehyung returns to his room and flops on the old bed. His room is like any other. Two average beds with old mattresses they found while looting, blankets and pillows out of cloth and feathers from the geese and chickens they keep in the university library’s vacated rooms and garden. Two bed-side tables and two ‘closets’, which were most likely either old cupboards or shelves put together so that people can keep their belongings somewhere. Although Taehyung was proud of his room, since the walls were also lined by various posters or paintings he found or did over the years.

“Where could she be… I need to find and tell her before I leave at 2 pm.” he groans, stretching out on the bed and instantly sitting up, eyes going wide. He remembers how she once mentioned occasionally going up on the roof to think about stuff or look at the scenery.

Taehyung jumps out of the bed and sprints up to the roof. As he finds, it is not as easy as he previously thought to look for Byulyi among all these solar panels, not to mention the huge water tank he has to pass. Finally, he hears sobbing “and someone talking?”. He walks a few more steps to that direction and sees someone sitting by Byulyi.

“Thank you…ummm…I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.” Taehyung hears Byulyi say, sniffling and getting out of a hug.

“Oh my… sorry! I’m Yongsun. But my friends call me Solar, since I’m very invested with solar panels and all…”

“Okay…I’m Byulyi.” There is a faint smile on her swollen face and her eyes seem to sparkle a bit.

Taehyung can sense the awkwardness around them, but he decides not to come closer. That Yongsun girl seems to be doing a great job. Besides, he remembers he has wasted so much time looking for Byulyi that he only has some left to find Seungwan. Somehow, even though Byulyi is always the one to take care of Yoongi and him, he trusts that Yongsun will make Byulyi go to the infirmary to inquire about Seulgi.

“She will take care of her.” Taehyung nods and, abandoning his ‘inform Byulyi mission’ heads for the kitchens. He easily finds Seungwan there, briefly informs her about Seulgi’s death and hurries to get his things and get to the gate.

The van is already waiting there. He loads his things into the truck and they slowly drive out through the gate. Taehyung hopes that the Yongsun will be able to take care of Byulyi. She is the one, who needs to be taken care of now, not others.

Yoongi wakes up as the first ray of light shines through the small window the next morning feeling extremely groggy, his neck hurts and someone is loudly talking outside. Gain and he were discussing various strategies up until late. Yoongi was just resting his head on the table, waiting for Gain to bring tea, when he fell asleep.

Yoongi groans. He lifts his head and looks around only to see that the shack is completely empty. He gets up and heads for the room complexes where he ran over to leave his things yesterday. “It’s a good thing we don’t have roommates, since we work here. The person would be pissed if I just came in at this hour.”

Yoongi quickly gets new clothes and the ones that could use a wash and heads for the lake, where people bathe until there’s enough electricity generated to bring the water to the showers that are being built in the rooms that seemed to have been toilets before. He also gets the things, he should bring to the mission Gain assigned him to, into a bundle and places them by the door, so he can take them after washing up, before leaving.

----

Yoongi grumpily approaches the group of people lined up before Gain, while nibbling on a bun with chicken meat he got from the canteen while heading to the main yard.

“What’s this? I thought you said five people and I’m counting twelve. That’s way too many.” He mumbles, chewing.

“Good morning to you, too.” Gain smiles. “These are all the people that wanted to join. Now you can choose.”

Yoongi takes it as a compliment to his leadership skills rather than the influence of an interesting mission. He chooses the people after he asks them some questions. The group takes one of the vans and they start for the brick factory.

After an hour of driving west along a paved road they find the factory. It is an old red-brick building. The metal door is barely standing and the windows…well, there are no windows. Those are just some square-shaped holes in the walls.

Before they get out into the fresh, early autumn air Yoongi dictates the plan. He seems proud and excited for his task. Most of his teammates are older than him and have completely different fighting styles but he is quite confident he can manage to be the leader.

“When we first go in we split up in pairs. A close-ranged with a shooter. Kibum you use light throwing knives and Minho you use a heavy axe. You go together. Taemin with your light katana and Jonghyun with his heavy crossbow. I go with Jinki and his longbow. We go in silently, so we can scout the place for zombies and take them by surprise. That means no firing loud guns.” Yoongi glares specifically at Jonghyun, who is currently affectionately hugging Kibum and giving Yoongi his cutest puppy eyes.

“Anyway,” Yoongi continues, rolling his eyes. “Gain told me how the building should roughly be planned out.” Yoongi pulls out some kind of a draft from his bag and explains each pair’s scouting area, one of them being the second floor which is the smallest in the whole factory but contains the most rooms. It is probably where the immediate factory administration worked.

After half an hour of going over the plan of the mission again, they get out of the van and head for the factory. The door silently creaks when Yoongi slowly opens it and after a few seconds they are already inside. It is dark, except from the rays of sunlight that fall through the windows and make the thick dust clouds in the factory visible. The group spends some time to adjust their eyes to the change in lighting.

They see a hall that is not present in Gain’s sketch of the building to their right. Nonetheless, everything else is just as she has drawn. They see a huge room to their left. It is lined with various brick-making machines, ‘mountains’ of unused materials and new bricks, while the kilns are placed in the far back. The metal stairs for the second floor is just a few steps away, a bit to the left. Some steps are missing but they think they will manage to climb up.

Finally, Yoongi signals everyone to split up. He and Jinki move to the room on the left of the factory as the others hurry to their assigned places.

Kibum and Minho scouts what appears to be the locker-rooms, toilets and kitchens. Taemin and Jonghyun are occupied by checking all the rooms on the second floor, and Yoongi and Jinki carefully pass the room towards the kilns for firing bricks.

“It’s unusually quiet here.” Jinki states in a hushed voice after a while.

“You’re right, zombies aren’t that quiet.” Yoongi simply says. But Jinki can see he is still suspicious about something and does not say a word.

Yoongi takes a step towards one of the kilns. He figures he will first inspect them and then they can go back to the door to meet the others.

Yoongi hums in confusion and motions Jinki to come closer when he notices that the kiln is still emitting warmth. That is when they hear a sudden, loud bump coming from behind a door they have not noticed before. It is probably the janitor’s closet. Both stiffen at the sound. Yoongi’s grip on his machete strengthens as they approach the door, Jinki falling a few steps behind. Both are ready to attack.

 Yoongi flips the door open. He hopes to take it by surprise. Yoongi’s hand, holding the machete rises as if by habit and suddenly comes to an abrupt stop, when he hears Jinki yell ‘no’.

Two boys, if you could call them boys when they look at least 20 years old each, are sitting scrunched up. Eyes wide in horror. One is grasping an old kitchen knife.

“Zombies would not be capable of doing that.” is Yoongi’s last thought before an actual zombie lunges at him from behind a kiln on his left.