There's an hour left before boarding time when the end of the world begins.

"Okay," Irene clears , "Yeri's going with Joy to get some snacks, while the three of us will look for some other things to buy. Be back here in forty-five minutes, alright?"

Their two youngest barely even say yes before they're already off and heading towards the convenience store, linking their hands as they walk with an extra bounce in their step. Wendy, Seulgi, and Irene watch them for a bit before the eldest turns to face them and asks, "Which store are you going to?"

"We passed by a book store earlier," Wendy says, pointing to somewhere behind Seulgi. "I'll go there. How about you, unnie?"

"I don't really have anything to buy, so I'll just go with you," Irene answers. "Seulgi?"

"Hmm," she hums, not knowing where to go. Seulgi's thinking of just going to the café for some coffee and bread when Wendy interrupts her train of thought and blurts, "There are coloring books in the book store!"

"Fine," Seulgi looks at her amusedly but nevertheless smiles. "I'll go with you, too."

(A couple of minutes later, Seulgi couldn't be anymore grateful that she decided to go with them. Just imagining being alone during the zombie apocalypse makes her shiver.)

That is how they end up in their current situation—huddled behind the farthest bookshelf from the entrance, with a fire extinguisher and a baton they got from a fallen guard as their only weapons. Seulgi has the fire extinguisher because she's the only one who can carry it without struggling while Irene has the baton because well, after inflicting so much pain with just a slap of her hand, there's no doubt that she'd be a mean hitter with a baton, too.

Wendy is doing her best to think of a way out of this mess, but thinking is very hard to do, especially when the sounds of the growling undead kept on breaking her concentration. They managed to barricade themselves by moving some of the bookshelves and covering any open spots with books, blocking them from sight. She's actually glad the zombies aren't like the ones from that game her friends back in Canada used to play—just thinking about having to deal with any of those Special Infected makes her shudder. Instead, she hopes that the zombies are like the ones from The Walking Dead—slow, mindless beings that can be outrun. There's something niggling at the back of her mind when a hand slips into hers, getting her attention.

"I'm worried about Sooyoung and Yerim," Irene says in a low voice, her eyebrows furrowed. "Do you think they're okay?"

Not wanting to agitate their leader any more than she already is, Wendy replies, "If there's anyone who's going to survive the zombie apocalypse, I'm pretty sure it would be those two."

"Yeah, unnie," Seulgi adds, touching Irene's shoulder. "I'm sure they're fine."

Irene's about to retort when they suddenly hear a gunshot, stopping her. Judging from the sound, it wasn't too far off from where they are. Motioning with her hands for them to be quiet, Irene attunes her ears to their surroundings and takes note of all the sounds she hears. Besides their breathing and the zombies' growling, she hears distinct footsteps approaching their location, too regular and even in their pacing for whoever it is to be a zombie. She instructs her two other members to crouch and get ready to fight, also readying her baton.

Poised to attack, Irene raises her hand when the bookshelf in front of them moves, but when she sees a flash of brown haired heads, she nearly drops her baton in relief. It's when she sees the out of place red streaks on brown hair that she panics again.

Rushing to Yeri, she asks, "Whose blood is that? Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did you get bitten?" Irene is halted in her rambling by a shaking hand on her shoulder. "Unnie," Joy manages to say in between barely muffled giggles, "stop worrying, that's just blood from a zombie Yerim shot through the head when it tackled her."

She then notices the pistol their youngest member is holding in her right hand and nearly hyperventilates. "Where did you get that? Do you even know how to use that? What if you shot your—“

Irene is cut-off when a hand covers and she is honestly annoyed that she keeps on being interrupted, but when Wendy motions for them all to be quiet with her other hand, the Red Velvet leader is harshly reminded of their present situation by the louder growling of the zombies. She sees Wendy grabbing a book, and before Irene has the chance to ask what she's doing, the book is thrown over the bookshelf, followed by the rush of footsteps.

She raises an eyebrow at Wendy who just shrugs and offhandedly says, "Sound attracts them." The main vocal then goes back to sit in her corner—her self-proclaimed thinking space—to plan their escape. Irene turns back to Yeri to continue berating her, a bit softer this time since she didn't want to attract the zombies again, but their youngest member points towards Joy's direction. Irene looks confused at first but when she notices something slung on Joy's shoulder, her eyes grow large in disbelief.

“Why do you have a shotgun with you? Nevermind that, where—how did you even get that?" Joy cringes back a little bit from their frantic leader, while Yeri just chuckles evilly and Seulgi looks worriedly between her members and the bookshelves. After some more glaring from Irene, Joy breaks and answers, "We saw some dead bodies on our way here then Yerim pointed to the side and there was this dead guard with a shotgun, so of course I did the rational thing during a zombie apocalypse and took it. There was another guard beside him with a pistol, so I took it and gave it to Yerim."

They became silent after that since Irene didn't have any acceptable retort, but the silence doesn’t last long because of Seulgi who innocently asks, "Did you take their spare ammo too?"

Irene hisses Seulgi's name in disapproval, but the rest of the members just ignore it and Yeri perks up, opening her bag. "Yeah, two magazines for the pistol and around a dozen of shells for the shotgun."

"We should use them sparingly and when really necessary then—the shotgun when there's a horde and the pistol when in an emergency," Wendy says and nods her approval. "I trust you at least know how to handle them?"

Their two youngest beams at them in affirmation with Yeri replying, "All those shooting games aren't for naught, unnie!"

Wendy nods again, her eyebrows furrowed, thinking. After a while, she points a finger upwards, getting everyone's attention. "Okay, here's what we're going to do."

Suddenly, for some unknown reason, Irene gets a bad feeling and shivers.

“Vote no, Seulgi! It’s disgusting!”

“But unnie, it’s the only way we could go out safely!”

“But it’s so unhygienic! Do you really want to splatter yourself with zombie guts and blood?”

“If we’ll live, then yes!”

Amidst all her members’ whisper-shouts, Seulgi looks back and forth between them as if she’s watching a ping pong match. Why did she have to be the last member to vote? Where is all the fairness in the world? A zombie apocalypse comes and suddenly a matter of life and death rests on her shoulders?

“Seulgi, snap out of it!”

The bear blinks at her members. Their expressions range from excited, hopeful, determined, and fairly annoyed.

An awkward moment passes with only “Rarghrhrgwrs…” or “Ughhghnghnghghs…” filling up the silence.

Seulgi blinks at her members again. “I vote yes.”

Yeri beams at her, Joy looks defeated, Wendy only nods as if she was already expecting it, and Irene glares at her.

“I trusted you, Seulgi!” Irene hisses, looking betrayed.

Instead of looking down, Seulgi perks up and says, “I watched this one episode of Fear the Walking Dead and Nick lives. It’s going to work, unnie!”

The only thing that manages to do is to annoy Irene more, which Wendy notices. “Don’t worry, unnie. It’s only going to be for a while. We can wash it off when we get to a safe place. Besides, we can always walk around Michonne-style.”

That placates Irene for the moment, even though she doesn’t know who Mishon is. Wendy is smart and she trusts her. She got that presidential award after all.

After Seulgi got back from taking a zombie and killing it with the fire extinguisher by a solid bashing to the head, she smashes it again on its stomach, causing blood and guts to come out. Irene cringes, but nevertheless dips her hand in the pool of blood and smears it on herself, just as her other members did. Yeri looks excited, and Irene just rolls her eyes at her. 

They start moving out by pushing away the bookshelves as quietly as they can. Whenever the growls get loud, Wendy just throws a book somewhere far away. She now has several pocket novels stored in her bag, and she’s glad that she always brings big bags. They’re really useful, she thinks, and she nods in praise of herself. Good thinking will save them from the apocalypse. They creep slowly, and Sooyoung and Yerim look like they’re having fun posing as ninjas. That’s another plus—panic won’t do them any good.

“The coast is clear,” Yeri says in a serious voice and moves back behind Seulgi, though her small grin shows what she really feels about the whole apocalypse thing. They move out of the bookstore with Seulgi leading, Joy and Yeri flanking her, with Wendy in the middle as Irene takes up the rear guard. The airport looks isolated, and they think it’s really weird as they’re used to fans screaming and calling for their attention. Hopefully their fans are safe and didn’t turn into zombies. Just the thought of it makes Irene shiver.

The plan is to get to a place with food that would last them for a long time and more supplies, and that could only mean one thing—the convenience store. As frequent goers of the airport, they could probably get there with their eyes closed, but of course they need to have it open to check for zombies. On that note, Irene glances at Yeri and sees that her eyes are actually closed, so Irene does the rational thing and nudges Yeri a bit hardly with her baton.

Yeri’s eyes open and she grins sheepishly at Irene, while giving her a small shrug.

They pass by more dead people and that’s when Irene sees it, as if it were a gift from Heaven—a bow and a full quiver of arrows. She rushes to the dead person and briefly wonders why the hell they would have those, ones with arrows that are pointed and can actually kill, but she brushes the thought off. It’s awfully convenient, and given that she hit the camera inside the target that one time and was the reason all those idols got some chicken, even if she doesn’t like chicken, of course she should have it, although Yeri and Joy both eye her with a bit of jealousy. She considers giving the baton to Wendy, but remembers that she could give a good hard slap with just her hand, so she keeps it.

They quietly shuffle a bit more and are almost to the convenience store, when they see more dead bodies, and they all seriously feel like they’re in a reality show and someone’s playing a huge prank on them, or maybe the world just really loves Red Velvet and decided that they will survive the apocalypse. As if it were a miracle, the couple who died holding hands have a metal baseball bat and a katana. Seriously, what kind of people go through this airport? Wendy wonders, but oh well. She and Seulgi play rock paper scissors to decide who gets which weapon, and they end up with Seulgi having the katana and Wendy the baseball bat. Seulgi’s happy that she gets the katana because she was getting quite tired carrying around the huge hunk of metal that is the fire extinguisher, and Wendy’s a bit down because she really wanted to be like Michonne, but oh well, she does have some experience using a bat because of that one intro they did in some awards show, so it’s fine. Maybe they’ll find another katana soon.

The something that was niggling at the back of her mind hits her just as they step into the store—they really could walk around Michonne-style! They have the katana now, they can use it to cut off the arms and jaws of zombies! They really might just survive the apocalypse.

“Go and get all the non-perishable food, flashlights, and any supplies you think are necessary that you can carry,” Wendy directs in a hushed voice, and they all spread out.

Seulgi begins by perusing the snack section, because okay, she admits to herself, she really does get hungry a lot, so she stuffs all that she can in her bag. She sees several cans of Pringles, so she also stuffs them in her bag, and opened one to munch on as they go—zombies can’t stop her from eating.

Irene goes to the toiletries and other supplies section and grabs everything that she deems is needed. And if she stuffs a whole lot more than what is needed of tissue and wet wipes inside her bag, well, the apocalypse won’t stop her from being hygienic. She can’t wait till the moment when she could wipe off all the disgusting zombie blood—and guts juice—she just smeared on herself.

Joy surprisingly finds a canned food section in the store, which is really weird since it looks like it’s the ones that could be found in groceries. That means a whole aisle of canned food, and it’s pretty high too. As the tallest member, she does a good job of reaching for the ones in the really high places, as the top section had the yummy ones. She sees canned dog food and grabs three, so when they get back to their dorm and might be possibly holed up in there fo a certain period of time, Haetnim definitely won’t be hungry.

Wendy also sets off and heads to the drink section. As the one with the big bag, it would only be logical that she’s the one who keeps the large bottles of water and other drinks. She grabs what she needs and places them in her seemingly bottomless bag. The problem is that it’s getting quite heavy. Maybe she’ll let Seulgi carry it later.

They all meet up by the entrance of the convenience store, but Yeri is the one who got there first. Irene sees several lumps in her bag, so she asks, “What did you get?”

Yeri grins at her and proudly shows off the contents of her bag.

Irene’s mouth pops open in shock. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with all that soju?!” she exclaims, but still in a hushed tone. It’s crazy how she can still sound so scary while whispering, Joy thinks.

“Well,” Yeri shrugs and paints a nonchalant look in her face, “since you all got what’s necessary, I got what I think is also necessary.”

“And why in the world do you think those are necessary?” Irene hisses.

“To cheer us up when we’re down about everything being messed up!” Yeri replies cheekily. “Plus, it could also be used as a disinfectant! Any kind of alcohol is still alcohol.”

Irene tightens her eyes and glares at her, but all Wendy does is give Yeri a big thumbs up. “Good thinking, Yerim.”

Yeri beams happily back.

They decide to rest for a while at some restaurant because Seulgi’s a bit tired from carrying Wendy’s bag. She also needs to recharge with her Pringles. Wendy waits until the cheerful but determined look in Seulgi’s eyes return before she clears .

“Okay,” she begins, “since Joohyun-unnie seems to be really disgusted by all the blood and guts, I’ve figured out a way we can safely walk around without them. We just need to find a group of zombies.”

“For what, Seungwan-unnie?” Joy asks as she raised an eyebrow in interest.

“To keep as pets, of course,” Wendy replies, her face a mask of seriousness.

“How do we do that?” Seulgi asks this time around.

“All of us will keep one each. We cut off their arms and jaws with Seulgi’s katana and bind them around the neck with this rope I conveniently found in the convenience store. This will serve as their leash,” Wendy says.

As the rest of the members nod their head in understanding, they suddenly hear more groans coming their way. Seulgi bounces up from her seat, grabs the rope from Wendy’s hand, and announces, “I’m on it!” She skips out of the restaurant before anyone could stop her and heads straight to the incoming horde. All that the ones left inside could do is watch worriedly as Seulgi slices this way and that way as if she were moving to a well choreographed dance while also avoiding any bites or scratches. She isn’t their main dancer for nothing, after all.

When she’s done slicing away all the parts Wendy said she should, she smiles proudly at her members and motions for them to go outside.

“All of them had cameras slung around their neck. I think they’re our fansites,” Seulgi says while grimacing.

“Huh,” Wendy lets out, “maybe all they’re running on is their basic instincts, that’s why they found us. It’s pretty amazing, actually.”

Seulgi just shrugs and hands out the leashes to each of the rest of them as if she were giving away presents. Irene grins happily as she finally wipes off all the guts juice.

When all of them were settled with their “pets”, as Wendy calls them, she then says, “On to the next phase of the plan—time to find a working van!”

The others nod in affirmation and start moving, their pet zombies in tow. They’re all amazed at how the other zombies don’t mind them as they breeze through the rest of the airport and out to the airport’s entrance where several vehicles were parked. It all looks chaotic—car doors were open, bodies were strewn about, and there were so much guts and blood splattered on the ground. There was also a horde of zombies crowded around what they were supposed to head to—their van. Wendy looks at Joy and whispers, “You know what to do.”

With that, Joy takes several steps forward, gun aimed straight ahead, and fires. Irene is covering the eyes of Yeri who was silently protesting, Wendy looks around for anything else that they might need, and Seulgi just stares at the rest of her members while thanking whoever was up there for blessing her with them.

When all the zombies were dealt with, they all move forward towards their van. When they arrive, they all tear up a bit as they see their manager’s mangled corpse. Seulgi carries her out of the vehicle and onto the ground. “May manager-unnie rest in peace,” she whispers.

And so that’s how the end begins—Wendy’s sitting on the driver’s seat with her pet zombie riding shotgun, while the rest of her members sit beside their own at the back of the van. She catches their eyes through the rear-view mirror and nods. “Let’s go.”

Wendy starts the car, revs the engine, and begins driving off into the sunset and into their new beginning.

Perhaps they really will survive the end of the world as they knew it after all.