“─swoosh All of it, gather it up!”
“Oh. This is expensive, I’ll definitely use this.”
“….Everyone seems active.”
Watching Senior Hwamin and Senior Jung-eun excitedly stuffing canned goods into their bags.
I thought, for the next few months, I wouldn’t have to worry about food.
One big backpack and one small backpack per person.
Since we stuffed as many cans as we could into two bags, I roughly estimated we could manage comfortably for two or three months.
Of course, we’ve practically filled our backpacks with iron weights, so they’ll be pretty heavy, but if I think about extending our lives by the weight on our backs, it didn’t seem like such a burden.
And maybe, this kind of good opportunity won’t come again.
Inside the mart, luckily, there were no zombies.
In fact, we didn’t even see a shadow of a zombie while loudly moving through the underground grocery store, so that’s pretty sure.
Of course, while I wasn’t completely oblivious to the possibility of this situation, it was quite surprising that the future I thought had the lowest chance of happening became a reality.
The only signs we could see were a few items scattered away from the counter and some bloodstains, as if something had been dragged.
It was only remnants of the past reminding us of horrific events that occurred here.
If those disgusting bloodstains on the floor hadn’t been so wide or if I hadn’t judged that it would be insufficient to guard the area with just four people, I might have felt this mart was an ideal place to stay.
Literally, it couldn’t get better than this.
But.
Still.
─tap
“….Is this the right thing?”
My head was ringing louder than ever.
It felt like the first day of the incident. A friend with bloodshot eyes wandered into the classroom, and when I tried to help the distressed girl, I watched a friend get his neck bitten right in front of me.
No. Perhaps an even more unsettling feeling than that; it was as if I was stepping into the boundary of death myself, that horrible sensation continued to thrum in my mind.
Run away right now.
It’s not too late.
Maybe, the reason I couldn’t understand the situation was because my reason was being warned by my emotions.
What am I missing?
What have I done wrong?
─thud….!
“I have to figure this out.”
With that unsettling feeling that wouldn’t disappear, I hastily selected some nearby canned goods and started shoving them into my backpack, then began glaring at the marks nearby.
I could feel Senior Hwamin, pouring cans into her backpack beside me, shooting me a puzzled look, but I was frantic to dispel the doubts swirling in my head.
Even as the cans I shoved into my backpack slipped out through a small gap and fell at my feet, my thoughts continued.
Right now, the fallen cans didn’t matter.
If I couldn’t understand this discomfort…
I felt a chilling premonition that I might live the rest of my life regretting it.
“………”
All the way to the distant, unreachable bright light of the flashlight, the deep red line stretched out.
Setting the flashlight’s brightness to maximum, I carefully illuminated the bloodstains on the floor, thinking that they might be the only clue that could ease this frustration.
Thud, sitting down on the floor to observe the marks more closely, I started to conjure up a virtual experiment in my head about how these traces came to be.
What was needed for the accident was one person who had suffered a severe wound in an area where arteries pass, bleeding profusely.
And thinking of the floor as a piece of paper, the person bleeding as a brush soaked in ink.
The traces I initially thought were simply made by zombies or people crawling on the floor.
The virtual brush slowly traced along that line—
“…….It wasn’t crawling.”
─The result completely deviated from my initial expectations.
First of all, this red path was not made by a single person crawling.
It was clearly a mark left by someone dragging another.
Thinking about crawling, when a person moves their body by crawling, they pull with their extended arms and simultaneously push with their bent legs against the ground.
Then, to move forward again, they extend their previously bent arms and bend the legs they had propped up.
And that means, if a person crawls, it implies that there’s a repetitive action of moving the body according to a certain rhythm.
Think of it when drawing a line on paper with a brush.
If you pause the brush intermittently while drawing, that moment of pause would leave a thicker part on the paper like nodes.
Not just brushes, but any pen filled with ink would do the same.
It couldn’t be otherwise.
However, the thickness of the bloodstains left on the floor was continuous without such nodes, meaning the owner of these marks moved across the floor at a constant speed without stopping.
The reason it could happen was that some entity dragged another existence across the floor at that speed.
In other words, at least two entities were required to create these marks.
The one doing the dragging and the one being dragged.
And based on the next clues I’d surmise, it was highly probable that the being being dragged was a human, not a zombie.
Unless someone moved the zombies they killed for hygienic reasons after establishing a base, who would have the luxury to move the corpse of a zombie they slaughtered amidst a scenario where more zombies were approaching?
Simply put, the very act of being dragged while bleeding already indicated that it wasn’t some decayed zombie goo dripping out.
The dragger was a severely wounded human.
So, were these marks made as someone dragged a person who had been bitten by a zombie?
According to the clues we discovered so far, that possibility seemed most likely.
Maybe, during the time of the incident, friends or family nearby would’ve dragged an injured person as they tried to help them—
…
Wait, hold on.
Dragging them?
Dragging an injured person?
Not picking them up, not cradling them, but ‘specifically’ dragging them?
Given the amount of blood, it was reasonable to assume they were severely injured, perhaps bitten by a zombie on their neck or major arteries, bleeding profusely.
And not just one or two, the number of bloodstains seemed to indicate at least more than ten people were dragged in a glaringly strange manner that one could easily deem incorrect?
…No. That cannot be.
No matter how urgent and desperate the situation was, having someone sit there doing nothing and dragging an injured person on the floor is not something a person with any normal sense would do.
Sure.
If the one dragging them was not human?
“──────!?”
I felt chills all over my body.
I was gasping for breath, and for a moment, my lungs didn’t enact breathing.
Perhaps, I’ve been mistaken from the very start.
The full reasoning process I thought to be flawless.
But if the answer I arrived at wasn’t correct, there was only one possibility.
The assumptions were twisted from the very hypothesis.
That’s right.
“…..Ah, ah…!”
I had been wrong.
The unsettling feeling I felt upon entering this mart could only become clear now.
Why are there no corpses left here?
A person bitten by a zombie becomes a zombie.
And the already deceased do not turn into zombies.
Alternatively, it means that someone who died due to excessive blood loss or shock before fully turning does not become a zombie but simply ends up as a corpse lying on the ground.
Corpses that have been brutally chewed up by zombies are not hard to find, even while gazing at the streets from Hwi’s house.
But why.
In a place where I thought so many people had died.
In the location where many had died en masse without knowing anything on the very first day.
Why are there no bodies?
─Because someone hid the bodies or those about to become corpses instantly.
How?
─By grabbing their arms or legs and dragging them across the floor.
Then who did the dragging?
─Zombies.
Why is that?
Because it is simply──
“──To make those who find this place believe this place is safe.”
The truth was horrifying.
We planned to head to the mart because we had run out of all our supplies.
And that wasn’t a particularly unusual choice; it was a perfectly reasonable and ordinary decision for rational thinkers.
Although our survival had been buttressed by appropriate luck, it wasn’t some extraordinary fortune.
Just enough luck someone else could experience as well.
And many who survived likely made similar plans to us when it came to finding food.
They were short on rations.
Unlike us, who could stay longer at home due to an abundance of supplies.
But now, where were the traces of those people?
What happened to the survivors who came here before us?
─Creak, creak.
“……Ah─”
My neck turned unnaturally in all directions like a broken doll.
The many tracks I thought were merely made by zombies crawling around now held entirely different meanings.
If you looked closely inside the thick blood trails, you could find four thin lines that were about as thick as a finger.
They were etched long into the ground as if resisting whoever was dragging them away.
These marks were likely the last traces left by those who had sought shelter here.
“Don’t, go.”
At the crossroads of consciousness fading, even while half-conscious.
The being dragging them was the same horrifying existence that caused their demise.
And those who committed such terrible acts—where are they now?
Those who set traps in a frequently traveled area, erasing any traces of their wrongdoing to make the nearby prey feel safe, where might they be?
Right here.
“─They’re here.”
Here, of all places, watching over us.
In the pitch-black darkness, they would laugh at the fools drawn to the bright light.
“They’ve been watching us all along….!!”
Thud, I stomped my foot down.
Toward the two seniors far away, who were blissfully filling their bags with cans, completely oblivious.
I ran at the maximum speed I could muster—
[“”””””───■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■!!””””””]
“……W-What?!”
“Everyone, ruuuun!──!!!”
Everything was already too late.
