With a sudden sensation of weightlessness, Brian landed heavily on the ground, his boots striking solid concrete with a sharp thud.
The vertical shaft wasn't as deep as one might imagine—no more than five or six meters from top to bottom. Jumping down was easy enough… unless, of course, you suffered from claustrophobia or acrophobia.
Slowly rising to his feet, Brian shook out his slightly numb legs and looked toward the flickering firelight at the far end of the tunnel. That was his path forward.
"You good down there?" Jeffrey's voice echoed from above as he peered down through the opening.
Brian tilted his head up and shouted back, "I'm fine! Go ahead and seal the gap."
"Got it."
Once assured Brian was unharmed, Jeffrey pulled his head back. A moment later came the sound of wood scraping against stone, and the patch of light vanished—plunging the shaft into complete darkness.
Brian pulled out his flashlight and illuminated the path ahead. The tunnel looked like something carved by human hands—resembling a mine shaft, reinforced with wooden beams and planks.
He followed the passage until he reached the source of the light: a basement buried deep underground, utterly dilapidated. This was a spot the smugglers had passed through while digging their secret route to the outside world, and they'd repurposed it as a supply and transit station.
The light came from a small campfire. Beside it sat a rotund man engrossed in a comic book, his belly round and content. Against the wall to his right stood a workbench stacked high with more comics.
Brian approached, eyeing the man with surprise. He glanced around the room once more before speaking.
"Dawn, isn't this post supposed to be on rotation? Why is it always you I find here every time I come?"
"Bro! You walk like a ghost—scared the hell out of me!"
Hearing his name, Dawn jolted upright, tearing his eyes away from the comic. When he saw it was Brian, he visibly relaxed.
He patted his chest to calm his racing heart, then finally answered:
"You know I'm a total coward. Nobody else wants this job anyway. It's just sitting here guarding the place, and they even bring me food and drinks. I volunteered—it's easy work, and I don't mind."
"You…"
Brian shook his head, pointing at the chubby man. "How do you stand being stuck in the dark all day?"
"Eh, not bad at all," Dawn replied proudly, rubbing his belly. "I used to be a professional shut-in, after all." He gestured toward the workbench beside Brian. "There are a few pistols in the drawer, and some gas masks hanging next to them. Just grab one pistol—any will do—and when you reach your destination, drop it in the storage box there."
"Got it."
Brian opened the drawer, selected a high-powered handgun and a gas mask, then walked over to a raised platform nearby. He climbed the short ladder leading up to it.
Glancing back, he saw Dawn had already returned to his comic. Without another word, Brian aimed his flashlight down the tunnel ahead and hurried off.
…
Several hundred meters outside the quarantine wall.
Grass and wild vegetation had long since reclaimed what used to be paved roads. Not a single infected could be seen. In the early days, when hordes of infected surrounded the quarantine zone, the government had carpet-bombed the surrounding area. Over the next five years, they'd repeated these bombardments multiple times.
Once internal stability was restored, government troops began systematically clearing infected from the perimeter.
Later, as smugglers rose in influence, they too took enormous risks to clear a safe corridor—carving a hidden route between the inside and the outside. As a result, infected on the surface roads had been almost entirely eliminated.
Still, many infected remained hidden within buildings and underground. But since they stayed quiet and didn't interfere with either the government or the smugglers, neither side was willing to risk a full-scale cleanup.
Inside an abandoned restaurant, a faint scraping sound suddenly broke the silence. A floorboard slowly slid aside, revealing a man-made opening beneath.
Brian poked his head out, braced his hands on the tiles, and hoisted himself up with practiced ease. He then turned around, dragged the board back into place, and sealed the entrance once more.
Brushing dust off his clothes, he scanned his surroundings and headed toward the restaurant's exit.
Outside, sunlight filtered through the trees, casting dappled light across Brian's face. His eyes quickly spotted an aluminum ladder leaning against the side of a bombed-out apartment building. He hurried over, climbed swiftly to the second floor, then kicked the ladder down with his foot before vanishing into the building's interior.
Moving quickly through the ruined corridors, Brian remained on high alert. Even though this route was frequently used, stray infected occasionally wandered in—ambushing smugglers who let their guard down.
After walking nonstop for nearly half an hour, he spotted the bombed-out city hall across the street. That meant he was roughly halfway to his destination. Another kilometer ahead lay the main quarantine gate—but he couldn't approach it from the surface or from rooftops. Doing so would be suicide.
He descended via the building's fire escape, reached the ground, and slipped into the city hall. Casting a glance at the tattered American flag hanging limply in the lobby, he darted into the stairwell and headed downward.
Unlike the hand-dug tunnels inside the quarantine zone, the outside world had been reshaped by relentless bombing. Entire buildings had collapsed, and underground chambers had been fractured and interconnected by seismic shockwaves—creating a labyrinth of passages resembling an ant colony. Smugglers exploited this chaotic network to move undetected between zones.
Brian fastened his flashlight to his backpack strap, directing its beam forward as he advanced down the pitch-black corridor.
Just as he rounded the corner at the end of the hall, the air ahead suddenly grew hazy. Tiny particles floated in the dim light.
He froze instantly, frowning deeply, and stepped back several paces.
"What the…? Infected here?"
As a regular traveler on this route, Brian knew that just ahead—through a left-side passage—lay a narrow crawl-space leading into an underground shopping mall. That was his next destination.
But now, the air was thick with Cordyceps spores—a clear sign that an infected corpse had been decomposing here for at least two weeks.
Brian couldn't believe his luck. Of all the days to take this route, he had to run into this. Turning back wasn't an option—Norsen had only cleared this one path. Taking an alternate route would mean circling the entire quarantine zone, a journey that would take more than a day.
Sighing inwardly, he pulled out his gas mask—the essential gear for anyone surviving outside the walls. He'd brought it out of habit, never expecting to actually need it. After checking the filter and confirming it was functional, he pulled it over his head, sealing his entire face.
Then he drew both his pistol and his combat knife, crouched low, and crept forward. He found the gap beneath the wall, dropped to his hands and knees, and began crawling inside.
The moment his head passed through the opening, the spore density intensified. Visibility dropped to just three or four meters. Worse, he heard a faint, hissing sound from within.
"Stalker…" he realized silently.
Identifying the type of infected, Brian moved even more cautiously, minimizing every sound. If he were attacked here, trapped in this narrow tunnel with spores all around, he'd be in a hopeless situation—nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
It took him several tense minutes to fully enter the space. He glanced around, adjusting the mask on his face. Even after wearing it countless times, he still hated the thing.
The mask severely limited his peripheral vision. With teammates, that wouldn't be a problem—but alone, his blind spots on either side left him dangerously vulnerable. He'd have to rely entirely on his hearing to detect threats.
But no matter how uncomfortable it was, Brian had no choice. In a place saturated with Cordyceps spores, going without a gas mask wasn't just reckless—it was suicide.