Han-su crawled through the small window into the driver's seat. The windshield was smeared with old blood and grime. Outside, the hood of the truck was covered in grasping hands. One zombie was sprawled across the glass, its face pressed against the driver's side window.
He ignored it. He poured the scavenged gas into the emergency intake he'd prepared.
He turned the key.
The engine groaned. Rrr-rrr-rrr.
"Come on," Han-su pleaded, his forehead resting on the steering wheel. "Come on, you piece of junk. You've never failed a delivery."
Rrr-rrr-RRRRUMBLE.
The diesel engine roared to life. The vibration shook the zombies off the hood like crumbs off a table.
Han-su slammed the truck into gear. He didn't look for a clear path—there wasn't one. He aimed for the gap between a stalled taxi and the sidewalk.
"Hold on!" he yelled.
He floored the accelerator. The truck jumped forward, the heavy steel bumper smashing into the taxi's rear. Metal twisted and glass shattered. The truck groaned, its tires spinning on the wet asphalt before catching traction.
He plowed through the sea of grey. He felt the sickening thump-thump as the heavy wheels passed over bodies. He didn't look in the rearview mirror. He couldn't afford to see what he was leaving behind.
As they cleared the immediate block, the scale of the disaster became visible.
The Mapo Bridge was a graveyard of cars, some of them still burning despite the rain. The Seoul skyline, usually a glittering crown of light, was almost entirely dark. Only the N Seoul Tower remained lit, a lonely red beacon in the clouds.
"Where are we going?" Ji-young asked, clutching the dashboard.
Han-su looked at the fuel gauge. It had climbed to an eighth of a tank.
"We can't take the bridges," Han-su said, his eyes scanning the road. "They're chokepoints. If we get stuck on a bridge, we're dead. We're going to the riverside parks. There are maintenance roads there that the public doesn't use. We follow the river west."
"West? Towards the border?" Mr. Kim called from the back.
"Towards the sea," Han-su corrected. "If the land belongs to them now... we find something that floats."
But as he turned the wheel toward the Han River, he saw something that made his blood run cold.
A military blockade.
But there were no soldiers standing guard. There were only humvees turned on their sides, and a line of heavy machine guns pointed—not at the zombies—but at the road leading out of the city.
The city wasn't being saved. It was being quarantined.
Survival Status: Volume 1 Conclusion
Current Word Count (Cumulative): ~6,200 words.
Vehicle Condition: Damaged roof, 1/8 tank of fuel.
Party Health: Han-su (Minor bruising, fuel ingestion), Ji-young (Stable), Mr. Kim (Mental instability).
Next Objective: Bypass the military blockade or find an alternate route through the riverside park.