Red Dot - 107

Chapter 107

As Kwak Dujae was following the drone, he briefly looked up at the hospital.

Thanks to the safe guidance, he had gotten closer to the building, but with the height reaching up to the 7th floor, it was still difficult to distinguish between men and women. However, he could clearly tell how many people were standing by the windows.

“Five people?”

At one of the windows on the 7th floor of the hospital, three people were visible, and at two other windows on the same floor, one person was standing at each.

Other than them, there didn’t seem to be anyone else looking out of the hospital. Instead, zombies could be seen wandering around outside from the first to the fourth floors.

The last shelter he had hoped for, Inhan Hospital, was a mix of anticipation and worry.

As expected, there were survivors, but at the same time, unease started to creep in.

[Please connect your radio’s earpiece to this radio.]

[We will assist with your entry into the hospital.]

The note attached to the drone that suddenly appeared was highly suspicious. Would someone really expect a radio or an earpiece in this situation?

The radio he had been carrying had run out of battery the day before. He had tried calling out to other bodyguards who might still be responding, but all he had gotten in return was an agonizing silence until the battery completely died.

A radio without a battery and a specialized earpiece that had no use anywhere else.

He could have discarded these items along the way, but if he could just find a place to charge the battery, they would still be usable.

Especially since by simply matching the frequency with other radios, they could communicate with each other, which would be extremely valuable in Inhan City, where typical communication had been cut off.

It was almost as if the radio had read his mind, appearing before him along with the drone and note, surprising him even more.

“Could it be the people I met earlier this morning?”

When he had fought with a group of strange individuals earlier in the morning, he had dropped the radio while moving in a hurry. If it was them, they would definitely know about it.

His left arm, which had been severed, began to ache again as the painkillers lost their effect. While swallowing the pain, Dujae glared suspiciously at the young man on the 7th floor, who was giving instructions.

Dujae’s main responsibility was the protection of Inhan City’s mayor, and ironically, when the incident happened, the mayor and his group had been at Inhan City Hall. Dujae had tried his best as a bodyguard, but the panicked mayor acted recklessly and was bitten by zombies.

Before the mayor died, he had used a secret external communication line, only to be used in emergencies, to contact the outside world. During that process, Dujae was able to gather information that “the military had already begun to seal off Inhan City” and the location of an “emergency shelter on the outskirts of Inhan City.”

Thanks to the swift lockdown, the area outside of Inhan City was safe.

The people inside Inhan City were also told they would be moved outside once their infection status was confirmed.

This was very useful information for Dujae and the other survivors.

In an effort to rescue more survivors, Dujae thoroughly searched the City Hall, gathering as many survivors as he could. One of them had smartly printed out a list of nearby shelters, so after escaping from the City Hall, Dujae and the group were able to quickly find a place to rest.

By day one, Dujae’s group had survived, totaling eight people.

More than half of them wanted to find their families in Inhan City, but the shelter they were staying in wasn’t very secure. So, they decided to start from the nearest safe shelters and look for more, hoping to gather more survivors along the way. They thought that as long as they could keep gathering survivors, the threat of zombies wouldn’t be as frightening.

However, at each shelter they visited, the place was filled with corpses. Moreover, these bodies weren’t bitten by zombies; instead, they had wounds from knives wielded by “living people.” All they managed to obtain at those shelters were some preserved food and a heightened sense of vigilance.

By the morning of the seventh day.

They finally found some family members, and aside from those who had been torn apart alive, the only ones left alive were Dujae and five others.

With only two shelters remaining on their list and routes planned to get there, Dujae, who was on watch duty, suddenly encountered a group of black-clad intruders.

The ten intruders didn’t seem formally trained, but their unpredictable movements suggested they had learned from street fights. Each of them was armed with a well-sharpened military knife, leaving Dujae no time to use his taser gun properly, since reloading would take too long, and he was surrounded by knives.

While Dujae was struggling, two of the five people with him were killed. Seeing his companions die right in front of him, Dujae lost his composure and charged at the intruders. The intruders, caught off guard, lost the same number of their own.

Just when Dujae was about to overpower them all.

“I knew you’d have trouble.”

A clear voice came from the intruders, and a man with a slightly different type of military knife than the others appeared. He wielded it with swift movements and heavy force, so much so that even Dujae, losing his calm, had trouble reacting. However, Dujae threw himself at the man, relentlessly trying to land a blow, eventually succeeding in hitting the man in the eye with a well-placed strike.

The man, bleeding from the shard of lens stuck in his eye, didn’t stop with his murderous intent. Just as Dujae was about to warn him to back off, the man, using the military knife as bait, suddenly grabbed an axe that was mounted on the shelter’s wall and attacked him.

The man seemed to have aimed for Dujae’s neck, but the attack missed, and the axe cut off Dujae’s left arm instead.

Dujae, instead of staggering, became even more furious. He thought that if he retreated now, everyone would die in that cornered group.

The intruders, terrified by his overwhelming strength and savage fighting despite his injuries, quickly fled with their wounded comrades and the man who seemed to be their leader.

Before leaving, the man threw a deadly threat at Dujae.

“Next time we meet, I’ll gouge out both your eyes in front of that kid. Look forward to it.”

Who was the “kid” the man referred to?

The man’s murderous words planted a seed of doubt in Dujae’s mind, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to worry about it.

After they left, Dujae looked at his own body and saw his severed left arm lying among the dead bodies of his companions. Ironically, the axe that had severed his arm was now his most powerful weapon.

At the shelter where they had been staying, there was nothing useful besides some poor-quality first aid supplies.

With his arm tightly bandaged after only performing basic first aid, Dujae grew anxious. The horrific state of the shelters he had passed through so far, along with the image of the attackers from the place they had been at dawn, kept flashing in his mind.

Hoping against hope, Dujae reached the last of the two remaining shelters, the Inhan Subway Shelter, and was once again deeply shocked.

The shelters he had passed through up until now had mostly shown disorganized movements, where those inside had been quickly handled and left behind, with bodies scattered carelessly.

In stark contrast, the bodies at the subway shelter were arranged in a deliberate circle, as though someone had purposely positioned them that way. The white walls and floor around them were smeared with their blood, creating a chaotic, grotesque scene.

The sight of the bodies arranged in a circle sent a chill down his spine. Whoever had done this was not in their right mind. The people responsible for creating such a scene were definitely not normal.

Having witnessed the devastation at several shelters with his own eyes, Dujae couldn’t help but feel suspicious of the people inside Inhan Hospital when he finally arrived there.

The two companions he had with him were the same ones who had been with him since they left the city hall. Aside from them, there had been no survivors from the other shelters. Therefore, it was hard to believe that this hospital would be an exception, especially considering that the group of attackers seemed to be targeting all the shelters in Inhan City.

‘Can I trust them?’

Despite his doubts, a part of him couldn’t shake the thought.

If these attackers were really targeting survivors, they wouldn’t go out of their way to save them.

Even if they were twisted murderers who enjoyed killing those they kept alive, it didn’t seem likely they would offer valuable equipment to help Dujae and his group enter the hospital.

Above all, his other two companions were exhausted from the constant danger of the attackers, and he himself was severely injured. If they didn’t rest and get proper treatment soon, they wouldn’t survive much longer.

“Please trust me, sir.”

Startled by the young man’s voice, Dujae turned with a surprised expression. The voice was gentle, as if the speaker understood not only his thoughts but also the cause of his suspicions.

“I will definitely save you, sir.”