Red Dot - 16

Chapter 16

Junseong placed his hands on both sides of the card-scanning machine and easily jumped over the thigh-high bar. The others quickly followed without any delay. Since everyone except Junseong was trained in sports and knew how to use their bodies well, this was no challenge for them.

On the other hand, the zombies tripped over the bar at the ticket gate and fell forward. More zombies piled on top of them, and eventually, a few managed to get past the bar and started running. Some had parts of their faces smashed against the floor or lost fingers after being stepped on by other zombies. However, since they only craved the bl00d and flesh of living humans, their injuries didn’t matter at all.

From this point on, there were no zombies blocking their way. Instead, all the zombies that had been drawn by the noise would form a massive, trailing horde behind them.

“Kraaak!”

“Kyack, Kyahak!”

“Hoooaah—!”

The terrifying screams grew louder behind Junseong’s group as they ran at full speed. By the time they reached the platform with the screen doors, there were so many zombies that some were getting crushed under the others.

“Where do we go from here?! Should we just open any door?!”

Jiwoo shouted urgently as he ran ahead of Junseong toward the screen doors. But the door handles weren’t facing the platform—they were on the side facing the train tracks. That meant they couldn’t open them manually from where they were.

Jiwoo’s face turned pale as he realized this too late.

“W-What is this?! It won’t open! It won’t open!”

Panicking, Jiwoo shouted and threw his wrench.

He wasn’t the only one caught off guard. Even Chaeyi and Soyeon had never imagined that the emergency doors could only be opened from the tracks.

At that moment, Junseong checked his watch and ran along the side of the screen doors.

“Follow me! Hurry!”

When Junseong shouted, Chaeyi and Soyeon quickly ran after him. Jiwoo, a little behind, started running too, but suddenly, the wrench he had thrown was shoved in front of his face.

“Stop being a dumbass.”

The voice was so cold that, for a moment, Jiwoo forgot about the chasing zombies. He froze as Hanseo looked down at him with a sharp, emotionless gaze.

Junseong finally reached a screen door with an “Emergency Exit” handle. His face was tense as he checked his watch again. Chaeyi and Soyeon, breathing heavily, stopped behind him. Jiwoo and Hanseo also arrived soon after.

“Kyahhh!”

“Haaak—!”

The enormous swarm of zombies was still coming without slowing down.

“What do we do now?! Huh?!”

Jiwoo screamed again.

They were at the very end of the platform, pressed against the screen doors.

If just a few more seconds passed, they would all be torn apart by the zombies.

“Aaaahhh!”

Overwhelmed by fear, Jiwoo lost control and started smashing the screen door next to the emergency exit with his wrench. Luckily, the glass was reinforced, so it didn’t shatter. However, a small crack formed, and a few tiny shards broke off.

Meanwhile, the zombies kept getting closer.

“O-Oppa… W-What do we do?”

Crying, Soyeon clung to Chaeyi, who was trembling as she grabbed Junseong’s sleeve. But even then, Junseong kept staring at his watch, checking the time.

Frustrated, Chaeyi bit her lower lip and shook his arm hard.

Clack—

At that moment, they heard the sound of a lock being released from the screen door right next to them.

Then, the door opened toward them, and a middle-aged man appeared from the side of the tracks.

“Hurry, come this way!”

The man, who had a warm expression, urgently called out to Junseong’s group while glancing at the approaching horde of zombies.

“Go in! Hurry!”

Junseong silently thanked the man for arriving just in time and pushed the others inside first. Chaeyi, Soyeon, and Jiwoo entered, and then he tried to push Hanseo in next. But instead, Hanseo used his strength to shove Junseong through the door first.

“No!”

In his dreams, Junseong had always made sure everyone else got in first before entering last. He had thought that even if he got bitten, he could just restart. But more than that, he saw his younger sister and her friends as people he had to protect.

In those dreams, he had always been the last to enter, slamming the door shut just as the zombies swarmed in. The way they crowded against the screen door, pressing their bl00d-stained hands against the glass, had been terrifying.

Even then, it had been a close call. But this time, there was one more person.

In a situation like this, the last person to enter would almost certainly be bitten.

If he had followed his usual habit of pushing Hanseo in first and staying behind, there would be no restart this time. It would be a complete game over.

Right now, the one facing a game over was Do Hanseo.

No, it seemed that way.

The zombies crowding behind Do Hanseo suddenly seemed to pause. It was such a brief moment, like the blink of an eye, that it made me wonder if I had imagined it.

Right after that, Do Hanseo quickly rushed inside the screen door and slammed it shut with a loud bang. A zombie that had reached through the gap, smelling human scent, had one of its fingers caught in the forcefully closing door. With a snap, the finger was severed and fell to the ground.

“Graaaaaah—!”

“Ugh, ack, argh—!”

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

The zombies, pressing tightly against the screen door, furiously pounded on the glass while letting out horrific screams. They were attacking because their hunting instinct took over at the sight of a living human, but at a glance, it looked as if they were screaming in frustration after losing their prey right in front of them.

“Hah, hah….”

Jiwoo, who had been standing on the tracks, collapsed onto the ground. As if that was a signal, Chaeyi and Soyeon also lost strength in their legs and slumped down.

Junseong, staring at the zombies pounding on the screen door, suddenly felt someone grab his arm, as if supporting him. He turned his head.

It was the same person who had just barely escaped being devoured by zombies. Yet, he was still wearing that strangely calm smile.

“Don’t sit on the ground. Just hold on a little longer. Let’s sit somewhere clean.”

Everyone was covered in zombie bl00d and dust, so why was he suddenly worried about cleanliness?

Junseong quietly watched Hanseo, who even carried Junseong’s backpack. The backpack contained important things for Junseong, so he usually refused to let Hanseo carry it, but right now, he had no time to care about that.

‘Something’s definitely strange.’

The way the zombies reacted just before the screen door closed, and Hanseo’s consistently calm expression, were both bothering him. The moment had been too brief for anyone else to notice, but for Junseong, who always calculated time and patterns thoroughly, the lingering sense of something being off was impossible to ignore.

“Whew, that was close.”

While keeping his eyes on Hanseo, Junseong looked at the middle-aged man who sighed in relief just like the rest of them.

“Thank you. You saved us.”

Junseong, who had been so cold and indifferent toward Hanseo, even gave the man a slight smile. Seeing that change in attitude, Hanseo’s smile faded slightly.

“Good thing I happened to be checking the area. Is everyone safe?”

The man scanned the group with slightly tense eyes. He had rushed to save them, but he seemed worried that someone in the group might have been infected.

Junseong, more than anyone else, knew that nobody had been bitten—both from his dreams and from observing the situation.

“They’re just exhausted. No one has been bitten.”

“That’s a relief.”

At a glance, they were only covered in bl00d splattered from zombies, and none of them appeared to have actual bite wounds.

The relieved man helped the others get back on their feet. Junseong also helped Chaeyi up, and she asked him quietly,

“Oppa, did you know that guy was coming?”

“No.”

Junseong did know, but he couldn’t tell her he had seen it in a dream.

She wouldn’t believe him now, but if she did, that would be even more of a headache.

In the dream, when he had told Chaeyi everything honestly, she later scolded him for always being the one to find solutions. After that, people who wanted to take advantage of her secret began targeting her.

‘I have to prevent that.’

He didn’t want his sister to be exposed to danger—not from zombies, but from people.

Chaeyi stared at Junseong suspiciously, then let out a short sigh.

Someone who had prepared so thoroughly for this zombie outbreak didn’t even know which way the screen door opened? She found that hard to believe.

Not to mention, when fighting the zombies, he seemed to know exactly where and how they would appear. His reactions were abnormal, almost as if he had eyes on the back of his head. He also seemed to know that Soyeon, who had been near the back, was in danger—almost like he could see it happening.

It might just be an overthinking, but the idea that he even knew this man would show up to open the screen door was unsettling.

It was obvious they had only just met today, yet if Junseong had anticipated all of this without any prior agreement with the man…

Chaeyi shook her head.

Her brother having prophetic dreams or seeing the future? That was ridiculous. He wasn’t some Nostradamus or anything.

The most reasonable explanation was that everything so far had just been a series of coincidences.