I'm still alive

If the internal turmoil had been roughly settled, the external problems now remained. In fact, I was so busy running for two days that I didn't hear anything about post-war processing right now. However, the meticulous head of the organization said, "We are planning all the problems neatly, and we are already working on the measures after that." With the right leader now at the helm, the external turmoil was gradually being resolved.

Eden is a planned, systematically built place that is sometimes admired. The tall buildings blocked the road like the walls, and the alleys were cramped so that if they could not cross the barrier made of cement, they could never get inside. And the firm front gate was built with meticulous steel frames and cement whether it was made by professional engineers. Literally the only remaining safe zone, it was Eden.

Sometimes, I was curious about how I could build such a facility, so I asked my silver-rimmed glasses a little. Whenever he heard my question, he would raise his glasses and say, "Because the head of the group was predicting everything."

He was not usually a religious man, but at times like this he resembled the desperate believers I had seen around me. I told Chae-yeon to tell me right away if she points at something weird at school, while carefully opening her eyes to her glasses. But Chae-yeon just smiled brightly as if she didn't know what was what, and I was following her without realizing it.

The fighting group has been reorganized. There were so many people suffering from mental aftereffects that the number of people decreased a little, but the number of applicants among the residents was rapidly increasing. As the leader of the group, a certain believer was appointed by the head of the group, which is rumored to be a retired soldier. Of course I've never seen a face yet. And now, a day later, we were also busy.

Disbandment of the tramp team, and the name of the newly established team was the rescue team. I spent a couple of hours thinking about the name of the group with the group, but there was no name as effective as the rescue team. It was also suitable as a name to tell the survivors who would be rescued, and it was a word that would faithfully represent the feelings that the party is feeling now. We all got together in the office and had time to reorganize.

And Park Dae-bak and his flock, who wanted to join us, came to our office. The non-combat personnel entered the other team, and only combat personnel, including Park Dae-bak, were decided to join the team. Because it was such a spacious place, it was not too much to receive 10 people, including Park Dae-bak, and the new Park Dae-bak group greeted the existing team and started a fresh start.

Why me?’

Even mutant zombies are veterans who hunt without difficulty. Wherever I went, I would be treated, or I could form my own team and exert my influence. But Park Dae-bak followed me here, looking only at our team, whether he had made up his mind from the first time he met me that day. By no means, it was not a long relationship, so I asked him because I was grateful and questioned at the same time. Then Park Dae-bak replied:

'I fell in love.'

Kim Hye-jung shrieks, and Yong-pal hiccups instead of drinking water. The old man looked for Kang Soo-ryeon in a fit of rage, and strangely I had to be cursed. But Park Dae-bak laughed and tapped me on the shoulder. He showed his family picture, saying, "Don't get me wrong," and the photo contained Park Dae-bak, who was smiling brightly, and his family.

Park Dae-bak told me that he had a crush on me as a person. It was first thought that people like us had never seen them, stupid and foolish, and which fools did this. And as long as the Shelter is gone anyway, I wanted to go around with these fools," he said, pounding my chest.

I had no choice but to scratch my back and look at the old man. It seems that our hard-working operations seemed foolish to others. I looked at the old man and asked, "Did we really do that?" The old man turned away from me and pretended not to know.

The simple orientation is over. The Park Dae-bak group, or Park Dae-bak and the other team members, were already strangers, so they quickly melted into the team. Soon after, I offered Park Dae-bak to divide the team into two groups.

I'm not such a capable person. One of the reasons for the failure to increase the number of applicants has also contributed to the lack of applicants, but the next problem was my command ability. From my experience of leading my party, I could tell that I was not a commander-in-chief. To put it mildly, a field commander? I'm also under pressure to lead the people I have now.

But Park Dae-bak was different. He was a capable commander who led as many as 30 people and lived in a city full of monsters. Of course, I have the first order, but I felt that there was nothing wrong with giving the right to act to a group of Park Dae-bak, who has good teamwork and hands and feet. And Park Dae-bak nodded and smiled, and told me, as if he were going to firmly establish the chain of command.

'Okay, Captain.'

The rescue team was first formed today after the answer. The mission will begin tomorrow immediately. Teolbo moved busily and began to make equipment for the new team member, and the group and the Park Dae-bak group sat at their desks for a while and began the meeting noisily.

The office became noisy after a long time. There was a huge difference between the total of 20 people and the number of people who started from the first search team. The treatment has changed, and the equipment has changed. And that's how much pressure I feel sitting on my shoulders. But I felt as reassured as the burden.

* * *

It got dark, and I visited the group leader's room. Chae-yeon was running around asking if she was going to meet the man again, so she had no choice but to come after sunset. Soon after, I sat face to face with the head of the group to hear a briefing on tomorrow's mission. The head of the group offered me tea and asked me for a brief regards, and took out the most important points from the beginning.

'As expected, mutants are the problem.’

The group leader spoke with a firm expression on his face, and the silver-rimmed glasses sighed with a worried face. Instead of defeating his enemies as vagrants, Eden came face to face with another threat of variant. Of course, the rapid response of the head of the group has replenished defense facilities and increased security personnel, but it has never changed that it was a minimal defense to the extent and that restrictions on action are created.

Many varieties were unintentionally released. If you take a rough estimate of the number, there are 20. Statistically, the numbers were insignificant, but the problem was that they were variables with non-standard capabilities. If only one appeared right away, it would be an emergency, but the only problem for Eden was our team doing outside activities. The head of the group raised his head carefully and said,

Do you think a combat team can help?’

The fight against the strains is a set step. A strain that wants us to protect human territory and our flesh. It was an inevitable fight. In my heart, I reminded myself that this place is a jungle where casualties may occur. Knowing that, the head of the group brought up the story of the just-reformed combat team, but I was forced to shake my head and give a negative answer.

No, it's just casualties.’

This was the difference between catching herbivores or hunting carnivores. The level was so different, and the difficulty of fighting itself becomes difficult. As I and my party have experienced, when faced with a powerful strain for the first time, my chills ache and my whole body hardens. The fear of being hunted by a higher physical presence than I was, was not up to the combat team, which had just begun training.

After all, it was just us. Rescuers, the only team that can roam outside. Should we fight the variant with this number of people? I began to harden my face and figure out how to hunt them and how to hunt them. The head of the group, who knew my grievances, smiled bitterly and said he would train the combat team quickly, and soon brought up another topic.

You know why Park Dae-bak joined Eden this time, right?’

I nodded. It was time for Kang Soo-ryeon to have lunch after the orientation. Park Dae-bak was such a chatty person that he constantly told us everything we were curious about, and he could also hear a rough explanation of the Shelter he was running.

There were 30 people in total now, but there were originally more than 60 people. However, people began to die one by one due to the battle with the vagrants and their continuous attacks, and eventually they had to wander away from their original hiding place for a while. So in the end there were 30 people left, and in a hopeless situation he was hopeless.

By the time the food ran out and everyone was exhausted by the freezing cold, the only breakthrough for Park Dae-bak was a lucky encounter with the radio of the group leader who had come to visit. Park Dae-bak, who saw the release of the mutants, was forced to join to save people, and Eden had no reason not to accept the veteran survivors. In a win-win situation, the merger ended well.

But the problem was whether he was elsewhere, and the group leader said with a face full of agony.

'Other Shelters are sending rescue signals and joining forces at the same time.’

For some reason, many people built their own shelves by interacting with Eden. I heard there were about three more, which were small enough to be divided into medium and small compared to Eden. However, they broke the silence and sent out a fierce rescue signal last night. Why did they send a distress signal? Yeah, of course it's because of the strains.

Maybe there was a Shelter that was already wiped out. I sighed small, looking at the face of the group leader who looked dark, and began to think for a moment, leaning against my back in the chair. And soon he said, looking at the group leader and the silver-rimmed glasses standing next to him.

'Is there a Shelter you can still reach?’

It was the moment when the mission for tomorrow was set. It was a situation where they had to run into mutants anyway, and Shelters with weak defenses were in a state of emergency every day by day. The head of the group, whose face brightened at my answer, nodded hurriedly, and turned his eyes toward the silver-rimmed glasses. Then, the silver-rimmed glasses ran busily toward one side of the desk and showed me the data that I had collected.

'One lost contact last night, the other two were radioed through this evening. They say the situation is very bad, but the problem is that the radio signal is getting weaker.’

I swallowed my saliva quietly while looking at the data. There are three varieties that I've seen so far. I don't know if it's all of that kind in general, but I've already confirmed that there are some strains that can be active during the day. The idea of a dangerous mission crossed my mind, but I was thinking of an operation to rescue them safely before I thought it would be.

Are you okay?’

The head of the group asked anxiously, and I answered, shaking my head.

'It's not okay. There are many variables and the situation is not good. There may be a situation where you can shoot.’

Teolbo was working hard to make a silencer all night long. Maybe by tomorrow morning we'll have all the people who can shoot. Although the strains are said to be strong, their strength and speed are useless in front of the gun. Of course, the noise caused by wearing a silencer was a problem, but the situation was not very good to consider.

There was a high probability of speeding. As I nodded as I made a gesture to do so, the group leader jumped up from his seat and bowed to me, and the silver-rimmed glasses also carefully take off their glasses and look down at me. I faced them and bowed my head and wished each other safety.

* * *

I came out and walked along the deserted side of the road.

The alley without a single street lamp was dark and cold. But because of the stars in the sky, I couldn't hurry. The city, where humans disappeared, met the silence of the lights, but brought such clear skies and stars as if in exchange for him. I've got these two flying eyes full of memories I've seen once on the front line.

The stars pour over me and the Milky Way forms a river. I stood there and slowly stretched out my hand, without saying a word, in the sky that seemed to hold my hand. I can see Chae-yeon swimming in a whale in the river of those stars. The child was smiling, followed by a sparkling meteor. When I waved my hand, the stars breathed out the breath of light.

I ran into the warm quarters at a snail's pace.