Chapter 115
“Quite a hassle, huh.”
“It is. A real hassle. Made me wonder why he even bothered to go that far.”
“So? Did you figure it out?”
“A little?”
“Tell me.”
“Maybe he just got fed up. All the endless demands and questions directed at him. In the end, after enduring it all, he created the hierarchy for total control. That kind of system ensures absolute command and obedience. Just like soldiers.”
Sweeper looked at Yohan with a gaze full of sympathy.
“You’re exhausted, huh. Well, can’t blame you. You’ve been carrying all the burden on your own.”
It wasn’t like Yohan wanted to play the villain. But he was absolutely certain it was what the camp needed. He had to become colder, more resolute.
“…We’re here. Let’s finish this.”
With a meaningful look, Yohan pulled out his pistol. But Sweeper stopped him and pulled out his own Glock with a suppressor.
“What are you doing?”
“Felt bad that our boss always takes the fall. See, stuff like this—dirty work—it’s supposed to be handled by the right hand.”
Yohan gave him a long look. Sweeper just grinned, then turned to the wide-eyed soldiers and pulled the trigger.
Pop. Pop. The muffled shots rang out from the suppressor. The gagged soldiers collapsed.
Moments later, flames devouring the corpses shot up into the sky over Yeongjong Island.
“Good work.”
“You too.”
Truthfully, the dead soldiers were victims. It was the officers and NCOs who were at fault, but the burden of blame fell on all of them.
But there was no guilt. Just the thought that it was something that needed to be done.
He could feel himself growing more brutal—becoming a monster.
Maybe he was no different from Gae Baek-jeong now.
Such worthless thoughts would creep in now and then. From the start, he’d judged people by whether they were friend or foe, not good or evil. But if someone insisted on defining right and wrong, they’d no doubt see him as the villain.
The stares of the three people back at the battlefield pierced him like knives.
* * *
‘Another dream.’
As soon as Rina realized she was dreaming, she also instinctively knew—it was a vision of the future.
Same color palette. Same sensation. Just like always. Her blurry vision gradually sharpened.
She hadn’t had one of these in a while. As that thought passed, the scene started shifting rapidly.
Something was wrong.
There wasn’t a single person in sight.
Even as the view rapidly panned around like it was teleporting, there wasn’t a single human shadow to be found.
‘Gasp.’
Rina inhaled sharply without thinking. Right in front of her, a creature—one of the mutants—sat.
Or maybe it stood? She couldn’t tell.
It had an enormous body, the kind you’d expect to see in some Guinness World Record segment on TV. It looked too heavy to support itself—just sat there motionless.
Remembering that this was a prophetic dream, Rina recalled Yohan’s advice.
‘If you ever have another vision, try to confirm at least two things: the location, and the timing.’
Holding on to his words, she focused to get a clearer picture. The location was a temple. A temple near the coast. She didn’t know exactly where, but it was a small temple in the shape of the Korean consonant ‘ㄷ’. She tried to memorize the Chinese characters written on the wooden plaque.
The time wasn’t clear. It wasn’t spring. No buds. No melting snow or frost, so it wasn’t winter. Probably autumn. Not too far off.
“Bleeegh!”
The foul retching sound jolted Rina from her thoughts.
The mutant was gurgling like a cow chewing cud—or like a dog or cat just before vomiting. Its throat and belly convulsed.
And then, it vomited something up. Round, covered in slime, and…
An egg?
No—it wasn’t. It was something sticky and clumped together in a ball.
It wriggled. Something inside was struggling against the mucus. No doubt, a monster. A baby monster, still small.
It looked like what it’d be if something gave birth through its mouth.
A chill spread over her entire body. A birth method she had never even imagined.
The clump twitched, then a small creature pushed its limbs out through the thin, sticky membrane. It made a cracking noise as it stood up.
A mutant that gives birth to other mutants.
But the real shock came next.
‘What the—!?’
Someone had seen it. It wasn’t someone Rina recognized. Not a local islander—clearly another survivor.
From his ragged appearance and exhausted face, she could tell he’d barely scraped by through this chaos.
The man began to back away, trying to escape from the egg and the mutant. But after only a few steps, he collapsed.
Nothing had happened—he just dropped.
And then, he rose again. With red eyes and ash-gray skin.
His chilling gaze seemed to meet hers directly.
“Gasp!”
Rina woke up. Her body was drenched in cold sweat and goosebumps.
It had been a horrifying dream.
She’d had plenty of shocking prophetic dreams before, but never anything this disturbing and grotesque.
A mutant that gives birth to more mutants?
‘I have to tell them. Fast.’
Rina threw off her blanket and bolted up from bed.
“Oh? You’re up early, miss.”
“I need to see Yohan.”
“Sorry?”
“Quick. Hurry!”
As Berda looked at her in surprise, Rina urged him along.
Berda quickly grasped the urgency and ran to the community center. Soon, Yohan and the rest of the search team leaders gathered in the operations room at Rina’s call.
“A dream, you say?”
“Yes…”
Still tense, Rina recounted her dream step by step. The more she spoke, the grimmer everyone’s faces became.
“A mutant that gives birth to more mutants…”
Yohan tapped the table as he muttered. Thanks to the clue she’d provided, one mystery had finally been solved.
Mutants weren’t zombies.
Up until now, the prevailing theory was that mutants evolved from zombies over time, either through consumption or some mutation that occurred during zombification. But since no one had ever actually witnessed the transformation into a mutant, it remained a mere hypothesis.
Now, Rina’s explanation flipped that entire theory on its head.
Mutants and zombies were different species.
Whether those things were alien lifeforms or monsters from some fantasy-like sinkhole, what was clear was this: humans did not turn into mutants.
Humans didn’t become mutants—mutants turned humans into zombies.
That would explain their unnatural physiology.
Wherever these mutants had come from, they had appeared across the world simultaneously and triggered this catastrophe. Mutants birthed more mutants, and then those mutants roamed the world, turning humans into zombies.
“And then there’s the respiratory infection.”
Even more important was what happened next. The man hadn’t come into contact with a zombie. He wasn’t bitten or scratched. And yet, he was infected. A completely different transmission pattern. Just being near one of those zombies was enough to become infected—a form of airborne contagion.
“What kind of bullshit…”
“Then just meeting one is a death sentence?”
“Wait, it gives birth through its mouth? What is it, Piccolo?” (T/N: Dragon Ball Z reference.)
One by one, the survivors muttered in disbelief.
If what she said was true, then anyone without a special immune system like Yohan’s wouldn’t even be able to fight those zombies. The moment a mutant appeared, it would be instant annihilation.
Things were happening in this first apocalypse run that no one could have ever imagined.
“Uh, Sister.”
Jae-ho broke the silence.
“That big fat mutant… did its head look kind of like a snake?”
“Oh! Yes, that’s right.”
All eyes turned to him at once. Yohan quickly asked again.
“You know something?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve suspected something for a while. And what I heard today… I think I’m getting close to the answer.”
“Explain more.”
“Okay… there’s a religion in Haiti, in the West Indies of South America, called ‘Mòdu.’”
Jae-ho calmly began his explanation.
Mòdu.
A sect of Vodou. If Vodou were a mainstream belief like Confucianism or Taoism in Korea, then Mòdu would be the heretical offshoot. It involved demons, fetishes, and shamanistic black magic—a kind of animistic folk religion.
Vodou was often distorted as cultish or dark magic, but in reality, it was a widely-practiced folk belief similar to Taoism or Confucianism in local regions.
Mòdu, however, focused solely on the occult aspects of Vodou, developing them into a form of inherited sorcery.
According to Jae-ho, the creature in Rina’s dream matched the depiction of the messenger of Mòdu’s sole deity.
“It’s an extremely obscure belief, barely researched or documented. That island even made it onto the world’s most dangerous places list because of cannibalistic natives. It’s been a civilian no-entry zone for decades.”
“And how do you know all this?”
“There’s a single book on the subject in the National Library. A paper written by a researcher who visited the island 25 years ago. Back in 2011, I wrote a column on lesser-known world religions and just happened to come across it.”
Yohan’s mind tangled like a knot of threads. The idea felt so ungrounded, so unrealistic, he couldn’t accept it. Not as someone who didn’t even believe in superstitions. If anything, he trusted science far more than religion or the occult.
“I’ll keep it in mind. But don’t worry about the background stuff. Let’s just stick to the facts. Unless we know the location, there’s nothing we can do. Our priority is survival. Right now, the biggest issue is dealing with the military units on Yeongjong Island.”
“Yohan, sir. About that—there’s something I need to say.”
Ever since the naval invasion, the biggest topic at Yohan’s camp had been the nearby military units. Whether or not to strike the two nearby air defense bases.
After being attacked by the navy once, many agreed that leaving those units alone was no longer an option.
Opinions were evenly split.
Some argued that attacking uninvolved soldiers over a single incident was wrong.
Others claimed they weren’t uninvolved at all—but potential threats.
The debate had reached an impasse. Yohan had concluded that it would be best to observe and eliminate them when the opportunity arose.
“I’ll be honest. Please stop treating humanity like the enemy.”
“Anyone hearing this would think I’m some supervillain trying to wipe out the human race. Didn’t we have this debate last week?”
“It’s wrong to ambush and kill people we don’t even know. They could be good, or bad—we have no idea.”
“Listen, lady. No one’s asking you to help kill anyone. Just don’t get in our way. If our boss says kill, we kill.”
Sweeper jumped in on Yohan’s side, but Yohan raised a hand to stop him and motioned for her to continue.
“You stayed quiet during last week’s discussion. Why bring this up now?”
“Because of the dream I had today. I don’t believe humanity is our enemy. Humanity needs to fight a common enemy. Some unknown force is trying to wipe us out, and I believe my God is trying to stop that. That’s why I think we were chosen.”
Yohan frowned. It was too abstract, too idealistic.
“Have you ever felt that way, Yohan? That maybe someone—or something—is deliberately trying to wipe out the human race?”
