Side Story 16: Stories of Russia (16)

Ji-Eun and the stage-one mutants leaped over the outer wall and into the barbeque area in an instant.

They were like demons from hell. The soldiers were caught off-guard, but quickly grabbed their rifles and began firing away at the stage-one mutants. I was honestly surprised to see that they had brought loaded rifles to a barbeque party.

They were clearly prepared for a fight that night.

With my flashing blue eyes, I cut through the soldiers blocking my way and hunted down the Canadian researchers who were running for their dear lives. However, it was impossible for a human being to outpace me.

I caught up to the fleeing people and took them to the lab. There, I grabbed Jack and the brown-haired researcher in my hands. Jack gasped, staring at me as the color drained from his face.

“You murderer! You murdering son-of-a-bitch!”

“You’re no different from me.”

"You won’t be able to develop a cure if you kill me!”

I raised my eyebrows. "No. You’re wrong. We’ll make the cure. We’re going to prove you wrong.”

“You don’t understand! I’m the future of mankind and the cure itself, you fool!”

“No, you’ll go down in history as the worst scumbag ever.”

I clenched my fist and punched Jack in the face as hard as I could. I felt warm cerebral fluid flowing in between my fingers. I couldn’t help but wonder what had turned him into the demon he was, despite the fact he was still a human being, the same as all of us.

His desire for research had turned into an obsession, which then turned into madness. For a human being engulfed in madness, the distinction between good and evil was blurred, and the only thing left to do was to turn his body into a cold corpse.

With him gone, I directed my attention to the brown-haired researcher.

“Where are the research materials?” I asked him as I wiped Jack’s blood from my hands.

“Yes… yes?”

“The research materials from Canada. The ones you’ve been hiding this whole time.”

He shook as though he was seeing a ghost, and his face was a mask of chaos. It seemed like he was too scared to even think properly. I slammed my right hand into the space between his shoulder blades and his neck, and he let out a yelp and collapsed to the ground. He was knocked out. We would continue to question him again once he woke up.

Ruin came running over to me. She looked at me, then at the researcher with the brown hair, and asked, “Did you kill him as well?”

“I just knocked him out.”

“Jack. What about Jack?”

Ruin looked around, her gaze falling on a corpse missing its limbs. She gasped and covered her mouth.

"Did you…” Her voice was trembling.

“Let’s go find a rope to tie this man up with.”

Ruin swallowed and seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then we were both running to the storage room. I lay the man down and made my way back to the place where the barbeque had been going on.

The stage-one mutants had already taken care of all the military personnel. Since the outdoor area was taken care of, it was time to check on the dorms. When I got to the dorms where the Russian survivors and researchers were, a couple of soldiers came running out, fleeing for their lives.

They were screaming at the top of their lungs, confused and dazed. They were panicking over the zombies that were chasing them down. I flashed my blue eyes and took care of the soldiers—‘No, terrorists.’

I went into the master bedroom to check if anyone was injured, and heard someone whimper from within the closet. When I opened the closet door, I saw the terrified Russian children hugging each other in fear.

"Uncle!"

Tears streamed down their faces when they saw me. The other Russian survivors came out from the closet across from them with sighs of relief.

“Is it over?” they asked me.

“Yes. Where’s Tommy?”

“He should be in the next room.”

I gave them a small nod and headed to the next room. When I opened all the closets in the next room, I saw Tommy, Alyosha, Elena, and Choi Kang-Hyun crouching within, with their eyes tightly closed. Tommy opened his eyes and flinched as if he were surprised by the sight of me suddenly opening the closet door.

“Mister… Mr. Lee Hyun-Deok.”

𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"It's over. Come on out.”

It seemed like being in a crouch for a prolonged period had caused some problems with their blood circulation. Tommy crawled across the floor, massaging his thighs and calves.

All in all, the Canadian researchers' plans had failed. But… while I was taking care of them, I didn’t feel any sort of guilt. Just like the time I was hunting down dogs in Seoul, there was nothing human about me.

It seemed like there were fewer and fewer things that could make me feel guilty.

* * *

I came across a couple of soldiers who had mutated into zombies while taking care of the dead bodies. It didn’t feel good to have to kill them twice in the span of a couple of hours. I continued to clean up the area, spending a good amount of time cleaning up the lab.

Ruin approached me. “He’s up.”

I followed Ruin to the storage room and saw that the brown-haired researcher was awake. His limbs were tied to the chair, and he was struggling and squirming, trying to escape.

He gasped, then freaked out and started screaming as soon as he saw my face. I then placed my hand on his shoulder.

“The research materials,” I said.

“I’ll tell you everything! I promise. Please, please let me go.”

There was no need to torture him since he was willing to cooperate. He led us to where he had stashed the materials, and Tommy took his time to look everything over. His brow furrowed as he looked at all the materials. After a while, he began to tremble in anger and mutter to himself.

“These fucking bastards… They think this research is for the future of mankind?”

“What is it about?” I asked cautiously.

Tommy slicked his hair back. “It’s so reprehensible that it’s difficult to describe with words. Reading all of this reminds me of the atrocities of World War II.”

“Is there enough content in there related to the cure?”

“Yes. I think we’ll be able to speed up the research.”

After hearing his answer, I looked at the Canadian researcher. His jaw was shaking uncontrollably.

“I’m, I’m a victim too,” he whined. “I only went along with it because I wanted to survive!”

“Whose life do you think is more valuable? Yours, or the lives of the ones who died?”

The man’s eyes darted about as he seemed to think for a minute, then swallowed as he came up with an answer.

“I, I can cure this virus, and they’re of no help…”

“Wrong. You’re no different.”

“No, no… I just…”

“Since you extended your life by trusting Jack, it’s time you paid the price for it.”

I stared at him and clenched my fists.

"I-I'll help too! I’ll help with the research for the cure!” he cried, his eyes going wide.

"We don’t need you. You just follow Jack, like you’ve always done.”

Without the slightest hesitation, I punched the researcher in the face. I let out a deep sigh and turned around, and saw Ruin standing still, looking at the ground. As I looked at her, she smiled bitterly.

"I… I also have to pay my dues,” she said.

"Of course."

Ruin sat cross-legged on the floor and gently closed her eyes. It seemed like she had given up, and was ready to leave this world. Instead of punching her in the face, I carefully placed my hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but after a moment, she opened her eyes and looked up at me.

“Pay for your sins over the course of your lifetime.”

“Pardon…?”

“Do everything you haven’t been able to do for your son as atonement for your sins.”

With that, I left the storage room.

I heard Ruin sobbing as I walked away.

* * *

Tommy, Alyosha, Elena, and Ruin put their all into researching for a cure. Ruin’s son volunteered to be the subject of the clinical trials. We were all strongly against the idea, but he insisted on helping.

When I explained in detail how dangerous the experiments were, he said:

- I had no choice but to be on the research table because I was afraid, afraid that my mother might die. But now, I want to fight too. I want to be of some help.

Even though he had written all of this out with sloppy handwriting, his eyes were full of determination. He was a quick-witted and smart young boy. In the end, we had no choice but to let him do as he wished. While he stayed in the lab as a test subject, Kim Hyeong-Jun, Do Han-Sol, Kim Dae-Young, Jeong Jin-Young and I devoted ourselves to taking care of the zombies in the neighboring countries.

We didn’t bother dealing with the ordinary street zombies. Instead of dealing with every type of zombie, we only went after the zombies with red eyes, black creatures, and mutants. We took care of the ones that were a threat to humans and quickly made our way out west.

This allowed us to clear out more areas quickly. We were still confronted with dangers big and small every now and again, but none of them were life-threatening. We’d dealt with a black creature with godly power before, and we weren’t afraid of anything when we worked together.

One day, about four years after the Canadians had been wiped out, Tommy's research finally came to fruition. We got word that Ruin’s son, a zombie with red eyes, had come back as a human. We were out in Europe at the time, and when we heard the good news, we hurried back to Vladivostok with excited hearts.

When we arrived at the laboratory, Ruin’s son greeted us in human form. I have no clue how to describe the feeling I felt that day.

Impressive? Thrilled?

Overwhelmed?

None of these seemed to perfectly describe how I felt. A strange, complicated mixture of thoughts and emotions was swirling within me.

The thought that I could return to my human form.

The thought that I could stand in front of all of them, proudly, as a human being.

The thought of finally meeting So-Yeon.

However, before I became human again, there was still some unfinished business I had to take care of.

It was time to say goodbye to my underlings.

All of us gathered our underlings within the laboratory compound. In just a couple of hours, the compound was filled with ten thousand underlings. Before we said goodbye, we each took a close look at each of our underlings who had given us everything.

There were no words to describe just how much Ji-Eun and the stage-one mutants had done for me.

I bowed deeply to Ji-Eun and the stage-one mutants to show them my respect, then intoned in a low, soft voice, “Thank you for everything you’ve done. I’ll let you… I’ll let you rest in peace, in a place where pain doesn’t exist.”

This was the first and last time I paid respect to my underlings. For some reason, it felt strange to think that they would no longer be with me, and that I didn’t want to say goodbye to them. Perhaps ‘bittersweet’ was the way to describe how I was feeling. It felt as though I was saying goodbye to a good colleague of mine.

When I ordered my underlings to commit suicide, their final thoughts echoed in my mind:

‘Thank you.’

As their thanks echoed through my mind, I bit my lower lip and bowed to them again. To be frank, they were the ones who were deserving of thanks, not me.

That day… That day would be a day that I would never be able to forget until the day I died.

* * *

One winter’s day, with the cold wind blowing against my cheeks, we followed Choi Kang-Hyun to Vladivostok airport.

It felt awkward to be so slow, and I wasn’t used to my weakened physical strength and athletic abilities. As we got to the runway, Choi Kang-hyun sighed right away..

“Ugh, when are we finally going to be done moving all of this?” he said. “How many times do we have to go back and forth?”

“Once we get to Jeju Island, it’ll only take one more round trip, since there are other captains there.”

Choi Kang-Hyun burst into laughter.

“Man, I miss the days when So-yeon’s father was strong,” he said jokingly. “It’s such a pain to have to load all this stuff into the transport plane.”

I chuckled at his joke. As I turned around, I saw Kim Hyeong-Jun, Do Han-Sol, Kim Dae-Young, and Jeong Jin-Young all working hard to move the solar panels. As I watched them struggling with solar panels, it came upon me once again that we were all human now.

As I watched them with a warm smile, Kim Hyeong-Jun shouted in frustration, “Ahjussi, what are you doing! Help us!”

“Okay, okay. Geez.”

I chuckled and helped them move the solar panels with a satisfied smile. Then, Tommy’s team, along with the Russian survivors, walked over to me hesitantly.

"Can… Can we really follow you?” they squeaked in uncertainty.

“Everyone will like you folks.”

When I’d asked them to accompany us to Jeju Island the night before, they had smiled awkwardly and hadn’t given me a definite answer. They had only started packing their belongings when I demanded that they join us.

When we were prepared, Choi Kang-Hyun headed to the cockpit and announced to all of us to take our seats. As I fastened my seat belt, I tried to calm my rapidly beating heart and gently closed my eyes.

It had been ten years.

Ten years was an age; it was so long that anything could’ve happened. I already knew that So-Yeon would have grown a lot.

I wondered if she would be able to recognize me. In fact, I wondered if I would recognize her. I couldn’t help but imagine how her cute face had to have changed. I wondered if Lee Jeong-Uk had been okay all these years. The questions I’d pushed aside for the past ten years began to flash through my mind one by one.

Soon, the plane’s engines fired up, and we were on the runway. I sighed and put my right hand on top of my pounding heart. The beating of my heart felt awkward, but I realized that this was how a body filled with life was supposed to be.

Pshhhh-!

The transport plane shot down the runway, and I felt butterflies collecting in my stomach. This feeling… It felt like excitement to me. As I thought about what was waiting for me, I couldn’t help but smile.

I was finally human again, and I was going back home after this long journey of mine. I was going back to the place where my family was, where my So-Yeon was. To the place I’d left behind, to the place I’d long dreamed of going back to. To my hometown, which I had dearly missed for the past decade.

There were so many things I wanted to hear from everyone from the Survivor Rally Organization on Jeju Island, and there were so many things I wanted to share with them as well. To tell them everything that had happened over the past ten years… I knew one night wasn’t going to be enough.

I didn’t know what to say first. All sorts of greetings floated in my mind. But no matter how much I thought about it, I always came back to the same greeting.

I wanted to tell everyone that I was back home.

Walking Daddy – Stories of Russia Fin.