THE VARIANT: ZERO HOUR

6. JINWOO AND THE BLACK TIDE

 

"Jaemin! WTF, open the door, you asshole! It's me, Jinwoo!"

The hoarse shout from behind the steel door was enough to make Jaemin’s heart leap into his throat. He instinctively glanced at Min-Ji, who still had her pistol aimed at the entrance. The former fixer’s face was hard, her jaw clenched tight.

"Don't touch that lock, Jaemin," Min-Ji hissed, her voice cold. "That could be someone who's been bitten. The second this door opens, we're all dead."

"That's my goddamn friend! He's a cop!" Jaemin shot back. Ignoring Min-Ji's threat, he pressed his face against the cold surface of the door, peering through the small, rusted keyhole.

The sight outside made his breath catch.

In the third-floor hallway, under flickering, short-circuiting lights, Jinwoo was leaning against the door. His brown police uniform was in tatters, ripped in several places and soaked with dark red blood. His breathing was heavy and ragged, his trembling hand gripping a standard-issue revolver. But most importantly, Jinwoo's eyes were still normal. No cloudy white film. He was still human.

But about a dozen yards behind him, a tidal wave of nightmares was fast approaching. Dozens of monsters with mangled faces, former doctors and patients, surged forward like a hungry black sea, roaring with a sound that tore at the eardrums.

"Shit, they're getting close! Jinwoo, look out!" Jaemin yelled in a panic.

"Open it, Jaemin! Open the fucking door!" Jinwoo pounded on it even more brutally.

"Jaemin, don't!" Min-Ji took a step forward, but Jaemin didn't care.

With all his strength, Jaemin shoved the filing cabinet blocking the door, the metal screeching deafeningly against the floor. He twisted the deadbolt twice with lightning speed.

CLICK!

The steel door swung open. Jinwoo immediately threw himself inside, tumbling onto the dusty floor.

"Close it, you fucker! Close it!" Jinwoo screamed, scrambling away.

Jaemin slammed his right shoulder against the door to shut it. But he was a split second too late.

BAM!

A male zombie in an oversized suit threw its body into the gap. Before the steel door could close completely, the zombie managed to jam its left arm and part of its shoulder into the opening.

"ARGHHH!" The monster snarled savagely, its half-torn face peeking through the six-inch gap. Its jaw snapped in the air, only a fist's length from Jaemin's face. Its breath smelled like boiled, rotten rats.

"Help me, goddammit! This fucking pig is strong!" Jaemin roared, the veins in his neck bulging as if they were about to burst. His shoes slipped on the dusty floor as he braced against the weight of dozens of other zombies piling up behind the first one.

Jinwoo, who had just scrambled to his feet, threw his back against the door, pushing alongside Jaemin.

"Push, dammit! Push 'til it breaks!" Jinwoo yelled.

CRUNCH!

The sound of bone being crushed by steel was sickening. The steel door clamped down on the monster's arm with extreme pressure. The zombie's humerus snapped in two, skin and flesh tearing, splattering a thick, black fluid all over Jaemin's shirt and Jinwoo's uniform.

But strangely, the monster didn't scream in pain. Instead of pulling back its mangled arm, it pushed even more brutally, using the weight of the dozens behind it. Its left hand, with bone jutting out, reached for Jaemin’s face, its black fingernails clawing at the air.

"Holy shit! Does this thing have a pain tolerance or what?!" Jinwoo cursed in a panic, his feet starting to slide back.

Suddenly, Min-Ji stepped forward, her expression dead flat. She didn't waste a bullet. She lifted her right leg high and stomped her military boot down on the trapped zombie's elbow with full force.

SNAP! SQUELCH!

The elbow joint shattered, bending the wrong way. Min-Ji immediately pulled a tactical folding knife from her pocket and slashed the blade across the tendons and biceps of the monster's arm, which were stretched taut by the door.

Flesh tore instantly. The arm came free, falling to the archive room floor with a wet smack.

"CLOSE IT!" Min-Ji yelled.

With the obstruction gone, Jaemin and Jinwoo slammed the heavy steel door shut.

CLICK! CLACK!

Jaemin threw both deadbolts, and the three of them shoved the massive filing cabinet back into place to barricade the door. From the other side, the brutal pounding of dozens of the undead was deafening, but the steel door held firm.

The three of them collapsed to the floor, gasping for air. Sweat mixed with blood dripped from Jaemin's forehead. The only sounds in the room were their ragged breaths and the banging from outside.

Jinwoo leaned against the leg of a desk, his brown uniform soaked. The young man with the buzz cut raised a violently shaking hand, staring at his revolver as if it had just betrayed him.

"Jesus Christ." Jinwoo let out a hollow laugh, the bitter kind of laugh from a man on the verge of insanity. "I … I came here to give you a ticket for that illegal parking last month, Jaem, And instead, I get a fucking marathon with the living dead."

Jaemin, still catching his breath, crawled over to Jinwoo. His eyes were intense as his hands immediately checked his friend's neck and collar. "Were you bitten?! Don't bullshit me, Jinwoo! Whose blood is this?!"

"It's not … not my blood," Jinwoo roughly pushed Jaemin's hand away, wiping his grimy face. "This is Officer Choi's blood. His head a pregnant woman in the lobby bit his fucking head open. It just exploded. I shot her, but … ah, shit." Jinwoo hung his head, running his hands through his hair. The young cop was clearly in deep shock.

From the corner of the room, Jihoon slowly stood and walked closer. "U-Uncle Jinwoo?" the boy called out softly.

Jinwoo looked up. Seeing Jihoon, pale but whole, a flicker of relief crossed his eyes. He managed a thin, forced smile. "Hey, kid. You're still alive. Good. If you died, this crazy brother of yours would probably cry for seven days and seven nights."

"You'd be the one crying, you crybaby cop," Jaemin retorted sarcastically, lightly punching Jinwoo's shoulder. The brief moment of dark humor eased some of the tension in their chests. Jinwoo's presence, with his service pistol and tactical training, was a clear spark of new hope.

But then, Jinwoo's eyes narrowed as he spotted the middle-aged man tied to a shelf post at the far end of the room, his face battered and his nose a bloody, crooked mess.

"WTF! who’s the BDSM grandpa? Why do you have him tied up like a Yakuza hostage?" Jinwoo pointed at the trembling, curled-up figure of Minseok.

Min-Ji, wiping blood from her folding knife, snorted coldly. "That’s the creator of the apocalypse currently banging on our door, Officer. He made this damn virus for his son. It failed."

Jinwoo's eyes went wide. His hand automatically went to the grip of his revolver. "Are you serious? No wonder his face is so punchable. Let me put a hole in his head right now. The paperwork will be easy. I’ll just write that he was resisting an officer."

"Don't shoot him, you idiot! The noise!" Jaemin quickly grabbed Jinwoo's hand. "We need him alive for intel on the virus. Let's not make this room smell any more like blood than it already does."

Jinwoo clicked his tongue in annoyance, releasing his grip on his gun. "You're more trouble than you're worth, old man."

[Hours Later]

Night finally fell over Daehan City. Inside the Archive Room, the tension began to settle, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion. The pounding on the door outside had faded, leaving only the occasional soft scratch and the passive groans of zombies that were starting to go dormant in the hallway.

The only light source in the room was a small emergency lamp above the door, casting a dim yellow glow.

Jinwoo sat cross-legged, chewing on a leftover piece of gum from his pocket to fight off his hunger. He had just finished explaining how he got there. He was on patrol near the hospital when the riots broke out. Remembering that Jaemin had mentioned bringing Jihoon here for a check-up, Jinwoo had pushed his way inside just before the military blockaded the surrounding streets.

"It's a total loss out there, Jaem," Jinwoo whispered, careful not to wake Jihoon, who was asleep in Jaemin's lap. "I heard on the police radio, it's not just the hospital. There are outbreaks in several spots across the city. The military is involved, but they're shooting on sight. Doesn't matter if you're healthy or bitten. You run toward the barricades, you get put down."

Jaemin swallowed hard. "So what the hell are we supposed to do? We starve to death in here, or we go out and get shot or eaten."

"We wait until morning," Min-Ji answered coldly from a dark corner. "Those things respond to sound and light. Their instincts are sharper at night. We stay quiet here until sunrise."

BZZZT… PING!

Min-Ji’s words were cut short by a loud hum from the ceiling.

The low drone of the hospital's central air conditioning, which had been their static background noise, suddenly died. It was followed by the yellow emergency light above the door flickering twice, and then going out completely.

The hospital's power grid went dead.

Absolute darkness swallowed the Archive Room in an instant. Not a single sliver of light penetrated the space. Visibility dropped to zero.

"Shit," Jinwoo cursed in the dark, his voice trembling.

At the same instant the power died, the silence in the hospital shattered. Without the hum of machines and electricity, their hearing now picked up far more horrifying sounds from the outside world. The shuffle of dragging feet, the wet sound of chewing from the floor above, and the hoarse groans that now sounded ten times louder.

The first night in this new hell had just begun.