Chapter 30
"Soo-ah, Ji-woo! Lock the door tight!"
I kicked open the cockpit door and shouted urgently at the children.
Normally, I would have sent drones out around me to check monster positions and carefully secure the area, but I didn't have that luxury now.
Right before getting off, I looked out the window.
'There are quite a lot of monsters. Did they burst out of an abandoned dungeon?'
If the children's mother had read the note, there was a good chance she was still in the villa looking for them.
But monsters were swarming everywhere in this area.
If a monster had spotted her, she could be in trouble.
As I leaped out of the train in a rush, the drones, as if sensing my urgency, formed a perfect formation on their own without being told.
A nimble scout drone flew ahead to guide me to the villa, while the battle drones and sniper drones clung reassuringly behind me like bodyguards.
"Grrr..."
"Of all times..."
It was always when I was in a hurry that troublesome things seemed to pile up.
The moment I turned the corner following the scout drone, a horde of zombie-like monsters reeking of rot spotted me and began latching onto me with grotesque shrieks.
I clicked my tongue and kicked off the ground with all my strength.
Leap activated from my toes, and I felt light as if I were floating.
My body shot forward as if fired from a cannon, breaking straight through the monsters in an instant.
I decided to leave the zombies behind for the drones to handle.
As I widened the gap with Leap, the two drones that had been right behind me opened fire on the zombies chasing after me.
Under the relentless fire, the heads of the pursuing zombie monsters burst like watermelons, but there were so many that I still couldn't clear them all out.
"They never end... Still—"
Even the monsters in nearby buildings, stirred by the gunfire and catching the scent of blood, came pouring out in droves and joined the chase.
After the sprint, I finally arrived in front of the familiar red-brick villa.
It was the same house I had seen in the footage the scout drone showed me earlier.
On the second floor of this house, she might be there.
The siblings' mother.
There was still something to handle first.
"Hoo, let's clear them out first."
I turned toward the dozens of zombies that had trailed me right up to the villa entrance and immediately swung my mace.
Crack!
As the zombie hit by the mace burst apart, its corpse toppled over and became a speed bump, slowing the zombies behind it.
"Hup!"
The mace was still heavy, but maybe because I had swung it so often...
Or was it because of the Weapon Proficiency skill?
I could even swing it in quick succession now.
Once the drones' barrages poured in from every direction as well, the area in front of the villa became a graveyard for zombies in no time.
"Hoo... hoo..."
With two or three of them dropping per blow, a few swings of the mace were enough to clear them out.
I slung the mace over my shoulder and climbed the villa steps, panting hard.
If not for the Vitality skill, it might have been dangerous.
"...Would she be there?"
The pounding of my heart hammered fiercely against my ears.
Tension stiffened my body.
I desperately hoped the children's mother was safely hiding inside the villa, waiting for me.
At last, I reached the second-floor front door.
I raised my hand to knock on the tightly shut metal door, and then—
Click—creeeak.
Before my hand even reached the handle, the front door slowly slid open from the inside.
As if it had been desperately waiting for me to arrive.
"..."
"..."
Through the gap in the open door, a woman was glaring at me with a hardened expression.
Her hair was disheveled, and her haggard face was streaked with dirt.
The hammer clenched in her defensive grip was trembling, and her eyes, fixed on the young girl holding the mace, were filled with extreme caution.
If she was that scared, she could have kept the door closed, but the woman didn't run; instead, she threw the door wide open and faced me.
I didn't even need to ask to know what gave her that courage.
The woman moved her trembling lips and, in a cracked voice, let out a desperate question.
"Could you... be the one protecting our Soo-ah and Ji-woo...?"
I nodded silently and answered briefly and clearly.
"Yes. Both children are perfectly safe, with not a scratch on them. They're eating well too."
The moment those words left my mouth, the woman's taut nerves snapped.
"Aaaah..."
Her legs seemed to give out completely, and she sank to the ground.
The hammer rolled to the floor, and she covered her face with both hands, bursting into tears of relief.
I could only silently look at the woman who had collapsed before I even had a chance to support her.
For some reason, just watching her made a corner of my heart feel sad too.
"Just how on earth..."
She was barely collecting herself as she tried to ask me a question.
I had mountains of questions I wanted to ask her too.
How she had endured outside for days and made it back here, whether she was injured anywhere, and what had happened to the children's father.
But this villa was not a good place for a leisurely chat.
Monsters could swarm in again at any moment, drawn by our noise and our presence.
"Let's move somewhere else first. Monsters could come crashing in here at any time."
"Ah... monsters... right."
When I spoke firmly and held out my hand, she wiped away her tears with her sleeve and looked up at me dazedly.
"But... um, where are we going...?"
"The train I came on is nearby. The children are waiting there. Let's go."
"A train...?"
I helped the dazed woman to her feet by supporting her arm, then led the way down the villa stairs.
As three drones tightly escorted us out of the alley, the woman followed behind me, glancing back and forth between the drones and the mace on my back in disbelief.
"These drones... who's controlling them...?"
Before long, the train standing majestically in the middle of the station came into view.
I granted the woman access and opened the door to Car 2.
Inside Car 2, the lighting was warm and cozy.
In front of the large tank, Soo-ah and Ji-woo, giggling as they played with Donggeuli while holding markers, both turned their heads at the sound of the door opening.
"Noona, you're here—"
"What's wrong, oppa? Huh?"
At that moment, a suffocating silence fell, as if time inside the train had stopped.
The marker slipped from Soo-ah's hand and rolled away.
Ji-woo blinked his big eyes and froze.
The lips of the gaunt woman standing at the entrance trembled.
"Ji-woo... Soo-ah..."
The woman's voice, which had barely stopped trembling, began to shake again.
The two children, neatly dressed in their new clothes, kicked off from the carpet and rushed fiercely into the woman's arms.
"I'm sorry I'm late..."
The woman knelt on the floor and hugged both children.
Ji-woo and Soo-ah also wrapped their arms around their mother's neck and began to cry out loud, as if pouring out all the hurt they had held back.
I quietly watched the scene for a moment, then turned and headed back to the cockpit of Car 1.
It was time to give them some space.
***
How much time had passed?
After confirming that the exhausted children had fallen asleep softly in Car 2, the siblings' mother came to the door of Car 1's cockpit and knocked with cautious steps.
I seated the mother, who still looked utterly worn out, on the sofa and handed her a cup of warm tea.
Holding the teacup tightly with both hands, she slowly began to talk about the things she had gone through over the past few days.
"We ran out of food... so I went to a nearby supermarket to get some."
This was what I had heard earlier from the siblings.
The woman had arrived at the supermarket safely, and while picking canned food from the shelves, she spotted a monster prowling near the entrance and reflexively hid inside the storage room.
She had no idea that would become a problem.
"I was unlucky."
The monster rampaging outside, smashing through the supermarket in all directions, shoved a display rack over completely, and of all things, that heavy iron rack perfectly blocked the storage room's only exit.
Trapped helplessly in the storage room, she still acted quickly in that moment.
She tried smashing the walls with the things in the storage room to find another exit, but it was useless.
In the end, there was only one last method she could choose.
"I just kept throwing my body against the door, thinking only of Soo-ah and Ji-woo."
Every minute, every second, she hurled herself against the tightly shut steel door again and again.
Until the rack blocking the door was dented and bent.
Even through the pain of her shoulders and arms being covered in bruises, she never stopped pushing at the door with her body.
And on the third day of being trapped, she said she was able to squeeze through a narrow gap in the steel door, as if by miracle.
It was the day I decided to protect the siblings.
As proof of that desperate, vicious struggle, her shoulders and forearms, exposed through the frayed gaps in her sleeves, were still stained blue with bruises.
"Thank you... thank you so much. Thanks to you..."
As she kept bowing, I spoke in a calm voice.
"...Ma'am. If you don't have a particular destination in mind, would you like me to take you to a safe zone?"
"A safe zone...? There's such a place?"
Her eyes widened in surprise.
She looked as if she couldn't believe a place that guaranteed safety could exist in a world like this.
I nodded and explained about the safe zones.
I had only seen one in person, and most of what I knew came from what I'd seen and heard in the gallery, but at the very least, a safe zone would be the safest place for the siblings and their mother to stay.
"If it's for the children... yes, I want to go there."
The siblings' mother answered without a moment's hesitation.
I decided to guide the siblings and their mother to the safe zone in Yeouido.
It was a little sad to part from the siblings, but it wasn't a forever goodbye, and if I wanted to see them again, I could just go back to Yeouido.
"Yes, I'll take you there."
I smiled and operated the main panel in the cockpit.
We were heading for Yeouido, the heart of Seoul and home to the largest safe zone."