Episode 37
There were a total of four zombies waiting at the entrance. Two of them were the ones that had thrown their heads at the beginning; they were easy to dodge if you had quick reflexes and timing. After that, a zombie with its innards dragging behind appeared, as if the previous ones were just child’s play. It was easy to be taken aback by its grotesque appearance, but this too was a decoy. While you were distracted by it, the real threat, the last zombie, would pounce on you from above. Anyone unaware would likely be caught off guard from above.
Of course, I already knew that there was a zombie clinging to the ceiling. It was crawling around upside down like a spider, and I couldn’t understand why it was moving like that as if it used to be a cockroach.. In any case, just the thought of it stretching its head down and looking at us with its neck twisted sent shivers down my spine, so I could hardly look up there.
However, being caught off guard when he attacked would be dangerous, so even if I didn’t directly stare at it, all of my nerves were focused on it. But then, Do-yoon finished off all the dangerous opponents as smoothly as flowing water in the meanwhile, which left me stunned.
How many times had he done this to be able to finish it all so quickly?
I looked at him with a strange expression before finally moving further inside.
“Judging by the state of things at the beginning, it doesn’t seem like there are any survivors here.”
Looking at the walls which were damaged and splattered with blood made me feel as if I were in the cafe I first opened my eyes in, and I couldn’t help but agree with him.
“Yeah… it would be a miracle if anyone’s alive here.”
“We might have come in for nothing. We can’t even go out until we clear it.”
“Hmm… but since it’s a hospital, maybe we can find some medicine?”
Although it would be better to raid a pharmacy if we’re looking for medicine…
“What are the conditions to clear it?”
“The supermarket was cleared after the big zombie disappeared. So, maybe it’s something similar here, like we have to kill something?”
In this stage, the main zombie appeared randomly in one of three locations: the operating room, the intensive care unit, or the morgue. I didn’t want to go to the operating room or the morgue. The operating room was dangerous because of the various surgical tools. Moreover, there were zombies there that pretended to be ordinary corpses, lying on the operating table with their bellies slit open, only to jump up and attack when you got close. That place was a minefield. As for the morgue, since it was filled with corpses, the potential number of zombies was great, and I didn’t want to go there either.
Comparatively, the intensive care unit was the best of the three, although it also wasn’t exactly very good compared to a regular patient room. First, we had to endure the screams of the zombies and the beeping of medical machines, which were a torture to the eardrums. And then we had to deal with the violent zombies…
“Gasp!”
As we walked down the hallway, a zombie suddenly burst out of a door, causing me to jump.
I had memorized where everything would pop out during the game, but now that I was actually here, my mind was a jumbled mess, and I couldn’t remember. How many times was this already… I always thought I should be careful because zombies could pop out from anywhere at any time, but when they actually appeared, I was so startled that I quickly hid behind him. I really didn’t like these jump scare horror games! It wasn’t like it was a haunted house, so why did they have to pop out from everywhere? I silently cursed the game developers who made this stage like this.
“Where should we go?”
Hiding behind him and reaching a place with elevators and stairs, I examined the floor guide attached to one of the walls. The intensive care unit seemed like the better option, and since it was on the same floor as the operating room, it might be best to go there… but the question was how to bring it up.
The floor with the intensive care unit and the operating room was the third floor. It seemed abruptly weird to suggest skipping the second floor and going straight to the third, so I was hesitant about what to say. On the other hand, I didn’t want to walk through the second floor and then go to the third because I would have to relive the terrible time I had experienced walking here.
As I was agonizing over this, I felt his gaze on me from the side. When I looked at him to face him, he said something completely unexpected.
“Let’s go to the fifth floor.”
“What? The fifth floor…?”
Did he just say the fifth floor? Not the second or third, but the fifth?
When he said a floor I hadn’t even thought of, I could only blink and stare at him.
“…Why? There’s no reason to go to the fifth floor, is there?”
“I just want to go.”
Why did he specifically choose the fifth floor? His unusual behavior made me suspicious.
What did he know? But as far as I remembered, nothing special happened on the fifth floor…
“Come to think of it, there’s no fourth floor here. The floor right above the third is the fifth.”
That meant the 5th floor was essentially the 4th floor. This made me even less inclined to go. The 4th floor? It was so ominous from the start!1korean superstition: The number 4 sounds like the hanja for “death” (사), so the floor number 4 or room number 4 is almost always skipped in hospitals, funeral halls, and similar public buildings. In other buildings, the fourth floor is sometimes labelled “F” (for “Four”) instead of “4” in elevators. This is why the building directly has a 5th floor instead of a 4th one lol
“Do you really want to go?”
“Don’t you want to? Then we’ll just take a quick look and come back down.”
“….”
There must be a reason for him to be so insistent, right?. Let’s just go. We’ll take a quick look and then go down to the third floor, as he said. In a way, it’s better. We won’t have to go through the second floor to get to the third.
“Okay. Let’s go to the fifth floor.”
In the end, we decided to go to the fifth floor and headed for the emergency staircase, passing by the elevator. As we climbed each floor, I watched the shadow of the tiger climbing the stairs with large strides beside me and sighed quietly. To think that I would someday be climbing stairs in a hospital with a tiger in my lifetime. It was funny to think about.
“But are you sure you can keep using your ability? It’ll be tiring if you maintain it this long.”
“It’s okay. I can handle this much. I’ll make sure it doesn’t turn out like before, so you don’t have to worry.”
As if he knew what I was thinking, he added those words, making me feel inexplicably embarrassed.
In fact, since that thing earlier, it’d become awkward for me to ask him to use his ability. Perhaps sensing my feelings, he used his ability appropriately whenever necessary, but I still had to check on his condition with anxious eyes.
I was so surprised by what happened to her that I momentarily forgot about it for a moment and asked him to use his ability to take out the bandages, but…
“Huh?”
“Let’s go down.”
By the time we arrived on the fifth floor, he glanced at the wall of the stairwell between the third and fifth floors for a moment before suggesting we go back down. He said we would take a quick look, but at this rate, we didn’t even step foot on the fifth floor. I wondered what he was thinking to come here, but I couldn’t ask.
As I tilted my head in front of the fifth-floor door, a thumping sound suddenly came from the floor above, as if something was falling and rolling down the stairs. The sound gradually grew closer, indicating that it was quickly descending. I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t think it would be good to meet it, so I quickly led him down one floor and opened the third-floor door to go inside.
“What the hell was that sound? It sounded like something was falling and rolling down the stairs…”
It wasn’t as if an object could move on its own and fall down the stairs by itself. So, did a zombie drop something? The sound was dull and heavy, suggesting that whatever was falling had considerable weight. Yet, it didn’t seem to be an object of hard material going by the sound…
Something came to mind when I thought of that. …Maybe it was better not to know.
“Where should we start, east or west?”
Unlike me, who was pondering over the sounds, he seemed completely uninterested in such a thing and asked for my opinion as he looked around.
“Let’s start with the west wing.”
“Alright.”
The intensive care unit was in the west wing. If the main zombie wasn’t there, we would have to go to the east wing where the operating room was. If it wasn’t there either… we would have to go to the basement. I hoped we wouldn’t have to go as far as the morgue and walked slowly down the hallway. From somewhere, I thought I heard a sound, a grating metallic noise that seemed to grow louder as we approached the intensive care unit. I glanced at him, but he seemed unfazed. Given that he didn’t care, it was probably just my imagination or something insignificant, so I decided to ignore it.
“Ah, damn it.”
“What’s wrong?”
He suddenly stopped and muttered something under his breath, causing me to stop as well.
“It’s nothing. More importantly, keep an eye on our surroundings. You never know what might jump out.”
“Oh… okay.”
“But don’t you hear anything?”
“Anything? Oh, you mean that sound? I’ve been hearing it since a while ago.”
Huh? Come to think of it, wasn’t it getting faster? The sound, which had been intermittent, was now coming at shorter intervals. And it seemed to be getting closer…
“Gasp!”
BOOM!
Before I could finish thinking, he wrapped his arm around my waist and pressed me against the wall. Soon after, a hospital bed flew past us at neck-breaking speed and crashed through the door into the intensive care unit.
“…”
“…”
We were both so shocked that we lost our voices. I stared blankly at the intensive care unit through the broken door when suddenly all the lights in the hallway went out. Unlike the dark hallway, bright light spilled out from the intensive care unit and dyed the corridor. It seemed to beckon us, as if calling us to come inside.
*korean superstition: The number 4 sounds like the hanja for “death” (사), so the floor number 4 or room number 4 is almost always skipped in hospitals, funeral halls, and similar public buildings. In other buildings, the fourth floor is sometimes labelled “F” (for “Four”) instead of “4” in elevators. This is why the building directly has a 5th floor instead of a 4th one lol
