Episode 38
“We should go in, right?”
“We should. I told you to keep an eye on your surroundings. How can you just go on knowing you heard something? You almost got into big trouble.”
“I wasn’t sure because I only heard it faintly…”
And I thought the sound was coming from the intensive care unit. There were always noisy medical machines there. However, I swallowed my words and didn’t speak back.
“You said you’d been hearing it for a while now. Didn’t you hear it?”
“Well, that.. I was distracted by something for a moment, so I couldn’t help it.”
“You’re in danger. You were so distracted by something else that you only noticed the sound now.”
He was pretty shameless to say that when he was the same.
I rolled my eyes slightly and turned my head to look at the intensive care unit.
“Enough. From now on, we’ll both need to get our act together.”
“Yes.”
That being said, I really didn’t want to go in there… The loud machine noises were already spilling out and filling the hallway. He, too, seemed bothered by the noisy sounds, briefly furrowing his brows before slowly stepping forward.
As soon as we crossed the threshold into the intensive care unit, the sounds that had been echoing loudly just moments ago stopped abruptly. Beds and various machines lined up on both sides, and at the end was the hospital bed that had crashed through the door, now damaged. But where was the zombie?
Based on the phenomena that just happened, it was clear that the main zombie was here. However, no matter how hard we looked, we couldn’t find the creature that appeared to be the main zombie. The moment I thought it might be hiding on one of the beds, a sudden assumption popped into my head. It seemed that he had the same thought, as we both lunged forward at the same time.
“Wow, shit…”
Why did the zombies here all love the ceiling? It was like they had separational anxiety when it came to the ceilings.
Several syringes pierced the spot where we had been standing just moments ago, and the main zombie dropped down with a thud. It seemed as if it had been waiting for us on the ceiling right above the door, knowing we would enter.
“Kwaaaah!”
The creature blocked the only entrance with its body to prevent us from escaping and let out a loud roar. The machines that had stopped started operating again, emitting a high-pitched beeping sound that threatened to burst our eardrums.
Argh! My ears!
I quickly covered my ears to block the pain that felt like a direct assault on my brain, but it showed no signs of improving. The sound, which seemed to touch every nerve and stir up my head, made me dizzy and unsteady on my feet. What if my eardrums burst at this rate?!
It wasn’t until I was crouching and covering my ears, barely managing to hold out, that the sound began to subside and I could finally take my hands off my ears.
“I think my ears are bleeding. I can still hear a ringing in my head.”
I clutched my throbbing head and turned my gaze to the main zombie. The creature staggered and pulled out a handful of syringes from its clothes, throwing them at us. One, two… I didn’t know how many there were, but facing such a large number of syringes flying towards us, I was at a loss as to how to dodge them.
“Grr…”
Suddenly, a tiger jumped out in front of me and blocked all the syringes with its body. As the syringes stuck into its body, making it look like a hedgehog, the tiger seemed annoyed and let out a low growl, shaking its body to dislodge the syringes.
“Noona, it would be better to deal with that thing in the hallway than here.”
“But how can we get out when it’s blocking the way? It’s not going to move…”
But he was right. To deal with the zombie, we had to get out into the hallway somehow. This place was surrounded on all sides, and there were traps laid out on both sides, making it impossible to move carelessly. The zombie probably knew that, which was why it was blocking the door like that.
“For now, keep an eye on that zombie. I’ll take care of these.”
Knowing this place was a minefield, I had been standing still in the middle, but the main zombie had touched the traps. Some of the syringes that the tiger hadn’t managed to block hit the beds, causing the zombies lying on them to wake up and approach us.
“Ugh! Back off!”
As I swung my bat at the zombies’ heads and limbs, I saw an empty bed and had an epiphany. I was about to call out to him to tell him this, but…
“Do-yoon… Ack!”
Oh my god.
The creature, which had been standing at the entrance until a second ago, had somehow flown here and landed on the empty bed in front of me, reaching out towards me. I kicked the bed it was on with my foot and stepped back. The bed was pushed back and moved away from me, but unfortunately, it touched the beds next to it, causing the remaining zombies lying on them to wake up.
“I told you to keep an eye on it…! I freaked out because it suddenly appeared in front of me.”
“I’m sorry. It moved too fast for me to kill it immediately.”
As I shuddered and ran away towards Do-yoon, the main zombie moved back to the entrance. Wow, that thing’s agility was no joke. It came all the way here with just one leap. It crawled well on the ceiling and moved quickly too.
I wondered if it had been a nurse before becoming a zombie. In particular, one working in the intensive care unit itself. Nurses there would have to be constantly on the move to take care of patients, so their physical abilities would naturally be good. I remained vigilant as I looked at the main zombie, which was now wearing a tattered and bloodstained blue uniform that had once been a neat nurse’s outfit.
“Can you hold that thing down?”
“I don’t know if it will let itself be caught long enough.”
“Seeing that it got here in one leap and went back there like that, the entire area must be within its range. If we stay like this, we’ll just be playing into its hands. We need to get out into the hallway for sure.”
“Do you have a good way to do it?”
“I’ve been running the simulation in my head, but I don’t know if it’s going to work out or not. Let’s use that for now.”
With that, I pointed to the empty hospital bed.
It was harder to deal with the main zombie in the ICU than I thought it’d be, maybe because I almost always faced it in the operating room or the morgue. Out of ten plays, the intensive care unit appeared only about once, and I remembered that the last place I cleared stage 3 in was the morgue.
“Let’s push that hard towards the entrance to send it flying away. You have to keep holding it so it can’t dodge because he has to be hit directly with the bed to be pushed that far.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
He nodded as if he understood. Ugh… before executing that plan, I needed to figure out what to do with those guys; they were driving me crazy. I got up from the bed and swung the bat again at the zombies rushing towards us. As if to help me, a shadow tiger joined in attacking them from the side.
When I took a breather for a second thanks to that and turned my gaze to check on him for a moment, I saw him dealing with the main zombie using another shadow tiger. I needed to wrap this up quickly and help him out.
With that thought, I turned my head and focused on killing the zombies in front of me.
To kill them while conserving as much strength as possible, I targeted only their heads. After blowing up the last remaining zombie’s head, I could finally take a deep breath. But that was only for a moment — I then headed towards an empty mobile bed. I released the lock and dragged it to the center, placing it in line with the entrance.
“This is surprisingly hard to push.”
“We need to push it as hard as possible, so let’s push it together. I’ll hold that guy with my shadow and give you a signal, and we’ll push it at the same time.”
“Got it.”
I looked at the shadow tigers, which had now increased from two to four, and gripped the mobile bed tightly. Two of them were biting the main zombie’s legs on both sides and wouldn’t let go. Meanwhile, the other two were biting and tearing at its clothes and arms, holding on as much as possible.
“Now!”
The moment he spoke, I pushed the bed with all my might and ran forward. Then, just as I felt the speed was about to increase perfectly, I let go at the same time as him.
“Kuh-ah!”
The main zombie, seeing the mobile bed approaching at high speed from the front, violently struggled and tried to shake off the shadows. However, due to their persistent biting and pulling, it eventually had to take a direct hit from the bed and was pushed far down the hallway.
“Wow, that sound was no joke.”
I felt a bit bad because it felt as if I’d witnessed a car accident in front of me by how loud the noise, mixed with the zombie’s screams, was. But that was only for a moment. As the sound of the bed rolling and the main zombie’s screams faded, I felt a bit relieved at the fact that we’d managed to accomplish that feat.
“But how far is that thing going?”
The bed, which had been pushed to the end of the hallway, was no longer visible from the intensive care unit. It seemed to have been pushed all the way to the east wing of the hallway.
‘Wait, didn’t that go too far? We need to retrieve the gem that appears when the zombie dies, so we have to go over there, don’t we?’
Only then did I remember the existence of the gem and felt a pang of regret. If I had known this would happen, I would have controlled my strength a little while pushing…
“Let’s go out into the hallway first.”
Judging from the fact that the damned ‘CLEARED’ notification hadn’t shown up yet, it seemed the zombie hadn’t died yet.
If it were a human, the impact would have transmitted directly inside its body and killed it, but as expected of a zombie, it didn’t die easily. We passed through the west wing hallway and arrived at the place with the emergency stairs, but when we couldn’t see the main zombie or the bed, I concluded they had really been pushed all the way to the east wing. Ah… I really didn’t want to go towards the operating room.
“Aaah! Save me!”
“What?!”
Just as I was wondering what to do, I suddenly heard a human’s scream from the emergency stairs. And not long after, the door burst open, and a bleeding person appeared, followed by various zombies jumping out from the emergency stairs.
If ya’ll are reading this novel, pls leave some commentss. They’re both motivating and fun to read but also makes me remember to post lol
OHHHH New character unlocked 😎✨