Walking Daddy

Chapter 183

I killed about three hundred zombies on the way to Hotel L.

To my surprise, there weren’t that many zombies along the way. I assumed that it was because we had just experienced a zombie wave. Heo Seong-Min, who had come out to greet me at the front entrance of the hotel, took in the survivors in disbelief.

Not only was he shocked by the number of people, but also by the amount of stuff that the survivors had. Boxes of grenades, K2 rifles, solar panels, and other miscellaneous items were piled up in front of the hotel.

Heo Seong-Min stared at the boxes in awe as he scratched his head.

“I’m not sure if we can handle all of this,” he said.

"Don’t worry. We’ll clean up Hotel O tonight and move the supplies tomorrow.”

As I conversed with Heo Seong-Min, the leaders of the Survivor Rally Organization came up beside me. Lee Jeong-Uk offered his right hand to Heo Seong-Min.

“I’m Lee Jeong-Uk, the leader of the Survivor Rally Organization.”

“Ah, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Heo Seong-Min, the leader of the Jeju Defense Unit.”

“How about we continue this conversation inside?”

“Yes, please come in. I forgot how cold it is outside.”

With that, Lee Jeong-Uk and the leaders followed Heo Seong-Min Heo into the restaurant located to the right of the hotel lobby. In the meantime, Heo Seong-Min's wife led the other survivors into the lobby and took out the room assignment sheet they had made in advance. As she informed the survivors of their room assignments, Kim Hyeong-Jun, Do Han-Sol, and Kim Dae-Young moved the boxes outside into a corner of the lobby.

As the survivors went to their respective rooms, the crowded, bustling lobby gradually became quieter, until it was as quiet as the first time I’d entered the hotel. Only then did I feel relieved. Heo Seong-Min's wife put the room assignment sheet on the counter and walked over to me, smiling faintly.

“My apologies; I couldn't even greet you properly earlier.”

"That’s alright.”

She held out her right hand to me and smiled.

"It’s nice to meet you. I’m Park Hye-In.”

She had a genuine smile, the sort of smile that gave her the look of a cheerful, energetic heroine. I could tell she had a frank, open-hearted personality. After we shook hands, we continued to converse.

“If you ever need anything, feel free to let me know.”

"Thank you.”

"Of course. Then may I ask you to follow me?”

With that, Park Hye-In led me to the restaurant, where the meeting was in full swing. Right before I entered the meeting room, I called out to Jeong Jin-Young, who was behind me.

“Jin-Young.”

“Yes, Mr. Lee Hyun-Deok?”

“Go take care of those zombie heads over there and then come in.”

“Pardon?”

Jeong Jin-Young looked at me, dumbfounded. Kim Hyeong-Jun slapped him on the back.

“Mr. Jeong Jin-Young has to get stronger too!” he said.

“Oh…”

Jeong Jin-Young rubbed his neck, seemingly unsure of how to react. Kim Hyeong-Jun looked at me.

“Ahjussi, should we give all twelve of them to Mr. Jeong Jin-Young?”

"Sure. There seems to be many red-eyed zombies on Jeju Island. And besides, none of us are showing any weird, abnormal symptoms at the moment. I think the most urgent matter is to form an alliance with Mr. Jeong Jin-Young.”

Jeong Jin-Young was still a red-colored zombie to us. It felt uneasy that he was still red, despite the fact that we were on the same team. I knew that if we ever found ourselves in an emergency, there was a chance that we might attack Jeong Jin-Young by mistake, because we attacked any red zombies without a second thought.

I stopped at the cart outside with Jeong Jin-Young and examined the enemy leader's heads. Jeong Jin-Young looked extremely nervous as he stared at the heads. It was only natural for him to be anxious and nervous, because he had never eaten a zombie brain before. I looked at Jeong Jin-Young, who was hesitating to reach out for a head.

“I’ve already explained what happens, right? When we eat brains,” I said.

"Yes, I remember you explaining it to me.”

“Ok. Then you’re going to eat them one by one, starting now. Eat as many as you can before you fall asleep. When your body reaches its limit, you’ll pass out even if you want to eat more.”

"I… I’ll be okay, right? Even if I eat these.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at his question.

“Before you ask any more questions, try one first. It’ll feel like you’re eating pudding.”

“Pudding? Eating a human’s brain feels like eating pudding?”

“Remember, our appetites are no longer human. They’ve turned into zombie appetites as well. Drinking water makes us nauseous, but brains are a delicacy.”

Jeong Jin-Young wet his parched lips and stared at the heads. Five of the heads belonged to the scouts of the Northwest Gang, four belonged to the scouts from the Northeast Gang, and the other three heads were the ones Kim Hyeong-Jun had brought and added to the cart later on. I looked at Jeong Jin-Young carefully.

“Can’t you feel it already?” I asked him.

"I… I feel something… I feel like I’m strangely drawn to them.”

"That’s our zombie instinct. The urge to eat an enemy’s brain. When we form alliances, we don’t feel that urge toward each other. And that’s why it’s essential for us to form an alliance.”

“Then Mr. Lee Hyun-Deok… Do you want to eat my brain now?”

“I’ll tell you one thing; I’m trying my best not to.”

I answered with a hearty smile, and Jeong Jin-Young gasped and grabbed the heads of the enemies in the cart in his hands. Without the slightest hesitation, he started stuffing the brains into his mouth.

One, two, three, four… Jeong Jin-Young opened his eyes wide and tried his best not to fall asleep. However, as soon as he swallowed the eighth one, he was knocked out. When Kim Hyeong-Jun saw him collapse, he pouted his lips.

“I’d say he did a pretty good job holding on,” he said. “He ate eight brains! I’m amazed by his mental toughness. Someone with a weak mind would not be able to do that.”

“Well, I did say that I was resisting the urge to eat his brain. That probably made him try even harder to shove more into his mouth.”

“But I mean, what can we do about that, ahjussi? It’s the truth, you know?”

I chuckled at his answer, then glanced back at Do Han-Sol, who was behind me.

“I know. Well then, let’s move Jeong Jin-Young to the lobby and let Han-Sol have the remaining four.”

Do Han-Sol pointed at himself with his index finger and made a puzzled face. I snorted at his reaction.

“Didn’t you say you only had two hundred underlings left? If you eat the remaining four, you should be able to recover your losses at once,” I replied.

“Thank you…”

Do Han-Sol couldn't help but smile at the thought that he would get stronger. And since he leaned more toward defense than offense, it was important for him to increase the number of underlings he could have under him. I smiled softly.

“We need to get stronger to ensure the safety of the survivors,” I said. “From now on, let’s try to take over Jeju Island.”

"Got it!"

Do Han-Sol gave a firm acknowledgment and swallowed the remaining four heads on the spot. His eyes went wide for a moment, then he collapsed to the floor next to Jeong Jin-Young. Kim Hyeong-Jun and I moved Jeong Jin-Young and Do Han-Sol into the hotel lobby. We laid the two of them down on cots and finally went into the meeting room with Park Hye-In.

When I entered, all eyes turned to me. I nodded slightly.

“My apologies for the interruption,” I said.

Heo Seong-Min pointed to an empty seat and smiled lightly.

"Oh, no worries. Please have a seat.”

After taking a seat, I listened intently to what was being said in order to catch up. But it seemed like they had only been sharing what each group had gone through up to this point. Only then did I realize why the meeting had been going on for such a long time. Realizing that it was going to take a while to get to the topic I wanted to get to, I quietly folded my arms and waited.

Just like the Survivor Rally Organization, it seemed like the Jeju Defense Unit had been wandering around for a long time. They had roamed around the outskirts of Jeju Island to avoid the Hounds, and it was only recently, about a month ago, that they finally settled down in the L Hotel.

Heo Seong-Min pointed at Kim Dae-Young, who had joined the meeting with me.

"I don't know if I’ve already introduced him, but that fellow over there is Kim Dae-Young."

The leaders of the Survivor Rally Organization looked at Kim Dae-Young, who got up from his seat, seemingly rather confused, and greeted each leader one by one.

Once he finished, Heo Seong-Min picked up from where he had left off. He directed everyone’s attention to a map on the wall.

“We stayed at a place called Songnanpo-gu before we came here.”

He explained how they had faced several dangerous situations in Songnanpo-gu, but were fortunate enough that they managed to avoid the Hounds, and eventually made it to the L Hotel. He added that they had headed north, pushing through many sleepless nights in order to avoid the eyes of the Hounds. After all of this, they had finally decided to make L Hotel their hideout, and they cleaned up the surrounding zombies and built defensive lines for themselves.

It now made sense why Kim Dae-Young had been so flustered when the Hounds appeared at the rental car company. I remembered him muttering these exact words, looking agitated.

- When did they get this close…

Now that I thought about it, he was probably nervous at the thought of having to move to a different hideout once again.

Once he’d given us the history of the Jeju Defense Unit, Kim Hyeong-Jun, who had been sitting still and listening to everything, got up from his seat while raising his right hand. Heo Seong-Min gestured for him to speak. Kim Hyeong-Jun strode forward to the podium and looked at the map carefully.

“Mr. Heo Seong-Min.”

"Yes?”

“How much do you know about the Hounds?”

He was basically asking the head of the village how much he knew about his village. His question may have seemed somewhat absurd, but Heo Seong-Min didn’t think too much about it.

“The Hounds comprise four officers, centered around a captain called Hyung-nim. And they have scouts underneath them.”

“Have you figured out their location, or how many of them there are?”

“The officers are comparable to Mr. Kim Dae-Young in terms of strength. We confirmed this when we were in Songnanpo-gu, so I’m almost certain about this, unless they’ve grown stronger within the past month.”

Kim Hyeong-Jun walked over to the map and posed a follow-up question.

“This person that goes by ‘Hyung-nim’… Have you ever seen him with your own eyes?”

Heo Seong-Min scratched his forehead, looking troubled. Kim Hyeong-Jun stopped in his tracks and looked him straight in the eyes.

“Have you ever seen him with your own eyes?”

"No, I haven’t. No one is quite sure where the boss is, and not a single person has claimed to have seen the boss with their own eyes. I’m sure only the officers would know where the boss is.”

Kim Hyeong-Jun began to pace in front of the map again.

“Well, the officers didn’t even know that,” he said.

Heo Seong-Min tilted his head in confusion. "Pardon?"

Kim Hyeong-Jun swept his gaze across every person in the meeting room.

“It seems like each officer has their own territory or sector that they take care of. If we take Jeju City as the base point, this sector is controlled by the Northwest Gang, and this sector by the Northeast Gang. With Seogwipo City as the base point, this sector is controlled by the Southwest Gang, and this is the Southeast Gang’s sector.”

As Kim Hyeong-Jun spoke, he drew circles on the map with his finger. Heo Seong-Min looked at him in puzzlement.

"Even we haven’t been able to figure this out… Where’d you get this information from?”

“I heard this from the boss of the Northwest Gang. He told me all this before I killed him.”

The meeting room instantly turned dead silent, so silent that you could hear a pin drop. His words had been extremely shocking, and out of the blue. Unable to believe what I’d just heard, I got to my feet.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “Are you saying that, among the twelve heads that were in the cart just now, one of them belonged to the boss of the Northwest Gang?”

"That’s exactly what I’m saying. Didn’t Han Sol tell you that I was going to the enemy base?”

I’d heard that he had headed for the enemy base, but I wasn’t aware that he’d gone inside. I burst into laughter at the absurdity of all that I was hearing.

"So you're saying you killed one of the four officers?"

"Yeah."

“And did you assess how strong the officers were?”

“The boss of the Northwest Gang was able to command between a thousand and twelve hundred underlings. His first and second lieutenants could control about nine hundred to a thousand each.”

“Then did you find out where the boss of the Northeast Gang is as well?”

“That, I don’t know. It seemed like the two didn't get along. They seemed busy fighting each other over territory.”

After listening to everything Kim Hyeong-Jun had said, Kim Dae-Young cleared his throat.

"But… Is it possible for there to be bad blood between the two of them?” he asked. “I just can’t imagine the boss of the Hounds just watching and not intervening…”

“Oh, I asked about that too, but it seems like the Hounds’ boss is missing in action at the moment.”

“Pardon?” said Kim Dae-Young, his eyes wide with surprise.

Kim Hyeong-Jun shrugged.

“He said they lost contact with him over a month ago. He also said that if I’m that curious about his whereabouts, I should go to Seogwipo, because the officers over there might know. He said that the boss last showed himself in Seogwipo.”

Everyone in the meeting room was open-mouthed at all the information Kim Hyeong-Jun was spitting out. They couldn’t help but stare at Kim Hyeong-Jun with surprise in their eyes. Starting from day one on Jeju Island, Kim Hyeong-Jun had caused quite the scene.

Not in a bad way, but in a good way.

As everyone stared at him in awe, Kim Hyeong-Jun scratched his head with a puzzled face, then forced a smile.

“Did I… Did I make another mistake?”

“No, no! Not at all!”

Heo Seong-Min grabbed his shoulders and continued in a high-pitched voice, full of excitement.

“You’ve given us some really important information!”

Kim Hyeong-Jun gave me a sidelong glance.

“All I did was beat up the Northwest Gang, and they spat out all this…” he grumbled.

I understood why Heo Seong-Min was full of excitement. In the eyes of the Jeju Defense Unit, this was something they could never have imagined. And it was all because Kim Hyeong-Jun had taken care of one of the officers within a couple of hours.

I quietly rubbed my chin, lost in thought. We were in the clear, but I couldn’t help but think about an unpleasant being. The boss of a gang disappearing, and the black creature in Jeju Island that last showed itself a month ago.

The boss of the Hounds moved his hideout all the time. He seemed to consider Jeju Island his backyard. But I knew that he wasn’t the real boss of Jeju Island.

The real boss was the black creature with blue eyes.

As I thought about it, it was possible that the boss of the Hounds had been eaten by the black creature. And if so, the color of the black creature’s pupils might just have changed.