episode_0063

“Wake up, we’ve arrived.”

“Uh…huh?”

When I opened my eyes, the old man was standing there, looking down at me. I looked around and saw soldiers climbing up the ladder one by one.

What the heck, are you crazy? When did you fall asleep?

I was startled and told the man to let me down, and he carefully lowered me to the ground.

“Ma, did you sleep well?”

“I think I slept for about 20 minutes?”

“Sorry…”

I couldn’t understand what on earth I was thinking when I fell asleep. No, how did I fall asleep when my body was shaking so much…

“You don’t have to be sorry, right…? It’s better to rest when you can.”

Rather, I felt even more sorry when he said that. I was the one who got some rest, but he also had more burden because of me and didn’t get any rest.

“I’ll let you rest later too! Hang it up today.”

“You didn’t ask me to carry the short story, and I got my sugar supplement thanks to it, so do you really want to?”

“Anyway, leave it alone!”

Life is supposed to be about giving and taking. If one side continues to receive, at some point you start to think of it as something natural and you become useless.

Moreover, since my uncle and I are now entering our fourth year as partners, I thought that as the time we spend together grows longer, we need to be wary of these mannerisms in order to maintain a healthy relationship in the future.

I climbed the ladder leaving the old man behind, and the old man watched me for a while as I climbed, probably thinking of being the last one to go up. After confirming that all of the escorts that had been at the back of me had left, he began to climb.

Fortunately, there weren’t any zombies outside the sewer. I thought they had done some preliminary work. I had also heard that there were people preparing boats on the river earlier.

It seemed like it would still be at least four hours before the sun set.

The warm spring sunlight was enough to make you think you were out on a picnic, if not for the reddish-brown blood stains scattered here and there.

“Where is this?”

“Ah, it’s a one-room village near the riverside park. If you go up the stairs to the riverbank and go down, you’ll soon reach the boat dock. ”

“Um…”

Following Sergeant Kim’s gestures, I moved my gaze and a staircase that looked like it had at least 70 steps, although it wasn’t 108, greeted me.

However, because it was high up, it seemed like a place where you could see the surrounding area at a glance if you just went up.

“Dangso, country mouse. Please report that you have arrived at point A as of now and respond if there are any problems with the rendezvous with the water bladder.”

-Dangso, water bladder. Let me know that there is nothing wrong.

“Let’s go!”

Just like before, the people who had been waiting began to move in unison along with Corporal Kim’s shout.

The old man and I took up the rear, and as we watched the soldiers diligently climb up the riverbank, I spoke to the old man.

“Sir, I told you it would take longer than expected this time.”

“What, really?”

“That…”

“Huh?”

The old man looked at me with a puzzled expression. I kept thinking that I had something to say, but my mouth wouldn’t open.

“I’m listening. It seems like something important to talk about. Speak comfortably.”

My face got a little hot at the old man’s words. Well, if he says it’s important, then it’s important. But it’s not something that I should take so seriously…

“If you work on a weekly basis anyway, it’ll feel similar even if you add a day or two to it, right?”

“Well, if you say they are similar, then you could see it that way.”

“Since we’re going so far anyway. On the way back after work… Ahem! Well, I thought it would be a good idea to do some sightseeing and replenish supplies like we did before”

“Well, it’s not bad. There might be unexpected harvests like last time. The supplies might be a little bit lacking, but I’ll talk to Corporal Kim about it and prepare well.”

This time, I was planning to receive a solid salary after the commission was over, but experts like us are not supposed to move just for the salary.

The requests in the city we were working in, the distribution of supplies, etc. were pretty much familiar, so it felt like we could quickly finish the business, but if we went beyond the outskirts to a completely different area, there were cases where we could find an unexpected lottery.

You may even discover additional vegetable gardens or orchards, although of course there won’t be much to dig up since it’s spring.

There might be a chance to find a place like a warehouse and stock up on daily necessities. Strictly speaking, this would be more important than electronics.

Originally, didn’t companies build warehouses and factories adjacent to highways to save even a little on logistics costs?

Above all, because these warehouses are sparsely populated, they are more likely to be intact than city marts or discount stores, where products often have problems.

If I go out to secure supplies this time, I’ve thought about the things I absolutely must get. First of all, new shoes and new clothes.

My shoes and clothes were important, but my uncle’s were a bit more urgent.

Because he had such a large build, finding the right size was a challenge, and because he wore his clothes roughly, the clothes and shoes he had worked so hard to get quickly became rags.

Perhaps, the old man didn’t seem to care about these things at all. There is a limit to how much he can repair.

If I went like this, I would end up wearing rags, and it would be really difficult if I got sick or got unnecessary injuries.

More than anything, if you wear something like that, you won’t get a fetus. Even if it’s an apocalyptic world, you can’t just wear beggarly clothes, right?

Moreover, since the old man was in the service industry, there was a risk of being looked down on by others.

And this time, I decided that both my husband and I should get clothes that are similar in color and style.

If there was a special reason, it was because of the laundry. If the color or material was different, the washing method had to be slightly different, but honestly, doing it that way wasn’t efficient.

It carries twice as much water and twice as much strength.

Even though Lina is doing the laundry now, I felt it was my duty as a human being to help her out a little.

Well, in this case, it feels a bit like a couple look, but originally, when pursuing efficiency, there were bound to be things that had to be given up.

Okay, decided.

“Let’s go too.”

“Okay.”

I followed the old man up the stairs. My legs felt light, maybe because I had had a good rest.

There were hardly any corpses or zombies in the riverside park seen from the riverbank. I thought it was strange, so I asked, and it seemed like they had cleaned everything up and burned all the corpses.

“Thanks to this, other groups of survivors no longer have to use zombie bathwater as a water source, and we are also using boats as a means of transportation.”

Sergeant Kim said with a voice full of pride.

“It can’t be like that forever. While the old men are passing by, screamers and zombies can get involved.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to clean it up again then… But that doesn’t happen as often as I thought. I don’t know if it’s because of the price, or because there’s just nothing to eat.”

We were able to get to the boat dock without any problems. It was only uphill at the beginning, but after that it was downhill and flat, and there were no zombies to get in our way, which was a big factor.

Black rubber boats were docked at the dock, and each boat had a soldier in a jungle helmet on.

There were six people in each boat. Of course, I was in the same boat as the old man.

As soon as Corporal Kim gave the signal to start, the soldiers wearing jungle hats released the ropes. As soon as the ropes were released, the boat was pushed forward quickly by the current.

The current was faster than I thought. I wondered how it could be this fast when there were so many people on board. Well, ships weighing thousands or tens of thousands of tons can easily reach double-digit speeds, so isn’t that strange?

“Oh, sir, over there.”

“Oh, I’ve never seen that picture before.”

As I was passing by, I saw the Blue Field apartment and called the old man. If I had just seen it, I wouldn’t have called, but there was something unusual about it.

The walls of the Blue Hill apartment were covered with paintings that were used as drawing paper. There weren’t any until last year…

When I thought about whether there had been any special changes in the Blue Hills apartment complex, I remembered that it had absorbed members of the Hanmaum Church. Perhaps among them was a muralist.

On the other side of the Blue Field Apartment, you could see the main building of the Gunma Hospital that had suffered so much the previous time. The trees that had been bare all winter, with only trunks and branches left, were regaining their greenery and painting the pure white hospital building green.

Other than that, there was nothing special. Occasionally, there were people looking down at us from the roof of the building, and it seemed like they were a small group of survivors.

You’re brave enough to survive in a place like that. Well, I guess Hye-ji, Cheon-deuk, and Lina are all doing well, right?

When I see people somehow surviving even when people say, “Life is hard, it’s hard,” I think that humans have a stronger survival instinct than zombies.

“You will soon be getting off.”

While my uncle and I were enjoying the scenery, a soldier wearing a jungle hat spoke.

“Already?”

I asked in surprise and the old man shrugged.

“I got on to go fast. It has to go this fast.”

No, well… that’s not wrong. I think it would have been better if we had taken it a little more leisurely. We could have seen some sights together and gotten some rest for the old man.

It was regrettable, but it couldn’t be helped. I promised to take a side trip after work, but if we were to be clear, this was my main job.

I decided to be satisfied with the fact that if work was finished quickly, my husband and I would have more time to hang out together.