Chapter 29: Poison

My head hurt. Had I judged wrongly? Both with Hope Community and the poison, whenever I made plans something seemed to go subtly wrong and twist.

I was also troubled about what to pursue as a marauder. All sorts of thoughts filled my head.

I could barely hear RiderZero and the owner’s conversation.

“Owner, saw corpses at the entrance – you’re quite handy with a knife?”

“In a sushi restaurant, knife skills are basic. Whether slicing zombies or fish, the basics are the same.”

“If you ever can’t run the shop, contact me!”

I watched RiderZero trying to scout the owner, feeling resentful.

Why did the bearer of bad news seem so hateful? RiderZero was already unlikeable, and this made her even more so.

Of course, RiderZero didn’t notice my gaze, focusing on persuasion while waving hands.

“You could cook just the same if you joined us. This is my goal…”

The owner packing sashimi neatly into containers met RiderZero’s eyes with apparent interest.

I briefly set aside my grudge and focused on her voice. Both as an aspiring screenplay writer and marauder, I was very interested in others’ dreams.

In the sushi restaurant with scattered corpses, RiderZero’s cheerful voice rang with bright light.

“We want to be the threads connecting people to people. At this rate the city will eventually fall right? Zombies taking over spaces, communication methods breaking down-“

A world full of zombies where people would struggle to face each other.

The delivery vigilantes wanted to become an analog means of communication. Like mail carriers from times without internet or phones.

Her dark future predictions and the romance only possible in such a future.

Of course there were practical measures for maintaining the group too. Delivery, requests, payment, proper food becoming special commodities in the future.

RiderZero finished speaking:

“Anyway, that’s it. Owner, contact me if you’re interested.”

“Sounds good.”

The owner responded positively. His expression that had subtly hardened after poisoning the vigilantes softened.

This was natural enough. Their dreams didn’t conflict. RiderZero wanting to connect people and the owner wanting to cook and share food for life.

Room to coexist and progress together.

My thoughts deepened too.

‘Coexistence. A purpose to bind multiple marauders.’

As leader of a marauder group, I already thought about engraving profit and loss in other marauder members’ minds.

The profit of living by following and trusting me, the loss of death from betraying and opposing me.

But the vision needed to lead them long-term…

Tap tap tap, I drummed my knee with my fingers.

Around then the owner finished packing. He gave a subtle eye signal.

“Enjoy your meal! …And if you need more of the side dish I prepared, come visit. Can’t give often, but I’ll prepare sometimes.”

Talking about the pufferfish poison. I shook my head.

“I probably won’t look for it anymore. Can’t eat ocean fish once supply stops anyway.”

Better to look into hospitals or pharmacies instead. Medical drugs used precise chemical technology – real stuff. Making most natural poisons look like jokes.

‘Humans really are scarier…’

And so I finished my outing and started heading back to the villa.

RiderZero’s motorcycle idling at the entrance.

‘Should I remove the brakes?’

I briefly stopped walking, but with people around decided to just play a small prank.

Clink-

I pulled out the motorcycle key and threw it into the drain. The key slipped right through the grating. Would take some time to retrieve. I couldn’t help but smile.

Before RiderZero came out, I quickly ran away shaking the bag of sashimi vigorously. Not enough to fully resolve my grudge, but at least I enjoyed it.

Isn’t the world gloomy and bleak enough already? For mental health, such small pleasures were important.

“Haha.”

Under people’s stares wondering if I was a zombie or madman running wildly, I adjusted my mask. A faint smile played at my lips.

Looking back, I rarely laughed genuinely in life. Rather, I seemed to laugh more often since the apocalypse started.

When escaping detention and stealing a bike, ramming the public bathroom with the electricity thief’s car, getting revenge on the snitch, punishing the security elder.

‘…Do I enjoy doing bad things?’

More precisely, seemed to enjoy committing crimes without risk.

Not strange at all. Do-hyung enjoying electricity theft, Park Yang-gun addicted to professional theft. All our members were mentally unstable criminals.

For a moment, complicated worries about future and vision seemed to wash away.

I looked around the street.

Daytime. Human hours when only clumsy zombies came out to get beaten by vigilantes or passersby.

People lived day by day without grand purposes or hopes. In that sense, marauders living with intense pleasure could be called an upgrade.

“What does the future matter.”

Isn’t it enough to live happily moment by moment doing bad things? Just gather marauder members who enjoy survival and raiding itself.

My feet had kept moving busily, reaching the villa without issue.

Before entering the entrance, I saw a strange person. A middle-aged woman hiding bowls of food near roads and buildings.

‘A cat mom?’

I was going to pass by thinking she fed cats, but the bowls she put down weren’t ordinary.

Heated instant rice and seaweed soup. Clearly a meal for humans, not cats.

Perhaps feeling my watching gaze, she turned around. A face with deep wrinkles and sadness forced a smile.

“Student. Do you live here?”

“No.”

I did live here. But no reason to answer honestly. Why should I reveal my information to a stranger? Who knows what might happen later.

The woman seemed a bit taken aback, and I pointed at the food with my hammer.

“What’s this? Doesn’t seem like cat food.”

“Food for my son. He left home, and I worry if he’s eating well.”

Showing signs of anxiety, she hid the bowl behind her back as if protecting it.

She seemed mentally unstable. As if thinking I would knock over the bowl, she rambled excuses:

“My son turned into a zombie while grocery shopping with me. Fortunately he seemed to recognize his mother’s face, attacked others and ran to the streets.”

Ah. Not a cat mom but a zombie mom.

Not good. Cat food would be more useful. When city resources become extremely scarce, wild animals could at least be eaten. But feeding zombies…

The zombie mom’s eyes drooped as if about to cry, but she painfully smiled while holding back tears.

“My kid who always stayed locked in his room is now running around outside, looking much better… But I worry if he’ll meet bad people and die, if he’s going hungry…”

“Oh my. That happened.”

I made appropriate sympathetic gestures.

This was a world with many zombies. There must be many people keeping a zombie locked up at home, and not few people seeing family faces in wandering zombies.

Probably as more time passes, many people will carry a few zombies in their hearts.

Seeing my moderate response, the zombie mom fumbled out her phone to show someone’s photo.

A middle schooler in uniform? Expression and posture looking timid and introverted.

“If you happen to see this child…”

Though trailing off, I could guess her meaning. Probably saying she’d pay if I kidnapped and contacted her? Of course, no intention of taking such risks.

“Yes, I understand. Please go now.”

“Yes, yes. Thank you for listening.”

The zombie mom slowly turned, struggling with a shopping basket full of instant rice and seaweed soup containers as she left.

I watched her retreating figure.

‘Seems we could cooperate now.’

I found value in cooperating with her.

Wasn’t she voluntarily putting out zombie bait? I’d felt somewhat bad using my own food, but this worked out well.

After waiting until the zombie mom disappeared from view, I quickly poured lots of pufferfish poison into the seaweed soup.

Also searching around and finding several bowls, I shook out all the pufferfish poison. Mechanical labor. Neither fun nor rewarding.

‘Dealing with zombies isn’t fun.’

Rather, plotting at the church was more enjoyable.

Thinking about it, poison didn’t seem like a good strategy either. Feeding poison required using that much food as bait, which wasn’t good long-term.

After using all the pufferfish poison, I roughly threw the trash on the street and returned to the villa expressionlessly.

Had to talk with the members about Hope Community.

Though I bought sashimi, we wouldn’t all share it nicely. Scared of the virus, we ate separately in different units.

“The community changed that much?”

Park Yang-gun rolled his eyes while poking some unknown ocean fish sashimi. Showing signs of wanting to abandon this escape and return to church.

Meanwhile Do-hyung let out a pure sigh of relief. Unconsciously taking a prayer pose.

“That’s good. Yeji won’t be in danger.”

I pressed my head hard.

These were marauder members. People who seemed tightly unified yet scattered and changed hearts at any moment.

No one thought like me or followed my style. Lucky if they didn’t seriously betray me.

Park Yang-gun said:

“Then wouldn’t it be better to go back? Not that I dislike you. If it’s safer there.”

I closed my eyes tight, then decided to use this crisis of marauder members scattering as an opportunity.

A chance to lead marauders with my envisioned vision. A chance to use Hope Community. To maintain the marauder group steadily going forward, I needed to test and succeed now.

“Let’s cleanly steal their resources and knowledge.”

“…Steal?”

Park Yang-gun leaned forward as if interested. Do-hyung was similar. Seemed to like this better than just returning.

Indeed these criminals preferred crossing lines to normal behavior. Just by providing opportunities for crime, these people would follow me.

“Wouldn’t it be more fun to steal slingshots, shields, knowledge? Just joining the community would only be boring.”

“I like it!”

Do-hyung answered immediately. The vicious electricity thief seemed influenced by professional thief Park Yang-gun.

The original thief Park Yang-gun also showed signs of being won over.

“Now that, I like… Wait, no.”

“Elder Park Yang-gun. Think of it as reclaiming your youth. Reclaiming your youthful passion for theft.”

“Heh… It is exciting.”

Good. Somehow succeeded in unifying the marauders. Really, even just managing 2 people was this hard.

Plus I needed to make my own plans.

‘Should I find someone who can think, not just army deserters? …The professor’s daughter?’

The daughter of the professor who advocated killing 1 million citizens might be able to help me somewhat. According to my internet search she attended university in this city.

Anyway pushing future matters to the future, I made immediate plans for Hope Community.

‘I want to rejoin then cause internal strife but.’

When has anything gone as I wanted? Better not make such medium-long term plans.

Rather might be better to maintain friendly relations. With the pastor gone, their potential for expansion as a pseudo-religion was removed anyway.

Or cause trouble improvising based on the situation.

So we deliberately reduced meals and didn’t wash for several days to fake a shabby appearance before visiting Hope Community.

In case showing signs of eating and living well would put us on their raid list.