Please Shoot Me - 23

It was an ashen, cloudy, foggy day. The children were not paying attention in class, perhaps because it was soon vacation. Yuyeon, a 10-year-old elementary school student, was no exception.

“What are you doing?”

Yuyeon craned her neck and looked down as her classmate looked out the window. On the playground, a security guard in a navy blue hat was chasing a child with frightening speed. There was a scream, but Yuyeon giggled as she watched the distance between the two close.

“Did he do something wrong to you?”

A smile crossed Yuyeon’s face as the boy’s agonized screams rang out and the playground was stained with blood. The screams drew the attention of the teacher and the rest of the class, who stuck their heads out of the windows and stared at the playground, together watching the boy’s head fall off.

A moment of silence gripped the classroom. Screams and cries echoed around as the severed head rolled around the playground like a soccer ball for a few laps without stopping.

The classroom instantly erupted into a pandemonium. The teacher grabbed her cell phone to call the police, and her more mature classmates quickly dialed for emergency services, but there was silence on the other end of the line. Then, from the speaker above the blackboard, a gruff voice came through.

[It’s an emergency. Teachers, please dismiss your students immediately, and students should go home and talk to their parents…]

The announcement was abruptly cut off. Dismissal did not require teacher guidance. Everyone rushed out of the classroom, except for a few kids who were too stunned by the scene and sat down and cried.

Fortunately it didn’t include Yuyeon. She saw a man’s head being ripped off, and it was more realistic than the horror movies she had secretly watched with her brother in the wee hours of the morning. Her heart was racing and she knew she needed to find her brother to hold her hand.

Yuyeon’s brother, Hyunseok, was in sixth grade at the same school and they always went to school together. She saw him around the corner of the stairs on the first floor, his eyes desperately searching for her as she was pushed aside by the rush of children toward the exit.

“Brother!”

Yuyeon shouted, through her hands in the air. He finally found her. Going against the flow, Hyeonseok reached out a long arm and pulled her out of the crowd.

“Let’s go home first. I talked to mom, she’s on her way home now, too.”

“Yeah, let’s go. The teacher said once we go home we can’t go out!”

The two pushed their way through the crowds with the hands interlocked as if they would never let go. As they exited the school, their vision cleared. The school gates were crowded with parents picking up their children.

In the center of the playground, three male teachers were wrestling the security guard to the ground, but almost seemed as if they were outnumbered. Yuyeon’s gaze traveled from the severed head of the child to the red mouth of the man on the ground. The mouth that had bitten into the child’s throat was still chewing on the flesh.

“Brother, is he a cannibal?”

Yuyeon asked, gesturing to the scene. Hyunseok glanced at the scene where she pointed but roughly pulled her away.

“Don’t look… Please, don’t look. Come here!”

At first glance, Hyunseok’s face was pale. His fear was quickly contagious and Yuyeon caught on, their clasped hands trembling. Whenever she covered her eyes during a scary scene, Hyunseok would reassure her that it was all fake. Even her brother, who was so brave, was afraid. Her legs began to shake as she realized that the bloody scene, which seemed to be something from a movie, was real.

Ever since they left the school gates, Yuyeon had been running, led by Hyunseok. The usual leisurely route home was much more chaotic. The roads were clogged with cars, and up ahead, there were cars parked sideways as if there had been an accident. The increasingly frequent screams of people made Yuyeon nervous, feeling like there was a countdown until a bomb went off.

[People, a new virus of unknown origin is currently spreading at home and abroad. You become infected through a bite, similar to rabies, and the symptoms of infection include…]

A hard, stern voice from the radio of a passing shop explained the current situation, but it was too difficult for Yuyeon to understand. As they approached the house, the lady downstairs, with whom they usually greeted, was bleeding on the floor. When she spotted Hyunseok and Yuyeon, she desperately screamed for help. As soon as Yuyeon took a step toward her, Hyunseok firmly pulled her back and shook his head.

“Brother… Auntie…”

“We have to go home, right now…”

Yuyeon watched the woman as she collapsed on the ground, convulsing as Yuyeon was dragged away. The way her body bent and bounced this way and that on the floor reminded her of a fish out of water.

The communal front door was broken, with shards of glass lying on the floor and only the door frame remaining. Yuyeon hesitated as she looked at the sharp, dangerous pieces of glass, but Hyunseok didn’t hesitate to walk through, grabbing her arm and pulling her along. Large, half-broken pieces of glass shattered even more under her feet. From that point on, Yuyeon walked with her eyes fixated on Hyunseok’s tiptoes, barely able to keep up with his wide strides.

She passed the elevator, which was stuck on the fifth floor, and took the fire escape. Yuyeon’s house was on the third floor, so they didn’t need the elevator anyway. Hyunseok forced himself to skip the stairs two at a time, occasionally looking back as though he was worried they were being followed.

“Brother, are you okay…?”

“Seo Yuyeon… Listen to me. Didn’t you watch a zombie movie with me a few days ago?”

Yuyeon remembered the zombies crawling out of the grave and nodded. They were simply moving corpses, slow to walk, stupid, and made strange noises. If you were bitten by them, you would get a bad disease. No wonder they were dirty and rotten and covered in lice.

“If you are bitten by a zombie, you become infected, so you become a zombie, too, you know that, right? So now, if you see anyone bleeding like that, you run away, no questions asked. Do you understand?”

“… Unconditionally?”

“Yes, unconditionally.”

“What if it’s you, mom, or dad?”

Yuyeon barely raised her gaze. Hyunseok, who had been climbing the stairs in silence, only answered when they reached the third floor.

“Yes, mom, dad, and me too.”

Yuyeon’s vision clouded over at the thought of what if. If she left everything behind and ran away, where would she go after that? If she didn’t have her mom, dad, or brother, nothing would be fun anymore.

“… I don’t want to.”

“You have to do it, even if you don’t want to, if… If it comes to that.”

Hyunseok had experienced so much more than his younger sister, so he tried to be rational. She admired his determination, but deep down, she felt confident that it would never happen.

The old corridor-style apartment had multiple generations living together on one floor. They hurried down the wide, windowless hallway. She could feel blood on her cheeks, and smell the blood in the breeze. The red scenes from earlier were replaying right before her eyes.

Hyunseok tried shaking his head to clear the scene away, but his pace suddenly stopped and he fell flat on his back. Yuyeon rubbed her forehead and stuck her head out to look ahead.

The door to Room 304 was open, and there were small bloodstains in the hallway.

“Why is the door open…?”

“Aren’t mom and dad waiting for us?”

“Maybe…”

Hyunseok held Yuyeon’s hand tightly and took cautious steps. He then heard urgent footsteps behind him. Something suddenly attacked the neighbor as he appeared in the hallway with a pale face.

It was the old woman from the first floor, and she bit him on the nape of his neck like a hungry, wild animal. When her strange, glowing eyes turned to Yuyeon, guilt and fear surged through her at the same time.

She was clearly angry at her for not helping.

Hyunseok grabbed Yuyeon’s frozen arm again and pulled her along. When they finally arrived at their door, the scene was even more shocking and bloody than anything they had seen before.

Their mom was lying unconscious in the doorway, bleeding profusely, and their dad was having a seizure in the middle of the living room, and next to him was a small head poking at something.

It was a child. A tiny shoe in the shoebox told Yuyeon who owned the bloodstains in the hallway.

“Mom… Dad…”

The moment Yuyeon’s faint voice slipped out, the child turned around and Yuyeon saw a familiar ring on the severed hand he was eating. Yuyeon involuntarily lowered her gaze and looked at her mother’s arm. The hand that should have been below her wrist was gone.

“Ahhhhh!”

She didn’t remember much of what had happened next.

It was just bloody, gruesome, and brutal.

Kofi