The truck lurched forward. Mr. Kim was grinding the gears, the transmission screaming in protest, but the vehicle was moving.
Han-su stood at the very back, the rolling door cracked open just three inches. He watched the distance close. 200 meters. 150 meters.
CRACK.
A spark flew off the side mirror. The sound of the rifle shot followed a split second later.
"They're firing!" Kim shrieked from the cabin. The truck swerved wildly.
"Keep it straight!" Han-su roared.
He pulled the pin on the first smoke canister. It hissed, a thick, acrid white cloud billowing out. He kicked it out the back. Then he pulled the second. And the third.
Within seconds, the delivery truck was a ghost ship, shrouded in a massive, rolling fog that the wind dragged across the road. To the snipers on the roof, the target had vanished into a cloud of white nothingness.
CRACK. CRACK-CRACK.
More shots, but they were blind now, thudding into the heavy metal of the cargo hold or whistling into the trees.
"Ram it!" Han-su yelled through the pass-through.
The truck slammed into the chain-link gate at forty kilometers per hour. The sound was a deafening symphony of screeching metal and shattering glass. The gate didn't hold; the hinges snapped, and the truck plowed through, skidding sideways on the wet concrete of the courtyard.
"Out! Out! Out!"
Han-su threw the rolling door up. He didn't use the crossbow yet—it was too slow for a close-quarters ambush. He gripped the heavy carbon-steel frying pan in his left hand and the Gyuto chef knife in his right.
A man in a black security uniform stepped out of the gatehouse, coughing in the smoke. He was struggling to rack a shotgun.
Han-su didn't hesitate. He wasn't a soldier, but he was a man who had spent ten years lifting 30kg boxes. He moved with a heavy, momentum-driven violence. He swung the pan.
CRUNCH.
The edge of the pan caught the guard under the chin. The man's head snapped back, his helmet flying off as he collapsed like a ragdoll.
Min-ah was a shadow beside him. She used her pike with terrifying precision. As a second guard lunged with a machete, she stepped inside his reach and drove the sharpened pole through his thigh, pinning him to the ground, then followed up with a heavy boot to the temple.
"Clear the door!" Han-su shouted.
But the "Strays" weren't just two men. The door to the main facility swung open, and three more emerged. These weren't guards—they were civilians who had joined the gang. They held crowbars and pipes. Their eyes weren't milky like the zombies; they were bloodshot and filled with a desperate, feral greed.
"That's enough!" a voice boomed from the balcony above.
A man stood there, holding a revolver. He was older, with a thick beard and a scar that ran through his eyebrow. He pointed the gun directly at the truck's cabin—at Mr. Kim.
"Drop the 'shield,' delivery boy," the leader said. "Or I put a hole in your driver's head. Then you're just sitting in a cage."
Han-su felt the cold rain sliding down his neck. He looked at the leader, then at the man Min-ah had pinned, then at the smoking canisters.
"You're the 'Strays' leader?" Han-su asked, his voice steady.
"I'm the Captain," the man replied. "And you just broke my gate. That's going to cost you everything in that truck. Including the girl."
Han-su's grip tightened on the knife. He looked at the smoke. It was thinning. In a few minutes, they would be fully exposed.
"Captain," Han-su said, taking a step forward. "You think you're the king of this pile of dirt. But you haven't looked at the river in the last ten minutes, have you?"
The Captain frowned, his eyes flickering toward the Han River.
"The noise," Han-su lied, his voice dropping to a predatory whisper. "The crash. The smoke. The 'Marathon' we passed? They're not Sleepers anymore. They're coming. Hundreds of them. And your gate is wide open now."
As if on cue, a long, low moan echoed from the mist outside the facility. It wasn't the lie Han-su thought it was. The "Runners" had followed the sound of the crash.
The Captain's face went pale. He looked at the gate, then back at Han-su.
"We can fight each other and all die in the next five minutes," Han-su said, raising the frying pan. "Or you can give us the fuel and let us pass. You close what's left of that gate, and you might live till morning."
It was the ultimate gamble. A delivery man with a frying pan versus a man with a gun.
The Captain looked at the dark shapes emerging from the fog at the edge of the fence. The first of the spandex-clad runners appeared, their movements jagged and fast.
"Throw the fuel cans over!" the Captain barked at his men. "Then get the hell inside and bolt the secondary doors!"
He looked down at Han-su, his eyes full of hate. "If I see this truck again, I won't talk. I'll just fire."
"Deal," Han-su said.
Two red plastic jerry cans were tossed into the courtyard. Min-ah grabbed them and threw them into the truck. Han-su scrambled back into the hold, slamming the door shut.
"Kim! Drive! Now!"
The truck roared, backing out of the wreckage of the gate, narrowly missing the reaching hands of the first runner. As they sped away toward the highway ramp, Han-su collapsed against a stack of boxes.
His heart was hammering so hard he thought his ribs might snap. He looked at his hands. They were shaking.
"We... we made it," Ji-young whispered, crawling over to him.
"We made it past the humans," Han-su said, looking at the two cans of fuel. "But we're out of smoke. And the highway is ten times longer than the park."
He looked at the thermal monocular. Far to the west, toward Incheon, the sky was a deep, bruised purple.
"We have to reach the coast before the sun comes up," Han-su said. "Because once it's light out... they'll be able to see us from miles away."
Survival Status: Volume 2, Part 2
Vehicle Condition: No side mirrors, front bumper crumpled, 3/4 tank of fuel.
New Items: 20 Liters of Gasoline, Riot Guards (Equipped), FLIR Thermal Monocular.
Mental State: Han-su (Hardening), Mr. Kim (Broken), Ji-young (Resolute).