The transition from the world of rain to the world of concrete was a descent into a mechanical purgatory. As the delivery truck moved deeper into the 1988 Olympic Maintenance Tunnel, the acoustics changed. The roar of the diesel engine, which had felt like a defiant shout under the open sky, was now a deafening, rhythmic assault. The sound bounced off the curved, moisture-slicked walls, amplifying until it vibrated in the marrow of Han-su's bones.
The headlights of the truck were two weak, yellow lances cutting through a darkness so thick it felt like a physical weight. The beam illuminated the "hair"—the matted, greyish filth that Han-su now realized was a carpet of organic decay. Thousands of bodies had been swept into this bypass during some forgotten subterranean disaster, and the moisture had preserved them in a state of leathery mummification.
"Kim, watch the clearance!" Han-su shouted, his voice cracking.
The tunnel was narrowing. What had started as a wide, two-lane access road for heavy machinery was tapering into a reinforced ribcage of concrete arches. The truck's side mirrors—the few that remained—scraped against the walls with a high-pitched, metallic shriek that sounded like a woman screaming.
SCREEEEE—CRACK.
The passenger-side mirror vanished, sheared off by a jagged outcrop of rebar.
"I can't see!" Mr. Kim wailed from the cabin. His hands were white-knuckled on the wheel, his face illuminated by the eerie green glow of the dashboard lights. "The walls are closing in, Han-su! We're going to get stuck! We're going to be buried alive in this drain!"
"Keep the wheels straight and keep the RPMs steady!" Han-su roared back. He was standing in the pass-through, his body braced against the metal frame.
Behind him, in the cargo hold, the atmosphere was thick with the scent of fear and damp wool. The children were huddled together, their small bodies forming a single, trembling mass in the center of the floor. Ji-young stood over them, her chef's knife held in a reverse grip, her eyes fixed on the rolling door at the back.
Then, the first "Wall-Crawler" moved.
It wasn't a sudden jump. It was a slow, agonizing peeling. A shape that Han-su had mistaken for a thick electrical conduit began to detach itself from the ceiling. It was a man—or it had been. His limbs were elongated, the joints swollen and distorted from decades of being pressed into the concrete. His skin was the color of a wet sidewalk, translucent enough to show the black, stagnant fluid pumping through his veins.
The creature dropped. It didn't land on the truck; it landed on the hood, its fingers—long, needle-like claws—digging into the metal with the ease of a hot knife through butter.
"Kim! Don't brake!" Han-su screamed.
But the instinct was too strong. Mr. Kim slammed his foot on the pedal. The truck lurched, the tires skidding on the slime-covered floor. The heavy vehicle fishtailed, the rear swinging out and slamming into the concrete wall with a bone-shaking THUD.
The engine stalled.
The silence that followed was terrifying. It lasted for exactly three seconds before the scratching started.
Skritch. Skritch-skritch-skritch.
It was coming from everywhere. The ceiling, the walls, the floor beneath them. The vibrations of the truck and the heat from the engine had acted like a dinner bell for a colony that hadn't fed since the late nineties.
"They're waking up," Mrs. Cho whispered, clutching her birdcage. Jjizzeu was silent now, his head tucked under a wing, refusing to witness the end.
Han-su grabbed the LED lantern and shone it upward. The beam revealed a nightmare. The "hair" on the walls was moving. Hundreds of the Wall-Crawlers were uncurling themselves from the architectural nooks. They moved with a jerky, spider-like grace, their spines snapping and popping as they forced their atrophied muscles into motion.
"Min-ah, to the back! Ji-young, get the kids under the heavy tarp!" Han-su barked out orders, his mind switching into a cold, tactical gear. He didn't have time to be afraid. Fear was a luxury for people who weren't responsible for thirteen other lives.
He grabbed the professional crossbow. He had only ten bolts left. He couldn't waste them on the drones. He needed to clear the hood so Kim could restart the engine.
Han-su kicked open the cabin door. The air in the tunnel was freezing, smelling of ozone and ancient rot. The creature on the hood turned its head 180 degrees to look at him. It didn't have a nose or ears—just a jagged, vertical slit where a mouth should be, and two milky orbs recessed deep into its skull.
HISSSSSS.
The sound was like steam escaping a pipe.
Han-su leveled the crossbow. THWACK. The bolt caught the creature in the center of its chest, the kinetic energy throwing it off the hood. But it didn't die. It tumbled into the darkness, its claws screeching against the floor as it scrambled to regain its footing.
"Kim! Start it! Start the damn truck!"
The starter motor groaned. Rrr-rrr-rrr.
"Come on!" Han-su slammed his fist against the dashboard.
On the roof of the truck, a heavy THUMP signaled that more had arrived. The aluminum ceiling began to groan. A claw pierced through the metal, inches away from where the little girl with the stuffed cat was sitting.
"Back off!" Min-ah yelled. She lunged with her pike, thrusting the sharpened volleyball pole through the hole in the ceiling. There was a wet squelch and a shrill, inhuman shriek. Black fluid dripped down the pole, sizzling as it hit the floor.
Rrr-rrr-RRRUMBLE.
The engine caught. The vibration shook the truck, and for a moment, the Wall-Crawlers recoiled. They were sensitive to the frequency of the diesel motor.
"Floor it, Kim! Don't worry about the walls!"
The truck surged forward, but it didn't go far. The rear was wedged. The impact from the skid had jammed the heavy steel bumper into a vertical support beam. The wheels spun, throwing up a spray of black mud and shredded rubber.
"We're stuck!" Kim screamed, his voice hitting a note of pure hysteria. "We're stuck and they're coming in!"
Han-su looked out the window. The tunnel ahead was filled with them. They were dropping from the ceiling like overripe fruit. This wasn't a fight they could win with a crossbow and a frying pan.
"Min-ah! The thermite!" Han-su shouted.
"We only have two canisters left!" she replied, her voice strained as she fought off a hand reaching through the rolling door's gap.
"Use one! Not on the door—on the floor behind us! Create a thermal barrier!"
It was a desperate move. Thermite burned at thousands of degrees. In a confined space, the oxygen depletion alone could kill them. But if they didn't stop the flow of creatures from the rear, they would be overrun in minutes.
Min-ah didn't hesitate. She grabbed a canister, cracked the magnesium fuse, and hurled it out the back of the truck.
The darkness was instantly replaced by a blinding, ultraviolet glare. The thermite hit the wet floor and reacted violently with the stagnant water. A wall of white fire erupted, turning the tunnel into a furnace. The Wall-Crawlers caught in the blast didn't just burn—they ignited like dry parchment, their ancient, dehydrated skin acting as fuel.
The heat was instantaneous. Inside the truck, the temperature jumped twenty degrees in seconds. The children began to cough as the oxygen was sucked toward the chemical fire.
"Kim! Shift to first! Rock it!" Han-su commanded.
He jumped out of the cabin, the heat from the thermite searing the hair on the back of his neck. He ran to the rear wheel. He needed to see what was holding them.
The bumper was hooked on a rusted iron bracket. Han-su gripped the hot metal of the bumper. He didn't feel the burn—the adrenaline was a thick, numbing sludge in his veins.
"Push!" he roared to himself.
He put his shoulder against the cold concrete and his feet against the truck's frame. He pushed until his vision went black, until the tendons in his legs felt like they were going to snap.
The truck shifted. G-grind. The iron bracket snapped with a sound like a gunshot. The truck lurched forward, free from the obstruction.
Han-su scrambled toward the moving cabin, his fingers catching the door handle just as a Wall-Crawler lunged from a side pipe. He kicked the creature in the face, feeling the brittle bone of its jaw shatter under his work boot, and hauled himself inside.
"Go! Go! Go!"
Kim didn't need to be told twice. He floored it. The truck roared through the tunnel, smashing into the creatures that stood in its path. They burst like rotten gourds against the reinforced bumper.
The air was becoming thinner. The smoke from the thermite and the burning bodies was filling the tunnel behind them, chasing them like a vengeful ghost.
"How much further?" Ji-young asked, her face streaked with soot. She was helping the children breathe through wet rags.
"The map says there's a ventilation shaft another half-kilometer ahead," Mrs. Cho said, her voice remarkably calm amidst the chaos. "If we can reach it, the air will clear. But the tunnel slopes upward there. It'll be a steep climb."
Han-su looked at the temperature gauge on the dashboard. It was climbing into the red. The engine was overheating from the strain and the lack of fresh air.
"We have to make it," Han-su whispered.
The tunnel began to incline. The truck groaned, the transmission whining in a high, mournful pitch. Outside, the number of Wall-Crawlers was thinning, but the ones that remained were larger, more aggressive. They were the "Alphas"—creatures that had fed on their own kind to survive the decades of isolation.
One of them, a massive brute with four arms and a chest like a barrel, stepped into the center of the path. It didn't move. It braced itself, its claws digging into the concrete.
"Don't slow down, Kim," Han-su warned, his hand on the gear shift. "If you hit him and stop, we're dead."
The impact was horrific. The truck hit the creature at forty kilometers per hour. The windshield shattered, a spiderweb of cracks obscuring the view. The brute was tossed over the roof, but not before its massive weight crushed the hood, pinning the radiator fan.
SCREEEE—CLUNK.
The engine began to knock. A plume of white steam erupted from the front of the truck.
"We're losing power!" Kim shrieked.
"We're almost at the shaft!" Mrs. Cho pointed.
Ahead, a faint, vertical shaft of moonlight pierced the darkness. It was the ventilation exit—a rusted grate a hundred feet above them, with a narrow access ramp leading to a secondary maintenance door.
The truck slowed. 30 km/h. 20 km/h. 10.
The engine gave one final, violent shudder and died.
They were twenty meters from the ramp.
The silence returned, but this time, it was filled with the sound of the steam hissing from the dead engine and the distant, rhythmic thudding of hundreds of claws approaching from the darkness behind them.
Han-su looked at the survivors. They were exhausted, terrified, and trapped in a dead vehicle in the bowels of the city.
He reached for the last canister of thermite.
"Everyone out," Han-su said, his voice flat and final. "We're finished with the truck. Grab what you can carry. We're climbing."
"But the supplies! The packages!" Mr. Kim protested, finally looking at the crates of luxury goods that had been their lifeline.
"Leave them," Han-su said. He looked at a small box that had fallen near the door. It was labeled 'High-Altitude Mountaineering Gear.' He grabbed it.
"The delivery is over," Han-su said, opening the door and stepping out into the cold, damp air of the shaft. "Now, we just have to survive the night."
As they scrambled out of the truck, the first of the Wall-Crawlers emerged from the smoke. They didn't rush. They moved slowly, sensing that their prey was finally cornered.
Han-su stood at the base of the ramp, the mountaineering box in one hand and his frying pan in the other. He looked up at the moonlight. It felt like a million miles away.
"Ji-young, take the lead. Min-ah, center. Mrs. Cho, keep the bird quiet."
He looked at the truck—his home, his shield, his burden for the last forty-eight hours. He felt a strange pang of grief. It was just a machine, but it was the last piece of the old world he had left.
He pulled the pin on the final thermite canister and dropped it into the open hood of the truck.
"Goodbye, old friend," he whispered.
The truck erupted in a pillar of white flame, the magnesium reacting with the spilled oil and fuel. The explosion was small, but the fire was intense, creating a barrier of heat that would buy them five minutes—maybe ten.
They turned and began to climb the rusted iron stairs of the ventilation shaft, leaving the delivery truck to burn in the ribcage of the city.
As they ascended, Han-su didn't look back. He only looked up.
The air was getting fresher. He could smell the river, the salt, and the faint, unmistakable scent of pine trees.
They were nearing the surface. But the surface wasn't the end. It was just a different kind of battlefield.
Han-su reached the first landing and paused, gasping for breath. He looked at the mountaineering box. He tore it open.
Inside were four high-quality climbing harnesses, a hundred meters of static rope, and a set of titanium ice axes.
"Well," Han-su muttered, a grim smile touching his soot-covered face. "I guess the hobbyist wanted to go to the mountains."
He looked at the stairs. They were crumbling. The Wall-Crawlers were already beginning to scale the walls of the shaft, bypassing the fire.
"Rope up!" Han-su commanded. "We're going to have to climb the rest of the way."
The journey was no longer a drive. It was an ascent. And every inch would be paid for in blood.
Survival Status: Volume 2 Conclusion
Vehicle Status: DESTROYED (Sacrificed as a barrier).
Party Health: Han-su (Minor burns, exhaustion), Mr. Kim (Severe shock), Refugees (Stable but terrified).
New Equipment: Mountaineering Gear (Rope, Harnesses, Ice Axes).
Location:Ventilation Shaft (Vertical).