“What percentage?”

“Fifty-five percent.”

At Kim Jimin’s report after checking the power tank’s remaining charge, Junho narrowed his eyes slightly.

Among the equipment he had prepared for this Bucheon insertion was a six-kilowatt-class power tank.

Normally, it was the kind of thing people used for car camping or extended outdoor trips, but in the apocalypse, it had become essential survival equipment.

Especially now, when vehicles couldn’t realistically be operated, a high-capacity power tank was indispensable for charging the drones and all the electronic gear the three of them carried.

“Then we’ll need to keep charging until tomorrow afternoon. Got it.”

A six-kilowatt unit held enough electricity to power an ordinary household for roughly two days, but even that wasn’t enough for three people to survive on for over a week.

Which was why Junho had also brought portable solar panels, running them throughout the afternoon to replenish at least part of their power reserves.

“Power’s getting a little tight. Maybe we should’ve brought more panels and another power tank.”

Junho shook his head at Kim Jimin’s regretful muttering.

“Then the baggage would outweigh the benefit. Besides, once we reach the house in Bucheon, the power issue’s solved.”

The Bucheon house—which he had set up as a kind of practice shelter—already had residential solar-generation equipment and a low-noise diesel generator installed.

And right before the apocalypse, he had restocked it with food and various supplies.

“Still kinda chilly for May.”

“We’re beside the Han River. It’ll get colder before dawn. You finished setting up the thermal equipment, right?”

“Yes. But seriously... how did you even think of something like this?”

Kim Jimin looked at Junho with open admiration.

He had just returned after installing several portable thermal-imaging cameras according to Junho’s instructions.

“When you’re desperate enough, ideas come to you. I kept thinking about how to survive more safely outdoors at night and ended up trying all sorts of things.”

The three of them would take turns standing watch, but that alone wasn’t enough.

No matter how good your night vision gear was, you couldn’t wear it nonstop forever.

And with dense riverside brush surrounding the campsite, outsiders would have difficulty seeing in—but they would also struggle to see out.

So Junho had selected several points outside the brush line and installed thermal cameras there, linking them to a tablet so whoever was on watch could monitor the feeds in real time.

It steadily drained power, and because they were outside Namyangju’s wireless communication range, they even had to use wired cables.

But inconveniences like that were nothing compared to “safety” in the apocalypse.

Click. Click.

At the sound, Junho and Kim Jimin turned their heads.

A moment later, Yoon Seolhee pushed through the brush and emerged.

Wearing a windbreaker whose color closely matched the riverside vegetation over her gray multicam combat uniform, she lowered the backpack she had been carrying.

“There are a lot of wild animals around. Otters and stuff. But nothing dangerous.”

“Otters? Seriously? There are otters in the Han River?”

“Honestly, I was surprised too. They’re pretty big.”

As she pulled PET bottles from her backpack, Junho dropped a water-purification tablet into each two-liter bottle and spoke.

“There have always been otters in the Han River. There are probably more now that the world’s turned out like this.”

“Really?”

“Want to hear something even crazier?”

“...?”

“There are sharks and dolphins in the lower Han River too.”

“...What?”

Both of them stared at him wide-eyed.

Then Kim Jimin snorted.

“Come on. That’s pushing it. What kind of sharks and dolphins live in the Han River?”

“It’s true. There’s an endangered species called the finless porpoise. They normally live in the Yellow Sea, but they come up the Han River too. And the sharks are sturgeon. They’ve been spotted in the lower Han River for years.”

“No way. Seriously?”

“Seriously. And now that the world’s gone to hell, there are probably even more of them. Which is why...”

Junho looked toward the direction of Nanji Campground and Hangang Park, the last locations the drone had surveyed.

“...people gathered around here. There’s water, and there are plenty of animals they can use for food.”

Not massive animals like water deer or wild boars, but if you caught enough fish and birds, you could still get a decent amount of protein.

More importantly, the Han River had always been clean enough to qualify as second-grade water quality.

You could wash in it directly, and if you filtered it once through a makeshift setup using sand, gravel, and activated charcoal, then boiled it, it was drinkable.

In other words, now that all modern infrastructure had collapsed, there was hardly any place better for human survival than the riverside.

“All right. Finish eating and get some rest immediately.”

“Yes.”

“Got it.”

It was only a little past seven, but the three of them planned to sleep in shifts as soon as dinner was over.

Standing watch all night in a three-man rotation wasn’t easy.

And one of Junho’s firm beliefs was that whether you were inside a shelter or outdoors, you needed at least six hours of sleep.

***

Yoon Seolhee, who had taken first watch, checked the tablet screen repeatedly.

The four portable thermal-imaging cameras captured every living thing carrying body heat in the pitch-black darkness.

Most were just riverside animals, but now that humans had vanished from the Han River, they no longer moved around cautiously the way they once had.

The noises were frequent and surprisingly loud, enough that without the thermal cameras, she would have spent the entire night on edge.

In a world like this—on a moonless riverside in the dead of night—even the faintest rustling sound was enough to make people deeply uneasy.

People born and raised in South Korea, one of the safest countries in the world, rarely understood that.

But Yoon Seolhee, who had experienced “the real thing” in the past, understood it perfectly.

Which was why she found it both astonishing and admirable that Junho—who, despite serving in a rough unit, had technically only been an ordinary army sergeant—had understood that subtle but critically important difference and prepared thermal cameras in advance.

'Precognitive dreams, huh...'

At first, she simply couldn’t believe it.

But after indirectly witnessing all the preparations Junho had made over the years—and especially after seeing the shelter itself—she had no choice but to believe.

Still, even if he had seen the future in dreams, how could someone remember details this specific and prepare for them?

“......”

Yoon Seolhee looked over at Junho sleeping inside his sleeping bag.

After devouring three packs of combat rations, he had climbed into the bag and fallen asleep within five minutes.

And somehow, even his sleeping face looked completely ordinary.

But Yoon Seolhee knew very well what lay hidden beneath that ordinary exterior.

No—

“extraordinary” wasn’t even enough to describe it.

Setting aside the fact that he had spent tens of billions of won constructing their shelter—a place so close to perfect it was almost absurd—

just remembering his physical and combat abilities, which seemed to exceed human limits, sent chills down her spine.

And she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

The KJM Brothers had talked about him.

So had her superior, Park Cheolwoo.

But all their doubts and concerns had ultimately been cut off by something Kang Baekho said.

—So? Has Juno ever harmed us?

That single sentence had pierced straight to the heart of the matter.

Junho had never harmed them. Not once.

If anything, thanks to him, they had survived the infection outbreak and managed to stay alive at the resort.

And above all else, Yoon Seolhee herself had been personally saved by him in a life-or-death situation.

—Then that’s all that matters. Junho’s on our side, and we chose to stand on his side. More importantly, goodwill and mutual benefit both exist there.

That was true too.

People were like that.

If a relationship was built purely on unconditional goodwill, eventually anyone would start doubting it at least once.

But Lee Junho wasn’t like that.

He clearly wanted something from Kang Baekho and the resort, and he never tried to hide it.

And somehow, that honesty was exactly what made him even more trustworthy.

“What a strange person...”

Yoon Seolhee glanced at Junho, lying there as motionless as a corpse with his eyes shut, and quietly chuckled.

Then—

“...!?”

Her eyes widened as she looked at the tablet.

Several human-shaped heat signatures had appeared on one of the thermal cameras.

***

“Mr. Junho. Mr. Jimin.”

The instant he heard Yoon Seolhee’s voice, Junho’s eyes snapped open.

“What is it? Shift change already?”

Kim Jimin also rubbed his eyes and crawled toward her.

“Humans. Six of them. Near Camera Three.”

“Camera Three means...?”

Junho answered the still half-asleep Kim Jimin.

“Nanji Campground side. Everyone gear up.”

The moment he put on the helmet beside his sleeping bag, Junho lowered and activated his night-vision goggles before picking up his KP9.

Kim Jimin quickly checked his own weapons.

Junho spoke quietly to the two, who had finished preparing for combat in an instant.

“Jimin, stay here and secure the rear. Manager Yoon, circle around toward Camera Two and wait there first.”

“Yes.”

“Open radio comms. Channel Five. We rotate frequencies every ten minutes in reverse order. Jimin, use the air rifle. Manager Yoon, use the KP9. Setting time now. Five, four, three, two, one.”

The moment Junho gave the order, both of them moved.

They had practiced this countless times at the shelter before leaving for Bucheon, and they had run through multiple simulations even during dinner.

Neither of them hesitated for even a second.

Twenty seconds later, all preparations were complete.

The three immediately moved into action.

***

“You sure this is the place?”

“Come on, hyung, I’m telling you it is. I hid and watched earlier. Some military guy came over there to collect water. He had guns too.”

A man who looked to be in his late twenties whispered excitedly to another man a few years older than him.

The older man scanned the area and muttered quietly.

“Then, dumbass, you should’ve told Brother Daeho right away. Why’d you come to me instead?”

“Hyung, are you serious? You wanted me to tell that bastard we found some soldier carrying guns and suggest we jump him for the loot?”

“Well, obviously tha—... no, you’re right.”

“See?”

“Fuck. If we get guns, we can kill that bastard ourselves and become kings of the campground. Why the hell would we tell him? Good job.”

“Right? Smart bastard.”

“Heh heh.”

The men grinned in the darkness.

“But damn, I seriously can’t see shit. Should we just turn on a flashlight?”

“No. There are zombies along Gangbyeonbuk-ro, and a little farther ahead is the park guys’ territory. Those fuckers told us not to come toward Gayang Bridge after dark. Said they’d kill us without warning if they caught us. If we use a flashlight, they might spot us.”

“Fucking assholes only care about themselves. They know damn well we set fish traps out here too...”

“Bastards. Anyway, once we get guns, we can kill that fucker Oh Daeho, take over the campground, and then deal with the park guys somehow too.”

Whispering among themselves, the men moved along the riverside.

With no moonlight and rain seemingly coming the next day, it was incredibly dark, but after traveling this route countless times over the past several months, the men could navigate it fairly well even in the darkness.

Then, after advancing another thirty meters—

“Think we’re almost th—”

Thud!

The moment a small, muffled sound rang out, the lead man abruptly collapsed mid-sentence.

“Huh?”

The man right behind him widened his eyes—

Tak! Tak!

The same muted sound echoed several more times.

Two more men dropped to the ground without even managing to scream.

“What the fuck? What was—?”

Only then did the remaining men realize something had gone horribly wrong, and they immediately threw themselves to the ground.

And one of them did the one thing he absolutely should not have done.

Instinctively, he switched on the flashlight in his hand.

Fwaaaash!

Light bright enough for both humans and zombies to see illuminated one section of the Han River shoreline that had moments earlier been pitch black.

And the first things to react were—

Grrrrrr...!

—the zombies along Gangbyeonbuk-ro, who until now had been unable to perceive anything beyond several dozen meters thanks to the darkness and the roaring river wind.