Zombie - Soogyu

One Shot

🦴

The end of the world didn't announce itself with trumpets, apocalyptic earthquakes, or dramatic breaking news broadcasts. It arrived on a random Tuesday in late autumn, disguised as a violent, sudden fever that turned ordinary people into hollow, hungry shells within a matter of hours. In less than a month, human civilization collapsed like a poorly built house of cards. The bustling, loud cities fell into a deathly, suffocating silence, broken only by the sluggish dragging of worn-out boots against shattered pavement, the howling of the wind through broken windows, and the occasional, distant echo of desperate gunshots that always ended too quickly.

And right in the middle of that ruined, gray landscape was Beomgyu.

Well, what was left of him, anyway.

​By now, he barely remembered his own age, his family, or what his life had been like before the streets turned into an open-air graveyard. His skin had long since lost any trace of human warmth, carrying a grayish, lifeless tone that blended him in perfectly with the rest of the roaming horde. His pupils, fully dilated and void of any spark of life, stared at the world through a cloudy, dull haze. Yet, by some strange biological inertia-or perhaps just a sheer, stubborn refusal to fully fade away-his body kept moving forward, step by sluggish step.

His physical appearance was a walking disaster. His dark hair was completely disheveled, matted with dust and dried grime, falling over his eyes in dull strands that he couldn't be bothered to push away. His left arm, hand, and legs bore deep, jagged, dried bite marks: the exact scars from the day his old life was ripped away from him in an instant.

Sometimes, when the wind blew too cold through the empty avenues, a hazy, disoriented memory would flicker in the back of Beomgyu's clouded mind like a burning film reel. He remembered running desperately through a crowded, chaotic subway station, his lungs burning with ice-cold air. He remembered the muffled screams of terrified people tripping over each other, the blinding red emergency lights flashing against the wet concrete, and the suffocating smell of iron and fear. In the middle of the chaos, Beomgyu had grabbed a friend by the arm, trying to drag them away from a crowd of manic, feverish bodies advancing without control. But panic had been faster. A cold, clumsy hand had yanked him down to the floor, and before he could get back on his feet, he felt an agonizing, sharp pain sink deep into his left forearm. He remembered the horrifying sensation of cold teeth ripping through the fabric of his jacket, the heat of his own blood spilling over his fingers, and a sudden, overwhelming wave of fever flooding his veins like boiling lead. The world had gone dark right there, on the filthy floor of the station, surrounded by screams and snapping jaws. When he finally opened his eyes hours later, the crowd was gone. The heat in his blood had turned into an icy, permanent chill. He wasn't entirely himself anymore, but somehow, his human essence hadn't completely burned out either.

​Both his clothes and his face still bore dark smudges of dried blood of doubtful origin from those early days of panic, there were dark stains around his mouth that his rotting mind preferred not to analyze too deeply. He wore a faded black t-shirt-so old and sun-bleached that it looked like a depressing dark gray-and jean bermuda shorts that reached his knees, covered in dirt and frayed dangerously at the hem.

If an uninfected human were to give him a quick evaluation from a distance, Beomgyu was a full-fledged zombie. The vast majority of his being officially belonged to the undead club. He walked with a slight limp, he couldn't utter coherent words, and his body was ice-cold to the touch. However, his human side stubbornly refused to rot. While his fellow horde members walked endlessly in mindless circles, driven solely by the primitive urge to smell fresh meat, Beomgyu's head still functioned like an old, broken radio with terrible reception. Through the heavy static and mental ruin, there were still flashes of absurd thoughts, deep boredom, and a lingering spark of sarcastic humor that the virus hadn't managed to destroy. He found the other zombies annoying. He hated the sound of their wet, raspy groans, and he actively avoided joining their mindless stampedes. He was, for all intents and purposes, a dead guy who just wanted some peace and quiet.