Spinning around on their heels, Jaehyun and Jungkook were quick to usher Namjoon and Ms Ryu away from the door they had entered through, leading them around the clerk's desk in the corner of the store and through another doorway that only had heavy plastic slab curtains covering it. Pushing through, the four found themselves in a medium sized storage room filled with boxes and shelving units.
Wasting no time, Jeahyun made a beeline for a relatively large window at the far end of the room. It was the only one in the space. Speeding up, he made the small jump to reach the sill and gripped the handle, turning it and pushing the window open in on fluid motion. Peeking out, he noted that there didn't seem to be any zombies roaming about nearby the pharmacy but there were some walking across the street near a main road, their backs to the building.
Cautious of this, he pulled his head back into the storage room. He pointed to himself, then one of the tote bags he carried and motioned climbing out of the window. Jungkook nodded at him and took his other bag as Jaehyun pushed the window further out.
Carefully, he leaned forward so that he was crouched rather precariously on the ledge with one foot dangling down into the storage room. Assessing the distance to the ground to be much further than he had assumed as the road behind the pharmacy sloped down a hill, he lifted his head and decided to go up onto the roof instead.
Jungkook's eyebrows furrowed as he watched Jaehyun's figure, wondering why he didn't go down to the ground when that would be the easiest way to get back to the others, but the faint sound of heavy footsteps from beyond the room quicky distracted him.
Exhaling sharply out of his nose, he urged Ms Ryu to hide behind a stack of boxes near the window and got Namjoon to hide behind a separate stack of loading boxes that formed something of a small wall against a corner of the room, crouching ever so slightly behind him, listening.
It sounded as though someone had managed to open the side door to the pharmacy and was combing through the store. A sense of dread filled Jungkook's gut. What if they were zombies being directed by an abornormal? The memory of Jimin and Jaehyun talking about the zombie that tried opening a car door when they had been scoping their escape route came to mind.
It would only be a matter of time before the zombies noticed the doorway in the corner of the wall and came through to check. Swallowing, Jungkook crept over to where Ms Ryu was hiding, Namjoon watching him with alarm. Pressing his finger to his lips, he widened his eyes at her to stay silent, much like how Jimin had when they had found Yerim. Nodding, she watched him closely as he gestured for her to rise to a low crouch and align herself beneath the window.
Kneeling beside her with his eyes trained on the doorway, Jungkook indicated that she was to use him as a launchpad to get onto the window sill and go up to Jaehyun on the roof. Ms Ryu's neck jutted out in disbelief. Surely he was kidding? Did she look like a young rabbit who could jump around like that?
Jungkook looked at her with serious eyes and squatted down, ready to lift her up. Swallowing, she cast a flitting glance at the doorway, then to Namjoon who was just barely visible from where he peeked behind his box fortress. Nodding, she pressed her lips together tightly and breathed hard through her nostrils, determined not to make any undesired noise this time.
Slinging her tote bag more securely onto her shoulder, she pressed a foot onto Jungkook's sturdy leg and hoisted herself up with effort. Reaching out, she grabbed onto the window sill and held on as Jungkook lifted her legs higher.
There was a singular, rather fatal problem which neither Jaehyun or Jungkook had determined in this short panicked period: Ms Ryu lacked the same agility and balance as Jaehyun, so when she observed the drop beneath the window, she could understand why Jungkook had told her to go up, but she was physically unable to do so. Her harsh exhales began to tremor as the stress began to get to her and she slipped, letting out an agonised gasp as she fell.
Her cry was cut short into a gag as her shirt neck tightened on her throat from behind and she was pulled backwards. Jaehyun was on his stomach on the roof, using the bag on her shoulder to pull her back whilst Jungkook had jumped up onto the window sill and was using one hand to stabilise himself as he yanked on her shirt and jacket to prevent her fall, his neck straining with the effort to stay balanced with two massive bags weighing down one side of his body.
The sound of moaning became louder through the doorway to the storage room and, thinking instinctively, Jaehyun hauled Ms Ryu up onto the roof with him, with Jungkook lifting himself up after them, all three moving away from the ledge. As the sound of his heart pounding made way for the very clear sound of the zombies knocking into shelves and boxes in the storage room, Jungkook clutched at his hair.
Namjoon hyung!
~Present~
Jungkook wanted to slap the roof in frustration. They had very few rules for when they moved around and he had thrown one out the window, almost literally. He had abandoned Namjoon in there! Blinking rapidly, he tried to gather himself, glancing at his phone. It had been about seven minutes. Should he call? It was an emergency. Who would he even call? Namjoon had been the contact for emergencies and this one was about him!
Jaehyun and Ms Ryu watched him fret and Ms Ryu's gaze was guilty. If she had been more spry, this might not have happened. Impatient, Jungkook crawled to the roof edge, lowering his head to get a peek inside. There hadn't been any screaming, so he could only hope that Namjoon hadn't been discovered.
Taking note of the three zombies that had converged into the storage room and the fact that they were merely ambling about eased his fears by a fraction. Perhaps an abnormal wasn't directing them and they were just on the move themselves. Then there was hope.
As long as they weren't mutants.
Jungkook clutched his face to suppress a groan. He'd forgotten about the mutant zombies. But surely if they were mutants, they would have discovered Namjoon by now? Clinging to the thought that these were just normal zombies, Jungkook rose to a squat, grabbed Jaehyun's bag from where it sat on the roof and began to creep to the edge of the roof that hung over the side entrance they had used to get into the pharmacy.
Peeking over, he observed that the door was still open. Good, this was good. Making his way back to Jaehyun and Ms Ryu, he broke one of their rules for the first time in a long time.
"Jae-ya." He whispered, leaning close to Jaehyun. His friend jumped a little even though he had watched Jungkook approach him and he blinked with panic. The no speaking rule...! Jungkook shook his head once to show that he knew and still dismissed it before speaking again.
"Sorry, I'm going to try and get those zombies out of the room. I need you to get Namjoon hyung up here. Please." Was what he said before he made his way back to the roof edge with the door. Exhaling, he sent a silent prayer up that this would work and that Jaehyun would comply before taking one of the glass bottles of cold medicine out of its cardboard packaging.
Then, he threw it to the ground in front of the side door with as much force as he could muster without sending himself over the edge, wincing as the material splintered and shattered almost resoundingly. It was like a vacuum sucked all the sound and motion from the world around them. For a second, the trees had no breeze drifting through them, the grey clouds halted their trek across the sky, the air grew heavy with anticipation and not one of them breathed.
Then all at once, a swarm.
As if summoned from the stores and buildings nearby, a horde descended up the pharmacy with a chilling speed. Jungkook shot backwards away from the roof edge to avoid being spotted by any stray climbers, snapping his head around to lock eyes with Jaehyun who gaped at him like a fish in shock before springing into action.
Jaehyun jerked to the edge of the roof on his side, leaning over to see what was going on. The coast was clear for now, all the zombies had run to Jungkook's side. Spinning and lowering himself onto the window ledge, he gently rippled his fingers against the glass to catch Namjoon's attention.
Namjoon, who had curled up on himself when the zombies had entered the storage room and had just barely held himself together when the faint sound of glass smashing caused the zombies to rush out, bumping into his small box tower as they went, now peeked up at the sound. He locked eyes with Jaehyun who stood balancing on the window and was urging him to come over.
Looking nervously at the doorway where he could still see the figures of the zombies, unable to leave the pharmacy as the area had become inundated with other zombies, Namjoon rose shakily, working to keep any boxes that had fallen on him from dropping too loudly on the ground with one hand while he gripped his full tote bag with the other.
From squatting for more than ten minutes, his feet had fallen asleep and he struggled to cover the short distance between where he had been hiding to the window. Unsteadily, he made it to a spot below the window, but not without clumsily knocking into another stack of boxes.
Shit! Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit-
Scrabbling now, his long legs reached the window in less than three seconds and his height enabled him to grab the sill and haul himself upwards. With intense concentration, Namjoon focused on getting himself balanced.
He could barely hear anything over the roar of his own blood rushing through his head and he was certainly much too large to attempting to climb through this window with any sort of grace but he grit his teeth. He grit his teeth hard because he knew that he was dead for real if he messed up here.
Managing to get himself to something of a standing position on the window sill, he managed to twist his uper body to the roof while his feet still pointed at the drop below the window and was able to hurl himself up with the help of Jaehyun and Jungkook, who had scurried over from the other side, to pull him up.
As he lifted himself up, Namjoon felt a frisson of terror course through him when something clawed at his calf, hardly scraping him but making contact nonetheless. Collapsing onto the roof, Namjoon heaved, his anxiexty churning his stomach. It was a few seconds before he was mentally ready to reach down to check for damage, letting out a quiet grunt of relief. Aside from a blood stain on the bottom cuff of his joggers and the tip of his left sneaker, no scratches or cuts.
A rap on his shoulder brought his attention to Jungkook, who was already standing with Jaehyun and Ms Ryu already making their way to the roof edge. Jungkook gestured that they needed to go and Namjoon recounted Jimin's tale of the mutant zombies that could climb.
Rising to his feet, he moved slowly but steadily at Jungkook's pace, cautious not to step too heavily and give themselves away. Then Jungkook broke into a jog and hopped over the gap between the pharmacy and the building beside it. Jaehyun had carried Ms Ryu over, so Jungkook had picked up their bags of medicine before taking his turn.
Following suit, Namjoon told himself just don't look down, just don't look down as he made the jump and he landed, a little heavier than the others. To distract from the noise, Jungkook took another cold medicine out of its packaging, this time throwing it at an abandoned car across the road where it smashed and cracked against the window. The horde instantly descended on the vehicle, knocking into it again and again.
Clutching Namjoon's sleeve, Jungkook didn't give him time to observe the event, pulling him away, back to the minibus. Just as they made it back to the ground, each of their phones buzzed with a message from Jimin in the group chat asking if they were okay and where they were. Jungkook fired back that they were fine as they made their way through the store, through the back exit and onto the minibus.
The minute the vehicle came into sight, Namjoon felt all the strength leave his body, his adrenaline high dropping immediately. He boarded the bus on unsteady legs, dropping into a seat with a heave. Ms Ryu tenderly lowered herself down beside him. In the aisle, with the door now closed, Jimin did a short bow.
"Good job everyone, thank you for accepting my request. Thanks to you, we should be ready to leave the city now. How was it? Do you think we should begin to include kitchen utensils as weapons?" There was silence. Namjoon breathed out.
"No, I don't think we can afford to lose use of a hand to holding anything that isn't one hundred per cent necessary." He murmured, looking down at his palms. If he had been holding anything in his hands, he certainly would have dropped it in his scramble to climb out the window. Curling his fingers into a fist, he pulled himself into a half standing position.
"When we get back to Nambu Bus Terminal, let's debrief properly and prepare to depart to Ms Ryu's island right away." He called out his suggestion. He was met with sounds of agreemeent before settling back into his seat.
The journey back to the terminal was uneventful, much to the relief of the survivors. When Seulgi pulled around the front of the terminal in order for some scouts to go in and open the bus and coach door, Jimin stopped Jungkook and Seokmin from leaving the vehicle.
"Hyung?" The two asked, confused. Jimin stared at the terminal building, trying to guage what was wrong. What was ticking him the wrong way? Hoseok peered out of a curtain facing the building.
"Yah, why are the first set of front doors open?!" There was a pause for one, two seconds before everyone had the same collective thought.
The children!