Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 22



Only Krnovel

19. Theme Park (2)

Since I didn’t reveal my name, and my siblings didn’t reveal their names either, I decided to categorize them as Defender and Defender’s younger brother for convenience.

“Skeleton.”

Defender’s younger brother called me in a small voice and gestured with his hand.

I looked into it and it was none other than a community.

She was writing a new article.

Defender: (Defender Breaking News) A skeleton came to our house!

– Skeleton is so sweet. I thought he was an actor. He’s just a walking statue. He’s 2 meters tall, wears a sharp tuxedo, and drives a Bentley! I’m a man, but he’s so cool that I fell in love with him at first sight.

The mouse cursor point was in front of the button.

“No no no! No. Don’t do it. Don’t upload it.”

“······why?”

“No, what are you going to do by posting such nonsense?”

She pouts, then suddenly turns on her notepad and starts typing excitedly.

-You’re not popular. That’s why.

“So what?”

-To give it a lift

“You don’t have a very good image either, do you?

-I’m still named. Skeleton, listen to me.

“······.”

-And since everyone else is getting along, shouldn’t we get along too?

“Can’t you just say it?”

-There are things that cannot be expressed in words.

“Can I just type it?”

I never thought there would be a human being who would communicate with a notepad in front of them.

“That’s just how it is. My little brother.”

The Defender spoke as he stuffed the magazine full of bullets into his pocket.

As I was staring at him blankly, wondering if there was some kind of dark story behind it, he snickered and continued speaking.

“No, nothing much happened. I just liked typing more than talking when I was little.”

Crash

I asked him as he checked the chamber, locking the bolt back with a deft movement.

“There are a lot of opponents, so you’re going to kill them all?”

There were about twenty people wearing red pants.

My armed status is far superior to that of the group of Lieutenants who came to my territory.

Everyone is armed with automatic rifles and there are even armored vehicles.

We will have to check the individual qualities of each soldier, but in terms of size alone, it is a threatening force.

I wondered how they would resolve that difficult fight.

“Should we kill the kids first?”

The Defender said without batting an eyebrow.

“If you kill those kids, won’t one or two of them come and look for you?”

I’m serious.

I mean this sincerely.

“Kill them one by one to reduce their numbers. Then, when it looks like they’re coming, attack from behind and sweep the camp clean.”

“The armored vehicle?”

“My brother is good at handling drones. He’s especially good at dropping things with a drone. He even killed someone by dropping a brick instead of a bomb.”

My brother pointed at himself with two thumbs.

“I’ve thought about it that far. What do you think?”

“It’s an impressive plan, but there’s no follow-through.”

“Isn’t that what fighting is all about? Especially against those types of people, planning doesn’t really matter. You never know where they’ll go, and if you set things up well at the beginning, they’ll just fall apart.”

“Do we really have to kill the children?”

“Then should I let you live?”

The defender snickered.

Defender, who was looking at the monitor, also turned his chair and stared at me.

I opened my mouth, feeling the unspoken pressure.

“Wouldn’t it be better to save it?”

“Why me? He’s not even my child.”

When the defender looked at his younger brother, his younger brother nodded with a strange smile.

The Defender looked at me again.

“Or are you going to take Skeleton and raise him?”

“······that.”

“If you’re going to take me and raise me, I’ll think again.”

The defender snickered and his brother glared at me calmly.

The siblings were asking at the same time what to do.

Suddenly, I thought about it.

How much will the baby weigh?

I have little memory of my childhood and have never raised a child, so I don’t know exactly how much a young child weighs.

But their weight will never be light.

It is difficult to easily answer that weighty question.

“Look. You can’t answer either.”

Defender arranged the weapons he had prepared on the table and looked at his younger brother.

“What do you think, little brother?”

My brother spoke in his characteristically whispering tone, as if he had been waiting for me.

“Anyway, at this point, if they lose their parents, they’re already dead. They’re out of luck. The times are not on their side.”

For a moment I was convinced.

Defenders are not one, but two.

It’s not anyone’s solo.

Two siblings come together to create a horror film called Human Hunter.

After a moment of silence, the Defender offered a different opinion.

“Actually, there’s a way to ignore it. It’s too steep here and the road isn’t properly paved, so the kids can’t come up. They just move along the road.”

“Then, do we not have to fight?”

My caution is to avoid unnecessary fights.

“That may be true. But we’ll have to fight someday, right? We can’t hide forever. And before that.”

The defender stared at the monitor.

“Our friends will die.”

My sister added, pointing inside the monitor.

“Our bulletin board friends.”

“Community······.”

That makes sense.

Even if we put up a notice on the bulletin board warning of the danger, how many people would actually have the heart of a snake like Defender?

Even I am not very confident in this situation.

“What about combat experience?”

I asked the defender.

The Defender noticed my intentions and his eyes sparkled.

“You want to fight together?”

He nodded.

“We must protect the community.”

That’s the biggest reason, but it’s not the only reason.

The Red Pants’ method was so vicious, and looking at the Defender’s condition and equipment, he quickly calculated that it would be an easy battle. If we were going to fight anyway, it was better to fight with more than one person.

Of course, I won’t deny that it was also intended to satisfy my shallow hypocrisy.

Yeah, I guess I’m getting older too.

*

A drone flew into the dark night sky.

The one piloting the drone was Defender’s younger brother.

“My brother is going to destroy the armored car. Those guys always leave the hatch open.”

We have known since the Damien 04 incident that the Defender’s fighting power was extraordinary.

He keeps his mouth shut, but he might be a hunter.

If you look at the habits and behaviors that are subtly expressed, they are not much different from what was taught in school.

It would probably be around the 17th or 18th generation.

If he was a cursed student whose future ran away while he was still in school, it might be able to explain a little bit of that friend’s twisted personality.

“That’s where the women are kept. That’s why that building has the weakest security. There are guards, but they’re guarding the inside, not the outside.”

The Defender was a sophisticated killer.

He already knew the enemy’s positioning, weaknesses, and even small habits.

Just before the battle, the Defender shuddered slightly.

“Hey, look at the shivers running through my body. This is when I feel the most thrill.”

I could hear my brother’s ragged breathing through the earphones plugged into his ears.

Although she didn’t say anything, it seemed like she was feeling quite nervous and excited.

“Then shall we begin?”

The defender received the signal.

Watching the battle signs I hadn’t seen in a long time, I had a fantasy that I was on a Chinese battlefield across time and seas.

Thousands of corpses lying on the ground, comrades with expressionless faces shooting at the ruins, Chinese soldiers setting fire to the corpses while shouting in an unknown language, and medium-sized species whose outlines are gradually revealed in the darkness above the ruins.

Above all, I felt a bit of a headache and fatigue.

“······.”

It wasn’t just the danger of the battlefield that caused many of my comrades to fall into eternal sleep.

We were in loose hell.

So slow and boring that it makes you yawn.

“Skeleton?”

The Defender’s voice brought me back to reality.

“let’s go.”

The outline of the operation is simple.

Two trained assassins, with specific information and a plan, launch a surprise attack on a disorganized mob in the middle of the night.

It’s a fight whose outcome was predicted from the beginning.

As with all things, coincidence can change fate, but I won’t let coincidence kill me.

The red-panted pioneers’ base was an abandoned theme park.

There may not be any rides to return, but there are plenty of empty buildings, roads, and resources to turn to.

What we approached was the staff quarters where they were keeping the women they had captured.

I could see soldiers guarding the entrance along the outer wall, listening to women sobbing and men screaming.

The defender aimed his gun.

I shook my head, drew my two axes, and advanced toward the sentry.

I didn’t bend over or make excessive footsteps.

Soon a man noticed the noise and turned his head towards me.

Phew!

An axe was stuck in the man’s neck.

As the man began to groan and fall, another sentry turned his head.

“what?”

Phew!

Two corpses lay on the floor.

As I was stepping on their temples, pulling out the axe, and wiping the blood on their clothes, the Defender came over, gave me a thumbs up, and whispered.

“Skeleton Double Kill.”

As soon as he finished speaking, my younger brother’s excited voice came into the earphones.

“Skeleton killed him? Huh? He killed two of them?”

Her voice was much louder and more lively than when she spoke in person.

“I’ll take care of the rest.”

The defender drew his dagger.

“Is it enough on its own?”

“You must be having a great time, but I’m fine alone. Just stay outside and watch.”

I nodded and looked around.

An armored vehicle is visible under the pale streetlight.

Soon a woman’s screams rang out, followed by the Defender’s muffled voice.

Soon the Defender walked out.

“Kids. They were there. But there were five of them?”

“······.”

“There are two ways.”

“Two ways?”

“How to create confusion by making the women run away.”

“What about the rest?”

“This is how to kill them quietly.”

“Let’s do the latter.”

“Aren’t you trying to be too nice?”

The Defender straightened up slightly.

“Since you’ve decided to act nice, why not just do half the work?”

“It seems like we’re already halfway done?”

If you look at the results, my way was wiser.

They gathered in one room without any proper boundaries or separation, and drank and slept.

The old armored vehicle parked in front of the accommodation seemed to be the source of their confidence.

We subdued the sentries and prepared to sweep them away.

As the drone’s flight sound faintly began to be heard across the night sky, we began our operation.

As the Defender threw his grenade, he broke the window and opened fire in both directions.

Tata tata tang!

Signaled by the gunfire, the drone approached the armored vehicle and dropped a grenade precisely into the wide-open hatch.

The armored vehicle started to speed away with a loud noise.

It looks like the driver died while his foot was on the accelerator.

bang!

A few red-panted men inside tried to fight back using the table as cover, but the building was already on fire and smoke was quickly rising.

All variables were ruled out.

All that remains is a yawn-inducing, boring massacre.

“Hey! Skeleton!”

Defender laughed out loud as he saw the red pants running out with their bodies on fire.

“It’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

As he took aim and fired with a big smile on his face, the man who had been crying and on fire collapsed and never got up again.

“Skeleton. Did you think I was funny earlier? Yeah. I know. This older sister can see it all.”

My younger brother is also excited.

I shot and killed a red-panted man running away from me with a Chinese-made drone as if I was playing a game.

“Surrender! Surrender!”

Several red-panted men raised their hands and emerged from the smoking building.

The Defender laughed and fired his gun, and his brother’s laughter grew steeper.

thud!

An explosion occurred in the distance.

It appears that a speeding armored vehicle crashed into some part of the theme park facility.

It was a moment I was about to dismiss as a trivial coincidence.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

With a loud noise, colorful lights flew into the sky and exploded, decorating the night sky in beautiful radial patterns.

It’s a firecracker.

A large number of fireworks set up in launchers before the war were accidentally detonated, breaking the long silence and sending up colorful fireworks into the sky.

“Wow! Look at this! Hey!”

“Gyaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

Watching the siblings having fun like children, I suddenly had a thought.

Maybe the red pants’ misdeeds weren’t a good thing for these guys.

They just wanted to kill Red Pants and they achieved that goal with flying colors.

In that respect, it may not be an exaggeration to say that this theme park has fully fulfilled its mission.

Why, because people came to have fun and had fun there.

Thinking like that, I silently watched the miracle that coincidence had brought about that did not happen to me.

*

The play is over and it’s time for reckoning.

“What are we going to do with these people?”

The children and women left behind.

It is the price of shallow hypocrisy.

“As I said before, I won’t accept it. No, I can’t accept it.”

The Defender looked at me as if he was piercing through me.

“······I am.”

Several thoughts were popping up in my head, but I knew the truth.

That my gaze was only on one result from beginning to end.

I watched in silence as people walked into the darkness, awkwardly holding guns.

A child looked back at me blankly.

I decided not to think about their fate.

Click click

Behind, Defender is taking a certification photo.

“Skeleton.”

He came up to me and held something out to me.

“What is this?”

When I received it, I realized it was a painting.

The painting contained an overly glorified, pretty boy who looked like he came out of a female-oriented comic.

“My younger brother drew it.”

Sure enough, beneath the picture was the lovely writing, “To Skeleton.”

Now that I think about it, they do seem a bit similar…?

“My sister told me to tell you that you won’t be coming to our house anyway.”

Defender certainly has a knack for seeing into people’s hearts.

It’s the same for both younger and older brothers.

“Are you curious as to why I do this?”

“Why all this self-reflection out of the blue?”

“I know you all think I’m a psychopath.”

The defender had a strange smile on his face, biting the tobacco in his mouth.

His eyes were chasing the last scattered sparks.

“This park. I came here with my younger brother when I was little. Holding hands with my father and mother.”

He sent white smoke into the night sky.

“What a bad father he was.”

“······huh.”

I could hear my brother’s voice through the earphones.

“The next story will be told after we become closer.”

This time the Defender handed me a piece of paper.

Unlike the younger brother’s carefully prepared drawing, the one Defender prepared was a crude table.

“What is this?”

“If you need help, send me a DM.”

The defender waved his hand and walked off into the darkness with plodding steps.

“I’ll go anywhere.”

Then my younger brother’s voice was heard.

“Skeleton. Let’s get to know each other from now on.”

I stood there blankly for a while, holding the pictures and signs they had left behind, looking at the silent mountains, park, and sky.

There was a lot going on, but in the end, all I felt was fatigue.

It’s the kind of tiredness you feel when you come home after having a great time at an amusement park.

That night, the Defenders were plastering the bulletin boards.

Defender: (Defender confession) I love skeletons!

Defender: (Defender confession) I love skeletons!

Defender: (Defender confession) I love skeletons!

Defender: (Defender confession) I love skeletons!

Defender: (Defender confession) I love skeletons!

Defender: (Defender confession) I love skeletons!

Defender: (Defender confession) I love skeletons!

…

…

Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the horrific atrocities in real time.

“Numi······!!”

Because I was being chased by fucking zombies!