The rain wasn't just falling; it was colonizing the city. It turned the dust of collapsed buildings into a thick, grey slurry that coated the windshield of Han-su's delivery truck. The wipers groaned, dragging across the glass with a rhythmic skritch-thump that felt dangerously loud in the dead air.
Han-su killed the headlights.
In the sudden darkness, the silhouette of the blockade loomed like a jagged teeth against the horizon of the Han River. Two K2 Black Panther tanks sat motionless, their long barrels pointed toward the city center. Behind them, a row of K21 infantry fighting vehicles formed a wall of cold, unyielding steel.
"They're not moving," Ji-young whispered. She was leaned forward, her breath fogging up the glass. "Why aren't they moving? There are lights in the distance... someone must be there."
Han-su didn't answer. He reached for the binoculars he'd found in a "Birdwatching Enthusiast" package three hours ago. He adjusted the focus, his fingers stiff from the cold.
The scene at the blockade was a masterpiece of stillness. There were no soldiers on patrol. No spotlights scanning for infected. He saw a body draped over a machine gun turret, its uniform soaked dark with rain. The man's helmet had fallen off, revealing a pale, shrunken scalp. He wasn't moving, but he wasn't "active" either. He was just... discarded.
"The military didn't hold," Han-su said, his voice a low gravel. "They were overrun from the inside. Look at the positions of the vehicles. They weren't set up to fight an army coming from outside. They were set up to keep people from leaving."
"So we're trapped?" Mr. Kim's voice came from the back, muffled by the cargo. "You said we'd get to the river! You said we'd find a boat!"
"We are at the river," Han-su snapped, rubbing his eyes. "But the main road is a graveyard. If I try to ram through those Humvees, we'll get high-centered on a chassis and be sitting ducks. We need a detour."
He looked to the right. The guardrail of the highway ended where a steep, grassy embankment led down into the Hangang Park. Usually, this was a place for families to fly kites and eat ramen by the water. Now, it was a dark, flooded expanse of bike paths and sunken convenience store kiosks.
"The park," Han-su muttered. "The maintenance road follows the water line. It's narrow, and it'll be muddy as hell, but it bypasses the main checkpoint."
"The truck can't handle mud," Mr. Kim protested, crawling into the pass-through. "It's a 2.5-ton delivery vehicle, not a jeep! We'll get stuck, and then we're just a tin can full of meat!"
Han-su looked at the fuel gauge. The needle was hovering dangerously close to the red line again. Every minute of idling was a minute of life they were burning.
"The truck stays on the bike path," Han-su said, his decision final. "The path is paved. It's thin, but it'll hold the weight. We just have to hope the floods haven't washed it out."
He shifted into gear. The truck lurched. He didn't use the lights; instead, he relied on the faint, ambient glow of the burning city reflected off the clouds. He drove the truck over the curb.
The jolt was violent. The suspension screamed—a high-pitched metallic protest that echoed through the empty park. They descended the embankment at a precarious angle. Inside the cargo hold, boxes shifted and crashed. The heavy frying pan slid across the floor, clattering against the carbon-fiber crossbow.
As the wheels hit the paved bike path, the truck leveled out. To their left, the Han River was a black, churning abyss. To their right, the dark shapes of trees swayed in the wind like reaching arms.
"Keep your eyes on the tree line," Han-su told Ji-young. "They like the shadows. They don't have thermal vision, but they can see movement better than we can in this light."
The truck rolled forward at a walking pace. The engine's low thrum seemed to vibrate in Han-su's teeth. He felt the weight of the journey ahead of them. This wasn't a sprint. It was a long, agonizing crawl through the bowels of a dying nation.