Return of the Apocalypse Knight

Chapter 24: The Soldier Left Behind (2)

“It was a normal day. The troops were doing their normal work in the unit, and I was organizing the warehouse with my counterpart.”

Private Kang recounted the past with a blank face.

* * *

In the warehouse filled with military supplies, two soldiers are checking the stacks.

One of the soldiers checks out the right stuff, but the other is stuck in the corner of the warehouse checking out the wrong stuff.

“Don’t bother, they’re probably just doing it because they have nothing better to do.”

“Well, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.”

The private shook his head at the words of the corporal who was sitting on the floor.

“You’re such a high-minded bastard, who cares.”

The corporal grumbled as the private continued to work, but he didn’t encourage the private.

Instead, he stared at the ceiling and grumbled.

“Why is time passing so slowly? If North Korea is destroyed, they should shorten, if not eliminate, the draft.”

“You say North Korea is gone, but monsters have taken its place, and we need an army to stop them.”

“Do those monsters have tanks? Do they fly fighter planes? If we just fire artillery and push forward with tanks, it’ll be over. We’ll be unified, and if we do well, we’ll even take over Manchuria, and I’ll be happy when I’m discharged.”

“Haven’t you heard the rumors about the blockade of the North Korean advance? They say that the ceasefire line is still intact, with no bullets or bullets passing through.”

“It’s just a rumor. A rumor. Besides, what good is an army if guns and pistols don’t work? Instead of an army, let’s hire monster hunters. And discharge me.”

The private shook his head at the sound of the senior’s dismissal.

This conversation was nothing more than routine small talk anyway.

The senior wasn’t expecting anything, and he didn’t have a good argument.

“Moreover, the atmosphere among executives has been really strange lately. Is there some kind of censorship going on?”

“I don’t think it’s censorship, but I do think it’s a weird vibe, and I’d really like it to pass.”

Sighing, the corporal glared at his still hard-working successor.

“But why are you still stuck here? Even if you’re not a special force, you could easily have been dragged into a search party.”

“It’s my constitution. A man like me, who shudders at the sight of blood, is best suited for the supply line.”

“Do you really have such a constitution, or are you just making excuses to avoid being taken?”

The corporal snorted at his junior’s comment.

“Well, what does it matter, a man who can shoot a gun and play shortstop like no man’s business can’t help it if he doesn’t want to do it.”

But he soon leaned back against the wall as if it didn’t matter.

After all, for soldiers, the army is where they spend their time.

Maybe it was better to stick to the supply line, as the private had said, than to be dragged to a hard place for nothing.

The conversation stopped after that, and a peaceful silence settled over the warehouse.

The sound of the private pacing and checking off papers could be heard, and a small snoring sound came from the corner of the warehouse where the corporal was huddled.

It was a peaceful scene.

The two soldiers in the warehouse thought it would be another normal day but the peacefulness was immediately shattered.

-Boom!

A loud bang came from outside the warehouse.

“What the hell!”

“Hey, Lieutenant! Sergeant An is not right!”

“Crrrrrrr!”

“Stop! Private Wu, are you crazy?”

“Come on, you’re not managing your troops right!”

After the binge, the shouts and screams of the troops could be heard outside the warehouse.

Clearly, the voices belonged to the men who were working together.

However, their voices sounded nothing like what you normally hear.

They were a mixture of excitement and fear, tension and anger.

They were coming through the wall, and it didn’t feel real.

Maybe that’s why Private Kang stood dumbfounded for a moment.

After standing for a while listening to the noise, he finally moved his head.

The noise outside had gotten louder, but the inside of the warehouse hadn’t changed.

Stacks of materials, light streaming in through the windows, and dust.

Unlike outside, the silence of the warehouse made what was happening seem even less real.

No, the inside of the warehouse wasn’t the same either.

Was it the noise?

The corporal who had fallen asleep was suddenly awake.

“Uh…….Did you hear that? I think something happened.”

The corporal, who had been listening to the sounds outside with his head down, scratched his head at Private Kang’s words.

Am I wrong? Am I hearing things?

Suddenly, these thoughts crossed his mind, but the look on the corporal’s face forced him to dismiss it.

“Krrrrrr.”

The corporal’s face was different from the one that had just fallen asleep.

The corporal standing there was not the good-natured corporal who had been waiting to be discharged, the one who had taken the jokes of his successor.

It was the same face, but Private Kang couldn’t recognize the man in front of him as the same corporal he’d just seen.

Had a vein burst?

The corporal’s face was blue as he stared at Kang.

Saliva was dripping from his mouth, and an animalistic growl came from his throat.

“Jesus Christ…….You didn’t turn into a zombie or something, did you? Wake up!”

Private Kang was sure that Senior had turned into a zombie.

He wasn’t a big fan of web novels or comics, but he’d heard enough stories about zombies and monsters since the monsters had invaded the North,

He had seen pictures of zombified North Korean soldiers in training.

The senior standing in front of him now was not unlike the North Korean zombie photos he had seen.

The only difference was that his skin wasn’t broken or dirty.

“Kaaah!”

Thanks to his training, Private Kang was able to grab the crowbar that was propped up next to the crate before the zombified senior could lunge at him.

“Damn it! Stop! Stop!”

The senior lunged at Private Kang with his mouth open, and Private Kang swung the crowbar at the charging senior.

-Puck! Puck! Puck!

* * *

“I kept swinging the crowbar until the corporal stopped. Blood splattered and when I came to, I realized I had killed the corporal.”

The soldier, no, Private Kang, looked down at his hands.

His hands were still shaking, as if they remembered.

He hadn’t killed him, now that he was undead, but we hadn’t stopped him.

We didn’t want him to stop talking and then have his words cut off.

Zahina’s mana wouldn’t last forever, and we needed to hear as much as we could now.

“When I left the warehouse after killing the zombie, the troop was already a mess.”

“Soldiers biting their fellow troopers and soldiers screaming because they were bitten. Soldiers who had been bitten and turned into monsters over time. If left untreated, the unit would have been wiped out.”

It seemed that this army had been struck by death energy before the demon army descended.

The army was full of young men, but not all young men could resist death energy.

Furthermore, it would have been harder to stop the spread of the undead in an army camp than elsewhere.

A normal unit would likely have been wiped out, as Private Kang says.

“Fortunately, some of the officers and soldiers came to their senses, gathered the healthy ones and formed a defense line.”

As Private Kang spoke, images of the piles of bodies in the building’s corridors flashed through his mind.

“Luckily, I was able to get the key to the ammunition cache, so I was able to deliver the ammunition to the surviving soldiers.”

As it turns out, my eyes weren’t wrong.

It was clear that the soldier in front of me had been instrumental in saving his unit.

“After we got the ammo, we wiped out the zombies in the unit, and when we counted them all, there were about 400 soldiers left alive. That’s about 20 percent.”

Was it more or less?

Either way, it seems they were able to prevent the unit from being wiped out.

“Fortunately, a lot of our cadres survived, and we managed to contact the higher units.”

As expected, this was the unit that made contact with a higher unit.

Hopefully, they would hear about other units that had survived.

“Then came the news of zombies and skeletons pushing down from North Korean soil, and then the order to gather the surviving members of the unit and regroup at the rear.”

I wondered why he went out of the unit, but there was another reason.

“I followed the order and left the unit with my men, and a short time later we met the skeletons coming down from the north.”

The signs of battle on the road, where they must have met.

“Skeletons were different from the zombies I fought in the unit. Zombies would keep moving unless their heads were broken, but they would still fall to bullets, however the skeletons didn’t.”

It made sense. I hadn’t just handed Zahina a gun for nothing.

Unlike the zombies, which were a hoax, the skeletons in the Demon Army were hard to deal with without mana.

“In the end, we didn’t get far before we were forced to retreat.”

The battle scars from the national highway leading up to the unit were the last of the unit’s scars.

“By the time we got to the front gate, there was no one left in the platoon. The skeletons kept coming, and when the last man was killed, we had no choice but to run in all directions. I grabbed my battle rations and ran to the ammunition depot. I knew that the ammunition cache would keep me alive. I even kept the key to the ammo bunker with me.”

Now we know everything that happened in the unit.

What’s left are the hours he survived alone.

“I hid in the ammunition depot and heard the sounds of other soldiers dying. I begged for help, for my life, but I couldn’t leave the depot. That’s how I continued to survive in the depot. When I was hungry, I ate, dug, and buried myself, and even after that, I kept hearing endless cries for help, but I was too scared to take a single step outside the depot.”

“Cries for help?”

Were there other soldiers besides Private Kang who were alive?

“I think I was going crazy in the ammo bay. There’s no way I could have kept hearing screams for help, and I couldn’t have seen the men I killed out the window.”

As he spoke, Private Kang stared at the wall of the ammo bay.

No matter how I looked, I couldn’t see a window on the wall, but we didn’t say anything.

“Then I finally got fed up, grabbed my machine gun and ran outside, and then I saw you.”

Had he gone completely insane just before he met us?

If he had been saner, we might have been able to treat him, but we were a little late.

Private Kang continued to answer our questions as best he could.

When we had finished asking all the necessary questions, he looked a little exhausted, but then with a smile on his face, he told us

“Now that we’ve killed the zombies and the big monster, I hope you don’t mind if I take a shit outside, because I’ve been doing it in here and it’s starting to stink.”

Asking our permission, he turned to Zahina.

“If I let go of your hand, I won’t go crazy right away, right?”

“You’ll be fine for a little while.”

With Zahina’s assurance, he shouldered his rifle and headed outside.

“Bye then.”

Hoffman and I stared at the soldier as he walked out.

“Is it okay if I send him alone?”

We didn’t answer Zahina’s question,

BANG!

The ensuing gunshot didn’t move us.

What would happen if a person who had escaped the shock and pain of going mad were to return to his senses by the hands of another?

We had seen the results of that many times.

Unable to take responsibility for the insane soldier, we could only watch in silence as he made his decision.