Apocalypse Hunter - Chapter 99

Chapter 99: The War in Shane (Part 4)

With a serious look, Jarot checked his surroundings using his lantern. Suddenly, the dead bodies all over the parking lot became clearly visible.

“… What are those?” the children mumbled with a puzzled look.

Although the limbs were torn from the bodies, the children could tell that those were not bodies of human beings.

“Monsters?”

“…”

The fresh blood flowing from the monster’s bodies revealed that they had just been killed. The monsters were none other than the corpses of ghouls.

“Why would there be any monsters here?”

The other children looked around the monsters’ bodies using their lanterns, but there were only a few scattered bodies in the ravine, and all were dead.

Jarot clenched his jaw.

The use of light was necessary to see things in the dark. However, the light was also revealing the exact location of the team to the enemies in hiding.

‘Whoosh! Phat!’

“Aah!”

“Wh-What?!”

Something came up in the dark, and a boy’s head flew across the air. The total number of children who had followed Jarot was ten, and one was dead already. The boy’s neck twitched as if it had been ripped off by something.

“There’s something here! Shine the light! Shine the light!

“I don’t know where!”

There were many columns in the underground parking lot, and it was difficult to tell whether there was a monster or a person standing behind the pillar. No matter how bright the lanterns might be, they could not shine behind the pillar.

Then, as the lantern passed by the area, something suddenly popped out of the dark.

‘Whoosh! Phat!’

“Arrgh!”

The children clearly saw something strike a boy really hard, and then the boy split in half, from his shoulder to his right leg. And the thing that had struck the boy hid itself back in the darkness incredibly fast.

They couldn’t even see what had attacked the boy.

“A monster, a monster… It’s a monster!”

One had lost its head, and the other was split in half. It was hard to keep one’s sanity after seeing something horrific like that. Being killed by guns and getting killed something else felt qualitatively different.

“Boys! Stay sharp!”

“Ahhhhh!”

‘Ba-ba-ba-ba-bang!’

Even though Jarot shouted at them, the boys were already in a daze and shooting at anything. But the thing behind the column wasn’t being affected by such careless shooting, so the children gathered around.

‘Whoosh!’

And once again, something attacked them and flew across.

‘Phat!’

This time, the two kid gangsters who were standing within range were sliced from their waist.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

After the four children got killed in an instant, Jarot could no longer keep his composure. The monster in the dark was attacking them slowly as if he were preparing a meal.

The children were dying without knowing what was attacking them. Firing guns at random was the only thing they could do to fight back.

Fear had a way of paralyzing reason and making judgement poor. The children chose the most foolish way of fighting back and made a poor judgment call to stay together rather than spreading out.

Something that had killed the ghouls here was tightening the noose on the children.

‘Whoosh!’

After seeing a boy’s head crack from the philtrum and burst like a watermelon, Jarot yelled, “We-We surrender! We surrender!”

He cried out desperately, hoping that the opponent might be human rather than a monster. They had already run out of bullets and could no longer shoot.

“No, put your weapons down! Down, I say, boys!”

The remaining five children hurriedly threw the gun away as if it were the key to their salvation.

“Don’t kill us! We surrender! We Surrender!”

Faced with the fear of death, Jarot’s pants were already dampened. Being prepared to die and facing the fear of death were completely different issues. They lowered their weapons and put down their lanterns.

Confronted with something horrible that was completely impossible to fight, the children were forced to do so as they held on to the last straw.

“That’s disappointing.”

The hunter’s voice spread slowly in the dark. When the hunter waved his hand, the snake-like iron rails spread across the floor flew in the air and took the shape of a sword in the hunter’s hand.

‘Whoosh!’

The weapon, called “Wire Blade,” was a kind of a conversion weapon that could be used as a knife or as a whip. The significantly high-powered wires had an enormous amount of destructive power that could tear everything that came in contact with it like a shooting bullet.

Though not used as often as guns, Zin used it quite a bit in close combat because it allowed him to not use bullets.

And all non-firing weapons were perfect for use in the dark because they did not give off light.

Because the children had lowered their lanterns, they could not identify the bizarre human form that had been hunting them.

They were just relieved that the enemy had stopped the attack.

“First of all, kneel.”

The children kneeled at once, and Zin approached them slowly.

“You should be punished for taking your play too far.”

The children were kneeling out of fear. Considering the victims of their mischievous act, Zin could not go easy on them. The children felt insulted that all of their actions were being looked at as play, but they could not say anything in front of the scary hunter.

After he captured the children, Zin started to walk in front of them while holding a rope that tied them up. The children were walking in a row, like a string of yellow corvina.

For whatever reason, the hunter had been waiting for his enemies in the basement of the Central Office instead of leaving Shane.

“I can understand you running a corpse disposing facility, but I was surprised to see that cadaver hunters were being bred for cleaning.”

“…”

Jarot could not say anything, but he gave him a miserable look.

“When a dead body starts to rot, it stinks, and in some unfortunate circumstances, it can bring contagious diseases. Plus, if you were to burn it, it creates smoke, so throwing them away as food was a neat strategy.”

Not only was the Sheriff Gang using the deepest basement of the central government as a corpse disposing facility, but they were also feeding corpses to the ghouls they had captured and brought here. The cadaver hunters could go a long time without eating, and they could easily swallow most bones whole, or lick the bones clean after chewing and gnawing on them, so as long as they could be properly locked up, they were excellent cadaver handlers.

Because of this, Zin had to suffer when he went down to the basement and faced the unexpected cadaver hunters.

The children were shocked that the Sheriff Gang was involved with such an operation. And they were starting to understand why Jarot had opposed using the underground passage to blow the building up.

The honor of the organization was on his mind, but he was also anxious about fighting the ghouls underground. However, since they had had guns, he had made the brave decision to deal with them.

But what had been waiting there wasn’t ghouls, but the hunter who had destroyed all the ghouls.

Wasn’t what they were doing too heinous for people who talked about honor? The fact that they had been feeding people to monsters was horrific.

The only thing one heard about the people who were disposed like that was that they had either gone missing or had become victims of another gang’s retaliation, but they had been tossed as food for monsters all this time.

Zin opened a tightly closed secret door that rose to the top of the corpse disposal area. The conflict above was over, and the children’s plans to destroy the building had gone down the drain.

————

There were guerilla fighters who survived, including Turian. Even if the surroundings of the Central Government had collapsed, there were gaps through which a few could get out. Turian was meticulous when it came to the operation, and he had designated primary, secondary, and tertiary points of contact.

Even if the Sheriff’s operation were to succeed, most members of the Skull Family and the Shandoo Tribe had been killed. Regardless of the success of the operation, all planning and execution would be in the hands of the Sheriff Gang, even if the Group was annihilated.

However, Turian thought it would be impossible to bring down the Reavers, even if the Sheriff’s operation succeeded. It was inconceivable to him that they could beat an organization that had a man who couldn’t be killed by gunshots as their leader.

It was all over. The children had put an end to the gangs’ history. They had acted absurdly in their optimism, thinking that they could defeat their enemy without knowing their enemy fully.

“What should we do?”

“Is everyone here?”

The number of people gathered at the third contact point did not even reach fifteen all together, even though it included the members of the Skull Family, Shandoo Tribe and the Sheriff Gang.

“Suran… He’s dead…”

Some of the members of Shandoo Tribe were sobbing. The leader of the Shandoo Tribe was crushed by a collapsing building. Even though they didn’t yet know that the Sheriff’s mission had failed, no one was feeling optimistic anymore.

Having seen the walking tank, the City Administrator, the defeat was clear regardless of whether the central government building collapsed or not.

Turian stated, “The gangs are finished. Now, the organization doesn’t mean anything.”

He had regained his composure once he realized that had to think of the next step. There would be plenty of time for despair and remorse. The Reavers would be pouring out of the Central Office Building to destroy the survivors, and now was the time to make a choice.

“Listen, all of you. You’re getting out of Shane with me.”

Luckily, they had weapons. Therefore, they could shoot a decent-sized monster. The organization was no longer there, and the organization that had been maintained by the children was now completely gone. The children had to get out of Shane in order to survive.

The children were dazed by the sudden need to leave the city in which they were born and raised.

“Now is the time for survival.”

That statement reverberated in the children’s minds. They had failed, but Turian was telling them that something else was in the works. They were going to flee now, but they would come back later. They would build up the strength to get Shane back.

Turian’s words had created huge waves in the children’s minds. All the children, regardless of clan membership, nodded in agreement.

“OK, there’s no time to lose. We need to get out of here before the Reavers get here.”

“I’m sorry about this,” said someone going down to the abandoned building they were hiding in.

“!”

The man with the icy expression continued calmly, “You guys are coming with me.”

All the children picked up their guns and aimed at Ramphil, but when they were about to shoot him, he was no longer there.

‘Crack! Puck! Boom! Bang! Crack!’

Ramphil moved through the children as fast as lightning and broke their arms, smashed their knees, destroyed their shoulders, and struck their napes.

In an invisible hand-to-hand combat, he had moved like water through the children and made each of them incapable of fighting.

The children agonized without being able to shoot their guns as they were overly contorted.

And that brief agony was a luxury in front of Ramphil.

The children were all scattered on the floor while Truan hesitated for a moment. Ramphil smoothed his clothes and patted his body.

“Uh…”

“Ah…”

“Huh! Ahhh!”

The children were lying on the floor, crawling like bugs. Not a single shot was fired. Turian fired his small pistol at Ramphil, who was looking at him like an insect.

“What are you?!”

‘Bang!’

Ramphil was able to avoid the bullet just by guessing the direction of the gun and turning his body. It was not difficult for a combat soldier with a skill like Ramphil’s to know when the moment of fire would be based on the movement of the person’s finger.

“Die!”

‘Ba-ba-ba-ba-bang!’

The AR fired in rapid succession, but Ramphil was already gone. He grabbed Turian’s gun and stared down at the boy-leader with cold eyes. Turian lost his cool in this extreme situation, and he looked up at Ramphil with fear and anger.

“The house play is over, kid”

‘Whack!’

Ramphil crushed the AR with his hand and grabbed Turian’s head.

“Aah!”

“Now, you have to pay.”

“Aaahhhhh!

Ramphil left the third contact point holding the head of the last remaining gang leader and dragging him out like an animal. Soon after Ramphil’s departure, the Reaver guards rushed into the third contact point.