The Shelter in my plan—renting an entire old building, at least three stories high, tucked away on the outskirts of the city.
Even on the outskirts, buying one for 1.3 billion was unrealistic. Besides, the zombie chaos would begin in fifty-one days. There was no reason to throw money away for nothing.
I ruled out apartments immediately; I intended to use one only as a secondary shelter. I also crossed off one- and two-story private houses. If you get surrounded, that's it. There’s no way out.
If you want to keep living after civilization collapses, it's more logical to avoid the city where self-sufficiency is impossible and head for the sticks where there are fewer people. In the countryside, you can grow food. There are plenty of fruit trees—persimmons, chestnuts. Water is easier too; there are usually wells and decent infrastructure. You can survive there.
The problem is that everyone thinks the same way.
Even those who catch on quickly at the start of the disaster, manage to stockpile, and lock themselves inside don’t have infinite resources. Unless they plan on hanging themselves from the balcony, sooner or later, they have to open the door and step outside. For water. For food.
They’ll strip the supermarkets and convenience stores bare. After that, there’s only one path. They’ll abandon the hollowed-out cities and move toward the wilderness. The zombies will trudge after them—sluggish, but never falling behind.
That’s how it was in my previous lives. Nothing will change this time either.
If you build a shelter in the countryside, in a place full of empty houses, and pack it with supplies—you become a lure. The marauders will come for you. Then, it’s the same old story.
I needed the city outskirts. Near a mountain. A hidden spot. Somewhere it made no sense to go—neither before the disaster nor after.
It sounds like such a place doesn't exist. But if you look, you find it.
In my last life, I held out in a warehouse on the outskirts of Gimhae. In three years, only five people showed up there. Three were marauders. Two were leeches who survived by clinging to the weakness of others. All of them threatened me. All of them died before I did.
Even when hundreds of thousands of refugees, hearing rumors of radiation, panicked and swept through Gimhae like locusts, my shelter remained intact. I eventually lost it anyway—a fire, a fight with marauders, a forced retreat to Hadan. But I had chosen the right place back then.
This time, I decided to set up my shelter not in Gimhae, but in Busan—in an area that falls into the emergency measure zone for the Kori Nuclear Power Plant. The station is only twenty kilometers away.
If a leak happens, the locals will be herded west without exception. When the officials and military show up, screaming "radiation" and announcing evacuations, those hunkered down in their homes will pour out in a panic.
And if they crawl toward Gimhae, Changwon, Ulsan, and Gyeongbuk, dragging zombies behind them, Busan will become a ghost town. There will be more cats on the streets than people.
Radiation is a strange disaster. You can’t see it. And even if you’re hit, the consequences don’t surface immediately. That’s what makes it scarier, and it makes it easier to lie about.
In peacetime, the government, activists, or the media—someone would check if it was true. But in a hell where it’s hard to get even a bottle of water, you can’t stop a rumor once it turns into terror.
There won’t be a leak at the Kori Nuclear Power Plant.
In my past life, I specifically set up Geiger counters in several locations and monitored them. Five years—and nothing.
I know this. The others don’t. And that difference will turn the district into a quiet hole. A place without people and without zombies.
*****
I spent the night in a hotel, and in the morning, I stopped by a real estate agency to look at buildings I’d pre-selected.
In the listings, everything looked tolerable: the location, the condition. The reality was different. At two agencies in a row, they told me the same thing: "You’re a step too late," and immediately started pushing other rental options. Whether it’s used cars or real estate, it’s the same trick. I just crossed them off in my notebook and moved on.
The agency across from the Damian Apartments felt right for some reason. The entrance was designed almost like a flower shop, and a ginger cat was stretched out by the door, sleeping as if he owned the world.
The realtor was clearly over fifty. And, a rare case, he looked like a man who wasn't trying to fleece you from the first second.
"It’s a bit far. Let’s take the car."
We drove in his subcompact toward the target district. We passed a quiet entrance, then turned and climbed a gentle slope for a long time. Shops, stalls, villas, Studios, apartments, university buildings—we squeezed deeper and deeper until we dived into the brush at the foot of the mountain.
"Here."
I stepped out and looked around.
The massive parking lot caught my eye immediately—it could easily fit ten cars. Strip the concrete, haul in some soil, fertilize it—and I could actually grow vegetables.
There was only one access road. About three meters wide. If I installed iron gates, they would sit flush with the parking lot fence—over two meters high. It would make a solid wall to cut off the outside world.
Behind the access road was a thick pine-covered slope. If you went down the bend about twenty meters, a row of two-story private houses stretched out. Along the way, I’d specifically noticed: even during the day, there were almost no people.
I turned back to the building.
It was smaller than the warehouse in Gimhae where I’d held out in my last life, but the location was perfect: the mountain embraced it from all sides. A three-story reinforced concrete structure on pilots.
It was clear no one was looking after it: the cladding was crumbling in places, and trash was scattered haphazardly. The first floor—the parking area—had a high ceiling and was completely open. On the second and third floors, there were three separate units each. The two facing the road were standard two-room setups. The one on the mountain side was about the size of those two combined.
Inside, it felt like the end of the world had already been through a few rehearsals.
The realtor brought a digital door lock to life with a 9V battery and opened it with a master key. Every unit was the same mess. Junk scattered everywhere. Wallpaper and linoleum torn to shreds; in one spot, a mirror and a toilet were smashed to pieces.
I flicked the switch. No light. No water or gas for a long time, either.
"It’s like an abandoned ruin."
I spoke honestly. The realtor seemed surprised himself that it was this bad. He clicked the switch one more time for some reason and nodded.
"The owner was going to tear it down and rebuild. Evicted everyone a year ago. The permits were all there; all that was left was to demolish it. But the family had some trouble—they stalled, delayed. That’s how it ended up like this. You mentioned an online shop?"
"Yes. I’ll use it as a warehouse and office."
"Then it’s even more convenient for you. It hasn't been empty that long. A little tidying up and you can get to work."
"'A little'... Cleaning, electricity, water—everything from scratch. What’s the rent?"
The listing said: 10 million deposit, 2 million rent.
The rent hardly bothered me—two payments, and the world goes over a cliff. But the deposit, which I wouldn’t be getting back later, felt like a waste.
"Wait. Let me call the owner."
The realtor stepped into the hallway.
I walked through the apartment, which looked like the site of a midnight flit, and stepped onto the balcony. Beyond the parking lot fence, the roofs of private houses were visible in the distance. Yellow and blue water tanks sat atop them.
In my past life, I’d seen this many times. Those tanks quickly became targets: they held clean water. When the water ran out, I’d climbed over other people's fences too. Once, I climbed over thinking a house was empty—and got caught. I nearly died that time.
If I put a few more tanks in this parking lot, I wouldn't have to worry about water for a while. If only there were groundwater... but the elevation is high. Unlikely.
The realtor returned.
"5 million deposit, 1.5 million rent. He won't go any lower."
A 500,000 cut on rent and 5 million off the deposit—good enough.
"Let’s sign."
We went back to the agency. Signed the contract. I transferred the deposit and the rent. The realtor handed over the 9V battery and the master key for the digital lock.
I grabbed a quick bite, called a cleaning company, and ordered a building-wide sweep. As soon as I mentioned the extra fee, "in three days" immediately turned into "in one hour."
Then I called the electric company, the waterworks, and the sewage department one by one. I didn't set up gas; I planned to install an electric boiler.
I walked out with a cold coffee, thinking of going on foot, but took a taxi anyway.
First, I need to buy a car.
Almost everything can be ordered by phone or online. But there are things you have to go get yourself. And in the apocalypse, when the roads become a mess, you won't get far without a car.
I returned to the building and went up to the roof. I surveyed the pine slope behind the house and the surrounding terrain—marking spots for surveillance cameras. The water tank on the roof was old and dirty, scorched by the sun and battered by rain, but it wasn't cracked or leaking. Still, when the ordered tanks arrived, it would be better to replace it with a new one.
The crew arrived early—about fifteen minutes. Two trucks and a van rolled into the parking lot with a loud rumble. A crowd of workers spilled out of the vehicles carrying metal pipes and long knives. They looked like they were about to start a "seventeen against one" slaughter.
But they were just regular people. The foreman and the crew were a standard team.
"Take everything inside out and scrub it clean."
"You heard him! Move, fast!"
The foreman, clearly pleased with the cash job, drove his men inside. People used to this kind of work finished in three hours. All the small trash was cleared and loaded into a container. The bicycles on the first floor, the broken pots, the smashed furniture, and the mattresses piled in the open parking area—all of it went in.
I walked through every empty unit, made sure they were clean, and paid in cash.
When the trucks left, I went back through the units on the third floor—that’s where I planned to live. I was gauging where and how much to install when I stumbled upon a thick packet of medicine in the far corner of a kitchen cabinet. The crew had missed it.
The name on the packaging was unfamiliar, but from the ingredients and the schedule, it was clear: a hopeless chronic illness. Without these pills, the person wouldn't last a day. And there was about a month's worth left here.
With an illness like that, you don't "forget" medicine during a move.
I understood why they were no longer needed.
In the other units, traces of former tenants surfaced too—unexpectedly and unpleasantly. Yellowed wallpaper with white rectangles where someone had taken something down and left a void. I didn't know what had hung there—certificates or someone’s family pride—but it had faded just like these walls.
On the top shelf of a built-in closet, deep where you couldn't see, sat a cardboard box. I took it down, set it on the floor, and opened it.
Children’s clothes. New. The packaging hadn't even been opened. Underneath lay baby socks, a bottle, and a pacifier, all still in plastic, as if they’d been sealed and hidden away.
I looked for a few seconds, packed it back up, and put the box back in its place before closing the closet.
Then I went outside and crossed the open parking lot. At the access road, I looked back. Against the backdrop of a red sunset, the dark silhouette of the mountain loomed, and the lightless building merged with it.
Where had the people who lived here as neighbors scattered to?
Useless sentimentality scraped at my brain for a second—and then let go.
I walked down the road and caught a taxi at the edge of the quiet neighborhood. The taxi rolled down the slope into streets where the night was thickening. The neon, which was lost during the day, grew brighter against the darkness, and people bustled about, looking for a place to end their day.
There was no sign anywhere that the world was about to collapse.
Today was the same as yesterday, and almost everyone believed tomorrow would be the same too. No one knew that an unprecedented catastrophe was about to tear their lives out by the roots.
And somewhere far to the north, glaciers were melting, and hungry polar bears were dying. To the south, the Amazon was burning.
And the virus that would turn people into walking corpses had probably already jumped from some animal to a human right now.
Soon, it will kill them.
Then, it will pull them back up.
And force them to tear into others.
The apocalypse is coming soon—the kind that even those who spent years obsessing over the end of the world never saw coming.