The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 28: Talent in the Talent Residential Community

By noon, the makeshift steel-pipe barricades clogging the hallway had been entirely dismantled.

SU JIN stepped out of FU HU’s apartment once more, a physical list gripped in his hand.

The contents were, naturally, the personnel files for the floor’s residents.

FU HU was familiar with almost everyone in the unit, save for a few transient renters.

After a quick scan, SU JIN mapped out his strategy.

This complex boasted a surprisingly high percentage of retirees from the military and government sectors.

What he lacked right now was muscle. He needed to beef up his security detail.

The tenant living opposite his fourth-floor storage unit was a former soldier named WANG SONG.

Slightly younger than FU HU, clocking in at early forties.

Common sense dictated that ex-military meant high discipline and decent combat stats. At forty-something, his physical specs should still hold up.

The perfect first hire for his little apocalypse startup.

Grabbing the adhesive remover, SU JIN headed straight for the fourth floor and went to work on the door seams.

Ten minutes later, he pounded his fist against WANG SONG’s heavy metal door.

If the guy inside had turned into a Zombie, the noise would trigger a reaction. Simple diagnostic test.

He knocked until his knuckles ached. Downstairs, distant cries for help were already echoing through the stairwell, but WANG SONG’s apartment remained dead silent.

SU JIN paused, then drew the Silver Gun.

He had run field tests with it last night.

After emptying the nine-round magazine, the weapon had automatically regenerated a full clip thirty minutes later.

The HEAVENLY DAO COMPANY’s corporate perks were undeniably top-tier. This Gold Finger was a ridiculously overpowered loadout.

He leveled the barrel at the peephole and pulled the trigger!

Bang! The brass fixture blew inward, spraying jagged shrapnel across the dark entryway.

SU JIN took a tactical step back, peering through the smoking hole.

The hardwood floor was slick with a massive pool of coagulated, blackish blood. Two bodies lay in the center of the mess, both draped in stained white bedsheets.

Before he could adjust his angle, a raspy voice drifted from the shadows.

“Who’s there?”

“Your neighbor. Are you WANG SONG? Are you injured?” SU JIN slid sideways, planting his feet on the stair landing and pressing his back against the wall, a two-handed grip locking the gun on the door frame.

“Does it matter? Piss off.”

SU JIN frowned.

The two sheeted corpses were likely infected before they were put down. Judging by the viscosity of the blood, they had been dead for a while.

The survivor inside was still lucid. Even if he was a suspected exposure case, the immediate threat level was manageable.

Calculating the odds, SU JIN pivoted the barrel toward the deadbolt.

The Silver Gun packed an absurd punch, completely ignoring standard physics like ricochets. Two deafening cracks later, the lock mechanism was reduced to twisted slag.

He nudged the heavy door open. Mimicking some half-remembered tactical sweep from an action movie, he sliced the pie, sweeping the dark living room with his muzzle.

“WANG SONG, you in here?”

“Who the hell are you? How do you have a piece?”

Tracking the sound to the master bedroom, SU JIN slowed his breathing and crept forward.

He rounded the doorframe and immediately let out a tense breath.

A rugged man in his early forties was perched precariously on the window ledge, staring down into the abyss, caught in the terrifying hesitation right before a fatal plunge.

SU JIN kicked the bedroom door shut behind him and lowered the weapon.

“WANG SONG, let’s keep cool. Don’t jump just yet.”

WANG SONG slowly turned his head. His muscles were locked tight, shivering violently from the freezing draft. His complexion was a bloodless, waxy gray. His teeth clicked together like castanets as he spoke.

“You… got a gun? You’re no neighbor. Who are you?”

“My ID badge isn’t the priority here! Step down from the ledge, shut the glass, and don’t clock out just yet. Let’s talk this through.”

Despair carved deep lines into WANG SONG’s face. “What hope is left? The system collapsed… that GRAY RAIN is falling everywhere. You think there’s a patch for this broken world?”

“You rebuild the system one block at a time. Long as you’re breathing, the servers are still up. Just step down and we’ll strategize,” SU JIN coaxed, playing the role of the sympathetic HR rep to perfection.

“Home… home is gone too. You saw the living room.” WANG SONG’s voice was paper-thin, scraping against a suppressed sob. “My mother… my wife. They turned into monsters. My boy is two provinces over… he’s probably gone too. Just leave. Write me off.”

“I’m keeping you on the roster. Half the world just lost their families, man. Join the club.” SU JIN kept his spine pressed hard against the drywall, his eyes tracking every micro-expression. “Fine, you don’t want to step down. Your family turned. Did they get a piece of you? I can source some meds.”

Trembling, WANG SONG pivoted his upper body. He hauled up the hem of his shirt, exposing a torso heavily wrapped in blood-soaked gauze. A hollow, bitter smile touched his cracked lips. “Three days ago—”

BANG!

The silver flash illuminated the room. WANG SONG’s tragic smile froze permanently as the kinetic force threw him backward out the window, his body plummeting down into the fog.

SU JIN slid down the wall until his ass hit the floorboards. He clawed at his chest, his lungs pulling in ragged, greedy gulps of freezing air.

I just zeroed a guy… I actually killed someone… Wait. No. Calm down. He was a Zombie!

Well, pre-mutation. But he was about to rage-quit anyway! He just didn’t have the nerve to jump… so I just expedited the process.

Technically… I provided a vital service. I saved him!?

Having successfully rewritten his own moral code with airtight corporate logic, SU JIN braced his hands against the wall and pushed himself up. He crept toward the open window, white-knuckling the sill as he slammed it shut against the wind.

He retreated to the living room, grabbed a cheap plastic mop from the corner, and used the handle to flick away the bedsheets covering the two corpses.

The stench hit him immediately. SU JIN’s throat bobbed, swallowing down acidic bile. The flesh was mutilated. He used the mop stick to poke and prod the gelatinous tissue, morbidly fascinated by the squelch.

Zombie infection transfer rates might not be an absolute one-hundred percent, but he wasn’t running a clinical trial to find out.

WANG SONG had to be deleted. It was simple math.

The two monsters on the floor had clearly gone a few rounds with the ex-soldier. Their clothing was shredded to bloody ribbons.

Deep, jagged lacerations from a combat knife crisscrossed their necks and abdomens.

But the focal point was the chest—a massive, devastating plunge wound right through the sternum. That was the kill shot!

Cross-referencing this with his rat dissection data, the conclusion was verified. The Zombie crit spot was definitely the heart!

Not a total waste of a trip. Good intel.

Shaking off the lingering nausea, SU JIN dragged a thick winter quilt out of the closet.

Using the fabric as a hazmat barrier, he wrapped the mangled bodies, hauled their dead weight to the hallway window, and pitched them over the edge.

With the trash taken out, he retreated to the stairwell, his heart still hammering a frantic beat against his ribs.

He smoothed out the crumpled resident list, his eyes locking onto the sixth floor.

That entire encounter had been wildly out of spec. He had been way too reckless.

Time to pivot. No more recruiting prime muscle just yet. The sixth floor housed two seniors. According to FU HU’s intel, both were retired researchers with military backgrounds.

But they were pushing seventy. Even if they had mutated into Zombies, the threat level would be heavily downgraded by arthritis.

A Zombie is only as good as its base hardware. Osteoporosis was a hell of a debuff.

SUN YA in Unit 601 was flying solo. Perfect tutorial mob to grind some safe experience points…

…

Hitting the sixth floor, he executed the same standard operating procedure: spray the adhesive remover, knock on the door.

SU JIN gripped the Silver Gun, hugging the wall in silence.

Seconds later, a gravelly voice penetrated the steel frame: “Who’s out there?”

“Neighbor from downstairs.”

“My door was glued shut. Sounded like the lower levels got locked down too. How the hell did you break out… Are you injured?”

SU JIN raised an eyebrow.

This boomer wasn’t just sharp; his situational awareness was off the charts!

“I’m the one who sealed them. They’re unsealed now. No injuries on my end. What about yours?”

In response, the heavy deadbolt clacked open.

The door drifted open on its hinges, seemingly pushed by a phantom force.

SU JIN crept forward. The moment his line of sight breached the threshold, his entire body froze in place!

Deep within the oppressive gloom of the apartment, a single candle flickered.

Bathed in its orange glow stood a lean, weather-beaten old man. And he was leveling a double-barreled shotgun right at SU JIN’s chest!

“Hold your position. Don’t twitch.”

“Whoa, safety on.” SU JIN immediately raised his free hand, ensuring the muzzle of his Silver Gun pointed firmly at the floor, forcefully suppressing his spiking heart rate. “I’m not a hostile. I’m doing search and rescue. There are survivors in the building. I’m just trying to centralize our numbers so we don’t freeze or get picked off.”

“FU HU from downstairs gave me your file. You’re Elder SUN, right?”

“Keep warm?” SUN YA barked a dry, hacking laugh. In the dancing shadows, his gaunt face looked downright demonic. “The infrastructure is gone. The world is beyond saving. What’s the point of huddling together?”

“How do you know there’s no coming back? Priority one is forming a defensive perimeter against the hostiles out there. If we just clock out now—”

“Shut your mouth!” SUN YA barked, before immediately dropping his voice back to a paranoid hiss. “There is no recovery patch for this!”

“That GRAY RAIN didn’t just infect the human population. It hit the animals. The infected are driven by pure instinct to hunt living meat.”

“Think about the logistics. Major military outposts are stationed out in the wild. Huge populations of wildlife, massive floodlights that act like beacons in the dark. The moment that rain fell, military bases worldwide would have been swarmed by infected creatures. Small animals breaching the barracks. The troops couldn’t mount a defense indoors, and stepping outside meant exposure to the rain. It compounded the disaster.”

“The cities weren’t the frontline. The military was! The armed forces were likely wiped off the map on day one!”