Excerpt: Bound

The only thing more dangerous than driving through the empty, lifeless streets of Seoul at night, was to walk through them. The streetlights overhead flickered dimly; there weren’t a lot of them left, and Taejun didn’t mind it. Darkness was preferred; it was easier to avoid detection then. And if it was anything Taejun wanted to do, it was to avoid detection.

He paused at the street corner, looking out over the street ahead; it was littered with old, burned out cars and debris from the adjacent houses, but looked like it was empty. Harmless.

Taejun didn’t buy it. He closed his eyes, relying on his other senses to decide whether or not it was safe to proceed. Well, it was hardly ever safe, but as long as there weren’t any immediate danger, he would have to be satisfied. However, that didn’t mean that he’d rush into action – it was better to take a few extra minutes to check out the area, to gauge if it would be worth the risk to continue.

Of course, he was the only one who thought that slow and steady was the best option.

“Would you hurry up? All night is gonna go by if you’re going to stop on every corner.” Chihoon’s voice was quiet and annoyed, but it still made Taejun smile faintly and open his eyes again, although he didn’t turn back.

“Looks clear,” he said, and without looking around to see if Chihoon followed, he started walking again, crossing the street after a few feet. Maybe it would have been safer to keep going along the houses along the road, but this would save them time.

Quiet footsteps told him that Chihoon followed him closely, as always. It seemed to make the most sense for Taejun to lead the way; his abilities made it easier for him to know if they were getting too close to anything dangerous, while Chihoon was good at making sure nothing or no one snuck up on them.

They were good together, but not perfect. Taejun knew that the day they started to relax, the day they started to think that they could handle anything Seoul threw at them, would be the day they risked getting killed.

Granted, it was a risk they ran every day, no matter how careful they were.

Taejun paused as they approached a large, run down school building, looking up at the dark windows before squinting into the non-existent evening light, peering into the abandoned schoolyard.

Chihoon came up beside him and gave his arm a light squeeze. “Come on. It’ll save us time if we go through it instead of around.”

Even if he didn’t like it, Taejun nodded and pushed the rusty gate open, tensing at the screech of metal against metal. He tensed even more when he realized that the dark shapes he had spotted weren’t toys or piles of garbage; they were dead bodies, stacked up against each other in a haphazard, bizarre fashion.

“Fuck this,” Chihoon mumbled beside him, and Taejun knew the younger man hated this even more. He wouldn’t hesitate to deal with the decomposing bodies when they were re-animated, but he hated seeing them like this. Taejun had less of a problem with it; it was the cycle of life. Maybe there had been a time when a sight like this would’ve been inconceivable, but these days it was as natural as not having enough to eat or a place to go home to at night.

Taejun’s steps faltered as they passed the derelict school building, even if this was supposed to be the safe stretch. They had heard the rumors for a few days – there was a small area of habitable houses in Gangnam-gu, houses that still had running water and whole windows. Houses with actual furniture in them and people who were trying to survive just like they were.

Trying to get there was a risk, but both of them had agreed that it was a risk worth taking. The mere idea of having a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in again was more than enough to make them take the chance. Especially after they had spent nearly a week living in an abandoned, cold and wet subway station, living off of scraps of food and each others’ company. They had been more or less safe there, sure, but Taejun hated having to resign himself to mere survival, and Chihoon had never been one for staying long in the same place.

This time, Chihoon was the first to round the corner even if he stopped almost immediately, staring over at a row of buildings across the street. They were small and had been hidden by the large school building, but now Taejun could see that so far, the rumors were true. The buildings were whole, the windows looked clean apart from a layer of dust, and there were even lights coming from some of them.

Taejun noticed the lights just as something inside him clenched, told him that this wasn’t right, far from it. He reached out to grab Chihoon’s arm, to stop him from going forwards, but his fingers never connected with Chihoon.

“Chi,” he started, but he was cut off at an inhuman wail from one of the buildings across the street. The red light emanating from one of the windows grew stronger, and just as Taejun took a step back, the previously flawless wall of the building erupted in splinters of wood and a rain of plaster and rocks, threatening to crush them.