“Help! Help me! Why are you just standing up there watching? Hurry, help me!” shouted a man who looked to be around fifty.
“Why should I help you, Boss?” replied a young man with messy black hair that somehow still looked cool. He was around twenty-seven years old, tall and athletic, though not bulky like a bodybuilder. His physique was quite striking, like a supermodel’s.
“You’re still asking? Can’t you see? They’re going to eat me!”
One of the young man’s eyebrows rose lazily as he looked down at the older man standing on top of a car. A horde of zombies had swarmed around him, their hands reaching toward him.
The young man standing on the roof simply smiled mockingly.
“Boss, do you know my name? Didn’t you always call me a coward? Now, if you can remember my full name, I’ll consider helping you.”
The old man standing on top of the car appeared to turn red with anger. He glared at him and pointed in annoyance.
“You…! You just want revenge on me, don’t you?”
Raiden Pratama smiled with a sly, sinister expression.
“Why? Am I not allowed to get revenge, Boss? Isn’t it an incredible coincidence that we’ve met again after all this time?”
The zombie apocalypse had been going on for more than a year. Since then, Raiden had stopped working at a prominent insurance company in the capital.
It wasn’t that he had no heart, but remembering what his days at the company had been like, Raiden clearly wanted revenge. As cruel as it might seem, he still remembered how the old man had treated him like a twenty-four-hour errand boy. Even when he was already home, the old man would call him with all kinds of unreasonable orders.
What an incredible twist. Now they had met outside the capital, and their positions could be said to have completely reversed.
Back then, Raiden had always begged the old man to keep him on as an intern. He would do anything. That was why the old man had felt free to treat him however he pleased.
Now, it seemed God had finally given him the perfect chance to repay all his suffering.
“You! You’re absolutely shameless! If you don’t want to help me, then just say so!”
The old man actually had a name. He was Bayuda Gunawan, an older man who loved acting bossy. He was tall, though he had a slightly protruding belly. His face was the kind that made his NPD traits obvious at a glance. Even his smile looked disgusting.
“What’s wrong, Boss? You really don’t remember my real name?”
Raiden laughed for a moment, then whistled in satisfaction.
“All right, it’s fine if you don’t remember my full name. How about you do fifty push-ups right there while singing ‘My Five Balloons’? How’s that? If you manage to finish within an hour, I’ll help you.”
Raiden smiled with an utterly satisfied and vicious expression.
Actually, helping him would have been easy. They were close to each other. The building Raiden was standing on was only three stories high, and the car serving as the old man’s temporary refuge was fairly tall. If he tossed him a rope, that would solve the problem.
Unfortunately, Raiden didn’t want to help him right away.
Where was the fun in that?
God had given him the chance to take revenge and humiliate the man in front of hundreds of living corpses eager to tear him apart. Why let it go to waste?
Hearing the condition, Bayuda clenched both fists so tightly that his knuckles stood out. He ground his teeth in anger, then pointed at him again in frustration.
“You shameless bastard! You just want to toy with me, don’t you? Oh, you’d probably be really happy to watch me get torn apart by them, wouldn’t you? Just admit it! You cruel young brat!”
Raiden grinned and snickered. He leaned against the guardrail while enjoying the potato chips he had scavenged from a nearby convenience store yesterday.
With an exaggeratedly evil laugh, he replied in a playful tone.
“Boss, I’m human too. I have both good and evil in me. What, are you the only one allowed to treat other people however you want?”
“You! You shameless bastard! Get down here! Fight me!”
Raiden burst out laughing, clutching his stomach.
“Boss, beggars can’t be choosers.”
“What did you say?!”
The man nearly jumped in anger, but the moment he realized he was surrounded by hundreds of zombies ready to pounce, he immediately backed away and fell onto his rear. Cold sweat soaked his back. One wrong move, and those horrifying hands would reach him.
His heart pounded.
They all looked terrifying and smelled rotten. If they touched him, he would surely become infected.
The old man looked up at the building again, staring at him with desperate pleading and unmistakable fear.
“Aren’t you afraid of God? Huh? You won’t help this old man? Where’s your conscience?”
Hearing the jab, Raiden stopped chewing his chips. Resting his chin lazily on one hand, he looked down at him with a cynical expression.
“Oh, so now Boss remembers God? Back when we were still at the company, weren’t you the one who believed least in something called karma from God? So, how does it feel now?”
The old man hadn’t been the only person who liked to bully him at work. But he had been the most annoying and the one who gave him the most orders, leaving him with barely any time to rest.
So let’s just let him wear himself out down there for a while.
“You bastard! You must really enjoy watching me suffer, don’t you? If I’d known you were like this, I never should have kept you at the company!”
“Boss, what’s the point of bringing up the past? Why don’t you think about your current situation?”
As he spoke, he tossed down two packets of bread.
The man was startled.
“What’s this?”
Raiden shouted with a playful expression.
“That’s bread I made myself! Eat up, Boss! I don’t have the energy to haul you up with a rope today. Let’s just wait until tomorrow, okay?”
Bayuda Gunawan was so stunned that he lost his words. He couldn’t believe Raiden was really going to leave him there.
“You… you’re joking, right? Hurry and help me!” he shouted, his angry tone seemingly powerful enough to make anyone nearby tremble.
Raiden lazily lifted an expensive camera while propping his chin on one hand and smiling mockingly.
“Boss, if I help you now with strength this unreliable, aren’t you afraid you’ll fall and become food for those wild walking corpses?”
“That’s nonsense! Just throw down the rope and let me climb up myself!”
Raiden shook his head with a playful smile and began taking several pictures of him like a professional photographer.
The scene made Bayuda Gunawan even more irritated down below. Though he couldn’t see Raiden’s expression clearly, the silhouette of his body was incredibly annoying.
“Stop taking pictures of me, damn it! Hurry and help me!”
“Boss, you’re really stubborn. Besides, what guarantee is there that you haven’t been bitten at all? Isn’t this better? I should wait one night first to see whether your body is safe or not.”
Bayuda Gunawan blinked in disbelief.
“I’m clean! I’m not infected by them at all! Hurry and help me! You shameless bastard! I knew you were an ungrateful human being! Completely unreliable! That’s why you were never promoted to a permanent employee! You coward!”
Raiden smiled faintly, looking incredibly annoying.
“Boss, if you know what I’m like, you shouldn’t have asked me for help, right?”
Bayuda froze. He watched Raiden Pratama leave the edge of the third-floor railing with a mocking smile.
“What are you doing? Come back! Hurry and help me!”