I Have Returned, but I Cannot Lay down My Gun

Chapter 662

"Ch-Choo… I was definitely sleeping at home…"

Sss, sss.

The biting wind, the trash that hadn’t been cleaned up, and the wrecked cars. The ground, frozen solid from the repeating cycle of melting and freezing, covered in dark, polluted runoff, and the outskirts of the city with no artificial lights at all.

In the suburbs of Brooklyn Mapleton, where the thick clouds blocked even a single ray of sunlight. In this urban wasteland that resembled a dump, a woman with a strange, long snake-like tail was shaking violently, looking around nervously.

Her body was trembling uncontrollably from the horrific cold, and the snowstorm was so thick she could barely see. Despite not understanding her situation, she knew that if she stayed there, she was going to die. Her name was Eugene.

The cold air was tightening around her life, slowly strangling it.

"Is… Is anyone here…?"

Her breath misted in the cold air, shattering into tiny ice particles as she desperately took a step forward, trying to find a place to escape the freezing cold. She had to find shelter.

Her body seemed to freeze in place. Even though she had only been outside for a few minutes, her body was rapidly succumbing to the freezing temperatures, an unnatural state she couldn't fight.

Gripping onto a telephone pole covered in snow, dragging her slippers, she found a building with an open door and climbed the stairs, struggling to get inside.

The cold wind still crept in through the door’s cracks, but the temperature inside felt at least ten degrees warmer than outside. Snow that had stuck to her body fell onto the floor with every step.

Eugene realized she was in the hallway of a low-rise apartment building.

"...Ugh!"

As soon as she let her guard down, a sharp pain hit her stomach and made her want to vomit. She gasped, holding her breath and climbing the stairs, determined not to vomit on the floor.

The dust thickly covering the floor, the stillness of the place—no one had passed by for a long time. Breaking the silence, she weakly knocked on any door, not really expecting anyone to open it.

In her pain, she tried to open the door with all the strength she had left. Struggling, she turned the doorknob and, with everything she had, managed to break the door open and enter the room.

Of course, there was no one inside.

Inside, there were various items scattered about, but she paid them no mind and immediately went to the door that looked like it led to a bathroom. She opened it and clung to the toilet.

With a horrible sound, a foul liquid poured out.

Later, Eugene would realize that this was a characteristic of reptiles when exposed to the cold temperature.

"Keugh, erh, huff…!"

The painful twisting of her intestines felt like everything in her stomach was being forced out.

She remained there, gripping the toilet for a long time, until the pain subsided. Gradually, her mind began to clear.

Her body was still as cold as ice, and she couldn’t move as she wanted, but she forced herself to give her legs some strength, struggling to close the toilet lid and sit on it.

It was then that she saw something in the mirror that didn’t match anything she had ever seen before.

"...Wh-What is this, who... is this?"

When she placed her hand on the mirror, the woman on the other side of it mirrored her movements.

She quickly looked down. She couldn’t see the floor clearly. Something that shouldn’t have been there was attached to her chest. It was clear that this was only the beginning.

Except for the fact that she was still wearing the same t-shirt and shorts from when she had been sleeping, the reflection before her bore no resemblance to the self she remembered.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

"Ugh, AAHH-!"

A slithering sensation wrapped itself around her hand… something that looked like a snake. She was momentarily horrified, thinking there was a snake in the bathroom, but technically, it wasn’t entirely wrong. A snake’s body part was attached to her backside.

What in the world was going on? Thinking that, she crawled out of the bathroom. It was too cold to focus on what had happened to her body.

She rummaged through the apartment. In the closet, there were clothes that didn’t match in size or color. Eugene, seemingly trying to hide her body or desperately seeking warmth, piled on as much clothing as she could find.

How long had it passed? She had transformed into a fluffy, bulky form.

It was a bit uncomfortable to move, but at least it wasn’t as cold as before. The only issue was that wrapping her tail, which refused to adjust, was a bit difficult.

Once she had wrapped herself in scarves, one leg of pants, and a hat with fur, she collapsed onto the bed, trying to focus her scattered mind on understanding her situation.

The first thought that came to her mind was:

"...Where am I?"

Could this be a completely different world? But the first things she had seen when she fell here were discarded junk, plastic bags full of trash, and modern buildings.

The surrounding area was eerily devoid of any signs of life, and she vaguely recalled the car license plates and the metal warning signs attached to the telephone poles.

But that wasn’t enough to be sure, so she started searching around the house.

"First, I need to contact my parents…"

If her body had changed like this, how was she going to explain it to her parents?

She didn’t know where the Korean embassy was, but with her current body, would she end up trapped in some research facility, being experimented on? Such grim thoughts crossed her mind, but one thing was certain: her parents were probably worried about her.

She searched the house thoroughly, and the answer came quickly. Every book on the shelf was written in English, proving that this was an English-speaking country.

And one more thing:

-[GO TO CENTRAL PARK]

Written in red marker on a whiteboard in one corner of the room.

Although she didn’t know much about English-speaking cultures, she knew what Central Park was. It was the city park in the middle of Manhattan. Fortunately, there was a map next to the whiteboard.

It showed the path to Central Park. She wondered if she could even make it there in this ridiculous outfit and state, but more urgently, she needed to get back home.

The best solution was probably to get a plane ticket somehow. But already, the fact that she had illegally broken into someone’s house had made things more complicated than she had imagined—at least, that’s what she thought.

Until she heard a loud noise nearby.

???Kooong!

"EEK…!"

Startled to the point where her breath stopped, she jumped out of bed and checked the window. All she could see was the snowstorm. The sky over Brooklyn was still covered in thick clouds.

But through the clouds, she saw flashes of lightning in impossible colors. What on earth was happening in this world? But those thoughts soon faded into the back of her mind.

From far away—

???Kakakakakang!

"...!"

A screeching, primal sound, like it was ripping through her survival instincts, cut through the snowstorm without being muffled.

The sounds of many people screaming and wailing mixed together. It didn’t matter if they were men or women. People were dying. Eugene crouched in the corner of the room, feeling like her heart had dropped.

She wondered if someone was coming to kill her. Hiding under a dusty bed, she held her breath, gasping intermittently. The screams faded away, or perhaps the snowstorm wiped them out.

She couldn’t understand anything, but she vaguely realized something.

This place was a cold hell.

She was in the middle of hell.

"Ugh, oof…!"

Amid the freezing cold, stepping through blood-soaked puddles as bodies scattered across the ground, she observed civilians, some of them with holes in their bodies, desperately gasping for breath, the blood pouring out like a torrent, their bodies twitching intermittently near a military truck.

On top of a military truck, there were several dead U.S. soldiers sprawled out, their bodies visible beneath the piled-up bodies of many civilians. Eugene was watching the horrifying massacre unfold from the rooftop of a nearby multi-family building.

To be precise, it wasn’t just observing—it was witnessing. There was nothing she could do at that moment, nothing at all.

The reason she had come out of her house, rather than stay quietly hidden inside, was simple. She needed information. At the very least, she had to know who to avoid and who was hostile, so she might survive later.

And, at the cost of her own mental agony, she had figured out who the 'enemy' was.

‘Those outfits... The prisoners wear those uniforms.’

Orange jumpsuits. But what really stood out were the holsters strapped to their legs and the bulletproof vests or tactical vests they wore, easily recognizable items.

These people were walking around, shooting people in the head as they went, and Eugene had to witness the reality of a person’s head getting blown off. She could barely suppress her nausea as she stood there, unable to do anything.

Through the snowstorm, she could faintly hear the prisoners talking in English.

They tore open boxes of supplies from the bodies on the ground. Military rations, bleach, flashlights, first aid kits, radios, gas masks—they pulled out what they needed, but didn’t seem to care much about the rest.

The prisoners grabbed a few things, such as cigarette packs, laughing and swearing, even recording videos with a seemingly still-working phone as they shot at the heads of the corpses.

"...Ugh, ew, cough..."

It was from the cold and the fear.

Eugene's hands trembled uncontrollably. It felt like she would pass out any moment. Yellow liquid spilled from her throat as she vomited on the rooftop. The blizzard, thankfully, obscured the view of her, and she kept her composure as she continued to watch, trying to ignore the horrific scene.

After what felt like ten minutes, she managed to drag her unresponsive body back down. The ladder was freezing cold, and the corpses were quickly freezing over.

At least, the snow that covered the bodies had hidden some of the most grotesque parts of the mutilated bodies.

What could she gather from this? As she rummaged through the torn boxes, Eugene decided to stash some of the items, planning to secretly retrieve them later. She had no choice. She needed supplies, and she needed them badly.

She grabbed two gallon-sized water containers, freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, combat rations, and a gas mask. Eugene wasn’t used to situations like this—she didn’t even know what to take, but she knew she had to take something.

She moved closer to the truck, unsure of what she was doing, but recalling something she had overheard—fuel was important.

But then, in that very moment,

"<Damn escapee bastards, just this one…!>"

"Uwaaaagh…!"

A soldier, hiding among the pile of corpses, grabbed Eugene’s hand and pointed a gun at her head with bloodshot eyes. If he had pulled the trigger even a little, her head would have been blown off on the spot, but at the critical moment, the soldier met her gaze and, with great difficulty, relaxed his finger from the trigger.

Eugene froze in that instant. Tears began to roll down her cheeks as she barely managed to speak.

"Pl-Please, please save me…"

"<…A girl…?>"

"<I-I’m a good person, I’m Korean, please don’t shoot…>"

She could only mutter a few broken words in the desperate moment when the soldier, breathing heavily, swallowed his pain and pulled the gun away from her head.

Blood slowly trickled from the soldier’s gaping wound, and his pale, almost lifeless blue eyes reflected the sight of Eugene, awkwardly dressed, with whatever she had managed to throw on. He managed to give a strained laugh and added:

"<God damn, almost put a hole in a civilian's head… What’s your name?>"

"<Y-Yujin. Yujin. That’s my name.>"

"<Ha…..>"

His movements were swift.

The soldier, with great difficulty, glanced around and spoke to her, his energy draining.

"<Take this… it’s for Central Park, the only safe place…>"

"<W-Why…?>"

"<In a shitshow like this, it’s good to have something, anything, to survive…>"

With his stiffening hands, he struggled to pull out his holster and hand it over to her.

In his blood-soaked hands, a Glock 19 pistol and two spare magazines were given to her. Eugene wouldn’t realize until later what kind of gun it was, but for now, she just stuffed it into her pocket.

The soldier, his breath shallow and labored, pressed something into her hand—an identification tag with the name “Baker” and blood type written on it, and a family photo soaked in blood, along with a map.

"<Manhattan... Jenna at the Central Park Health Center…>"

"I-I… I’ll take you to where I’m staying! Please, just hold on a little longer! We can still make it…!"

"<Hell, this is so fucked…>"

The soldier’s hand fell limp, and Eugene instinctively knew that it was time to leave, but before she could act, a bullet ricocheted off a car near her, the gunfire crackling and flames erupting. She could hear the distant commotion as the escapees began to approach her position, closing in fast.

Through the blizzard, voices began to faintly emerge.

"<See? If you leave the supplies out, at least one rat will grab it.>"

"<That’s mine. If anyone else touches it, I’ll put a hole in them.>"

"<That bastard’s marked by Gibson. He won’t go easy.>"

Eugene, still unable to fully comprehend the situation, began to run.

She was running for her life.