118 Evolved one
“And that makes the last one,” Mathew commented. He then took a step back to take a better look at the whole scene.
There was something that bothered him to no end. An element of the picture that didn’t fit the rest.
‘I see,’ Mathew thought when he stepped back far enough to grasp the whole picture at once.
The young man’s face soured as his cautiousness returned to his eyes.
‘There are more corpses than there were zombies in that group,’ he thought, warily looking around in search of another potential source of zombies.
“Are you okay?” Nadia asked from the middle of the former battlefield when she took a break from harvesting the cores.
Mathew didn’t bother to reply. He directed his eyes to the nearby houses instead, only to see a group of a few more zombies slowly breaking through all sorts of natural obstacles on their way.
“Look at the houses!” Mathew shouted.
There were up to five or six zombies in a single house. Yet, while there were only single-family houses on the street they were on, a mass-residential district was just two streets ahead.
‘If there are a few zombies per housing unit, then we might stumble into a massive horde on our way to that building,’ he thought. Mathew then jumped to the nearest yard’s fence only to break it in pieces with just a few swings of his ax.
“AaaaAAa…” a strange screech came out of the nearest zombie’s throat as it stopped banging itself at the fence, opting to take the route Mathew had just cleared.
‘So they have some sort of spatial perception,’ Mathew thought as he finished that particular zombie’s existence, finally letting the former owner of the body rest in peace.
‘Looking at the corpse, rest in pieces seems like a more fitting call,’ Mathew thought, using his broken humor to ward off the thoughts of killing former humans.
Slaughtering zombies in the school was a bit different than doing the same outside of its bounds. Mathew was long used to treating anyone unresponsive and wearing his school outfit as a mindless enemy. On the other hand, slaying the zombies that still wore their comfortable clothes…
“This leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” Mathew muttered as he closed his eyes for a second, only to open them and look at the corpse below his feet from a relatively fresh perspective.
The young man then gritted his teeth.
The corpse that he just created belonged to a middle-aged woman, dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt.
‘A housewife? Or maybe a stay-at-home mother?’ Mathew thought, unable to tear his eyes away from the gruesome sight.
“Stop thinking too much about it,” Nadia said as she appeared by Mat’s side. “There is nothing you can do to help them anymore. Right now, we need to think about ourselves, not about those who already met their end,” she said, accurately guessing what troubled her man.
“That doesn’t make it any easier,” Mathew replied, still looking down at the corpse of his own making.
“Then look,” Nadia rolled her eyes before taking a step forward. She then brought her machete down, splitting the head of the zombie open. Then, without any regard for her own cleanliness, she reached down and plucked the core out of the corpse’s head.
“Look,” Nadia repeated as she raised the core to Mathew’s eye level. “That’s all they are right now. Robots moving on some sort of energy contained within this stone,” she explained her own take at what zombies were. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“You know that’s not the truth,” Mathew said, denying Nadia’s approach to explaining the situation. Still, his lip curved up a little, forming a shy smile. “But I guess you are right about one thing,” he added as he turned around and took a look at the situation on the street.
“I’m always right,” Nadia replied with a smile on her own. “And if I’m not, then you should check rule number one,” she added with an open grin.
Neither of them was bothered by the fact that the seemingly empty street was now starting to fill up with zombies.
Even though there were only a few of them in each of the residential units on the streets, once they all started to converge in a single point, the street quickly became quite congested.
“Then let’s just kill as many as we can before the situation will turn truly bad,” Mathew decided. He then swung his ax around by his right side, letting the inertia clean all the blood and gore remains from its blade.
The times when Mathew would feel scared upon seeing a small crowd of zombies all belonged to his former self. To the Mathew that died, sacrificing his life for Nadia’s safety.
Right now, the only thing that Mathew saw in the street was a free opportunity to raise his strength and protect Nadia without giving his life for it!
“Let’s go!” Nadia urged her man before the two of them rushed back into the fray.
There wasn’t anything special about this fight, just like there wasn’t anything worth a note about their earlier engagement.
‘With our level of strength it almost feels like bullying,’ Mathew thought as he continued to cleave through zombies one by one. As he quickly reached the very front of the formation, he could just leave the half-finished ones to the girls behind, giving them even more opportunities to grow stronger.
“It’s slowly starting to get cramped,” Daria shouted several minutes later, after a huge chunk of the street ended up covered with zombie corpses.
“Can you tell where they are all coming from?” Mathew called out his question over the noise made by all the zombies moving, stretching, and dying.
“A huge group approaching from the south!” Daria reported a moment later that she climbed up a nearby lamp-post to get a better look at their surroundings.
“Okay then, Daria, I’m leaving the front to you!” Mathew shouted before turning his eyes to the two other girls that fought right by his side. “I need you two to start collecting the cores now. I will make sure you two are safe,” Mathew added before fixing his grip on his ax and looking up.
He then braced himself against the ground as he prepared for the inherent struggle.
The horde that Daria noticed took only a moment to reach the street. And right in the middle of all of them, there was a single zombie that stood apart from the rest.
‘An evolved one?’ Mathew thought, tightening his grip over his weapon even more as he analyzed the situation.
Then, the zombie raised its hand toward Mathew’s group…
Only for roughly a third of the zombies surrounding it to rush ahead at a speed Mathew never saw a zombie move at!
“GO BACK!” Mathew shouted, realizing that the situation wasn’t as comfortable as he expected it to be.
The two girls near him instantly dropped the cores in their hands and raised their weapons.
Sadly, Mathew couldn’t see past the mass of zombies ahead to check whether Daria even heard his order.
“Nadia, I will clear the way for you,” Mathew ordered as he leaned his upper body forward and took a few breaths to accelerate the rate his heart beat at. “Leila, I’m leaving our backs to you,” he added.
And then, without giving the girls even a second to prepare, Mathew rushed ahead.