143 Divide and conquer
“Okay, we got inside,” Daniel remarked the moment Mathew joined the rest of the group. He then stretched his hands up before throwing a long glance at the hole they all used to get into the building. Only after a long while that was necessary to confirm no zombies managed to follow them, the officer turned his eyes towards Mathew. “Now, what?”
The young man only smiled in response before shaking his head.
“It’s not me who you should be asking that,” he stated before looking at Norbert. “Which way to the roof?”
“Straight through the main hall, then up the stairs, all the way to the top,” Norbert replied. He had more than enough time to figure out all the necessary details of their incursion into the building before they even rushed inside. “That is if you don’t mind going through the floor that the locals occupy,” he then added, seeing how Mathew was ready to get going right away.
And his words successfully managed to stop the young man from rushing ahead.
“And if we don’t want to cross paths with them just yet?” Mathew asked, turning around while an unpleasant grimace formed on his lips.
“You might find it pretty strange, but this building has nearly the same structure as the school,” Norbert pointed out. “Save for the fact that it’s a single brick rather than a cross with four arms pointing in every world’s direction.”
‘Why would something like this be strange?’ Mathew thought, angling his head to the side. ‘This entire city is a wet dream of soviet modernism mixed with brutalism, an ugly ducking of the rightfully gone era. It’s only natural that most of the buildings are nearly the same.’
“And that means?” Daniel asked, clearly not amused by Norbert’s indirect manner of explanation.
“There are shafts, just like the one we are using back at school, in every corner of this building,” Norbert explained what he meant.
“Figures…” Mathew commented, hiding his face in the palm of his hand.
The answer was so obvious that it eluded him for a while. Yet, just like the saying went, the darkest hour comes right before the sunrise. And it was often far harder to figure out the answer to simple questions, out of the sheer fact that people were used to solving complicated issues instead.
“The problem is, all those shafts only lead to the topmost floor, not the roof,” Norbert pointed out. “And that means, we will have to either climb the outside of the building or go through the area occupied by locals to get to the roof,” he explained why he wasn’t all that happy with this possibility.
“Then let’s give it up,” Mathew said as he shook his shoulder. “For now, we need to hurry up and get to the other side of the building,” he said before shaking his head and getting on the move. “The longer we linger near its weaker side, the easier it will be for the zombies to follow us here.”
Mathew was a man of his words. And while he liked to overthink stuff, once he decided on something, he wouldn’t waste time before putting his wishes into motion.
***
“I’m telling you, I saw a group of people enter the building!” Robert shouted before slamming his fist into the side of the wall.
“I don’t give a single fuck about them,” Natasha replied, her hand playing dangerously close to the trigger of the shotgun resting on her lap.
The middle-aged woman then dug the heel of her high-heel shoes into the back of the gagged director of the company that originally oversaw the entire building and its operations.
“Or maybe you want to be the one deciding what are we going to do from now on?” Natasha then asked, gracing Robert with a smile that was colder than one’s normal grimace.
“I-I…” Robert opened his mouth, only to force them to close a moment later. “I do not,” he finally replied after swallowing his pride.
In the end, a man’s pride wouldn’t fare well against the grapeshot that Natasha’s shotgun was loaded with.
‘How in all hells did she get her hands on the gun in the first place?’ Robert whined in his soul, not daring to utter another word of complaint.
“Everyone, listen up,” Natasha said out loud. She then put her entire weight on the poor director’s back as she stood up from the makeshift throne she turned a comfy chair into.
The gun in her hands was the only argument she used to convince her fellow survivors to unbolt it and then drag it out from the recording studio. It was the fear of her unhinged personality that she displayed when she first culled all those who dared to oppose her that made the others waste so much energy moving it up several floors just for Natasha’s wicked satisfaction.
“Listen and listen well,” she added once she finally walked off the director’s back and stood with the barrel of her shotgun resting on her shoulder. “I’m the only one who can keep you all alive. Not that pussy,” she added, lowering her gun and pointing its muzzle at the gagged director. “And definitely not a fresh intern like this fucker,” she added, moving her weapon and then pointing it right at Robert’s face.
“Do we understand each other?” she then asked while her lips turned into a wicked smile.
‘This power-hungry bitch,’ Robert thought, forcing his lips together to stop even the tiniest sound of dissatisfaction from escaping from his mouth.
“Is that a hate I see in your eyes?” Natasha then asked, clearly enjoying herself. “Do you maybe want to go and join your girlfriend in the room of…” the woman hesitated for a moment. “At the room of volunteers?”
Robert’s face froze.
‘Wait, isn’t this my chance?’ he suddenly thought, Natasha’s words reminding him of the only reason why he still dared to stay in the wicked society she created.
“N-no…” he lowered his face and mumbled, bringing his acting talent to its peak in order to appear scared. He even went as far as to make his body tremble in the faked panic. “I’m sorry, anything but this,” he added in a whisper only slightly louder than the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings.
“Good boy,” Natasha replied with a smile only to knock one of her shoes out of her feet before stretching it out. “Now, lick it clean.”
‘You dumb bitch,’ Robert swallowed all of his pride while falling down to his knees and reaching out with his hands to grab the woman’s foot.
The black muzzle of her illegal shotgun was persuasive enough to make him follow her sadistic orders.
Yet, for how much the following action would hurt his pride, Robert actually rejoiced on the inside.
Not because he had a foot fetish, especially if it was the foot of someone as disgusting as the severely overweight Natasha who never learned the meaning of hygiene, claiming it to be a product of patriarchal society.
But because Natasha appeared to buy his act.
‘You just wait, you dumb bitch,’ he thought as he lowered his lips over the piece of fat that Natasha called her foot. ‘Even if I will have to give my anal virginity to the people that came, I will find them…’
Robert’s eyes flashed with his deeply hidden rage.
‘And then I will make them kill you.’
***
“Damn!” Norbet suddenly uttered a disgusted moan before shaking off Daria’s hand and rushing to the wall only to lower his head and throw up directly on the floor.
That action alone, something that Mathew saw only once before, was enough to put the entire group on a high alert.
For someone who saw the hell left in the wake of a horde of zombies, it was pretty challenging to find something disgusting enough to cause one to vomit.
“How bad is it?” Mathew asked coldly, tightening his grip over the weapon’s handle.
If the two weeks he survived in the apocalypse before dying taught him anything, it was that humans could be far more brutal than the mindless zombies.
“Sorry, it’s nothing as bad as what we saw back in the hidden room,” Norbert explained as he spat out to clear his mouth from the residual filth. “But it seems that we might be able to get this place for ourselves quite easily,” he then added as a wicked smile emerged on his lips.
“Internal strife?” Daniel asked, knowing his partner well enough to connect his current expression to the events of the past they shared.
“Divide and conquer,” Mathew muttered after hearing Daniel’s words and figuring out what was going on. “Am I safe to assume there is some sort of conflict between the locals?”
Norbert nodded his head in response.
“And I think I already know how we can get all of the normal ones to our side,” he added as his grin widened. “There is a woman in that group that holds everyone at a gunpoint. And from what I heard, there is a room with volunteers… But judging by the reaction of the others, it’s more like a room stacked with people whose sole aim is to pull the attention of the zombies away from the main building.”
‘It all sounds great… too great,’ Mathew thought, And then it dawned upon him. ‘If there is a room that pulls the zombies away from the main building…’
“Doesn’t that mean that those people in the ‘volunteer room’,” Mathew raises both of his hands and bent two of his fingers on each of his hands to add quotation marks to the room’s name, “are right in the middle of the zombie’s horde?”
Norbert heaved a deep sigh in response.
“And now you know why I wasn’t all that happy to tell you all about it.”