197 Battle musical
“Let’s go!”
It’s such a simple order. It lacks any finesse, depth, any real meaning behind it. It’s nothing more but a call for an action to start, an action that was already introduced and explained.
A trigger-order.
And yet, for Mathew, saying those two simple words felt insane.
‘Now I can cast aside all the worries and just focus on the simplest task in one’s life,’ he thought, rushing forward.
His fingers tightly gripped the handle of his saber. His eyes moved between different potential targets so that he wouldn’t be surp[rised by any zombie while fighting .
And just like that, Mathew crashed right into the crowd of zombies.
Mathew started his attack with a horizontal swing. This kind of warm welcome made three zombies bow their heads to him, only for said heads to roll to the floor right as Mathew moved over to another enemy.
Downward cut. Shoulder smack against a zombie to the side that dared to bare its fangs against Mathew. A kick to the left that then transformed into a sideways step with another zombie as a foothold.
‘It’s like a dance,’ Mathew thought, squinting his eyes a little. ‘A delicate choreography,’ he continued to immerse himself in the liberating feeling of moving his body around while slashing around with his saber.
‘Like a song on a wind,’ he thought, closing his eyes completely and allowing the mix of his body instincts and the fighting techniques ingrained in his flesh to take over.
Every swing of his saber turned into a solo on a guitar. Every kick turned into a slam on the percussion, adding rhythm to the sonata he was composing with his moves.
And then, barely a second after Mathew went in, several other instruments joined, turning the simple music Mathew created into a proper symphony.
Mathew slashed his saber across a zombie’s chest. It was a faulty strike as it didn’t lead to said zombie dying properly. Yet, while an open injury through a zombie’s chest was meaningless, the force of said strike pushed the undead against Nadia.
“Hahahaha!” the girl laughed out loud, squashing the zombie’s head with her hands.
Nadia’s eyes turned red as she immersed herself in the fight.
Her moves were starkly different from how Mathew or actually anyone else in Mathew’s group moved around. Because contrary to all the others, she actually had some practice behind her back and proper techniques guiding her attacks.
Clang!
Mathew’s saber struck squarely against the metal of the fence. In just a few seconds, the small group of zombies that stood in their path was annihilated, unable to resist the vicious attacks unleashed by the couple.
“Go!” Leila shouted from the back, kicking Norbert’s backside to give him some initial speed.
“Open the gap!” Mathew shouted, hoping that by raising his voice, he would have a shot at reaching Nadia’s ears.
‘I know we are pretty damn close…’ he thought, glancing over at the girl.
Her eyes were red, her lips were curved up and open in a crazed smile.
‘But it was never about the distance, to begin with,’ he thought to himself only to pull his attention away from the girl and focus it on his own task.
Cleaning the zombies from a small area by the barrier was the easy part of the task. Keeping the main weight of the horde away from it now that the zombies around took notice of the attack was a whole different matter altogether.
‘I guess I can only hope she heard me,’ Mathew thought, cutting the thoughts about Nadia from his mind as he focused on the task at hand.
Mathew slashed to the right, only to follow the momentum of the attack and swirl around on his heel, using the speed of his turn to execute another attack in the same direction.
“Don’t spin around like that!” Nadia shouted over, proving that she was actually in control of her actions. “You are exposing your back for no reason at all!”
“Good call!” Mathew replied, stomping his leg on the ground to kill his angular momentum. He then turned his wrist around only to slam his fist tightened around the handle of his weapon into the rotting face of the next opponent.
“We are here!” Leila shouted as soon as she reached the barrier. A mere moment and five zombies fell by Mathew’s hand later, Norbert joined the group at the barrier as well, only for Daria to come running while protecting their rear.
“Throw him over!” Mathew called for action, taking a step back when a massive number of zombies quickly started to overwhelm him.
The young man could kill each of the zombies with ease. Not even ten or twenty of them could pose any threat to him.
But that was only under the assumption that not only he was in an open area with no restriction to his movements whatsoever… But also with the assumption that there was nothing for Mathew to protect!
“Heavy…” Leila sang from behind Mathew’s back.
‘Fuck off!’ Mathew cursed in his thoughts, kicking the knee of the zombie that managed to sneak past his guard and latch onto his left shoulder.
“HO!” Leila and Daria shouted. Right then, Mathew felt a small gust of wind behind his back followed by a panicked shout of a male origin.
The zombie by Mathew’s shoulder opened up its mouth and then slammed its head down, attempting to sink its teeth into Mathew’s arm.
“FUCK OFF!” Mathew cursed again, this time out loud. Yet, rather than trying to free himself from the zombie’s grasp, he simply slammed his body to the side, pushing the zombie right into the barrier.
The rotting flesh of the zombie struck against the see-through barrier of the fortress. Yet, rather than squashing as it would against a solid surface, the contact caused sparks to come out, only for the zombie’s flesh to sizzle away.
“Daria, your turn!” Leila shouted from behind Mathew’s back, allowing him to track the progress of their small mission.
“Do you need a hand?” Mathew asked out loud while swinging his saber to ward off the zombies in front.
Thankfully, the enemy that latched onto his shoulder couldn’t survive the force of the barrier. It continued to wriggle in what appeared to be agony for a while, all the way to the point where the barrier consumed its head as well.
“We are fi-ineee?!” Daria attempted to report back, only for her voice to turn weird when Leila mercilessly grabbed her by her shoulder only to throw her above a roughtly two-meters tall fence.
“We are done!” Leila reported right away, even going as far as to step forward and tap Mathew on his back. “I will be going first,” she then added only for her presence to disappear from Mathew’s instinctual radar right away.
“Your turn, dear!” Mathew shouted, hardly having any time to even think about his words.
The entire attack lasted for less than thirty seconds. In all meanings of this word, it was fast.
But the horde was just a tiny bit faster.
“Let’s do it together!” Nadia called out.
But Mathew had no means of freeing himself from all the zombies that jumped on him.
Sure, he could ward them off for now… but with how close they were to him, he had no opening to back away and jump over the fence.
“Just a little bit lo…. WHA…”
Mathew’s voice cracked when an unfamiliar force suddenly grabbed him by his arm. Shocked that he allowed someone to approach his back without him noticing, Mathew froze…
Only to realize that just like Leila did with Daria a few seconds earlier, Nadia now ignored his own pride and threw him over the fence in the same way!
“Hey!” Mathew uttered a shout of disbelief, only to see the girl herself kick off the few zombies that had their attention on her before gracefully grabbing the edge of the fence and then jumping over it with ease.
“What?” Nadia asked as she landed and dusted her knees only to grace Mathew with a smug, amused smile.
“What was that?” Mathew asked, gathering himself from the ground and resting his hands on his hips. “A show of strength or something?” he demanded an answer, the heat of the short battle still clouding his mind.
“Not at all,” Nadia replied, her grin only widening. “I just found this move to be the most… efficient!”