221 Desperate rush
Mathew jumped out. And for a fraction of a second, he became the freest man in the world.
The winds surged past his ears, they pushed against his eyes. And after the short moment of extreme liberation, the rope Mathew wrapped around his hips tensed up before digging hard into his flesh and stopping only when it coiled around his bones.
“Ugh,” Mathew uttered a pained sigh when his freefall stopped, replaced by the torture of the rope threatening to cut him in half. Yet, for how awful of a feeling it was, the rope did its job of stopping Mathew’s fall and forcing him back toward the building’s wall.
Thump.
Mathew’s feet struck the wall, transfering some of the force of his jump to his knees. And after another instant of torture of the backlash caused by his jump, Mathew finally stabilized roughly four additional meters above the ground.
“You served me well,” Mathew muttered, releasing his blade only to cut himself free of the rope with a single slash.
Mathew entered a freefall for yet another fraction of a second only to land down on the ground and roll forward, alleviating some of the force of his drop with a forward roll.
‘It worked,’ he thought as a tiny hint of relief spread throughout his body.
But this wasn’t the time for Mathew to fully relax. Not yet.
‘I better get going,’ Mathew thought, raising up from the ground only to bolt forward in the direction he could hear the fighting still going on.
“On three!” a familiar voice of one of his wives reached the young man’s ears. “One… two… THREE!”
Mathew passed by the edge of the eastern wing of the school compound right as the girls attempted to close the gate. And while he wanted to observe their valiant deed, he had no time to do so.
‘Please, let me be on time,’ he thought, rushing past two of the hunters desperately fending off the attacks of at least thirteen different zombies.
And yet, contrary to how Mathew expected the fall of one of their companions to affect their morale… they actually stood strong.
“Don’t let them pass you!” Frank shouted, directing the efforts of the hunting squad at slowing down the advance of the zombies that made it past the line of Mathew’s wives. “As long as they are in front, we can stop them!”
Frank’s voice was devoid of fear and full of determination.
His face wasn’t filled with courage, though. It had nothing but cold determination reflecting on it as he continued to stab his spear forward only to then violently pull it back and then repeat the process.
“I’m back!” Mathew shouted, sliding the last few meters that separated him from Carol and the fallen hunter. When he left, the unfortunate victim of a zombie’s attack was starting to tremble. And now, there was foam forming all over his mouth while his body rocked up and down, with nothing but Carol’s feeble frame pinning him down to the ground.
“Right in time,” Carol whined heavily, unable to even turn her head to face Mathew in fear of her hold failing to keep the man pinned down. “Hurry up… please,” she then moaned, right as a powerful jerk of the unfortunate hunter nearly knocked her off him.
“Go to sleep!” Mathew screamed out from the bottom of his lungs, pinching at the cover of the syringe’s needle only to then stab its tiny blade right into the man’s throat.
Whatever was causing people to turn into zombies would turn their innards into a disgusting mush, something that Mathew could see in the uncountable number of zombies he brought down. Contrary to that, their brains would remain roughly the same as before, with the exception of an energy core forming inside of them. As such, whatever magical syrup was inside the syringe, had to be delivered as near the brain as possible.
‘And I don’t think stabbing him in the eye is a reasonable thing to do,’ Mathew thought, pressing the cylinder of the syringe and pumping all its content into the poor hunter’s bloodstream.
The man shook violently on the ground. His jerk was so powerful that he finally managed to shake Carol off him. His hands clawed down at the ground… And then, all his violent symptoms came to an end, as if some sort of a magical wave washed the curse off his soul.
“Did it work?” Carol asked, not minding the bruise caused by her unexpected fall to the ground. She ignored how unlucky she was for her cheek to land right on one of the few stones one could find on the ground, too focused on the state of her underling to care about the tiny injury to her own face.
“It looks like it did,” Mathew muttered, only to shake his head and stand up. “But I can’t say for sure. For now, keep an eye on him. Even if he starts acting like a zombie it might still not be too late for him,” he then informed the girl only to raise back up to his feet and turn around.
Mathew exhausted all the methods he could use to save the poor guy. And according to the merchant, the first grade of the syringe only could stop the progress of the symptoms. As such, as long as the man didn’t fully turn into a zombie yet, a time would come when Mathew could purchase the medicine that could potentially revert the effects that already took place in his body.
For now, though, it was nothing but a song of a wishful future.
‘And for this future to come to be…’ Mathew thought, turning his attention away from the man and towards the gate where Leila desperately attempted to hold back an entire horde by herself while Nadia and Daria attempted to shut the wings of the gate down against the pressure of all the zombies trying to make their way inside.
Mathew swung his saber in the air, warming up his right wrist as he started to move towards the gate.
“Do you need some help, I wonder,” he muttered, bolting forward only to slam himself against a group of several zombies, pushing them off with the sheer force of his body slam. “Well,” he then added, a vicious grin appearing on his lips as he allowed his hunting instincts to take over his mind, guiding his blade through several zombies’ heads at once. “I will help either way!”