234 Necessary touchy-feely moment
“We have survivors here!” Mathew shouted, turning his eyes away from the gruesome sight within the truck to alert everyone.
The excursion was aimed at two things. Gathering supplies that could allow them to use fewer cores to sustain the already existing survivors and then go through with the bet between Carol and the hunter. But now that they found some people who were left alive after the apocalypse, all Mathew’s plans from before turned to void.
Because just like he realized earlier, the thing that they lacked the most right now wasn’t weapons. It wasn’t the cores either.
It was the number of people.
“Can you move?” Mathew turned his face towards the insides of the truck.
They were all covered with blood as if someone exploded from within. And yet, within this disaster-like scene, there was a group of three people, two women, and one man, lying on the bloodied floor and whining.
If they could, they would likely scream out into Mathew’s face how they had no energy to even speak properly, not to talk about moving around. But transmitting this message through whining, which was the top limit of what they were currently capable of, was a pretty damn daunting task.
“I guess you can’t,” Mathew muttered, only to climb up to the insides of the backside of the van. “Nadia, dear, I’m going to carry them to safety, make sure no zombies can approach while I do so,” he ordered only to approach the nearest of the lucky survivors.
“..a.e…” one of them muttered, only able to spell the letters that didn’t involve moving his mouth a lot.
“Hold on for just a little longer. We have water and food in the school,” Mathew whispered, quickly searching through the poor victim of starvation and dehydration for any sort of injuries that would imply he could turn into a zombie.
‘Even now, we don’t know how the process of turning works. It wouldn’t be fun to have him bite down on my neck as I carry him away,’ Mathew thought, ignoring the guilt of taking his time to search through the man’s clothes and exposed skin.
“Okay, there are no bite marks,” he said only to sneak his hands underneath the man’s knees and back before lifting him up with ease.
The man’s eyes widened when he realized that a scrawny young adult like Mathew actually managed to raise a heavily built adult like him without any struggle. His eyes widened even further when Mathew’s lightly jumped out of the van before jogging towards the gate.
“There is another wave coming,” Nadia commented, looking to their left as she accompanied Mathew on his path towards the school’s back-side gate.
“Can you open it up for me?” Mathew then requested only to shake the man in his hands a little. “I don’t really have my hands to do it.”
“Sure,” the girl threw back, pressing herself right at the gate and forcing her hand through the gaps in the fence only to grab the lock before flinging it open. “You are in!”
Mathew didn’t spare any further words. He kicked the small gate open before rushing for just a few steps inside. Then, he lowered himself to his knees before gently placing the man down on the grass.
“Just wait for a little bit longer. We need to bring everyone here before we will be able to look after you,” he said right as he turned around and sprinted past the gate, back towards the van.
A moment later, Mathew was ready to repeat the same process as before. This time, however, before searching through the body of the next survivor, he looked up at her face only to lower his head.
pan-da-n0vel.com “For touching you all over like that, I apologize in advance,” he said, accounting for the fact that the other two survivors left in the van were actually women.
And then, as if he was a long-time lover of the female, Mathew ran his hands across her entire body, quickly searching for any marks signaling that she could become a massive problem in the future. Then and only then did he sneak his hands underneath the middle-aged female before raising her up with ease. “We are going back for you,” he said, taking a moment to glance at the last survivor left in the van before sprinting back towards the school.
“That’s two,” Mathew muttered a short moment later when he laid down the woman on the ground, only to be met with the sight of the man he just saved currently busy licking the dew off the grass.
“Carol!” Mathew then called out, turning his eyes towards the side of the street where the zombies continued to approach only to crash into the trio of Daria’s shadowy form, Carol, and the opponent of her bet. “Get that hunter of yours to come back!”
“My name is fucking Kasper!” the only other man within the group then shouted back, clearly annoyed by the fact that up until this point, not a single person in the group bothered to use his name at all.
“Good, Kasper, you fucking moron!” Mathew quickly applied the new knowledge for his own benefit. “The bet is off, go and fetch food and water for those poor people!” Mathew ordered, turning his head right away only to run out of the gate and head back towards the van.
Yet, while still out in the open of the street, Mathew couldn’t help but notice how their time was running out. Because while Daria alone was easily capable of holding up her own against all the zombies coming from one end of the street… There was actually no one to keep the blockade on the other end of it!
‘We only have a minute left, tops,’ Mathew thought, rushing back into the van. This time, however, rather than getting to work right away, he was faced with the realization of where all the blood within the van came from.