60 Division of labour
The time that Mathew could spend flirting with Nadia… Was gravely limited.
Fighting with the zombies didn’t pose much threat to the young man’s group. Yet, even if they could all take a single zombie out with no more than a single attack, it didn’t change the one primal factor of fighting the horde.
Once they were surrounded and swarmed, there would be nothing they could do.
“We need to keep on going,” Mathew muttered when he noticed the first signs of the potential disaster.
It wasn’t that there were too many zombies for them to take care of. At the current rate in which they marched into the ruined grounds of the school through the collapsed wing of the compound was manageable.
What troubled the young man, though, was the increasing number of corpses.
‘Save for the disease and small, they are starting to pile up,’ he noticed as he continued to swing his ax around, claiming more and more heads for the back row of his group to harvest.
Mathew’s group left a trail of motionless corpses in their wake. Yet, as they had no concrete objective they needed to reach, every last one of them just moved around.
‘We gravitate towards zombies; zombies are drawn to us,’ Mathew thought before stopping his legs and taking a proper look around.
The problem would linger for a few more minutes worth of slaying the zombies. But in some places, like near the collapsed wall of the southern wing, the corpses had already started to seriously pile up.
‘At this rate…’ Mathew thought, bitting down on his lips as he fell into deep thought. He then moved his eyes to the back, judging the number of the zombies they had fallen already.
“Mat!” Leila shouted over from one of the big piles of corpses. She had a precariously satisfied look on her face as she waved her hand at the young man. “Look over here!”pᴀɴᴅᴀ-ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ.ᴄᴏᴍ
“What?” Mathew asked, slight displeasure flashing before his eyes.
Leila had a strange talent for getting on his nerves. From how she was clearly hostile towards Nadia, through how pushy she was back then with her body all the way to how she just interrupted Mathew’s train of thought…
“Can’t we maybe stack those corpses up to block off the hole?” Leila pointed her hand at the nearly uncountable number of bodies they could use as a building material. “That would stop a lot of those freaks from getting in!”
‘Damn it,’ Mathew gritted his teeth. ‘Why does it feel wrong to admit she’s right?’ he thought, lamenting over his own lack of foresight.
Because Leila’s idea was as simple as it was genius.
“Good idea,” Mathew swallowed down his displeasure before shouting his praise.
‘It’s better to be impartial. I need to make sure this team will stick together, not like it went back in my first run,’ the young man thought, closing his fists so strongly his nails started to cut into the skin of his palms.
“Can I do it, then?” Leila asked while averting her eyes for some reason.
“Try to stack them into two piles. Those with cores and those without,” Mathew shouted before sending Nadia a quick glance.
“Fine, fine,” the girl shook her head, “I get it. I will go help,” she offered before Mathew could even ask her for it.
Nadia wasn’t the one to throw around empty words or promises. She ignored her own dislike towards Leila as she rushed in to give the girl a hand. pᴀɴᴅᴀ ɴoᴠᴇʟ
Ultimately, whether they liked each other or not, they were survivors in the middle of an apocalypse. And only Mathew appeared to have any idea what they should do to keep their status as survivors.
‘I wonder if it will be enough,’ Mathew thought, watching how the girls got to work, moving the bodies and stacking them up in the long, open area where the southern wing used to stand.
Due to all the rubble littering the place, there were only a few relatively easy paths that zombies from the outside could take.
And the girls appeared to be thankfully aware of that fact.
‘This could actually work,’ Mathew thought, looking at how quick the two girls were at filling the gaps.
When the two of them pushed their animosity aside, they proved to be pretty efficient workers.
‘Or maybe they are faster because of all the level-ups?’ Mathew thought, only to shake his head. ‘No, I don’t really have the time to think about it,’ he lectured himself before refocusing on the core problems.
Right now, Mathew’s greatest wish is to establish the fortress.
For as little as he knew about what it was and what it would do, he still knew something.
And by picking establishing a fortress as his objective, Mathew managed to avoid the depressing reality that he had no other idea for how to progress.
‘This is going to be a huge pain once we actually set it all up,’ he thought before casting his look all over the ground floor. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“Daria!” Mathew shouted once he made all the necessary calculations.
“Yeah?” the girl appeared by Mathew’s side in a matter of seconds.
This time, she didn’t manage to keep her clothes clean or even remotely clean. Yet, each drop of blood that dirtied her clothes and skin was proof of just how strong this girl became.
“Can you go and pick all the cores that we left on the upper floors?” Mathew asked.
He then took a quick break to swing his ax, cutting off the head of yet another zombie. “Counting the cores we will get from this floor, we should have enough.”
“Weren’t we going to clean all the zombies out of the school?” Daria asked, an expression of doubt appearing on her face. “Is there something wrong?” she asked, reading way too much into Mathew’s expression.
“No,” the young man replied with a shake of his head. “Not yet, at least,” he added in a tone slightly darker than usual.
Daria stood in place, closely watching Mathew’s face. Yet, only a few moments later, she nodded her head and left Mat’s side without any further word.
‘What now?’ Mathew asked himself, puzzled by the girl’s behavior.
Up until this moment, save for how she acted when they first met, Daria appeared to be the reasonable one.
‘It looks like not even she is safe from fostering drama,’ the young man thought before dropping the topic out of his mind.
Once again, his ax started to dance around, cutting Mathew a path towards the backline.
With all three girls now busy with their respective tasks, only Mathew was left to defend the two civilians to the back.
“How does it go?” Mathew asked as soon as he landed by the side of his two juniors.
“We gathered seventy-three so far,” the man replied for the two, raising his head and looking directly into Mathew’s eyes.
‘What the hell does he want?’ Mathew thought, a stifling feeling making Mat clutch at his chest.
The one fellow man, the one oasis of chill and lack of drama… turned out to be someone weird.
‘Well, in a situation like this,’ Mathew thought, turning his head around, ‘I can’t really blame him for acting weird.’
Only a few hours ago, this place was bustling with student activity. It was full of people with dreams, passions, problems, and ambitions.
But now, it has all turned into an open graveyard for all those who fell victim to virus or zombies.
Mathew was already used to this sight, allowing him to save the time he would otherwise waste on making sense of the new reality.
But the fact that he already went through this process in his first attempt at survival didn’t mean others did the same.
“That’s not bad,” Mathew finally reacted to the fellow man’s words, only to turn around and throw a look at the rest of the floor.
It was littered with decapitated corpses and heads rolling all over the place.
‘At this rate, we are never going to gather enough,’ Mathew thought, his mood darkening even further.
“Why isn’t she working?” Mathew then asked, turning his eyes towards the girl who sat in the back while constantly jumping whenever a zombie would get close.
“Come on, man!” the young man protested. “I’m barely holding my vomit; how do you expect her to dabble in this bloody mess?” he asked, raising his blood-covered hands.
Mathew then took a step forward, quickly dealing with a group of six more zombies.
“Here,” he said, turning back to the couple as he kicked one of the heads towards the girl. “Pick the core out of it.”
The girl first raised her eyes at Mathew’s face. For a moment, she simply stared down at his pupils… only to then lower her sight and pick up the head from the floor.
For a moment, the girl stared at the face of the deceased. She then swallowed a gulp of saliva before placing the head down and curling her fingers into fists.
“Here I go…” the girl muttered before closing her eyes and smashing her fists into the broken skull. A moment of moving her hand around later, she pulled it out with a core shining in her fingers.
“Good job,” Mathew nodded his head, finally turning away his judging eyes. “Keep it up, then!”