81 Daniel's strategy (Daniel's Pov)
“We have over a hundred cores,” Norbert reported in a tired voice.
He wasn’t physically tired from the fighting or, later on, climbing the stairs. The activity of this sort was the daily bread for a veteran policeman and an anti-terrorist unit member.
No, it wasn’t his body that was tired. It was Norbert’s mind.
“Won’t this be enough already?” Norbert asked as he raised his eyes at Daniel with a pleading expression written all over his face.
‘Robbing the brain matter of students and teachers alike from a stone that formed inside…’ Daniel thought, looking down at the blood covering Nortbert arms all the way up to his elbows.
“Fine, let’s hope it will be enough,” Daniel replied. He then nodded his head before moving his eyes towards the stairs leading up. “How about the scout?” he then asked.
“I think I found two viable paths,” Norbert reported back without even a moment of hesitation. What’s more, a look of relief appeared deep behind his eyes as a vitality started to return to his face. “One leads through the drainpipes on the outer side of the compound’s walls,” he said, only for his expression to sour right away.
“What’s wrong?” Daniel asked when he noticed the small change happening on his colleague’s face.
‘Just a single day ago, I would likely ignore something so small,’ Daniel thought, weirded out by the sudden change in his personality. ‘Maybe it’s the sense of danger and urgency that makes me so perceptive?’ he guessed, only to shake his head as he dropped the topic out of his mind. pᴀɴᴅᴀ-ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ.ᴄᴏᴍ
Norbert cut his words short. In the end, he didn’t need to finish his sentence to pass the message to his colleague.
“From your tone, I can guess that there is another way,” Daniel pressed on with his guess, trying to read beneath the lines of what his companion actually said.
“There is one… But I’m not really sure about it either,” Norbert stated. He then brought his hand up to the side of his head and rubbed his scalp with his fingers.
“I could vaguely recall a shaft leading through the entire height of the building,” Norbert revealed what was going through his mind. “It was on the plans we studied right before the action, and then the whole mess started,” he explained.
“Now that you said this, I think I can more or less recall the captain mentioning it,” Daniel admitted, only for his thoughts to turn sour.
‘Right, captain,’ he thought, clenching his hands. ‘Is she okay, I wonder,’ he thought, sending a short, nostalgic look towards the window.
The captain herself, along with half of the team, ended up staying back, just in case Mathew’s invitation from several hours ago would turn out to be a trap. And ever since Daniel stepped in to play the role of a negotiator, he hasn’t heard from the woman. pᴀɴᴅᴀ ɴoᴠᴇʟ
“Still,” Daniel then shook his head before raising his hand and wiping some sort of trash from the side of his mustache. “You wouldn’t be so hesitant if there weren’t any problems,” he pointed out as he stared at his colleague.
“The thing is,” Norbert started, only to then gulp his saliva down his throat. “The entire thing is sealed off behind a wall of reinforced concrete,” he said as he lowered his eyes and refused to look at Daniel’s face.
“I guess it’s some sort of sealed-off shaft for fire emergencies,” Daniel put forth an educated guess.
It wasn’t the first time when he was met with a situation like that. And it was all a courtesy of the messy building laws of the city that liked to change whenever a new political group would take over.
As a result of the political mess at the top, most of the buildings had to overgo several renovations. And the shaft that was on the topic right now was likely first added to comply with new fire safety standards, only to be sealed off when the city deemed vertical movement systems like that to be more of a hazard than a help in case of a hazard.
‘Thinking back, this was actually a good move,’ Daniel thought, only to shake his head and look at his former subordinate. “Where is that shaft, then?” he asked before pushing his hand out. “Lead the way!”
‘There are only one or two schools building nationwide per decade,’ Daniel remembered as he followed after Norbert. ‘Contrary to that, the number of kids that broke through the doors to those shafts and ended up dying or heavily injuring themselves due to the fall?’
Daniel shook his head, his soul filling with conflicted feelings about the situation. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
‘Anyway, what’s important, is that we can make use of it now,’ Daniel thought as he tightened his fists.
“We are here,” Norbert announced as he stood with his side to a seemingly the same kind of wall that they could find all over the place. He then raised his hand and knocked two of his fingers against it.
‘There is a hole behind it?’ Daniel thought, involuntarily raising one of his eyebrows.
The sound caused by Norbert’s tapping wasn’t anywhere close to what he would hear whenever looking for a fake wall.
“I told you it’s a reinforced concrete,” Norbert said and released a deep, exhausted sight. “The seal is actually thicker than the rest of the walls around,” he added before taking a step away and pointing with both of his hands at the wall.
“Either way, it’s entirely up to you whether or not you want to try your best shot at it,” Norbert said, only to then shake his head and look beyond a nearby, broken window. “Otherwise, we will need to prepare for a climb.”
‘Climb?’ Daniel thought, sending a glance to the world outside of the school’s walls. The angle didn’t allow him to look directly towards the courtyard beyond the layer of the walls, but what he saw was still enough for the middle-aged man to picture the potential fall.
“No, I think I will save us that bother,” Daniel said, approaching the wall and then stopping right before it.
‘What songs should I go with?’ he thought while staring at the blank face of the seemingly ordinary piece of wall. ‘Maybe this one?’ he thought as his feet started to tap an energetic rhythm against the floor.
‘No, it’s too rapid; I need something with a massive drop,’ the middle-aged man thought. ‘What about that Big-Room genre that Jean often recommended?’ Daniel thought, his mind filling with the loving memory of his deceased son.
Daniel’s eyes filled with determination.
Escaping to using the melody his son once recommended to him appeared like a valid way to pull himself by the bootstraps and move forward.
‘Back in the days, I used it to move ahead with my life. And now,’ Daniel thought as the song started to play out in his mind. ‘I’m going to use it to push forward my strategy instead!’
Daniels’ arranged his thoughts perfectly along with the rhythm of the music playing out in his mind. And once the bass drop of the song approached, Daniel pulled his hand to the back…
And then struck it forward the moment the music exploded within the frame of his imagination.
THUD!
A loud noise spread throughout the corridor, bouncing off the walls only for its volume to stack on top of each other. Thankfully, though, there was no echo in the school, preventing the noise from lasting for a long and unbearably noisy while.
“I can’t believe it…” Norbert muttered as he stared at the fist-sized hole in the concrete wall he pointed out before.
“It’s not done yet,” Daniel pointed out as he reset the progress of the tune and allowed it to play all over from the beginning. “In fact,” he added, taking a pause so that his speech wouldn’t throw a wrench into the rhythm of the song in his mind. “It’s going to take a while,” the man revealed, only to strike with his fist, doubling the size of the hole in the wall.
“It’s not going to work at all!” Norbert protested, only to point his hand out at the wall. “Even if you get to break through this layer, you will have to repeat it on the top level as well!” he soberly pointed out.
“It’s not going to be a problem at all,” Daniel smiled as he replied and turned his face back to his friends. “Because all I need to be is a distraction,” he said before pointing at a makeshift bag in which the two policemen stored all the cores they gathered from the zombies.
“What exactly could you mean?” Norbert asked as his face darkened, proving that he managed to somewhat guess Daniel’s intention.
“Oh, it’s quite simple,” Daniel smiled at his colleague, only to turn around and start smashing his fists against the wall again. “While I will bang on the wall and make all of those monsters gather, I need you to climb the drainpipe, and once you see an opportunity with your ability, you will need to rush to the merchant,” Daniel explained his plan.
“And what I’m supposed to do even if I somehow manage to reach him?” Norbert asked while crossing his hands over his chest.
“It’s pretty simple,” Daniel smiled even further. “All you need to do is summon Mathew to help you out!”