‘Just a little bit more,’ Mathew thought.
Drops of sweat trickled down his forehead, the result of him carrying Nadia in his arms.
‘We sure do look weird,’ Mathew noticed as he passed by yet another group of his schoolmates.
They were all heading down the main corridor towards the school’s front yard.
‘Just the fact that we are going in the opposite direction is strange,’ Mathew thought, only to look around and then hang his head low.
The sight of a huge group of heavily armed policemen was designed to draw attention.
‘This could turn into a problem,’ Mathew thought. He then bit down on his lip as he continued to push forward. ‘Someone will notice there is something wrong; there is no stopping it,’ he thought.
Mathew then took a deep breath. The oxygen filled his lungs to the brim, pushing revigorated blood down his veins.
Only two sets of stairs separated them from their objective.
But the last clock in the corner of Mathew’s vision continued to tick its last toes.
“How are we standing?” the negotiating officer asked, his face completely still and relaxed.
This man was a veteran, after all.
‘He knows better than to panic or gets emotional,’ Mathew observed, silently taking a note of the point.
Managing people was a vital point of the young man’s plans for the future. One couldn’t build a world anew alone, after all.
“Two minutes left,” Mathew replied shortly.
There was no need to elaborate. Only one set of stairs remained.
“WOAH!” someone in the crowd shouted. The people remaining on the last level all looked towards the center of the commotion.
‘There it is,’ Mathew thought, his face darkening.
His fingers tightened around the handle of the firemen’s ax he held hidden under his hoodie.
Before the first wave truly began, the most susceptible to the virus would turn. This attack in advance was clearly designed to strike terror and chaos into the public before the main wave of zombie-turning would commence.
‘So devious.’ Mathew swallowed down his saliva. ‘Whoever planned for this to happen was meticulous to the tiniest detail,’ he thought.
The order of the things was simply too steady, too organized.
And nothing in nature worked in a straight line.
“We need to hurry up,” Mathew shook his head and hurried everyone.
Thankfully, the last floor of the school, the one Mathew was interested in, was generally emptied out.
“No good will come from standing in place,” the negotiating officer bit his lips and pushed on ahead.
The last set of stairs separated them from the part of the school Mathew intended to put a claim to.
“What’s wrong with her?” someone from the crowd below casually asked, pointing their hand at the girl lying down on the ground.
‘It’s starting,’ Mathew thought, hurrying up over the last set of stairs. Fat beads of sweat trickled down his neck.
He was never athletic, and now he had to go all the way up the school’s massive building, all the while carrying Naida in his arms.
‘Just a little bit more,’ he thought, pushing his tired muscles to their limit.
“Hey, what’s with her?” A voice from below reached Mathew’s ears just as he passed by the last set of stairs.
“Get the booms,” Mathew ordered, not paying any mind to the hierarchic structure of the law enforcement.
The people serving in the anti-terrorist forces had to have wits quick enough to keep them alive. And right now, their senses were tingling all over.
There was something in the air, even without all of Mathew’s esoteric warnings.
They all saw and participated in the massacre in the school’s underground. And now, the one man who predicted it to happen was hurrying them up.
This wasn’t the time for any of those adults to oppose Mat’s words.
“Mine the stairs, boys,” the leading officer of the strike team gave his order. It was just to formalize what his subordinates had already rushed to do.
“Hey, what are you guys…” someone called them out.
‘Fuck, they noticed!’ Mathew pushed with the last ounce of his strength, bringing Nadia away from the blast radius.
But the calling-out voice… vanished.
No other sound covered it. This suspicious and accusing voice… simply ceased to be.
“Right ready,” one of the policemen reported and turned his head to the leader.
“AAARGH!” a first shout came from the level below.
“Let us!” an urged whisper reached Mathew’s ears.
‘Isn’t he from the year down?’ Mathew thought, turning his head around. He recognized the young man instantly.
He was the talk of the school since he got the school’s beauty to go out with him.
‘Isn’t the lucky boy,’ Mathew thought, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
And just like one could expect, Lydia, the shy and silent idol of nearly half of the school, was running behind him while holding tightly to her boyfriend’s hand.
There was a look of determination on Mathew’s junior’s face, as opposed to the scared and obedient look deep in Lydia’s eyes.
Her long, platinum hair coated the weirdest part about the girl, the one that got the imagination of countless of Mathew’s classmates going.
It was her figure.
One could tell, with just a single look, that she was perfectly slim… Yet, her hourglass figure betrayed that all of her parts were exactly as meaty as a man’s heart desired.
Behind them followed an athletic man, one of the ball kickers from Mathew’s parallel class.
“Left ready,” the soldier reported.
“Center ready.”
The detonation was all green to go.
“We wait until we see what happens,” the leader of the strike squad commenced.
“What’s going on?” the trio that luckily got to the upper floor just in the nick of time looked at Mathew in bewilderment.
“You got lucky to notice it,” Mathew replied, ignoring the obvious plea for information.
He then tucked Nadia’s powerless body into a corner before shielding her with his own chest.
“Ten!” Mathew shouted towards the officers.
The men readied out their guns.
They saw the culling at the bottom floor. And they were ready to fight for their survival.
“If we are successful here, we might be able to sortie out for your families,” Mathew suddenly said.
It was a weird idea, one that randomly popped out in his head.
But after thinking through it all, there was a huge chance that some of their close ones would survive.
And right now, what those hardened veterans needed, wasn’t a threat.
‘What they need is an objective close to their hearts!’ Mathew figured it out.
“Five!” he then shouted.
The sounds from the floor below were quickly intensifying.
No one needed Mathew’s warning anymore.
The tension filled the air as all the shouting and crying suddenly ceased.
“One!” Mathew’s calm voice filled the silent hall of the upmost floor of the school.
And then, all hell broke loose just down the stairs.
“Get ready!” Mathew shouted, raising his hand.
Mining of the staircase didn’t mean they were going to just allow a massacre on the floor below.
It was but a necessary preparation for how it would ultimately all go down.
As the shouts and cries intensified, some people finally rushed to seek refuge on the upper floor.
“Go!” Mathew shouted, revealing his trusty weapon and rushing down the stairs.
Between the real apocalypse and the one that Mathew read about in novels, there was one major difference.
People wouldn’t die from just a single bite or even a scratch.
The zombies would basically need to gnaw at someone to the point where they would die anyway for them to turn.
That’s why, as long as one didn’t let the zombies lock them down, their survival was still an option.
On the other hand, those infected at random by the virus itself would stand no chance.
“Run towards the upper floor!” Mathew shouted from the bottom of his lungs, raising his ax above his head.
The first target revealed itself in an instant.
Someone Mathew couldn’t even recognize, mostly due to how half of that poor victim’s face was gone. And yet, it didn’t stop the zombie from lunging at a nearby person.
“Sleep,” Mathew muttered softly, driving his blade down with a wide swing.
The crowds all around didn’t make his task any easier.
‘Thank God I stopped the early wave,’ Mathew thought, swinging his hammer again, only to raise his face and look around for his next victims.
The people all around rushed to escape…
But only a portion of them would nail it. The rest of the students and teachers, boys, girls, women, and men alike, all ended up in the claws of the newly turned monsters.
Seeing th3eir clothes, flesh and bones split and cracked open was a truly gruesome sight.
Mathew didn’t turn around, but he could feel how shocked the soldiers behind him were.
‘No kind of battlefield can prepare one for this kind of sights,’ he thought, coldly moving around the place and finishing any zombie that he could find.
Bit by bit, one by one, Mathew cleared the area. Yet, only a small fraction of those who were initially on the floor escaped to the upper floor.
Some of them scattered around; others succumbed to the attack.
‘It would be good if we got even twenty people,’ Mathew thought, quickly judging the situation.
But there was no time to waste.
They couldn’t secure this floor. As such, they had to work swiftly.
“Everyone, it’s harvest time,” Mathew announced, raising his bloody ax above his head.