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“Are you guys ready?” Mathew asked once the entire group gathered by the hole in the wall they used to enter the building in the first place.

He then took a look around him, not skipping on anyone even though he just had a small fight with Nadia.

“Remember, we don’t have much time so we will have to hurry the hell up,” Mathew announced only to turn his face back towards the hole and step through it. “Let’s go!”

‘It could be devastating to stay here for too long,’ Mathew thought, using the broken piece of the wall as a support for his hands that allowed him to basically eject himself forward. ‘If even a tiny part of stray zombies were to enter the building, this could prove disastrous.’

Mathew’s eyes were focused on what was in front of him… Yet all of his senses worked in unison.

He could hear every noise. He could feel every fluttering of the wind on his face. He could smell the odor of burned and rotting flesh alike and then judge the distance of the source of the smell by how intense it was.

All for the sake of keeping his group safe.

‘I need to ask myself what would Mathew do if I were to die,’ Nadia thought, following after Mathew without a word.

The question that Leila left her with made the girl uneasy and restless. Nadia’s emotional state, under the attack of her own consciousness, became so bad she couldn’t even pay attention to her surroundings.

“Watch it!” Daria shouted, slowing down just in the nick of time to take a step to the side, shot her arms out, and then drag Nadia towards herself, pulling her out of harm’s way.

“AAARG” the upper half of a zombie’s corpse reached out with its rotting arms for Nadia’s leg, only to miss it by a mere inch.

“Are you out of your mind?!” Daria shouted. She clearly wanted to stare down at her cowife, yet her reason persevered, making Daria get back into running while pulling Nadia along.

“I’m sorry,” Nadia nodded her head as she got used to the momentum again. She then shook her head in an attempt to clear her mind…

This time, however, this simple motion didn’t work.

‘What would Matty do if I were to die?’ Nadia asked herself again, shortening Leila’s lengthy question into a more compact and easier-to-understand version.

Then, Nadia’s face darkened.

‘He would freak out beyond any reason,’ she thought, well aware of how important she was to her childhood friend turned lover.

A series of images flashed past Nadia’s eyes.

Mathew cuddling himself to her chest, finding solace in something as simple as her warmth. The worried look on Mathew’s face when he was unable to move during their first time and thus had to leave everything to Nadia. His pained face when he could hardly resist the pleasure other girl’s brought him, the look in his eyes betraying how it all came from how aware he was of her own feelings.

And the sneaky glances he would steal of her whenever in combat, always making sure that she was okay while near him. The reluctance in his eyes whenever he would send her to a mission or give her some orders, especially when doing so would mean working separately.

‘Wait, isn’t he kinda crazy about me?’ Nadia asked herself, unable to stop her throat from gulping down all the saliva that gathered in her mouth.

Nadia then looked forward, stealing a long glance of Mathew’s back.

He didn’t seem to mind her at all with how focused he was on the path ahead.

Mathew suddenly jumped to the side and pulled out his saber. He then made three quick steps, redirecting the sideways momentum of his jump only to use it to reinforce the slashing attack he brought upon his extreme right.

‘Woah,’ Nadia uttered a small moan of inspired shock when the tip of Mathew’s blade cut right through the throat of a random zombie, cleaving its head away in a single, gentle swing.

‘But wait, why did he move so much to the side?’ Nadia asked herself as she continued to run after her lover.

And in just a few steps, the answer appeared before her very own eyes as she made a small jump over the headless body of the zombie.

‘He didn’t clear it because it would obstruct him, but because it could be in my way!’

A strange, warm feeling welled up at the bottom of Nadia’s soul. And as she moved her eyes back to Mathew’s back, her pupils filled with warmth.

‘He might not speak much unless asked, but his actions prove this point over and over again,’ Nadia noticed only to end up bitting down on her lip.

‘And in such a scenario, what would he do if I were to die?’

The realization that came with this question shook the girl to the core.

She lowered her eyes and then nearly closed them, too stunned by her simple discovery to care about anything else.

“Careful!” Mathew shouted, only to turn sideways and bury his legs into the road, leaving a small, smoking trail from his burned-out shoes. “We swing to the right!” he ordered, pulling the group away from the main road and through the side streets that this city was full of.

In one sense, moving as a group through the narrow areas of the small street was a critical mistake. And yet, Mathew, someone who survived longer in the apocalypse than the apocalypse existed, decided to pull his group of four into a sidestreet.

This time, however, no one bothered to question his decision. For that, the time would come later.

‘Just a little bit closer,’ Mathew thought, taking one last look at a group of strange-looking zombies that he saw down the main path. Yet, this look lasted for just a second as the buildings of the side street quickly covered the view.

‘What was that bad feeling, I wonder,’ Mathew thought, swallowing down the saliva that was produced when he first noticed those zombies.

The young man knew better than to ignore one of the few greatest assets that he had in the apocalypse, the extremely basic human instinct of survival.

‘I guess we will stumble into them once we get back,’ Mathew thought, opting to ignore the weird zombies, throwing the notion about them to the back of his head.

Thankfully, the path back to the school’s compound turned out not to have any further obstacles, allowing the entire group to reach the open area in front of the compound’s main gate before rushing in.

“That was a nice jog,” Leila commented, most likely not even aware of Nadia’s mishap that could easily cause the entire group to fall into disarray back just a few moments ago. She then turned around only to look at Daria’s exhausted face and the awkward expression on Nadia’s.

“Is something wrong, guys?” Leila asked, openly ignoring the entire conversation that she had with Nadia back in the Media outlet building.

“Let’s not waste time,” Mathew cut the discussion short, taking just a few short breaths before rushing inside the building. “We still need to get back. And who knows, maybe they are fighting off the rush of zombies as we dawdle around,” he scolded everyone, himself included, before making his way inside through the rubble of the compound’s collapsed wing.

‘What the hell is that cold sweat?’ Mathew asked himself once he gained just enough distance over the girls to be left all alone for a short moment.

His face tensed up as a distant echo of terror sounded in his mind.

‘Those zombies clearly weren’t normal,’ Mathew thought, gritting his teeth as he rushed up the stairs and then inside the hole in the wall leading to the shaft. ‘But just how powerful they have to be for me to keep feeling the terror of their aura, even though I’m within the safety of the fortress now?’

Mathew knew that he had no time to waste pondering over this stuff. Yet, while climbing up the nearly ancient ladder of the shaft, he was free to use that time for any mental exercise he wanted.

“You are back, guys,” one of the local survivors reached out with his hand to help Mathew out of the shaft. “Did Daniel and Norbert…?” he then asked, once Mathew made his way inside.

“I guess you saw us through the window,” Mathew muttered, only to shake his head. “And no, they should be okay as far as I know,” he then added, hoping to calm his former schoolmate down. ‘Or so I hope,’ he then thought, standing up from the ground before approaching the merchant.

Then and only then did Mathew stop in his tracks, his hand frozen just an inch away from the darkness of the merchant.

‘It all rests on this guess of mine,’ he thought, gulping down his saliva.

The terror that he felt from the zombies outside made Mahtew painfully aware of a simple truth.

‘We might be growing faster than anyone else, but not faster than the apocalypse itself,’ he thought before gritting his teeth against each other.

“Mathew,” Nadia called out even before she emerged from the hole. And while there was an urgency in her voice, Mathew simply closed his eyes… before pushing his arm ahead and enclosing his fingers around its darkness. “We need to talk…” the girl added, just as the shadows surged past Mathew, cutting him away from the reality around him.

“Safe…” Mathew muttered once he realized that he managed to escape the problematic situation by the skin of his teeth.

The young man then plummeted down to the shadowy ground only to bring his knees up and hide his face between them.

‘Just what am I supposed to tell her, once I get back?’