Novel Full 57 From the rubble
***Change of POV in case someone didn’t notice***
Darkness.
This one word described everything that Daniel could feel and experience. Darkness… and pain.
‘What the hell happened?’ he asked himself before trying to stand up…
Only to discover that his body wouldn’t move at all.
‘Where the hell am I?’ Daniel asked, too exhausted to utter even the tiniest voice.
And that was a point worthy of consideration all on his own.
He couldn’t move… but nothing stopped him from thinking.
‘What’s the last thing that I remember… It has to be standing on the edge of the floor, isn’t it?’ Daniel rummaged around his memory.
‘Well, judging from my state I think I can guess what happened,’ Daniel thought before releasing a heavy sigh.
Yet, as his chest squeezed down on his lungs, the middle-aged man realized something else.
‘My body actually can move?’
He could clearly feel his chest moving up and down. He simply had to focus on this sort of feeling that a human brain would naturally filter out.
‘Did we fall?’ Daniel asked himself, racking his brains to come up with an answer.
Once he knew what happened, he could figure his current situation out. And that was the minimal necessary framework that Daniel needed to move ahead.
‘If we fell…’ Daniel hesitated.
Even his heart, long used to the notion of death and injury, froze when he was about to voice out his situation.
He hesitated to do so because it would mean acknowledging what was going on.
‘I need to move!’ A sudden thought appeared in Daniel’s mind.
The perspective of wasting the spark of his life away while buried away under some trash and rubble just didn’t appeal to the middle-aged man.
He tried to move… And albeit with a great effort, his hand managed to twitch.
Daniel dedicated even more strength into his muscles. And a mere moment later, he simply gave up.
“Duh…” a long sigh escaped from the middle-aged man’s lips.
‘There is no way I can lift it,’ he realized.
Just a mere second of holding the piece that blocked him up sapped half of his strength.
‘Wait, I shouldn’t try to lift it,’ Daniel calmed his breath down as he focused on the problem. ‘How about trying to roll it off instead?’
Daniel didn’t rush into action. From the looks of things, he had all the time in the world to figure a way out. And spending a few minutes to recover his strength before an attempt to free himself out didn’t seem like that much of a bad idea.
‘Okay then,’ Daniel thought, tensing his muscles. Yet, contrary to his previous attempt, he didn’t bother to lift the entire chunk of rubble at once.
Instead, he raised its right side as far as he could, before relaxing his arm and putting his strength to his other arm.
And the rubble that locked him down… It tilted a little. And while it wasn’t much, Daniel could at least move his arm a little.
‘Now that I can get a better leverage,’ he thought, squeezing his elbow through some sort of floor panels before trying again.
Right then left. Right then left.
During his second attempt, Daniel managed to repeat the process twice.
Changing the position of his elbow appeared to help a whole lot.
‘Again!’ Daniel scolded himself, moving around a tiny little bit before trying again.
Right, left, right, left, right…
The chunk of the rubble moved a little bit further, only to tip its point of balance and with Daniel’s last push to the left, the piece rolled off.
“AAAGH!” Daniel instantly took a deep breath.
It felt as if several elephants stepped off from his chest, allowing the middle-aged man to finally take a proper breath.
For a moment, Daniel simply laid down in his pit. With the burden taken off his body, he could finally see the light of the day again.
Yet, before Daniel could get any real rest from the extreme task he accomplished… he heard rustling.
‘Fuck, I forgot about them!’ he realized, rushing to stand up…
Only to become aware that while his upper body was now free, the same couldn’t be said about his legs.
His right foot was free, that alone was a huge relief. But his left ankle was stuck, blocked by some sort of steel reinforcement from the wall.
‘Fuck,’ Daniel thought, his face darkening.
The footsteps of the zombies were getting closer.
The noise the middle-aged man made while freeing himself alerted them about his presence. And now he had no other choice but to face an entire horde while stuck in place!
‘Damn it all,’ Daniel struck his fist out in a powerless fury.
Only for a massive bout of pain to appear when his knuckles smashed into the concrete.
‘AUCH!’ Daniel screamed inwardly out, his body autopiloting another punch.
“DAMN!” Daniel screamed out. And his body, ruled by his raging emotions, made his fist strike again.
All within the rhythm of the music that Daniel always listened to when enraged.
The concrete, struck by Daniel’s third attack, crumbled beneath his fist.
“Huh?” Daniel shrugged, not prepared for this sort of novelty.
But he was running out of time.
A zombie was already climbing up the pile of rubble he was buried in just a moment earlier. More of them were bound to follow soon.
‘Fuck it all!’ Daniel reignited the spark of fury from before. He sang out the tune in his head. And then, right at the drop of the beat, he struck down at the stuff holding his ankle back.
“DIE!” Daniel screamed out, mirroring the lyrics of that exact part of the song.
For but a brief moment, he turned into the vocalist of one of his favorite rock bands from the past. And as he screamed the iconic shout of the song out, a broken piece of wall that locked his ankle in place crumbled under the force of his fist.
‘Is this the kind of system that this guy from before talked about?’ Daniel quickly connected the dots. Yet, this was the only clue that he had for this new, unexpected situation.
“System… show up!” he attempted to order. “System open!” he tried again…
Only for a blush to appear on the middle-aged man’s face when he realized just how stupid he had to look right now.
‘To think I would be happy most of the students in this school are dead,’ Daniel’s thoughts darkened as he breathed a sigh of relief.
Those deaths, although tragic and unnecessary, allowed him to keep this shameful display a secret.
“Well then,” Daniel muttered, turning his face down the slope of the pile of rubble.
Despite how long the situation appeared in Daniel’s mind, realistically only a few seconds passed since he freed himself from the rubble. Yet, in those few short seconds, zombies managed to fully crowd out the main corridor. To the back, the outer corridor leading to the end of one of the compound’s wings could be seen.
‘I guess that’s my way out,’ Daniel thought, taking a step forward and stomping on the head of the first zombie to climb his pile of rubble.
The tune of a death-metal band that he loved started in his brain.