Novel Full 66 Revealing the past
“It’s done,” Mathew muttered as he took a step to the back and cast a long glance at the finished barricade.
It was impossible to call the end result of their job anything else but that.
One could tell that the part of the wall they fixed from the rest of the wall with a single glance, even from a super far away. Yet, in terms of a barrier for the horde of zombies, the barricade should do just as well of a job as the rest of the compound’s wall.
“This took a lot more time and effort than I thought it would,” Daria muttered under her nose, sliding down the barricade and resting her back against it.
From the outside, the difference between the reconstructed part and the normal wall was mostly visual. Yet, once one looked from the inside of the school grounds, the difference became obvious.
Because while the normal part of the wall was roughly a third of a meter wide, the barricade reached even two meters in width!
“Not a single one of us has any experience in construction,” Mathew commented, only to release a sigh of exhaustion. “We couldn’t know we would need that much support just to hold our makeshift wall in place.”
This was the true form of the struggle that caused their barricade to swell up so much.
With no industrial-grade adherents available for the group, they could only rely on prompting the wall up from the inside.
They managed to make the wall stand relatively stable on its own several hours ago. Yet, a single push from any of the group was enough to topple it right back down.
“What are we going to do, now?” Nadia asked as she sat down by Mathew’s side. She then rested her head on the young man’s shoulder as she attempted to relax after a long period of intense effort.
“To be honest, I’m not really all that sure,” Mathew admitted as he lowered his eyes. “We could either try to clean up the rest of the school or attempt to raise the fortress. But when it comes to deciding which idea is better?” Mathew asked, shaking his head. “I have no clue.”
“Right, I wanted to ask this for a long time already,” Leila joined in the discussion as she sat on top of the fixed part of the wall. “But what is this fortress that you speak of?”
If he didn’t know any better, Mathew would assume Leila’s position as nothing more but an attempt to make herself look cool. Yet, this time, it was his very own request that put her on top of the wall.
After all, they could only know what to expect from it later on by testing the quality of their barricade themselves. And while Leila herself didn’t appear to weigh all that much, having her balance on the edge of the highest part of the barricade was enough proof of the stability of the wall.
“To be completely fair?” Mathew asked, shaking his head again. “I have no idea. We never managed to raise it back then,” he added, too tired to care about the potential effects of revealing his situation to the rest of the group.
‘Is there anything wrong with doing so in the first place?’ Mathew asked himself.
In theory, it was always better to keep his own cards close to his chest, only revealing them when the right time came. But when it came to the truth about his past, Mathew couldn’t see a single reason to not share it.
“Back then?” Leila asked, sliding down the wall and jumping only to land right by Mathew’s side. She then fell down to her knees before sitting herself down on her heels. “What do you mean by that?”
The inquisitive look behind Leila’s eyes made it fairly obvious it wasn’t the only thing she was asking about.
‘I guess she doesn’t want to push me too hard,’ Mathew thought as he released a deep sigh. ‘But I used them for long enough for the two of them to earn the right to know the truth,’ he concluded before swallowing his saliva and raising his eyes.
“This isn’t the first…” Mathew attempted to explain the truth, only to stop his words when Nadia suddenly nudged his side.
“Are you sure?” she asked, looking him deeply in the eyes.
“I don’t think I’m risking anything by telling them,” Mathew explained. “And we already reached the point where it no longer matters if they know either,” he added, only to shrug his shoulders and look back at Leila.
“It’s not the first time that I went through all this shit,” Mathew stated, only to bite down on his lips and shake his head. “No, that’s not right. Back then, everything went differently,” he added as he turned silent for a moment.
“Roughly a ten hours ago, I died,” Mathew finally revealed the truth about his past in the simplest and the least confusing form. “Yet, rather than reincarnating, vanishing on the spot, or going to heaven, I somehow returned to my past,” he finally revealed.
“I never asked this before,” Nadia spoke out right as both Leila and Daria turned speechless. “But how did you actually die?” she asked, snuggling up even closer to Mathew’s side.
For a moment, Mathew remained silent, refusing to open his mouth as he recalled the details of his last day in the previous run.
The fall of their makeshift fortress. The desperate rush to run from the horde. The bloodbath when they attempted to break away from the horde. And the moment when he forfeited his life for the sake of the girl that snuggled to his side right now.
“Back then, I didn’t have a wives system that I have right now,” Mathew revealed. “It was a miracle-sacrifice system that allowed me to sacrifice something of mine in order to invoke a miracle. It was also the only reason why I managed to bring the two of us as far as two weeks into the apocalypse,” he added, moving his hand to the side to grab Naida’s fingers and squeeze them a little.
“But…” Nadia hesitated. “Since I survived that long as well, how could you die?” she asked, a small, smuggish smile appearing on her lips. “It’s not like I would ever allow you to get harm as long as I was by your side!” she stated, moving her free hand over Mathew’s stomach to hug herself even closer to him.
“You had your leg injured. And you still managed to stay by my side until the very end, when we broke free from the school grounds and reached the last place with no zombies in it,” Mathew revealed as he looked at Nadia’s face with deep affection.
Sensing the intense emotions behind Mathew’s weird smile, neither Leila nor Daria dared to interrupt the moment.
“Then what happened?” Nadia asked, unable to grasp at the hints Mathew left all over his explanation so far.
The young man turned his head away from Nadia’s face.
‘How the heck should I tell her what happened?’ he thought, struggling to come up with any believable lie. ‘Or should I just tell her the truth?’
“Well…” Mathew hesitated for a bit longer before resting the back of his head against the barricade’s support and looking up.
“Back then, we were at the end of our rope. We had nowhere else to run and had no means of fighting off all the zombies within the school,” he explained before turning silent for a moment. And then, he revealed the rest in one breath.
“So after enjoying our first, deep kiss for a while, I offered my life as a sacrifice to keep you safe,” Mathew revealed, unable to look again at the girl.
‘My cheeks are burning,’ he realized, not sure what to expect. Because now that he put his past actions and decisions into words, he realized just how hasty and emotional they were.
“And then?” Seeing how Mathew had no intention of continuing and how Nadia was too shocked to ask about more details, Daria took this burden on herself. “What happened then?”
“I don’t know,” Mathew shrugged his arms as he looked down. “The second I finished the sacrifice, everything went black. And before I knew it, I was back to two hours before the apocalypse kicked in.”