"Okay then," Mathew muttered once the menial task of carrying the new survivors inside the school was completed. "Thanks, everyone, but I need you to go away now," he then said, giving everyone an eye.
There were only a few workers left within the area, to begin with, so clearing it out from all the unnecessary people took only a moment.
"Nadia, dear." Mathew turned his face to his main wife. "Could you wake her up?"
"Sure thing," the girl said as she nodded her head and moved forward. "Before I wake her up, though," she said as soon as her hand reached out for the woman's healthy side. "Why did you excuse everyone else?"
"If you were her," Mathew locked his eyes on the police leader's relatively cute face, "how would you react to an audience of tens of kids?"
Mathew left his question to hang in the air for a bit. And Nadia didn't see a point to dig deeper.
Now that Mathew pointed out his thoughts, she could easily see herself in the woman's shoes.
"Let's wake her up," Mathew said, hurrying the girl up a little. The night was already gone and the sun was beginning to rise.
'And if we want to somehow control the other two, dealing with the leader comes first,' he thought. Then, his expression darkened. 'And having her be crippled... as cold as it might be, I cannot see it as anything but an opportunity.'
Nadia shook her head and moved her hand by the last few centimeters. She then shook the woman's shoulder, making sure it was strong enough to pull her out of her sleep while remaining too weak to further strain her crippled arm.
"NO!" the woman screamed out as soon as she opened her eyes. Her body shoot up while she reflectively attempted to shake Nadia's hand off.
Then, the woman froze. She stared at the wall of the school's courtyard with her eyes wide open before slowly moving her head to the sides.
'Don't say a word,' Mathew thought, hoping for some miracle to transmit his thoughts to the rest of his group.
Right now, the maimed policewoman was taking the reality in. Her willingness to trust their words would plummet to the abyss if anyone were to disturb it.
"Where..." the woman muttered, only for her body to suddenly relax, lose its stability and cause her to fall to the back.
She shot her hands behind her in an attempt to support herself... But she clearly wasn't used to lacking one of them.
As such, while she managed to rest her right hand on the ground, her body only twisted before she fell back right onto her primitively bandaged wound.
The cloth that she used to cover her stump was soaked in blood. And when this red premature ending of her arm struck the ground...
"ARGH!" the woman screamed out while intense pain twisted her face. And coupled with her backward motion, she failed to stop herself from falling down, striking the ground with an entire side of her face.
"First off, you are safe," Mathew said, standing right where he was when the woman woke up. "And yes, we have water and food for you and those two others you were in a car with," he said.
Mathew then turned silent, giving the woman some time to process the information.
First off, the woman clenched her teeth to fight off the intense pain of straining her wound. She then raised her head and looked at Mathew and gritted her teeth.
'Not good,' the young man realized. 'This kind of intense hate...' he gulped down his saliva while being on the receiving end of the wrath contained within the woman's eyes.
Misunderstanding or some fault of his that Mathew wasn't aware of, it didn't matter. What was important, was that this woman clearly wasn't happy to interact with him.
"The others..." she finally spewed out, raising her back only to hug her wounded arm to her chest.
"To your right," Mathew said, pointing his hand at the two bodies lying on the floor roughly two meters to the side of the woman.
The policewoman glanced over to the side only to bring her eyes right back to Mathew's face.
"Are they...?"
She didn't need to finish her sentence.
"Dehydrated and starved," Mathew revealed. "We gave them a tiny bit of water before letting them sleep in peace. You are the only one we woke up," he explained the situation.
The hate in the woman's eyes subsided a little. Yet, it didn't mean it vanished without a trace. Her rage continued to smolder at the bottom of her soul, it simply didn't turn into fires great enough to flash at the back of her pupils.
"Who are you?" the woman asked.
"I'm..."
As soon as Mathew opened his mouth, the woman turned her head to the side. Yet, rather than getting annoyed by her apparent rudeness, the young man couldn't help but smile.
'Making me talk so that I would be less likely to jump on her when she's looking away,' he thought. His eyes widened a little, prompted by the genuine respect this smart ploy earned the woman in Mathew's soul.
The woman then turned her face back. This time, however, her facial muscles relaxed as compared to how she was before.
'And she really does seem to care about her people,' Mathew continued to silently judge the amputee before him.
"I'm Mathew," he then said. "The guy that pretended to be a school freak to bring you all over before it all started," he then revealed.
The woman's face tensed up upon hearing those words. And there was nothing Mathew could do about it.
In a certain way, he was responsible for how life played out for her. There was a chance she wouldn't lose her arm if she were cooped up in the base with the others.
But there was also a chance that she would be long dead, caught unprepared for anything as opposed to when she brought a huge force to deal with the problem Mathew faked.
The young man gave the woman some time to digest the news, aware of how massive they had to be for her.
"Where are the others?" the policewoman then asked, squinting her eyes as she looked at Mathew. "An entire unit of our best went into the school. Where are they?"
"Your best?" Mathew repeated a selected part of what the woman said. "Then I have both good and bad news for you," he said, only to lean back and support himself on his hands.
"Both Daniel, the negotiator, and the young one going by the name of Norbert are still alive. The former should be here any moment," Mathew revealed without any hesitation.
"And the others?" the woman pushed the topic.
Yet, after a moment of prolonged silence, she realized that both wouldn't receive the answer... but also figured out the meaning behind said silence.
"Did you..."
"No," Mathew cut the woman's words before she could even put them out. "I saw some of them die while we fought together to defend other survivors. Others..." he shook his head before turning it towards Nadia.
"Others died when they bought me and two others the time to escape from a group of savages that saw them as obstacles stopping them from doing whatever they wanted," Nadia explained her part of the story.
"What about others hiding in the rest of the cars?" the woman then asked, turning her eyes back from Nadia to Mathew...
Only to notice how their faces froze on the spot.
"Betty!" Norbert suddenly came storming in, running out of the eastern corridor. He ran past Mathew and his wives only to slide down on his knees as he neared his former leader. "You are alive!"
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