BXBX NOVEL Chapter 63 Reconstruction
“Heavy-ho!” Mathew uttered a small shout as he lifted a zombie’s corpse before throwing it on the rubble behind the breach.
“Leave the corpses to us.” Nadia was quick to approach Mathew’s side. “The boulders from over there would be perfect to close the gap,” she said as she pointed her hand at a nearby pile of rubble. “But I don’t think any of us could as much as make it tremble,” she added with a wry smile.
‘I guess there are still limits to how strong we can get, even with the system,’ Mathew thought before nodding his head.
“Will do,” Mathew said as he clasped his hands to clear them out from dirt before moving in the direction the girl pointed at. “Right, make sure Leila won’t venture too far,” the young man added after making barely a few steps. “She’s prone to getting emotional. And we can’t afford to lose anyone right now.”
The fight for the wall’s breach… was even more disappointing than clearing the ruins of the southern wing of the compound.
At first, it was tough.
When Mathew’s group finally reached the breach, it was filled with a horde of zombies nearly as dense as the one they fought off inside the school.
Yet, despite how many zombies there were on a small patch of land, their overall number wasn’t all that bad.
And now, a measly quarter of an hour later, Mathew’s group could finally move on to actually fixing the gap in the wall.
It took them only about fifteen minutes to clear the small horde and then the immediate surroundings of the wall.
Yet, for how quickly Mathew’s group reached this point, their progress soon stalled.
‘As easy as it is to kill zombies, fixing a damned wall is actually a damned challenge,’ Mathew thought as he approached the boulder Nadia pointed at.
In reality, though, it wasn’t a bolder but a broken piece of a building’s wall. Yet, for the purpose in Mathew’s head, it was perfect.
‘MOVE!’ Mathew screamed inwardly out, pushing his muscles to their limits in an attempt to push the piece of a demolished wall.
First, he failed.
Mathew put all his strength into his task, but it wasn’t enough.
“Damn it,” he muttered, airing the frustration that quickly built up in his soul. Mathew then took a step to the back to size the chunk of rubble up.
‘Maybe I should break it down into smaller pieces?’ the young man thought, hoping to find a solution to his current problem.
It would be most reasonable to simply give up and grab some smaller pieces. By standing and thinking, Mathew didn’t contribute to rebuilding the wall at all.
Yet, there was a difference between stacking boulders on top of each other and actually building a wall capable of stopping zombies.
‘If we don’t want to go just for visuals alone, I can’t break it down,’ Mathew realized before clenching his teeth and approaching the wall once again.
‘Off we…’ Mathew thought, only to take a deep breath and keep it in his lungs.
‘GO!” Mat shouted, exhaling the air while he used every last spark of energy left in his body.
And finally, the wall moved.
At first, it only wiggled a little, trying to regain a stable resting position. Yet, as the solid chunk of reinforced concrete started to move up and down, Mathew’s strength proved to be finally sufficient to force it up.
“Do you need some help?” Nadia shouted over from the wall where she continued the task of moving the zombie corpses towards the bottom of the gap.
“Actually, yes,” Mathew admitted.
‘Sure, it would be lovely to carry it on my own and leave a good impression on her,’ he thought, his eyes gravitating towards Nadia’s face. ‘But right now, I can’t allow myself such shallow luxury,’ he concluded.
The events from before proved that the apocalypse developed at a vastly different pace than what Mathew could remember from his previous attempt at surviving it.
‘We can’t tell when true hordes will start to gather,’ he thought, only to breathe a sigh of relief when Nadia rushed to help.
With the girl’s strength, moving the massive piece of concrete proved to be a manageable task. It still required the young man to put absolutely everything he had.
“I will hold it now,” Mathew said. “Can you make some room to slide it in?” he instructed.
“Give me just a moment,” Nadia replied before hurrying to pull some of the corpses away.
The reason why they stacked the bodies by the bottom of the broken wall was pretty simple.
They had no wet concrete or any kind of mortar. What was even worse, not a single one of them listened during the chemistry lessons that outlined the process of making the simplest mortar.
As such, even though they could likely find all the materials they needed, Mathew’s group lacked the know-how to build anything that couldn’t support its own weight.
‘If we can’t build a wall, then let’s build a rampart!’ Mathew thought back then.
And now, the corpse that the two of them stacked by the wall could serve as a support for the wall Mathew and Nadia brought!
“Okay, let’s push it in.” Nadia signaled as she stood in front of the wall only to pull it towards the gap she created.
‘Just move!’ Mathew urged the concrete in his hands, pushing his muscles to their limits to push it just a few inches further.
For the next few moments, all the young man knew was the pain of overusing his flesh.
‘I just hope I won’t end up paralyzed,’ Mathew thought as a wry smile appeared on his lips.
And then, after a prolonged effort, the chunk of the building’s wall finally rested against the destroyed wall of the compound.
“Can you hold it in here for a moment?” Nadia requested only to let go of the wall and take a few steps to the back.
“Sure thing,” Mathew replied, even though Nadia already moved ahead with whatever idea popped in her head.
Yet, this time she didn’t prove to be someone unorthodox. Rather than surprising Mathew with some ingenious solution, she simply moved over several bodies and chunks of rubble that she could lift before stacking them all at the bottom of the new piece of the wall.
“Okay, let’s see if it will collapse,” Nadia muttered before gesturing at Mathew. “Come here,” she requested, reaching out with her hand.
“Steady…” Mathew muttered, freeing his hands from the burden of holding the wall, only to stop his arms and hold his palms right off the surface of the rubble’s chunk.
He then slowly backed off, keeping his eyes alert for even the tiniest movement.
“But not for long,” Nadia commented, squeezing her lips together into a single line. “Right now, all it needs is a small push to fall over,” she pointed out before shaking her head and starting to move again.
“At least we can use it as the base for the rest of the gap,” Mathew shared his idea. “We could stack the support for it first and then fill the rest of the gaps around it,” he then explained his plan.
The gap was roughly five meters wide. And the chunk that Mathew and Nadia brought only covered about two meters at most.
All in all, for all the effort they had to expend, the progress appeared to be pretty disappointing. But what couldn’t be easily noticed, was how much easier it would be to fill the gaps between the standing wall and the makeshift barricade than actually building a five-meters long rampart made of rubble and corpses alone!
“Guys!” A sudden shout stopped Mathew from delving into his thoughts any deeper.
The young man raised his head and looked in the direction of the voice… Only to see both Leila and Daria rushing back at a breakneck speed.
“What happened?” Mathew asked in a loud voice while rushing to the wall and pressing on it with his shoulder.
If either of the girls were to trip and crash into this wall, the measly support he and Nadia provided wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to hold the huge chunk of the wall in place!
“Emergency,” Leila said as she jumped over the unrepaired part of the wall only to fall down on her knees.
She didn’t follow her initial report with any explanation as she turned out to be too busy fighting for her breath to speak at all.
“A massive horde is nearby,” Daria finished the report for her partner, following closely after Leila.
She took a bit longer to reach and then jump over the broken part of the wall. Yet, she ended up capable of speaking way sooner than Leila managed to calm her breath.
“Are they attacking us?” Mathew asked, a bad feeling filling his gut.
“No, not yet.” This time it was Leila who replied. “But what else they could attack?” she then asked, shaking her head.
Leila then stood up, clasped her open palms against her cheeks, and looked towards the gap in the wall.
“Do you guys want to use this as a sort of foundation?” she asked, guessing Mathew’s and Nadia’s intentions.
“That’s right,” Mathew nodded his head as he moved to the side to pick a suitable piece of rubble. “And since the two of you are here already, we should be able to finish it in no time!”