Boom! Crack!
In the basement of a residential house, two shadows were rummaging through drawers and various cabinets. These two figures were Merle and Hanna.
"Hehehe, mother of God! What am I even telling you?"
There were several dark objects inside a box at that moment, and Merle grinned as he put them into his backpack. The girl beside him couldn't see them at all because of the poor lighting, so she continued searching everywhere without wasting time.
"Alright, stop looking. With what we just got, you could say it was the best thing in this house. Let's move on to the next one."
As soon as the front door of the house they were in opened, Merle saw a few walkers on the street. When their rotten gazes fixed on them, Hanna took a step back out of fear and, instinctively, wanted to make sure she was safely behind Merle's back.
But after thinking about it, she immediately stopped and asked herself: Hanna, do you want to keep hiding behind others for the rest of your life? No, absolutely not—that was exactly what she didn't want. Thinking about her parents and then about Elene, who fought so she could live, she never wanted to be a burden to others again.
Yes, right now she would prove what she was made of!
Hanna was filled with determination. She tightened her grip on the knife in her hand and unconsciously walked forward.
Merle didn't worry about anything other than his objectives. He pulled out a dagger he had just found and went straight toward the first walker. He raised the knife in his hand and stabbed the first walker in the head.
Crack! Boom!
In no time, the sound of a sharp weapon piercing rotten flesh was heard, and the first walker fell straight to the ground.
After killing the first one, Merle kept walking, and the undead fell to the ground one after another without much trouble.
Hanna watched old Merle's skillful movements, her face filled with envy, and her hand gripping the knife handle couldn't help but tighten even more.
After dealing with most of the walkers, Merle turned around and walked back. Looking at Hanna's confused expression, the corner of his mouth lifted, and he pointed at the last walker.
"This one is all yours."
"What?"
At that moment, Hanna felt her heart pounding after hearing Merle's words, and her urge to prove that she could also kill a walker completely faded away.
"Mine..." Hanna's lips trembled, and the hand gripping the knife handle tightly began to shake, her joints feeling as if they had received an electric shock.
"What are you standing there like an idiot for? Get closer to it. Didn't you see what I did? Take a deep breath and keep your distance—steady, precise, and ruthless! Do you understand?"
Taking a deep breath, Hanna tried to calm her heartbeat. She wasn't tall, no more than 1.5 meters, and she was very thin. The large bayonet knife in her hand did not match her small figure at all.
But gathering the courage to step forward, Hanna raised her knife and faced the undead head-on, without any expression of disgust at the sight of that rotten face. Yet slowly, a feeling of fear began to fill her movements.
"Hoo... Hoo..."
After exhaling a few more times, Hanna forcibly suppressed that feeling of fear. She truly wanted to face this undead bravely. She forced herself to position her body, ready to attack, and her large eyes carefully observed her enemy.
As the seconds passed and the distance between her and the walker grew shorter and shorter, she could smell that rotten stench.
Rrrr!
But at the final moment, just as Hanna's life and death were being decided, she succumbed to her instinct and ended up closing her eyes. She only pushed the knife forward, but the blade merely pierced the walker's mouth and did not cause a fatal wound.
The walker's movements were not affected at all. The undead continued walking and stretched out its long, rotten hands toward Hanna's shoulders, slowly dragging her toward it.
"Ahh!"
Feeling the sense of danger, Hanna opened one eye and saw the walker approaching her getting closer and closer.
Was she going to die? No, she still hadn't proven that she could survive in this dead world...
All the people Hanna had met, whether good or bad, their faces flashed before her eyes, and all the things she had never proven herself capable of also began to surface. Regret was deeply buried in her heart...
After losing her balance, she fell to the ground. Hanna's expression was filled with panic. She closed her eyes, not daring to open them, waiting for the tearing pain that her imminent fate had in store for her. A few seconds passed, but she felt nothing.
But at that moment, a hoarse old voice was heard with a mocking exclamation: "How long are you going to keep pretending to be dead?"
"Ah?"
Opening her eyes, Hanna saw that the walker on top of her was dead, while Merle was looking at her with a gloomy face.
"A little help, old man..."
With difficulty, Hanna crawled to the side, finally getting out from under the walker that had been on top of her body.
"Pick up the damn knife!"
Merle roared brutally. His shout caused another walker to approach, and in anger, he let that undead become her test. After it came close, he grabbed it firmly.
But at that moment, Hanna was already terrified that Merle might get hurt just because he was helping her. She couldn't even hear the old man's voice, striking the sides of her body with both hands.
"Trash! Pick up the knife for me!"
But a strong shake snapped Hanna awake. She stared at Merle and then at the walker, not knowing which of the two was more terrifying now.
"Are you deaf? If you don't pick it up, I'll throw you into a crowd of walkers right now so you'll be torn apart. Don't you want to prove that Elenea's death wasn't in vain? Where did that shitty courage you had go?"
Tears began to gather in Hanna's eyes, but this time she held herself back and didn't make a scene.
Gritting her teeth, as if she had made up her mind, she ran toward the walker on the ground, pulled the knife embedded in the mouth of that dead walker, then ran toward the walker being held by Merle and aimed at its head.
The sharp blade quickly sank into the walker. Merle watched the result and then saw that the girl didn't stop stabbing again and again, as if somehow venting herself, but he no longer wanted to be part of it and shouted, "Stop!"
Hanna was startled, holding the knife with both blood-covered hands, tears gathered in her eyes. She looked like a raging mother bear.
Merle threw the dead walker in his hands to the ground with a dull thud, kicked it once, and then looked at Hanna.
Hanna moved to his side like a machine, and when Merle pulled her, she immediately felt her hand being grabbed and heard the hoarse voice in her ear: "Look carefully!"
As soon as he finished speaking, Merle swung Hanna's hand that was holding the knife, and the knife was thrown, landing in the dead walker's forehead.
"That's how easy it is!"
Hanna felt the strength in her hand loosen and realized that a walker could be eliminated in such a simple way.
"Is it... dead?"
"Hey, what do you think? When you deal with this kind of walkers, you have to eliminate them easily. There are things more dangerous than these ugly guys, believe me. If we ever run into those, it's better not to make any noise."
Hanna nodded, half understanding, wiping the blood from her trembling hand. Just now, the surge of adrenaline that had been driving her was gone.
However, there was a smile on her face. Although she hadn't personally killed the walker now lying on the ground, the feeling of facing it herself made her extremely happy.
"What are you standing there for? Let's go!"
"Yes!"
Hanna looked at Merle's back with a smile and walked toward the next house. Maybe she wasn't strong enough to deal with walkers alone yet, but she knew that she had overcome the hardest part.