The World Cataclysm - Chapter 49: Common Sense

“…” Both Arthur and Evelyn stood frowning as they listened attentively to Kyle’s parting words. However, at his last words related to her and Mary, Evelyn clenched her fists tightly as she tried to suppress the anger boiling inside her heart.

When Kyle couldn’t be heard shouting and banging the door, Arthur asked in fluster, “Is he dead or did he escape?”

“Why do you even care? Didn’t you hear what he just shouted? His survival isn’t our business now.” Evelyn angrily reprimanded Arthur. As she was agreeing with Dave that Arthur was too kind when it came to such stuff, Evelyn looked harshly at Arthur, observing him.

He had a stupid smile planted on his face, trying to pacify her anger, but she got even angrier looking at him. His blue eyes seemed as deep as an ocean, shining kindly with light, and they seemed to be able to drown other people in them, giving him natural allure. Looking at him, Evelyn sighed inwardly as she thought, “Dave is right! His attitude is too soft to command people. I don’t want to lose Arthur and Mary again.”

Noticing awkward silence between the two, Dave said, “With this finished, let’s return to others. Mary should be worrying about both of you.”

When they had returned, people down there were still in a daze as they gazed blankly at the door. With an image of Dave dragging helpless Kyle upstairs fresh in their minds, they winced when the door was flung open.

All other survivors, including Rebecca and Rachel, felt somewhat uneasy when they had returned without Kyle. Since they didn’t participate in the conversation between Dave, Arthur, and Evelyn, nobody was aware of their decision…only the fact that Kyle was dragged by Dave to somewhere.

Surprisingly, Mary was the first one to leave her stupor as she noticed a gruesome silence between her friends. She pouted as she said, “Meanies! You left me alone again. Do you know how worried I was? Let’s go, tell me why are you so secretive.”

It seemed that leaving Arthur with her had helped her to calm down as she pulled both of her friends while saying something to distract them from their thoughts. Dave wasn’t an expert in human psychology, yet he was confident that Mary didn’t suffer any mental traumas.

“Evelyn, how are you feeling after your fever? Arthur, stop being mean and talk to Evelyn…” Mary pouted as she tried to break the silence between them. Leaning on the wall, Dave had a light smile on his face as he observed the trio of friends. At least, his help wasn’t in vain.

Step by step, Dave was closer to the realization of his plans. In his past life, it took just under a year to deal with all zombies inside the university, establishing one of the small survival groups inside the city. However, he didn’t want to waste a year for it, and he also believed that it’ll progress much faster with him here.

First, he needed to find trusted people who will help him to do it, and of course, he had thought that Evelyn would be a great help since she was the one who did it in his past life. He had hoped that he’ll dump most of the tasks at her, so he would have more time hunting alone, but it seemed he needed to keep a closer eye on her.

‘Commander and hero,’ Dave thought as he thought about the respective roles of Evelyn and Arthur. Both of them had their own strengths and weaknesses, and he hoped that Evelyn could restrain Arthur from taking any rash decisions. Both still needed time to adapt to the new changes.

Well, he still had Adam to dump this task. And no, it wasn’t only to avenge him for the leakage of his secrets. Dave believed that Adam would be a great fit for the leadership role since he was engaged in that field from a young age.

He was been familiarizing himself with business and human managing in his father’s company, so Adam already had an experience of doing it. He was cool-headed, rational, smart, and compared to him, Adam easily socialized with other people.

Currently, their group was small, so Dave could still act as a default leader, but in the long run, it’ll just be a pain in the ass to handle all problems among other survivors. Food distribution, allocation of places, making use of the skills of other survivors, and creating a self-sustainable community were the problems they needed to deal with, so he decided that he’ll dump it on Adam.

After handling all zombies in the university and establishing a survivor group, there still were millions of zombies inside the city itself. It took approximately three years for survivors to clean all the city from zombies and other monsters, including internal strife and conflicts between other survival groups. Only then did they join forces with other survivor camps in the Federation.

Furthermore, since their city was one of the most populated cities in the Federation, it was one of the latest survivor camps to be liberated at that time. Small cities were the first ones to handle all zombies inside their respective areas.

‘Let’s deal with one problem at a time.’ Dave sighed as he leaned on the wall. He decided not to overthink about it since he won’t solve his worries like that. He just hoped that he could finish with it much faster than it was in his past life.

“Ehm…Mr. David, may I know what you did with the guy you dragged upstairs?” Rebecca leaned near to him as she looked at Dave with her hazel eyes. Since they were separated from Adam and Brian, she was the only one who was left with Dave from the initial hunting group. Therefore, being familiar with him longer than others, she was less scared of him.

“We untied him and released him outside on the first floor,” Dave replied as he was thinking about the future.

“Ehm…Good then. Was he able to escape? Did you gave him any food?” She sighed in relief.

“What do you mean by it? We aren’t doing a charity. We chased him away from our group for what he did and it’s unlikely that he was able to run away from zombies when he was surrounded by them.” Dave responded as he looked questioningly at her.

“But…Then, how is it any different from murder?” She asked in fluster as Dave had betrayed her expectations. Indeed, she had killed plenty of zombies in the last days, but she never thought of killing a person.

“Instead of being killed directly, we released him, so he still had chances to survive. I just said that he was likely eaten by zombies. Moreover, it’s easier to view our situation as a state of war, so every criminal or troublemaker should be punished correspondingly.” Dave stated as he glared at her.

“I know that he left Arthur in a grave danger, but isn’t it too much to kill him for it?” Rebecca asked Dave as she recalled the conversation between Arthur and Dave. She was in the same room at that time.

“Ohh, right! You weren’t here when everything had happened. Not only did the guy from before had tried to kill Arthur, but he also tried to violate his girlfriend. It’s too dangerous to keep him with us. And I doubt you wanted to remain in the same room as a rapist?”

“Ehh…Rapist?” Rebecca instantly grew silent as she bit her lips. She turned slightly paler as she became conflicted between her thoughts and life’s value. She just mumbled silently, “But…it isn’t right.”

Dave knew that Rebecca was kind, perhaps, even kinder than Arthur, but he didn’t think that she would also sympathize criminal’s death. Dave didn’t understand did she need to overreact so much and how a person could act so selflessly.

Compared to them, he easily accepted that he was selfish. He wanted to be stronger and level up faster to survive, to protect himself, to protect his close friends, and to do what he wanted because he was selfish. He didn’t want to be restricted by others since he was selfish.

Of course, his first kill wasn’t also impactless on him, yet, as far as he remembered, he got over it pretty quickly. Isn’t it normal to do everything to survive? To be selfish? To favour close ones more than strangers?

It wasn’t that people had never killed the fellow person, so it wasn’t a foreign concept to humans. He was pretty sure that some criminals were given death sentences by the court and such crimes were punished by death in a state of the war.

He didn’t know was he just so heartless since it was his second time living this life, but he didn’t feel a tad of sympathy towards Kyle. On the contrary, isn’t it common sense to deal with a person who will only cause trouble in the future? Moreover, Kyle didn’t seem to be sorry for what he did.

“Brace yourself. We’ll meet such people more than you can imagine, and they need to be dealt correspondingly.” Dave said as he patted her on the shoulders. As he said it, he went to the place with the fewest people and sat cross-legged to meditate, leaving Rebecca deep in thought.