"Are we safe here? Out of sight, I mean?" Cody asked, nervously glancing all around.
From the part we were sitting under, there was a large balcony that nobody could look down on us. We were protected from above, and in the corner so no zombies turning would ever find us. Cody and I both watched as Dad and the others cleared through the horde, killing them off, one by one.
Gunshots stopped for a slight moment while the last big crowd of the zombies grouped up, and from the door right beside the front of the school, a foot came out.
It swung open violently, and I could see Korin tilt his body toward Dad and the others. He didn't see us and didn't allude to knowing about Cody and me because of how hidden we were.
"You'll see... you'll see how you fucked up, Charlie Weiss," Korin muttered to himself. He pulled the gun out of the holster on his hip and started to raise it up to Dad.
I was still shell-shocked from the time I was almost shot in the head, but Cody wasn't moving. It felt like, in a total of five minutes, I had grown up completely. I knew that the people in this world were terrible, terrible things to deal with. One of them shot at me, and it felt like I aged six years.
It might've been stupid at the time, but I pushed myself up and screamed while running at Korin's back.
I tackled him to the floor while slapping him on the back of the head. His gun slid down the road and closer to Dad than him because of the incline, and the two of us got into a physical altercation.
He elbowed me in the stomach and pushed me off of his body. Korin stumbled as he ran over to his gun, and I retaliated by pulling my own out.
I angled myself so that I wasn't shooting in Dad's direction and would accidentally hit anybody in the crossfire, and by the time I rose my gun, Korin ditched all efforts to head for his, and instead, tackled me to get it.
"LEO! I TOLD YOU! THAT WOULD BE A BAD IDEA!" Korin shouted out. He grabbed onto the barrel as I nervously squeezed the trigger once. Korin was invoking a sense of the truest fear I've ever known in my body, and I could barely think straight as he kept bending the gun away from him.
I remembered, from my time practicing with guns with Dad from a long time ago, that after I shot my pistol a few times, the barrel in front started to warm up a lot until it became hot to the touch. I was so baffled that Korin didn't feel that heat... I didn't even think about an effective way to get him to back off of me.
I got an idea, and squeezed the trigger, again, and again, and again. Because I pulled it nine times, the barrel started to heat up before Korin could understand what was happening, and I scorched his hand. He winced in pain, throwing his entire body away from mine while shaking his hand to cool it off in the cold air of the night, and refocused on me. I didn't have any bullets left in my gun, but it was still a weapon.
Korin began to run at me again, and I reacted by throwing my empty gun at him. It hit him in the face, causing his nose to drip blood, and he tackled me into the glass behind me.
It was the door, so upon being tackled into it, I flew straight through it with him.
I tried to cover my head before I hit the ground, but I failed in my efforts and bounced off the ground as Korin stumbled forward once more.
I held onto my back right after I hit the ground. My combat ability was far too low to get into a fist fight with anybody, so as Korin continued to stumble, I looked around for anything I could use.
Clip boards, binders, notebooks, I threw everything at him, but he was a 'seasoned' man in this apocalypse, and that meant he wanted blood for the blood I made leak from his noise.
Korin smacked me in the face with a wimpy punch, one that threw me into the desk that I stole all of the materials off of, and I slipped onto the floor as he threw me aside.
"Leo, Leo, Leo. You didn't get it when I explained it to you. I've killed somebody before, killing you means nothing to me, I'm already stained by this world... and Charlie couldn't see it. He trusted me when he shouldn't have. I waited all this time to exact my revenge on you ignorant, innocent people," Korin told me. He picked me up by my shirt and threw me over the desk.
I fell over the chair, knocking it down, and losing the breath in my lungs. Again, I felt weird right now as adrenaline coursed through my veins, as it was my first true time. My life was in danger...
In Korin's dramatic effort to seem cool, he started to laugh behind the desk as I unplugged the computer monitor from all of its cables and got it loose from the stand.
"I guess since it is just me versus all of you newbies, I'll have to start by killing you. I'll harden them, and then, I won't be alone in all of this suffering," Korin admitted.
That's what it was all along. A cry for help. He had an interesting cry, but I suppose nobody is the same. I winced my eyes in pain, picked up the monitor, and threw it straight at Korin's head again.
In my childish mind, I didn't want to necessarily kill him, I just wanted him to stop. I'm sure once the adrenaline left my body, I would want to kill him just as badly as he wanted to kill me.
When I threw the monitor at Korin's face, it hit him in the nose again. It bent out of shape and was now bruised, purple, and even more bloody than before.
"You little shit!" Korin screamed out. I jumped off of the desk onto him and tried kicking him in the face before I hit the floor. I overestimated my power, and instead of kicking him, lightly tapped him on the shoulder before falling to the floor.
Korin grabbed me by the leg and tried stepping on my knee in order to cripple me. I rolled around, pushed my body closer to him, and dug my nails into his arm while kicking at his shin. He suffered minor wounds all over his body, and eventually let go when I kicked his finger out of place in his left hand. I had no idea that I was this powerful, as I was a generally small and weak kid. It must've been the adrenaline.
I was narrowly escaping any imminent injuries from Korin, barely dodging his strikes by a breadth of my hair, and running deeper into the school. My goal was to get to the back where I could reach Niko. I knew that Niko would do the hard thing, and the instant he saw Korin, he would put a bullet or five into his skull for what he was trying to do to me.