Marek was the first to move after that short, tension-thick silence.
He clearly wasn't the type to stand still and weigh someone's intentions when the situation was simple, someone had saved his life, and that was that.
He swung the massive hammer up onto his shoulder like it weighed no more than a stick, trudged across asphalt slick with blood, and stopped in front of Leon. Even through the grime and fatigue, there was something honest in his face, no calculation, no theater.
"Thanks," he said flatly, without drama, spitting off to the side. "If you hadn't stepped in during that second, one of those bastards would've turned me into one of their buddies. I'd be stinking like them right now."
He held out a hand, broad, hard, knuckles scraped raw from impact.
"Marek Domański," he added. "Before all this crap, I worked construction. Now, as you can see…" He flicked his eyes to the hammer and the bodies around them. "…the job description changed a bit."
Leon looked at the extended hand for a fraction of a second, not because he was hesitating, but because his mind was still in combat mode, scanning the edges of the world for movement that wasn't there yet. Once he confirmed nothing was closing in, he took the handshake.
Short. Firm. No pointless pumping.
"Leon Rubio," he said calmly. "Student. Or… I was."
He released Marek's hand and looked back at the gym doors, metal scraped by claws, dented by repeated impacts. People had to be inside. There was no other explanation for that swarm.
"You fight well," Leon added without emotion, like he was stating a fact instead of trying to encourage him. "If you weren't knocking them back with that hammer, we'd have had a lot more trouble."
Marek snorted, like he hadn't expected a compliment.
"Yeah? And you move like you've got a jet engine shoved up your ass," he shot back, half a joke, then his expression tightened as his eyes flicked toward the ice woman.
He was about to speak when he noticed a figure sprinting toward them from between the buildings.
"Well, look at that," Marek muttered. "He finally grew a spine."
Leon turned his head and saw the man emerge at a springy run, bow in hand, quiver across his back.
Tall. Lean. A sharp jawline. A face that looked like it had been designed for the role of "handsome hero" instead of "student fleeing across a zombie campus." Dark hair fell messily over his forehead. His shirt was torn in several places, but his movement had the confidence of someone who believed he'd survive the next five minutes.
Leon didn't need long to connect the dots: bow, distance, headshots.
This was the archer.
"So you finally came out of the bushes," Marek called, waving a hand. "I thought you were going to shoot from hiding until the end of the world."
The archer didn't even look at him.
He passed Marek without a word and went straight to the ice woman, stopping in front of her as if only now allowing himself to breathe.
"Natalia Silva," he said quickly, too quickly, like he was afraid something would take her away if he didn't say it out loud. "Are you okay? Did anything happen to you?"
Only then did Leon understand who she was.
Natalia Silva.
A name everyone on campus knew even if they'd never spoken to her. The most beautiful woman at the university, some said. Terrifyingly ambitious, others said. Five years of studies, year after year, perfect grades, always first place, always undeniably flawless. The first person in the university's history to keep a record like that. The student council had tried to pull her in as president more times than Leon could count, and every time she refused without explaining why.
Now she stood here among zombie corpses, ice still steaming on frozen bodies.
For the first time since Leon had seen her, a small, almost imperceptible, smile touched her face.
"I'm glad to see you too, Adam," she replied evenly, but her voice had a softness that hadn't been there before. "I'm fine."
Marek took in the scene, then looked at Leon, lifted an eyebrow, and snorted, shaking his head.
"Beautiful," he muttered under his breath, dripping with sarcasm. "Hours of fighting shoulder-to-shoulder, and the guy doesn't even say hello because he spotted some pretty little shoes. Romantic apocalypse, huh."
Leon shot him a sidelong glance and let a short smile flicker across his face, but he didn't answer, his attention was already elsewhere.
He turned toward where he'd left the students and lecturers, who were still waiting, tense, unsure whether the nightmare was over or just changing shape.
He strode back quickly, then glanced once more at Adam and Natalia.
"Thanks for the arrows and the ice spikes," he called, pointing toward the cluster of people huddled together, trying not to make a sound. "We're going into the gym. If you want, come with us."
Adam looked at him, then at Natalia, then back to Leon, and nodded.
"That was our plan too," he said. "We were heading for the gym to take shelter."
Natalia turned her back on Adam as Leon walked away, gave a short gesture signaling movement, and started first, as if she simply never had the habit of staying behind.
"We have to do the same," she told Adam. "Gather the people we saved and get them into that gym as fast as possible."
Adam nodded, then walked up to Marek, who was watching him with a heavy, oddly quiet look.
"Move," Adam said. "We need to hurry."
Marek didn't move right away.
He stood there with the hammer on his shoulder, staring at Adam with an expression that felt too heavy to be mere exhaustion. Something in his eyes didn't belong in the moment, as if the decision had been made a while ago.
"It's too late for you," he said at last, almost sadly. "You can't be saved anymore."
Adam frowned.
"What are you talking about?" he demanded. "Too late for what?"
Marek only waved a hand, turned away, and started walking.
"Come on," he threw over his shoulder. "We need to get our people here."
***
Ten minutes later, a group had gathered in front of the gymnasium that shouldn't have been able to exist in one place just hours ago.
Survivors rescued from different parts of campus, by different people, in different states of mind, now stood together as a single mass: just under ninety people, staring at the slaughter spread out before the metal doors.
Dozens of zombie bodies lay in heaps. Some with heads tossed meters away. Others with faces frozen stiff. Others literally embedded in asphalt or slammed against walls. The stench hanging in the air was something between rotten meat, the metallic bite of blood, and the sharp chemical cold of ice magic.
People reacted on instinct.
Some covered their mouths.
Some turned their eyes away.
A few simply vomited to the side, not even trying to pretend they had control.
Fear mixed with disgust, but underneath it was another awareness, if not for the handful who fought, they would be on the same side of the doors now.
Adam and Marek stood at the gym's metal entrance for a full ten minutes, shouting, pounding, trying to convince the people inside it wasn't a trap, wasn't zombies mimicking voices, wasn't a trick.
The only answer they got back was screaming, crying, frantic whispers, and panic.
"Don't open it!" someone yelled from the other side. "They can talk! They can pretend to be people!"
Adam tried again, giving names, mentioning lecturers, explaining what had happened, but the longer it went on, the clearer it became: fear had beaten logic.
Then Marek stopped shouting.
He stepped back, rested the hammer on his shoulder, and spoke calmly, in the same tone he'd used to joke during the fight.
"You've got five seconds. Either you open up, or I open it. And if I do, these doors won't close again."
Silence.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Metal bolts scraped faintly.
The doors cracked open, just enough to let the first people slip through, then widened as panic on the other side collapsed into pure survival instinct.
Leon was among the first to step inside, adjusting the backpack on his shoulders, the one he'd taken back from the girl with the messy ponytail, and only then did he truly see how many people had been hiding in the gym.
Around thirty.
Men and women of different ages. Several students. Several female students. Two lecturers he recognized immediately, because a week ago he'd been sitting in their classes. Now they stared at him with a mix of relief, fear, and suspicion, as if they weren't sure whether the boy in the blood-streaked coat was a savior…
Or the next problem.
Leon instinctively peeled away from the crowd and began checking the interior methodically, moving along the walls, peering into side rooms, scanning entrances and blind corners, the places something could hide. He knew too well that one missed monster was all it took to turn this place into a slaughterhouse.
The gym was enormous, bigger than he remembered from before the apocalypse, or maybe he'd simply never paid attention to its scale. Now, seen through the eyes of someone searching for shelter, it felt less like a sports facility and more like a self-contained structure.
On one side stretched a full indoor basketball court, with stands and technical facilities. Beyond that were storage rooms for equipment, locker rooms, corridors, and deeper in, separated by thick walls, Olympic swimming pools.
There was even a café.
And that was where Leon headed.
Not because he was thinking about coffee.
Because a café meant back rooms. Supplies. Refrigerators. A closed space with a single entrance that could be secured.
In a world collapsing faster than the human mind was built to handle, details like that decided whether tomorrow would even come.