39 Another way to die (1st person POV - special intro)

A man came to me, he said he would cover for me,

With his black rifle, running and hiding, shooting and crawling. Bullets shrieked from everywhere, and grenades made the night a new kind of nightmare.

He looked to his side, a door left open, a woman run by, a bullet in her head and he looks me in the eye.

Eyes burning with stinging sweat, pale face and the smell of death. That's the man who wants to make me fight. That's the man I must protect.

A man you think is on your side, a look in the eye, someone you think you can trust, or it's just another way to not die?

~bang~

"Wake up, girl!" shouted Mark while reloading his rifle, and the girl came out of her own thoughts and gave him a nod while already crawling by the side of the building.

Mark threw a grenade through the window, and she raised from behind, shooting everyone inside.

Smoke came from her rifle as the bodies fell to the ground.

"Advance!!" shouted Mark, and more people came from behind him, entering the building and shooting everyone they saw, stepping on guts and blood on the ground.

The building was akin to a small battlefield, and at every corner, people were shooting at each other, trying to fight for what they believed, fighting for their lives.

Mark raised his black rifle, and pointed to another door, and the girl made way for him, by throwing a flashbang.

Mark jumped inside the room, and bullets rained everywhere. But the only thing the girl saw was the red eyes of that reaper taking all the lives.

"Get ready, we are going to the barracks!" shouted Mark, seeing they took the building they were inside.

The girl came to him and said, "I'm out of ammo," while showing him an almost empty magazine with only three bullets left inside.

Mark checked his own rifle magazine, and he only had five bullets, too. "Take mine," he said while passing his own magazine to the girl.

"But you?" asked her feeling a bit down, because Mark was the best of them all, never got tired, always hit the targets, and kept encouraging everyone to fight and gain ground on the buildings that surrounded the barracks instead of rushing head straight to there and dying like the first wave of the battle.

"I have my ways," said Mark, taking out the Katana from his back. He knew this time would come. He knew the bullets would eventually end. After all, this was the apocalypse.

Mark looked at the shining luster on it, and knew that it was never used, probably was not even sharp.

Mark passed his finger over the blade's edge, and it made a thin cut in his skin. The blade was sharp as it could be.

Seeing the katana in Mark's hand, the girl said, "Err... I think it's made from silver," while pointing to the blade engraving close to the handle.

"So it's very expensive and good?" asked Mark because he knew nothing about swords.

"Not really," said the girl. "Silver is too soft for a sword, but is good for a decorative sword like this one, because it will take very long to lose its shining luster and is easy to maintain."

"A decorative sword?" asked himself Mark, but the cut the sword made seemed very good to him.

"Yes, this sword will probably bend when you hit something. Let me show you," said the girl, and Mark extended the sword for her to take.

The girl grabbed the sword and put below her right feet, while holding with her left hand, and put all her weight over it, as if trying to break the sword with her weight.

"Strange... it was supposed to bend." said her seeing the sword kept intact, "It must be a mixed alloy," said her, grabbing the rifle and smashing it on the sword, because she knew the rifle was made of a mixed alloy that had steel on it and was stronger than the sword made of a mixed alloy with silver.

"Err.... I dont know what is happening..." said the girl, looking at the damaged rifle barrel and the intact sword blade.

"Maybe you read wrong?" said Mark, trying to console the girl and move with his life. They had a fight to go, and they had little time to spare, let alone to test a sword.

"No!" said the girl with conviction, "Before the invasion I worked with this, I worked in selling alloys, so I know how to identify and what they were supposed to do, but this... its strange, silver is a soft metal, that's why it was used in body armors in the past."

At that moment, Mark had a click. "Maybe it's the radiation?" he said, "I mean... the radiation is changing everything... why it would not change metals?"

"Radiation?" asked the girl, a bit stunned by that information, but before she could conclude her thoughts, Mark grabbed the sword from her hand and said, "Throw the rifle high"

The girl, still a bit lost in her thoughts, did as asked and threw the rifle.

Mark grabbed the sword with both hands and hacked the sword against the rifle.

~shin~

The sword passed through the rifle as if it was butter and the two parts of it fell to the ground.

Mark looked at the two pieces of the rifle on the ground and smiled, "I think that silver is the new gold, and this decorative sword is now one of the best swords in the world"

The girl came closer and looked at the blade edge, but saw not a single dent on it, "It's unbelievable, not even a scratch," then she looked up at Mark eyes and asked, "Did you say it was the radiation?"

Mark nodded, but he was not going to explain all in details to the girl now, and said, "Let's leave this for later. We need to survive tonight first," and pushed his rifle toward her, because he now had a new weapon, a weapon that fit him well in this new era.

A silver sword.