Declan's way (2)

Grabing the nearest zombie, throwing it as if it was a cannonball on the others and start again; if Judith was trusting was she was seeing, it was the full extent of the battle plan of the man with the cigar and given the strength with which he was launching these 'cannonballs' as well as the damage they were causing when they were reaching 'their targets', he wasn't going to need a plan B to defeat the horde.

"Hm?" Judith felt that someone was pulling the right sleeve of her leather jacket and when she looked at it she saw that it was one of Gabriella's thin hands that was pulling it. Without saying a word she shifted her gaze from her sleeve to Gabriella's face and what she saw there was a fascinated expression...

An expression very similar to the one Gabriella had yesterday when she had told her about a certain woman she admired to convince her that it was worth lowering themselves to ask the man with the cigar to train them if there was the slightest chance that he would accept because it would allow them to obtain the power necessary to survive without having to depend on anyone else, 'But, is that really all she wants?' Judith asked herself with apprehension seeing Gabriella's envious gaze fixed on the back of the man with the cigar.

"And to think that only 4 days ago he was still a normal man." Gabriella declared out of the blue without taking her eyes off the man with the cigar and loud enough for Judith to realize that her statement wasn't only intended for her but also for her brothers, "Do you realize what that means?"

Ewan was quicker than Judith to respond to Gabriella and when she heard what her older brother said, she couldn't agree with him more, "That doesn't mean shit, don't get any ideas. No one is stronger than him in Manhattan, it's a certainty, and I'm saying that without taking into account the fact that I've never seen him use his weapon or any of his skills. I don't think 'anyone' is capable of doing that." He retorted, showing Judith that he too found the word 'normal' inappropriate to describe this man.

"In any case, whether it's in 4 days or 1 month, I don't see myself doing the same thing as him." Josh added with a dejected tone before lowering his eyes to his sneakers...

Judith was sharing the same pessimistic vision as her little brother concerning her chances to equal the power of the man with the cigar, moreover for her it shouldn't be an objective, even less a priority and given that she was now almost sure that Gabriella had ambitions which went in this direction, she wanted to make her understand an important thing, "The reason my brothers and I want him to train us is to have the strength to protect each other. We don't care about being stronger than him and you should too." She told her to try to convince her that her way of seeing things right now wasn't right.

When she heard this, Gabriella turned to Judith and thus finally came out of the trance she was in when she was looking at the man with the cigar. From the way she was staring at her, Judith knew that Gabriella was disappointed in what she and her brothers had just said, "If that's what you think, you'd better scale up your ambitions because sooner or later someone is going to have to eliminate the threat that this guy repre..."

Just as Gabriella was about to finish her sentence, she and the others were startled by the sudden lack of noise coming from the side of the man with the cigar. Suddenly, there were no longer the noisy and disgusting echoes of shattering bones and flesh that they were hearing every time one of the zombies he threw was crushing on his way up to several dozen others in several explosions of rotten entrails and blood, there were only the inhuman grunts of the few 'survivors' of the horde if one could qualify undead with this word.

Judith knowing more or less what kind of conclusion Gabriella's sentence was going to end in, and given that the man with the cigar had stopped throwing those 'projectiles' at the moment she had just referred to him as a 'threat', she began to fear the worst, telling herself that he must have heard what Gabriella had just insinuated.

The atmosphere became tense and Judith's heart skipped a beat, as she gradually directed her gaze towards the man with the cigar to see if her fears were founded she began to have thoughts for which she was afterwards deeply ashamed; her first reflex wasn't to think of the safety of her group but to internally curse Gabriella for having been stupid enough to think that it would be 'ok' to say that at such a distance of the principal concerned whereas even her had took into account the fact that the hearing of the latter was probably extremely sensitive...

A judgment that she found thereafter not only shameful but also and especially hypocritical on her part since she had made a mistake of the same kind with Bruce, and that even though it was justified since Gabriella knew even before Bruce demonstrated it yesterday that it was a very bad idea to take this kind of risk with a powerful awakenee.

Fortunately for Judith, her brothers and especially Gabriella, the man with the cigar quickly gave them a reason to relax by showing them that his attention wasn't directed towards them in particular, "Hey, I'll leave you the remaining ones, but leave at least 8 of them alive." He shouted at the man with the spear making quotation marks with his bloody fingers as he said the word 'alive' before distancing himself from the zombies who were still able to stand.

However, this relief was rather brief because right after he stopped bowling with the zombies, he displayed an even more disturbing attitude...