Chapter 54: Corruption

“Holy smokes!” Thompson shouted as the screens shifted to a shot of Coolidge’s swollen, green feet. “What’s going on with Coolidge’s legs?”

Arthur let out a bellowing laugh from atop his chair.

“Look who’s laughing now, you lowly peasant!” Arthur cackled as his opponent struggled to rise off the ground.

“What did you do to me?” Coolidge whispered.

“It’s you who’s at fault here,” Arthur replied, pointing over to Coolidge. “You’re the one who wanted to fight without leaving any margin for errors in your moves. When you do stuff like that, even the slightest of cuts can turn into a total disaster…” Arthur curled his lips into a vile smirk, “…a lesson which I thought you’d have learned well by now…”

“The slightest of cuts…” Coolidge mumbled, her mind focusing on these words without hearing the end of Arthur’s sentence. She looked down to her feet, noticing the bite marks centered at the mass of her green swelling. “Could it be…?”

“Precisely,” Arthur snarked. “You see, my zombies carry a special disease in their teeth and claws called `Corruption’. It’s a real nasty blight…and now that it’s gone and spread through your legs…” Arthur snapped his fingers as his horde of zombies moved towards Coolidge. “…you won’t be running away anymore!”

Coolidge glanced around at the army of corpses approaching her position, then turned back to Arthur with fists clenched.

“…it’s not that I won’t run,” she declared, speaking aloud for the first time this match. “I choose not to run!”

Arthur opened his mouth, paused for a moment, then closed his mouth with a puzzled scratch of his forehead.

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

Ignoring him, Coolidge lifted herself off the ground, steadying her wobbling legs with the support of her staff as Harding let out a sigh of relief from the stands.

“Phewie! It seems like Coolidge’s finally back to her usual cool as a cucumber self! And by the sound of things…I’d say she has quite the surprise in store for Arthur!”

“You actually understood what she said just now about choosing not to run?” Hoover asked. “Because I’m at a complete loss for what she’s planning to do.”

“Yup; I know precisely what she means to do with that cryptic phrase of hers.”

Harding gave a bashful smirk as Hoover waited for her in silence.

“She means to confuse us to no end!”

Hoover rolled her eyes.

“I could have worked that much on my own…”

“In any case,” Harding spoke with an ever-widening grin, “Coolidge certainly wouldn’t have spoken up like that if she didn’t have anything worth saying. All we can do now then, is wait to see what she has in store…”

On the ground, Coolidge looked ahead to the nearest approaching zombie. She glanced down, eyeing her swollen green feet. She breathed in, breathed out, then closed her eyes as she leaned forward, allowing her body to fall down towards the floor.

Then, just before impact, Coolidge struck her staff down onto the ground.

“What the…” Arthur mumbled as Coolidge shifted her falling body to the side, using the momentum of her fall to pivot about the tip of her staff and rotate herself around the approaching zombie.

Coolidge steadied herself at her new location, then fell back down while striking the ground with her staff, again using her momentum to pivot away from another incoming aggressor. Arthur gave a furious scowl from atop his chair.

“Surround her you braindead dolts! Don’t give her a single gap to weave through!”

Coolidge steadied herself, looking out as the remaining zombies formed a tight circle around her. She breathed in, then gave the slyest of smiles.