Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



"Yes," Li Ming Tao confirmed. "We have never seen them before."

It was a month and a half into the zombie apocalypse and this was the first time an entire military base had seen zombies. This was not going to go well if trying to teach Wang Chao's men about how to fight zombies was anything to go by.

Wang Chao, the rock that he was, simply nodded, neither happy nor upset over the situation. I really didn't know how he did it, but I was grateful that he did.  "Call everyone out," he said to the guard beside him, Li Ming Tao took out the walkie-talkies that I had supplied to everyone on the base and sent out a mass message for them to get their asses out here.

Of course, he was a bit more polite than that, but that was essentially his message.

Rear Admiral Zhou Gang Jia was the first one to arrive inside the watch tower.  The older gentleman walked calmly towards Wang Chao and looked out at the ever-growing horde in front of us. "There is something off about them," he said as he studied the 'people' in front of him.

"Probably because they are zombies," I said, coming to stand on his other side. Startled, he turned to look at me.

"These are the zombies?" he asked before turning his attention back to the horde in front, this time, studying them more seriously. The guys and I have had several discussions with him about what was going on in the outside world and the zombies that have taken over. 

Wang Chao nodded. "Even at this distance, you can see the fact that their heads are more rounded than a normal human's and you can even see the fact that their mouths are distorted," he said, handing the Rear Admiral the binoculars that he was using.

Zhou Gang Jia hummed in agreement as he took a closer look at the zombies. "And how do you kill them?"

"You cut off their heads and burn them to ashes," Liu Wei said.

"And how do you propose we do that?" asked Zhou Gang Jia as he turned to look at the man who just spoke.  Liu Wei smiled and pointed to me.

"Her."

----

"How do you want to do this?" asked Wang Chao looking at me. Technically, even though I wasn't military, I did have the most experience dealing with the zombies.

"Do you remember the hotel?" I replied, ignoring the screech that Zhao Jia Li let out. Wang Chao nodded his head and went down to the gate level to let the others know what was going to happen. Li Ming Tao, Huang Xiu Yan, and the five people still left in the watch tower quickly followed after him after receiving a signal from Zhou Gang Jia.  Zhao Jia Li refused to leave and instead stayed with me and the Rear Admiral.

"Not going down to fight zombies?" I asked, raising an eyebrow to look at the woman beside me.

"It's not like you are going either," she snapped back, her eyes never leaving Wang Chao.

"It's not like I need to know how to fight them," I said, watching as Wang Chao signaled the gates to open just enough to allow a few zombies in. Once there were about 5 inside, the gates were quickly locked shut again. 

"What are they doing?" asked Zhou Gang Jia, completely ignoring our conversation.

"Training," I answered. I couldn't hear what Wang Chao was saying, but I saw the results.  The group of easily 200 men split up into groups of 10 and the first 5 groups got their own zombies.  I appreciated what he was doing, but at the same time, he was going back to his previous military mentality. "But Wang Chao is forgetting a few major things," I grumbled.

There was not a single team that had a cold weapon on them of some kind.  Sure, they had their military-issued knives, but that was better for cutting people's throats rather than taking off a head.  When the first volleys of gunfire rose into the frigid air, Wang Chao looked at me.

Raising my eyebrows, I smiled at the man. "Guns are useless," I said, both to the Rear Admiral and Wang Chao. While Wang Chao understood my sentiment, Zhou Gang Jia looked at me like I just insulted his whole family, both living and dead. "It was the biggest issue with the boys when the apocalypse came about and they encountered zombies for the first time."

Wang Chao smiled at me and I finally understood what he was doing. He was teaching the soldiers here the exact same lesson that he and his soldiers had to learn; that using guns to kill a zombie was a complete waste of bullets. 'I do learn my lessons,' came the deep voice inside my head. I simply smiled in response.

"If guns are useless, then how do they kill them?" asked the Rear Admiral as he continued to watch his men fight against the intruders without success.

"Swords or powers," I replied. I saw that one group had managed to take the head off of a zombie and I quickly sent out a blue flame to finish the job.  As soon as I let my fire go, Zhou Gang Jia jumped and spun around to look at me.

"Powers?" he whispered as if he could not believe his ears.

"Powers," I repeated, allowing my blue flame to come out. I was not sure how it did it, but I managed not to set my snowsuit and mittens on fire as I did.  Secretly, I was seriously impressed with myself because part of me assumed that I would be burning my mitts when I called the flames.

"And just how did you get those?" he asked.

"The vaccine," I replied. "The same one that caused zombies had different side effects for some people."

The Rear Admiral looked around and saw that Zhao Jia Li was actively listening to our conversation. "We will discuss this later," he said, effectively putting an end to the conversation. I nodded my head in agreement and went back to watching the training.

After the 5th group of zombies entered and had been killed, the men were feeling quite confident in their abilities to kill them.  I chuckled as both my boys' men and the Navy became more and more relaxed. "Time to go out and fight them," I said to Wang Chao and Zhou Gang Jia. Wang Chao looked up at me from where he stood on the ground, directing the training.  "They are beginning to think this is easy."

"But it is," said Zhou Gang Jia.  I let out a bark of laughter that the man beside me seemed to think that killing zombies was a walk in the park.

"Should you take a turn, Rear Admiral?" I asked, still chuckling. I walked down the steps of the watch tower and went to stand beside my men.

"Let's go outside and show them what they are really facing. Because 10 on 1 is not the way it normally goes," I said as I patted Wang Chao's chest and winked at Chen Zi Han. Wang Chao nodded his head and we all went to the gate, ready to go outside. I refused to let the horde through because there was no guarantee that one would not be able to go off a hide somewhere when we were not looking.

I was surprised that Zhou Gang Jia showed up at our side before the gates managed to open enough to let us out.  "Admiral?" I asked confused. In my memory, not once has the head of a safe zone ever gone out to fight.

"Rear Admiral," came the five voices around me.

"Yeah, yeah," I said waving my hand.

"I might as well see just how easy it is to kill a zombie myself," said the REAR Admiral with a smirk of his own. I made a mental note to stay beside him, just to make sure that he would make it through alive.

I looked at Liu Yu Zeng who had come up behind me. "You good with this?" I asked as I felt him press himself against my back.  I leaned against him a bit and looked at him. "I don't want you or yours to end up injured."

"Such little faith in us?" he purred into my ear, causing goosebumps to raise under my numerous layers of clothes.  Apparently, the man did not fight fair.

"All the faith in the world," I assured him. But that was part of my problem. Just because I trusted him to come back to me, didn't mean that I wasn't stressed and worried that he would be injured.

He nodded and gave me a kiss on the top of my head. "I need to stretch my muscles too," he said as he allowed the black mist to encircle his hands. Like my flame, the mist didn't seem to affect the gloves that he was wearing at all.

"What is that?" asked the Rear Admiral as he stared at the black mist on Liu Yu Zeng's hands.

"Poison," I said with a smile. As much as I was uncomfortable with the idea when we first discovered his main power, I was fine with it now. A part of me trusted this man that I had interacted with the least of our group… and it was the same part of me that screamed he was just as much mine as Wang Chao, Liu Wei, or Chen Zi Han.

My smile only grew as I watched Zhou Gang Jia shudder at my response.