Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



The atmosphere was subdued after all of the zombies had been destroyed. The men and women that were once energetically looking forward to fighting a zombie now realized the challenges in front of them.  They would have to train harder and faster, even in the dead of winter, if they wanted to survive their next encounter.

They knew it, their commanders knew it, but no one knew how to actually go about it. I kept my mouth shut as everyone filed into the entertainment room to be debriefed.  I was snug between all four of my guys, Wang Chao in the front, Liu Wei at my back, and Liu Yu Zeng and Chen Zi Han to my left and right.

I don't know if Wang Chao could sense my unease and told the guys or if they just genuinely didn't want me out of their sight. Either way, I was not complaining. Plus, given how tall they were, they managed to keep everyone from being able to stare at me.

"You owe us some answers," said Rear Admiral Zhou Gang Jia as the last remaining soldiers filed in.

"I don't remember owing you any answers," disagreed Wang Chao as he found an empty seat. Leading me to it, he gently pushed me down until I was comfortably seated before the men formed a semicircle around me.

"Not you," Zhou Gang Jia agreed as he allowed his voice to take on a softer tone when dealing with Wang Chao and Liu Wei. "Her," he said as he pointed a finger at me.  I cracked my neck to relieve some of the pressure I was feeling, but I was too… raw… to deal with this much longer.

I needed sleep and a chance to regroup before people started accusing me of things. I needed to be in control, and as I felt the darkness churning inside of me, I knew that I was as out of control as I have ever been.

'Kill them all,' it hissed inside of my head.

I closed my eyes and continued to stretch my neck, refusing to even acknowledge what the voice had said.  I would be more than happy to embrace this dark side, I was not such an innocent angel that something like wanting to kill people left my heart shaken, but I would do it on my own terms.

'Kill them and be done with it!' the hiss came again, this time more insistent and demanding.

'Oh, shut up,' I hissed back, completely unperturbed about having a conversation with myself. Silence met my statement and I smirked. Li Dai Lu 1 --- Internal Voice 0. I was crushing this shit.

"She owes you nothing," said Wang Chao, pulling me back to reality. 

"If it weren't for her, General Yang Bo Wen would still be alive and the zombies would not have come here!" replied the Rear Admiral. 

I would have accepted this conversation in private… wait, that wasn't true… I would have put up with it in private, but to have him screaming and yelling at me in front of my own men and people I don't know? That was truly unacceptable.

"If it weren't for me, you would have been completely overwhelmed by zombies right now," I pointed out. I was not responsible for bringing a zombie horde here. This was a major city, and as such, would have had many vaccine centers built to deal with the massive population. They created their own zombies.

"You do not speak unless you are asked to," said Zhou Gang Jia as he narrowed his eyes at me. 

"So, you can address me, but I can't reply? That seems somewhat counterproductive," I said with a slight smirk on my face as I leaned back into the oversized chair and crossed my legs in front of me.

"You will obey the orders of the Rear Admiral," said Zhao Jia Li as she came to stand beside the man. 

"I would like to point out that I am not military, so there is no need for me to be obeying anyone. Besides, I'm pretty sure that I suffer from the complete inability to obey anyone, so please accept my apologies for that."

'I think you will obey me just fine, little girl,' came the low growl inside my head.  Unlike the hissing sound, this voice caused me to close my eyes and shiver at its silky promises.

'You don't play fair,' I grumbled in reply.

'Nor do you want me to,' agreed Wang Chao before he turned his attention back to the Rear Admiral and the man that he had admired for most of his career.

"What is this about?" he demanded, no longer interested in beating around the bush.  Given how tired I was, I was grateful.

"She let a General of the Country K's military die without helping him," snapped the Rear Admiral, clearly not getting over the fact that General Fuck Face was dead. Was it really that big of a deal? The man was going to die one way or another. He was just put out of his misery sooner than expected.

Well… that's a lie… I expected it.

"Sir," said Liu Wei as he adjusted his glasses higher on his nose. "Have you actually been out of this base in the last month and a half?" he asked, looking at the man in front of him.

Zhou Gang Jia didn't say anything. We all knew that since the EMP had gone off on November 1st, the base was pretty much on lockdown with no one coming or going until they received orders from the capital.

"No," confirmed Liu Wei. "So you have no idea what is actually going on outside of these walls, and yet you have no problem accusing Li Dai Lu of what? Going AWOL?"

There was a shuffling sound as many of the soldiers around us became increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation. I was pretty sure that they had to be more tired than I was and just wanted to go to bed.

"Everyone is dismissed," said Wang Chao, reading my thoughts.  The men and women in the room moved faster than I thought possible, practically running out of the doors before the Rear Admiral could say something to stop them.

"You have no right to dismiss my soldiers," snapped Zhou Gang Jia as he glared at Wang Chao.

"What is going on, Rear Admiral?" asked Wang Chao as he took one of the newly vacated seats beside me and looked at the man. "You hated that General as much as the rest of us did.  And you didn't see what happened. Those zombies easily killed over 200 people that day, and not all of them were for food."

The Rear Admiral sat down in a chair of his own and let out a huge sigh. "It's not that," he said, sounding so much more like the reasonable man that I had met before. "It is everything."

I let out a hum of agreement. I remembered when I first came to this world and how overwhelmed I felt, how I asked myself every day if this was going to be the day I died.

Change was not easy, especially for humans.

"Start with the first concern and let's work this out," said Liu Wei as he, Liu Yu Zeng, and Chen Zi Han took their own chairs and got comfortable. 

"How do we defeat them?" asked Zhou Gang Jia as he looked from me to the men.

"You train," I said as if it was the easiest thing in the world. And in a way, it was.

The Rear Admiral simply rolled his eyes and looked at Wang Chao as if he would offer a better response.  "You train," the lovely man agreed with me, reiterating my previous statement. "You learn what type of power user you are and you train."

"We have our guns," said Zhou Gang Jia, not fully on board with learning about mutant powers. "We have our technology."

I let out a snort of laughter at that statement.  I remembered watching a nature documentary in my first life where a scientist was talking about his encounter with a leopard seal and how much it terrified him. "Humans, without our technology, are simply lunch," I said, repeating what the scientist had concluded.

"Good things we still have our technology then," snapped Zhou Gang Jia.  I was about to back off and let the men deal with everything, but I needed to make one last point.

"Do we? Where? Because we are just counting down the days until our bullets are gone. We have already lost our electricity that pretty much ran everything. So, tell me, what technology do we still have?" I demanded as I took out a blanket from my space and wrapped it around me.

Thanks to our ingenuity and our ability to build things, humans had managed to convince themselves that they were at the top of the food chain. But in reality? Ants have more of a natural protection than we do.