Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



The zombie horde seemed to be unending, and no matter how much strength Wang Chao and Liu Wei gained by extinguishing each flame, they were starting to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Clearing a path to the best of his ability, Liu Wei led Han Xi Yang and Jin Si Cong into the eye of the storm.

"Nice of you to come," said Wang Chao, taking out another six zombies. Six seemed to be his maximum at the moment, but it was a mere stone's drop in the ocean when it came to dealing with the zombies around him.

"Well, you know, the party can't start until I arrive," quipped Liu Wei as he dodged the claws of one zombie and gently touched its extended hand. In less than a second, the zombie fell to the floor only to be trampled by the next one in search of a meal.

"Reminds me of City N in Country X," said Feng Dong Yang as he managed to decapitate the zombie in front of him, a giant smile on his face. Wang Chao let out a bolt of lightning, turning the body to ash.

"Was that the one where the Captain slept with the Prime Minister's wife?" asked Guo Bi Ming as he slashed his sword through the throat of a blue zombie. Once again, lightning incinerated the head and body of the zombie before it could regenerate enough to come back to life.

"No, that was –" Feng Dong Yang pauses for a second as he ducked under the put stretched claws of the zombie in front of him only to come up with a left-handed uppercut causing his opponent's mouth to close shut with an audible snap. "The capital of Country Q," he continued.

"Ah, yes!" said Han Xi Yang nodding his head sagely. "But for some reason, I don't remember so many tangoes at the same time. Those were more like termites coming out of a hill."

"Still, we made it out just fine," pointed out Feng Dong Yang decapitating his opponent.

Wang Chao and Liu Wei simply looked at each other and smiled. Not a single man expected to make it out of this basement alive, but by the very nature of their calling, they would go down laughing and joking.

'There has to be a way to take out more at once,' growled Wang Chao to Liu Wei as the two stood side by side, just as they had for countless battles before. 'But I can't take out the flame unless I can physically see them.'

'Li Dai Lu made this look easy,' said Liu Wei, missing his Sweetheart for more than one reason. But he also knew that there was no way that she would be able to come and save them.

'That she did,' Wang Chao agreed.

'And now I know why she said that we were sinking in quicksand, standing still while the world was changing around us.'

'You can tell her that she was right when we get out of this.'

'And throw you under the bus for making me abandon all of the supplies we collected.'

Wang Chao never responded as the claws of the zombie in front of him managed to get through his defenses and were able to rip long ribbons of fabric from his winter parka. Yet another thing that Li Dai Lu was right about. All the extra layers added some protection, but they were also causing him to overheat in the middle of the battle.

He felt his temper rise the more and more helpless their situation seemed. He always knew that he might die on the front lines protecting his country, but not in this way, not because of some genetically altered human with too many teeth. 'Then why do you hold yourself back?' asked a voice inside of his head that he had never heard before. It sounded like a deeper, raspier version of his own, but with a strange accent coming out faintly.

'I am not,' he growled in protest as he took out another six zombies.

'Yes you are,' came the insistent voice. 'You are so much more than you know. Now, do what you were put on this planet to do and kill them all!' The voice ended in a roar, almost like a call for battle.

Deep inside Wang Chao, he could feel the presence of… something… rising out of the depth of his very being as an answer to that call to arms.

'If you want to fight so badly, then fight. If you want to feast on the flesh of your brethren, then feast!' The voice coming out of the darkness growled like a beast, but his words echoed in Wang Chao's mind.

"If you want to fight so badly, then fight. If you want to feast on the flesh of your brethren, then feast!" repeated Wang Chao out loud. And as soon as he spoke the last word, chaos erupted all around them.

-----

'You are lagging behind,' came a low voice from inside of Liu Wei. It sounded like the wind as it blew across the open planes. 'Two have already claimed your Goddess, and now you will die because of these weak zombies? You are lagging behind.' The voice caused Liu Wei to pause for a second, only to have to quickly duck out of the way as a zombie swiped at his neck, attempting to take his head off.

'What do I need to do?' he asked in his head as he grabbed the hand on the back swing and the zombie crumpled to the floor.

'Find out who you truly are,' came the voice.

'That's not overly helpful,' snapped Liu Wei as he pulled off a zombie that had managed to jump onto Feng Dong Yang's back.

There was only silence at his remark as if the voice had drifted away on the same wind that blew it in. Liu Wei concentrated on the horde in front of them, he didn't have time to try and figure out the riddle that someone whispered in his ear, even if that someone sounded a lot like himself.

-----

Jiang Ming Tao lay there, completely at the mercy of the monster dragging him away from his team and to wherever it was that it decided to take him. His hands continued to shelter his face from the uneven surface while the padding of his parka kept the rest of his body protected to a certain degree.

They entered into some type of building, Jiang Ming Tao could hear the sound of a heavy door opening and instead of the snow-covered ground, he was now being dragged across wooden floors. He stared at the lines in the wood, his brain no longer processing what was going on.

Gripping the human by the ankle, the zombie continued to drag him until it reached the entrance of a stairwell. Going down one step at a time, the zombie never took into account the fact that the human's body was bouncing off each riser one by one.

When Jiang Ming Tao's body came to the final step, the zombie simply flung him into the middle of the room by his ankle, not caring about the snap that echoed or the thud from where his body hit the floor. Groaning from the impact, it took him a second to realize that he was not the only one moaning in pain. He slowly raised his head to look at his surrounding, and his eyes widened in surprise. "Chu Chang Pu, Du Ya Ting, Cao Mu Chen, what are you doing here?" he asked in a harsh whisper, no longer able to control his fear.

Just as the words left his mouth, he heard a steel metal door from the top of the stairs slam into the wall behind it with a loud bang causing all of the men on the floor to flinch in fear.

Sprawled out on the floor with some of his teammates around him, Jiang Ming Tao looked up and saw a light purple zombie coming downstairs, its eyes completely focused on the men in front of it. "Traitors," the zombie hissed as it stepped off the bottom step and glided over to them.

"Traitors," it hissed again, this time grabbing Jiang Ming Tao by the hair and pulling him up so that they were face to face. "Do you remember me?" it asked, its round head tilted to the side at such an angle that it looked like it was about to fall off its pencil-thin neck.

"It's okay," the zombie reassured him. Letting go of Jiang Ming Tao's hair, the zombie simply stood up as the man's upper body bounced off the concrete floor of the basement once again. "We will have a long time together for you to remember." The longer the zombie spoke, the easier the words came out until, by the end, it was talking almost normally with only a slight hiss coming out.

Looking down at the four men at its feet the zombie opened its mouth and let out a roar, the likes of which none of the humans had ever heard. That roar was echoed throughout the building by an unknown number of zombies on the upper floors, causing its very foundations to shake.

No longer interested in toying with the humans, the zombie turned and went back up the stairs, slamming the door shut behind him. Left alone in the darkness, Jiang Ming Tao relaxed his tense muscles.  "Does anyone know what that was about?" he asked as he rested his cheek against the cold floor. Silence was his only reply.