Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



"I am going to assume that I am in one of the empty fields, maybe even in the pasture," I said, still refusing to stand up. I was pretty sure that my legs were not going to be able to hold me up, not with how hard I was still shaking.

I had never been so grateful for my space as I was at this moment. I had always assumed that in an emergency, it would be next to useless simply because it would put me back in the exact same situation that I was trying to get out of. But at least this way I could get my scuba gear on before going back to being dragged underwater.

Small things that were actually really huge things at the end of the day.

Liu Wei nodded and took his glasses out from where I had no idea, but I was glad he had them.

"How long can we stay here?" asked Liu Yu Zeng, no longer expelling the water from his lungs. 

I shrugged my shoulders. "We can stay here indefinitely," I admitted as I turned my head to look at him. "The only problem is that as soon as we want to go back to the real world, we will go back to the exact same situation that we just left."

"That would be a minor inconvenience," chuckled Liu Wei as he placed his glasses back on and looked at me. "Do we have to go back to the same state that we left?" he asked, his right eyebrow raised as he looked at me.

"No," I said shaking my head. "I only do that when I am around people that I don't want to know that I have a space."

"So essentially, we can get loaded to the gills and then go back?" smirked Wang Chao, clearly the most composed out of all of us. He was simply sitting near my head, his arms draped over his knees as he looked around.

"Too soon," I said shaking my head. I knew the expression, but after almost drowning, anything with the world gills, zombies, sharks, or anything sea related was not something that I wanted to touch with a 10-foot pole.

"Sorry," he said with a shrug and a smile.

"But yes, you are right. We can put on the scuba gear, get loaded for bear, and then go back better prepared," I agreed, thinking that being loaded for bear was much better. At least bears needed to be on dry land. Unless they were polar bears, but I wasn't going there right now. 

"Alright," said Liu Wei walking towards me and coming to sit beside my head. "What happened?" he asked. 

"No idea," I admitted, not worried at all about sounding like an idiot. I honestly had no idea what happened. "I was slowly going into the water when a zombie grabbed my ankle and pulled me under. It then proceeded to drag me further out, keeping me under the water."

"What did the zombie look like?" asked Chen Zi Han. If it was anyone other than one of my guys asking, I would think that they didn't believe me. But since they were my guys I knew they weren't trying to be condescending.

"No idea," I admitted. "I never saw it."

"I saw the one that was dragging me under," said Liu Yu Zeng as went to lay down on his back like me and Chen Zi Han. "But it looked a lot different than the zombies on land. Could they have mutated?"

"I have no idea," I said honestly. "What did it look like?"

"Their heads were more streamlined, more like a shark's head than the round ball-type head of the zombies on land. Mine was also a darker blue color. Not navy blue, but also not light blue either."

"The teeth were the same," added Chen Zi Han as he started to sit up. "The three rows of shark teeth were the same."

"The hands were the same too," continued Liu Wei. "The claws at the end of abnormally thin fingers." He reached down and stroked the slashes at the bottom of my wetsuit. It looked like I was mere millimeters away from bleeding in the water. 

"No idea if the social structures are the same," said Wang Chao. "After all, for the most part, sharks are solitary creatures. Maybe the water zombies are solitary too."

"No, I don't think so," contradicted Liu Wei. "After all, there were at least four more of them just waiting to ambush us as soon as we went into the water to rescue Sweetheart."

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Wang Chao nodded his head in agreement with that statement. However, that was the closest that he had ever come to death in his life, and that stressed him out. He knew what he was dealing with, but the sheer power of those zombies was like nothing he had experienced before. 

He thought that the ones on land were nothing more than a joke, something that was as easy to kill as an ant, and just as annoying. However, what he experienced underwater was something entirely different.

He couldn't even use his powers since he was caught off guard so much. Hopefully, this situation was the exception and not the rule. He was not prepared to be that weak, to be so easily dominated by something that he never really put in his eye.

In fact, the more he interacted with zombies on land, he wondered why Li Dai Lu was so scared of them. Now he understood. She didn't have the ability to truly take them out en masse like she had now. 

Still, he would have preferred to go back to thinking that the zombies were nothing more than a joke.

And if he ever found out that Command Huang Nian Zu knew more than he let on, he would personally rip his friend's head from his spine and toss it into the water.

  "What about you guys?" asked Li Dai Lu, not moving from her spot. Wang Chao could feel her fear racing through her body even now. He still remembered hearing her thoughts. Mind you, those thoughts were interesting, to say the least.