Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



Recalling my blue flame, I waited the few seconds that it would take for the zombie to regenerate. He looked at me, cocking his round head to the side at an impossible angle, and opened his mouth wide enough that I could see all of his teeth.  And I do mean all three rows of them. 

His head ended up looking like a ball cut in half. If I didn't know better, I would assume that his lower jaw was just going to fall off, but I was never that lucky. This was how they not only showed dominance, but it was also his way of trying to figure out if he could eat you whole, or if he would have to break you down into smaller parts. 

I smiled at him as I quickly dashed up and cut off his right arm.  He looked down at the missing appendage, then back to me, and then started shaking. Rolling his shoulders a few times, it took him almost 30 seconds for that arm to grow back. I know… I was counting.

With his two arms in their proper places and a third one on the floor not far away, we both stood there, staring at each other.  The seconds were still ticking away inside my head, and by the time I had counted to 180, there were now two identical zombies standing in front of me… both their heads cocked to the side and their mouths open.  I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, wondering about the mess that my temper got me into, and then cut off the left arm of the first zombie.

Once again, more shaking and *poof* the arm was back… three minutes later and a third zombie stood up to take its place beside its… sire? Clone? Original? I am not sure what you would call him to be perfectly honest. But I wasn't done making my point yet. I cut the right leg off of the original and the zombie didn't even flinch or lose his balance.  Clone number three popped up after three minutes. 

Finally, I split one of the clones down the center and… would you believe it… each side took less than 5 minutes to become a complete zombie.  For those of us that were counting, that meant I have one original zombie, two zombies from each arm, a zombie from the leg, and finally, a zombie that was originally half of a whole.  If anyone wants to do that math, I now had 5 zombies standing in front of me, 4 of them who were clones of the original.

Looking at the men that were looking at me, I took out the AK-15 that I had put in my space and shot each zombie repeatedly, not stopping until I had emptied a full magazine into them…

We all watch as chunks of flesh flew off of the five zombies, spraying blue blood all over the place. In less time than I could count to 1, they were back in perfect condition. They didn't bother to move from their original positions and I continued to stay in mine.  The six of us just looked at each other, no one bothering to move.

"Any other questions? Concerns? Comments?" I asked the men behind me, not caring about making eye contact with anyone or anything else but the zombies in front of me.  They didn't listen to me the first time and we left my sanctuary in order to go save people we may or may not like. They didn't listen to me a second time and we were stuck on a highway with an exploding airplane, they didn't listen to me a third time and decided to enter the hotel from Hell just to test their abilities.  Well, guess what?! If this was a test, then they all failed!

I snarled when none of the men responded and swung the blade from left to right, removing the heads of three of the clones and the one original zombie. The last remaining clone was too fast and managed to get out of the way.  But it was also because it was the last in the line and my blade had slowed down more and more with each head that was removed before I reached it.

Knowing that I was quickly using up more power than I had, I sent out a blue flame with hopefully enough strength to burn the four zombie bodies and four heads to ashes in seconds. When I was done, I turned my complete attention to the second clone. It snarled at me, once again flashing its teeth, and made a half-hearted attempt to swipe at me with its claws.  I watched as it looked around, and noticed the moment it saw the door to the outside.  I slid to my right, giving it more of an opportunity to run and it took it, rushing to the doors as fast as it could.

Now that the immediate danger was over, I walked over to the stairs and began the long journey to the top of the 40-floor hotel.  Sometimes, not having electricity was a real bitch.

I heard the door to the stairwell open and a rushing of feet that told me Wang Chao and the rest of the men were on their way behind me. If they had any injuries or lost anyone, I didn't know, and quite frankly, I didn't care. They might be mine in a very general sense, but they refused to listen to me and this was the result. Any consequences fell firmly on their head.

"You didn't kill him," said a voice I was a little tired of hearing from today.

"Neither did you," I pointed out as Liu Wei rushed to catch up to me. My zombie kill count stood at 6 for the day, and my human was still at 2… I think. Anyways, seeing as they didn't have the ability to burn the corpses to ash, I knew that Liu Wei and his men had not managed to take out a single zombie.

The 'highly trained' super soldiers that thought guns were the answer for everything, did not manage to kill anything and instead, wasted a lot of bullets that could have been put to better use, like on the humans that would need to be killed in the future. It's not like there was a factory creating bullets anymore… each one was precious and needed to be conserved. But I digress…

Li Dai Lu 6 - Super soldiers 0.

They want to bitch that I allowed one of the zombies to escape, then by all means, bitch away. But I must have missed the part where they came in and helped me… oh wait… they didn't.

Deciding that I had had enough exercise for the day, I picked a random floor and walked down the hall where the rooms were located.  Thanks to the lack of electricity, I didn't have to worry about not finding a place to rest for the night.

A head poked out of one of the rooms along the corridor and I raised my gun, not bothering to see if it was a man or a woman. Hell, I didn't even care if it was a zombie at this point. "Back in your room, lock your door, and leave me the fuck alone," I said as I continued past the person.  He/She/It was smarter than the other men currently wandering down the hallway behind me and they withdrew back into their room.

Deciding on a random room, needing sleep more than anything else, I tried a door and to my luck, it opened on the first try. Scanning around the room with a king-sized bed in the middle, I checked the bathroom and cupboard.

Not finding anything, I turned to the door to see Wang Chao, Liu Wei, and the rest of the soldiers standing on the other side, just staring at me. I walked up to the door and saw Liu Wei open his mouth. Before he could even breathe out a word, I had slammed the door in his face and pulled the deadbolt across the door, effectively locking out the world. Finding a turn lock on my side of the handle, I engaged that lock too, making doubly sure that the men stayed on their side of the hall and out of my room.

Looking between the bed and the bathroom, I went into the bathroom first and turned on the water.  Putting my hand under the shower head, I was greeted with an icy spray. Fuck that. I knew that my blue flame was severely depleted and my pink flame was not up to heating my water quickly, so a shower was out of the picture for me right now. I went over to the bed and without even bothering to get changed, I slid under the covers and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

No electricity meant no elevators, no electronic locks on the doors… and no hot water.  Fuck my life…

However, for the first day of the end of the world, it didn't go too badly when it was all said and done. But tomorrow was a new day and I would have to deal with the boys, and probably Liu Wei's family… and his fiancé.

But if I wanted to make it out of here alive and get back to my paradise, then this couldn't continue. Someone would have to bend… and it wouldn't be me.