Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



Apparently, being able to sleep meant only being able to sleep for about four hours before the echoes of screams woke the boys up. I watched as they startled awake, ready to jump into action and the sound of gunfire burst out in rapid intervals.

But before they could do that, I shot out a small pink fireball at them, hoping to keep them on their perch without hurting them in any way.

'Wang Chao, I hope you can hear me. The sounds are coming from the road, not the forest, don't draw unnecessary attention to us. If you can, tell the others to stay put,' I said, secured in the knowledge that Wang Chao had an open connection to my mind. Watching as he let out a series of hand gestures the others seemed to understand, I relaxed back into my tree and the other four men did the same.

'Do you know what is going on?' Came a deep voice from inside my mind. I smiled.

'Yay! You picked up telepathy! This will be handy. And no, I don't know what is going on, but rule one of the Zombie Survival Guide is to mind your own damn business. Whatever is going on on the highway is not affecting us or our men, so just leave it alone. Hopefully, your men are smart enough to ignore things too.'

I felt Wang Chao's nod inside my head, and I settled back, ready to fall asleep now that someone else could take over the watch. 

The sound of screaming and gunfire continued until the sun started to rise the next morning.

I woke up slowly and stretched my poor, abused body.  I had gotten spoiled in the past year and now one night's sleep not on a soft mattress made my body want to fall apart.  Groaning at one particular knot in my shoulder, I rubbed it and looked around our small clearing. The four men were already awake and staring at me like I had grown a second head.

"What?" I asked as a round of gunfire cut through the stillness of the morning.

"Were you able to sleep through that?" Asked Liu Yu Zeng completely shocked at the idea that I could sleep with a firefight going on a few meters away.

"Yeah," I said, "I mean, it happens a lot. But by about year 5, humans run out of bullets so—" I  continued as I started to climb down my tree.  Once on the sold ground, I started to stretch out more, listening to all of the cracks and pops of my spine as I worked out some kinks.  The men just looked at me like I was crazy.

"What?" I asked, hands on my hips, trying to figure out why they were looking at me like that.

"Nothing," said Liu Wei, shaking his head and heading back towards the highway. The men should be ready to meet us at the very edge. Hopefully none of the decided to play hero last night.

I looked at the remaining three men and raised an eyebrow as I followed Liu Wei back to civilization. I chuckled at that thought as another volley of bullets sounded in the morning sun. There was nothing civilized left in this world.

I came to a stop beside Liu Wei as we stared at the carnage before us. There was really no other way to describe the scene on the highway. The General and his hundred-plus men and women were completely surrounded by wave after wave of zombies. I was going to assume that they created most of them as there were maybe only 20 or so individual zombies that I could see. The rest, numbered in the thousands.

"And that, my friends, is why I don't sleep out in the open at night," I said as another zombie got cut in half by gunfire and two emerged. As blasé as I was being, I was secretly panicking inside. There was no way our small number was going to defeat a horde of this size and there was no way that there were enough people on the General's side for the zombies to be full after eating.

"What the fuck are you waiting for!" Screamed the General as he looked in our direction and saw us. "We need help!"

I looked at Wang Chao and Liu Wei to see their reaction to the blatant call for help. Would they go? Or stay here?

"I told him to go into the woods to make camp," said Liu Wei, not appearing to be too choked up on the slaughter in front of us. I leaned against him to offer my support. Hopefully, he wouldn't take that as encouragement for going into battle.

He wrapped his arm around my side and pulled me in closer. I could hear the rest of the men come up through the forest behind us and spread out.

"What do we do?" Asked Hua Le Yang as he came to stand beside Liu Yu Zeng.

I tilted my head, not really looking at him, but wondering if he was looking at the same thing that I was.  "Do you think you will win?" I asked as this time there was an explosion from a grenade being tossed into the horde.

Hao Le Yang looked at me and didn't say a thing. "Ok," I said, still not bothering to look at him. "Are you willing to sacrifice the lives of your men and yourself to go to their rescue?"

Again, silence met my words as I could feel the men around me shifting from side to side with nervous energy.

"Anyone?" I asked, waiting to see what the majority would decide. "Welcome to the end of the world boys, take a good look," I said. "There will always be a battle and there will always be people that are more concerned with themselves than those in the middle of the battle."

I threw out my blue fire and watched as it encompassed some of the zombies. Nothing really happened other than the smell of burnt flesh traveling to where we stood.  I was originally going to see just want my purple flame was capable of, but I decided to test the men out instead.

"Alright boys, time to see if you got any superpowers," I said in a joking manner. I got Liu Wei and wang Chao to go to each end of our not-so-little group to be able to help those that were out of my range.

"First things first. We are going to start with the elements. Try to picture earth, air, water, or fire responding to your commands. Visualize it in your head and then extend that picture to your hands. Picture a ball of water or fire, think of how it would feel," I said demonstrating with my own powers.

I let out a little jump for joy as I saw a vine coming out of Chen Zi Han's hand. Earth was so important for the food that we would need to grow. When I saw the vine being surrounded by fire, I was less happy but still impressed. When the fire was put out by water, I was downright sulky. Chen Zi Han walked away with three elements and we were just getting started.

Liu Yu Zeng, like his brother, was able to call air, but that was the only element that he had. Thank God for a normal person. As I moved on to trying the metal elements, neither one of the men had access to it, although there were about 5 or 10 of their men that had it in addition to Wang Chao.

We continued to work down the list from common powers to uncommon to rare, and I discovered that Liu Yu Zeng, like the other three, was a complete anomaly with three powers; air, fighting, and toxicity.

I was a bit uncomfortable when I found out about him being a toxic user, simply because of Wang Zi Mo in the past, but Liu Yu Zeng was Liu Wei's brother and I was willing to trust Liu Wei completely. I took a breath and looked back at the ongoing situation on the highway. The General and his men were doing their hardest to stay alive, but they were only making the situation worse.

"Do you men want to try out your powers on this horde or move on?" I asked. It wasn't like I was intentionally trying to save Fuck Face, but the best way to get stronger was to constantly use your powers. The men talked amongst themselves and agreed that they wanted to test out their powers, but not necessarily when it was against such bad odds.

I was impressed with their thinking. "Get ready then," I said as I clicked my tongue a few times. The zombies at the edge of the horde turned to look at us for the first time. I was honestly surprised that it took them this long as we had been working on our powers for the past hour, but hey, it worked out in my favor so who was I to complain?