Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



We had been driving for only 30 minutes before the first shitstorm hit.

We had just gotten to the part where the crazy cat lady managed to decode the signal and discovered that the alien signal was not an S.O.S. but a warning. But did anyone listen to her? No! I was grumbling to Chen Zi Han how much shorter the movie would have been if they just listened to the woman when the RV came to a screeching stop causing me to almost fall off of the couch.

Good thing Chen Zi Han was really good at catching me or I would have been sent flying.

"Sorry about that," said Feng Dong Yang as he looked out the window at the RV in front of us.

"No worries," I said, patting Chen Zi Han's arm to let me go. Getting out of the RV I walked to the front of the convoy to see what had caused us to stop suddenly. I mean, these vehicles should be able to mow down a horde or two, let alone a human, so there was really no reason to come to such a sudden stop.

"What's going on?" I asked FNG where he stood just behind the first SUV. I looked around and saw the three guys standing in a straight line with a few of their men on either side, guns raised. FNG looked down at me and said nothing. "Okay then, good talk," I said rolling my eyes and walking towards my men. I would deal with FNG later. No point wasting my time and my breath.

Walking up between Wang Chao and Liu Yu Zeng, I looked out in front of us. There was a sight that I had honestly not expected at this point in time, but I guessed that I should have.

To say that it could have been a scene out of a Mad Max movie would not have been an understatement. The vehicles in front of us, 20 in total, were completely redesigned into something that didn't even look possible. Some had the driver's seat 6 to 8 feet in the air with nothing but a string ladder to let the driver get up and down.

Others had what looked like a wolf's head mounted to the front with spikes littered over the body and around the wheels. Seeing the blue, purple, and red blood decorating the outside, I could only assume that they had worked as they were intended.

But more than the vehicles, it was the humans that gave me pause.

I could deal with the leather pants and spiked jewelry that everyone was sporting, but it was the clumps of flesh hanging down from their face, the crazed look in their eyes, and purple flesh sticking out of their teeth that caused me to want to puke.

Nice to know the Reavers were that fucked up even this early in the apocalypse. I thought what I had experienced 4 years from now would have been the birth of them, but who was I kidding?

"What do we do?" asked Wang Chao, his arms crossed against his chest as he watched the line of Reavers about 15 feet in front of him. They hadn't moved an inch since I had gotten there so I could only assume that they were waiting for the leader to show up.  They might be the craziest fucks I had ever seen, but they always obeyed the head.

"That's a good question," I said as I watched the men in front of me. One had a huge chunk of flesh hanging from his jaw, his teeth and mandible visible even with his mouth closed. I wondered how they could still be alive with a lot of those injuries, most self-inflected, but then again, we had zombie sharks wandering around farming humans like cattle. There were just some things that you had to shrug your shoulders about and move on.

"Have you ever seen anything like this?" asked Liu Wei, never taking his eyes off the threat in front of him.

"Mmm," I hummed as I leaned back against Chen Zi Han. "Lived with them for almost a year," I continued, ignoring the men stiffening around me. While they were not laid back before, the tension was even thicker now after what I had said.

"Must have been fun," said Liu Yu Zeng, his eyes narrowing on a Reaver licking blood off of the machete in his hand. The fact that the blood was blue didn't even cause him to pause.

It takes all types to make the world go around, and all that bullshit.I think you should take a look at

"Do we kill them?" asked Chen Zi Han, his chest vibrating behind me. I hummed. "We will, but now is not the time," I said as my eyes scanned the growing number of Reavers and vehicles in front of us. There were several with zombies tied to the front hood, their heads and teeth trying to rip apart anyone that go too close.

I raised an eyebrow at the sight. "Huh," I grunted. When the men around me looked at me in question, I shrugged my shoulders. "The zombie makes a good car alarm. No one is getting near that thing with their limbs attached."

Wang Chao simply shrugged his shoulders before turning his attention back to the spectacle in front of us. "If we are going to kill them, it would be better to do it sooner than later. Their numbers are just growing the longer we wait."

"See, normally I would agree with you. But not in this case. Reavers are a lot like grass. You can pull them up, but if you don't get it all, or you leave some roots behind, they will hunt you down and kill you."

"You do know that grass doesn't actually hunt you down and kill you right?" asked Liu Yu Zeng, giving me a wired look.

"Sure it doesn't," I said with a smirk. No, the grass didn't mutate, but that doesn't mean that I couldn't fuck with my men.

"Bitch," he said half-heartedly as he caught on to my joke.

"But seriously, we need to wait until they are all here. If you leave any member of their tribe alive or allow them to get away, they will never leave you alone until you are dead. I don't even know how they find their targets or are even able to track people across the country, but it's not pretty once they get a hold of them."

This time it was Chen Zi Han that snorted in disbelief. "I can't see anything that they do as being pretty." He was about to open his mouth to say something else when the Reavers parted like the red sea and a man walked to the front.

This man, if you could even call him a man, looked like death incarnate. He was almost 7 feet tall with a barrel chest and the skull of a giant wolf over his head, completely blocking out his facial features. He walked forward, his bare feet leaving tracks in the mud as he made his way toward us.

His eyes, if he had any, were trained on me and I could see his hands clenching and unclenching around the two battle axes, one in each hand. There was red blood running down his neck and onto his bare chest, his only clothing nothing more than a strip of cloth covering the part of him that I never wanted to see without it.

He came to a stop 5 feet in front of us, towering over even the guys at this close of a distance. Honestly, I think I might have reached his belly button, and that made me shudder in disgust. No one spoke, each party waited for the other side to break the silence first.

A second Reaver came up behind the leader, kneeling behind the man and looking down at the road beneath him. "The Head has determined that you will leave your supplies, vehicles, and women behind and he will let half of you go," came the clear voice from the Reaver that was little more than a skeleton with ripped leather pants on.

"No," said Wang Chao, his arms still crossed, not intimidated in the least. I had to give it to the man. At least have of the men behind us had taken a gulp as soon as the offer was laid out on the table. If they weren't more disciplined, I would think that they might have peed themselves. But in their defense, no one could be prepared for the Reavers.

"Then you all die and we keep what we want," replied the kneeling skeleton not looking up once. The Head of this tribe never wavered his non-existent gaze. He never bothered to look at the men, just continued to stare at me.

I smiled as I pushed my men to the side and stepped in front of the giant.

"My mother's daughter is a savage," I sang as I came to a stop. "But you know that, don't you?"