Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



There was the sound of a large explosion and Cerberus shook under me, causing me to wake up. Out of all the things that I ever thought I would say, 'I was tired of being woken up by explosions' was not one of them. 

"What's going on?" I murmured as I rubbed my eyes, completely unconcerned. "Who pissed Lin off this time?"

"Go back to sleep," soothed Cerberus. However, the last time that this happened, we were being chased by a pissed off biker gang, and as far as I could remember, that didn't turn out too well… for them. "They have things under control, I promise," he continued as he swerved around obstacles that I couldn't see.

Probably because I hadn't bothered to actually open my eyes, but that was only a possibility.

All of a sudden, Cerberus slammed on his brakes, and the back end of the truck went fishtailing. Holding onto the steering wheel, my body jerked from side to side before almost coming to a stop. Grumbling under my breath that road trips never seemed to go according to plan and that the universe seemed to be holding a grudge against me, I opened the door and got out of the truck.

The low light of dusk didn't give me too good of an idea of what I was dealing with, so I asked Cerberus to turn on his headlights.

The road brightened up, revealing a horde of zombies in front of us. Turning around, I noticed that we were, in fact, dead in the center of a circle of zombies.

I had forgotten that dusk was one of those times when the zombies liked to hunt. Stupid shark DNA.

Walking up to where Chen Zi Han was sitting on his bike, I put my head on his shoulder. "What's up?" 

"Not much," he replied, and I am sure that if my head wasn't on his shoulder, he would have shrugged them. "Just a few zombies. But Lin seems to enjoy trying to blow them up, no matter what we said."

I raised my eyebrows and looked over to where Liu Yu Zeng was sitting on his bike. "Well, that wasn't very helpful, Lin," I said with a smile on my face so the bike knew I wasn't overly mad at it. "But that's okay. Just don't use up all your bombs. We might need them for the pesky humans later."

"Sorry," said Lin, his voice subdued.

"All good," I said as I left Chen Zi Han and walked over to Liu Yu Zeng and his bike. Crouching down by the front wheel, I rubbed the front of the bike like I would a puppy dog or something. "Just next time, let the guys take care of things."

"But they weren't," pouted the bike, and I couldn't help but chuckle.  Standing up, I walked to the center of the men and tipped my head back. Letting out a roar, I called the zombie Alpha to me. We were far enough away from City B that I knew that these zombies didn't belong to me.

There was an answering roar, and a blue zombie made its way toward the front of the horde. 

"Surrender or die," I said to it. Now that I knew that at least the Alphas seemed to be able to understand English, I might as well try to have a conversation with them.  I think you should take a look at

"Never surrender," hissed the blue zombie, his body swaying back and forth even as his feet were firmly planted. 

"Then you die," I said. With a wave of my hand, I turned to look at my men. "Anyone wants to be an Alpha?" I asked. I mean, I didn't really know what to do with a horde following us, but it couldn't be all that bad of a thing… right?

"I will," said Wang Chao as he got off his bike and went to stand in front of the Alpha.  He tilted his head back and roared. 

The blue zombie shook his head at Wang Chao's challenge. "Not you. Her," he hissed, pointing towards me.

"Why me?" I asked, confused. 

"You challenge first," replied the zombie with a very human shrug. Were these things evolving? I couldn't be too sure, but between human gestures and human languages, I didn't know if they could be considered to be evolving or devolving. 

Wang Chao turned to look at me, and I could only shake my head. I didn't know if there was a first challenge, first served type of thing, but either way, it didn't matter too much to me. Letting my vision change, I saw the blue flame swaying back and forth in front of me. 

It was taking me less and less time to switch back and forth, and I patted myself on the back for that. I reached forward and grabbed the flame before pulling it back into my body, where the purple, blue, and pink flames descended upon the intruder and consumed it.

I smiled as I watched the body drop to the ground before calling on my purple flame to consume it. 

The remaining horde paused for a moment before they began swaying back and forth again. They turned as one to look at me, and unfortunately, I had no idea where I was going to go with this. I mean, with Beta, it was easy because he controlled all the zombies, and I controlled him.

"Beta?" I called out, knowing that this horde needed to have someone in that position. This time, a lighter blue zombie appeared just behind me at the edge of the zombie line.

"Surrender or die?" I asked again. I should, by default, be able to take over the horde, but having a Beta would make life easier for me. Now, the biggest question… do I send them to City B or do I let them follow us?

What were the benefits of either decision? 

"S-s-s-urrender," hissed the Beta, not quite being able to work his mouth around the human word but was understandable enough.

"Understood. You can follow us but remain hidden. Do you understand?" I asked, going with my gut about what should happen next. I would keep this horde with me just to be on the safe side. You never knew when your own zombie horde would come in handy, especially in this world.