Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



It was dusk when I first felt it.

We had been walking, quickly, for about an hour and we had just reached the very outskirts of City B. The sun was setting enough that it was casting pink and purple streaks on the horizon. The highway route had been treating us very well, and we were able to make good time using it.

Of course, we had a few incidents where people thought we should save them, and when we didn't there were a few scuffles. But I didn't really think much of it. If they wanted to bring a knife to a gunfight then that was completely on them.

We had passed the "Welcome to City B" sign maybe 15 minutes ago when I realized a few crucial things: (1) my thoughts that the zombies would not be able to reach the middle of nowhere this early on was right… and (2) I didn't take into account that all the zombies were escaping the medical facilities IN MAJOR CITIES right now…. Like City B.

I really needed to get my head on straight if I was going to keep it attached to my shoulders. I had gotten too comfortable in the last year… and that might prove to be a horrible thing. Maybe I should not have been so happy to have that long of a time to prep, I seemed to have forgotten a lot of things that I should have remembered.

But as much as my mind might have forgotten, my body seemed to remember.

I froze, looking around at where we were. There was still a forest to our left, but to our right was the industrial area, filled with windowless warehouses and open spaces. All around us were destroyed cars… but no people.

Wang Chao and Liu Wei made it a few steps forward before they realized that I was not moving. Walking back to me, Liu Wei started to open his mouth to say something, but I held up my hand for silence. Until I could figure out what was setting me off, I was not taking my attention away from the surrounding area.

Their men were smarter than they were because as soon as I had stopped, they formed a circle behind me. Facing outwards, their backs to their fellow soldiers, they raised their guns and stood still, waiting for whatever came next.

I took out my own AK-15 rifle and continued to look around. It took less than a second for Wang Chao and Liu Wei to put up the same defensive positioning and for a few seconds, no one and nothing moved.

When you hear interviews from shark attack survivors they all mention how right before it happened, the world seemed to freeze for an inexplicable reason. Our world was frozen, not even birds made a sound and that stillness meant only one thing as far as I was concerned. The zombies were here… but where?

I continued to analyze the surrounding area, trying to figure out where they might be looking to ambush us from. "Do not freeze when you see them. You need to try and remove their heads as fast as possible. Rapid fire in the same area of the neck will hopefully accomplish it," I started, my eyes never stopping. I would put some swords in the middle of the circle, but I didn't want to give the zombies a weapon if they should break our ranks.

"Anything else they will recover from within a matter of minutes. If you feel a pressure building up inside you, congrats, you are a power user, fell free to direct it to the zombies and not at each other," I continued.

There! Movement in the forest!

I swung my gun around to where the bush made the slightest tremble. One thing that got more humans killed than anything else was assuming that slight trembling was animal related. It wasn't. Animals had a better sense of self-preservation than humans did… and when they sensed a predator in the area, they were nowhere to be seen.

I let out a single shot into the bush. Holding up my hand as soon as I was done to prevent the rest of the men from doing the same.

It worked. A snarl came from behind the bush, but then nothing. I slowly walked towards the place I knew had a zombie and signaled for the rest of the men to follow me.

Maintaining their defensive circle, they advanced with me until we passed the bush and came across a small clearing. I wish I could close my eyes at the sight before me, but I knew that as soon as I gave any sense of weakness, the horde would be on us in a matter of seconds.

Well, horde might be a bit of a stretch… there was just a group of 20 or so zombies couched on the ground gorging themselves on the humans that I could only assume were in the cars on the highway. This was why we were the only ones around… everyone else had become dinner.

The zombie closest to me turned his head almost 180 degrees to look at me and the men behind me. I heard the quiet gasps as the men laid their eyes on the zombies for the first time. I guess my warnings didn't fully prepare them for real life… or maybe they just didn't believe me.

But then again, seeing was believing, I guess.

Crouched on the balls of his feet and the palm of his hand, the zombie was in a position that no human could possibly maintain or even get into in the first place. His light purple skin was easily seen through his ripped jeans and a tattered collared shirt. He was very clearly missing shoes, but there was not a scratch or an ounce of his own blood on him.

His body looked similar to a normal human, but it was on the thin side… not quite emaciated, but still much thinner than anyone would consider healthy. The joints were his knees and elbows which appeared to be enlarged, like balls in between two sticks. But it was his head that was truly shocking.

His head was round… more so than just his face, his entire skull had undergone a transformation so that it almost looked like a ball resting on top of a thick stick. His ears had also become two tiny holes in his skull, almost invisible to the naked eye. A few dark purple veins were streaked across his temples as if he was struck by lightning and those were what was left behind. His nose, or where his nose should have been was simply an open triangle in the middle of his face with fine gills blocking the entrance.

After all these years I knew that the zombies had no traditional sense of smell, instead, they used their gills in order to be able to detect certain chemical signatures including; blood, urine, and sweat. There were also electrical receptors running front, back, and on either side of their bodies from head to toe that could detect the electrical output of their prey. Guess what! Humans didn't even know that we naturally sent out an electrical field from our bodies. They could literally find us with their eyes closed.

Pretty cool, huh?

Now, his eyes… they were round white balls with a small black pupil sunk deep into the sockets and he had three different types of eyelids. I managed to bring back a head to the compound once and let the scientist run some experiments on it. From what we could understand, each eyelid would open and close due to a certain response, just like a real shark. But their vision itself was limited to only 20 feet or so, so they relied on their other senses to be able to hunt, especially from a distance.

The zombie ignored me and the men in favor of turning his attention to the dead body in front of him. Opening his giant mouth that took up the entire bottom half of his head and almost unhinging his jaw, he took a giant bite of flesh, moving his lower jaw in a back-and-forth manner. His teeth clearly needed a sawing motion in order to get through the tissue, fat, and muscles of the… shoulder… he was chewing on.

Sorry, it took me a second to identify where he was eating.

After the bite was removed from the corpse, he turned his attention back to me and mine. Chewing once, twice, he tilted his head back to swallow the chunk of meat. There was an almost hypnotizing quality to watching the bulge move from his mouth and down his throat.

He bared his teeth towards us in a creepy smile… if these things could actually smile... showing off his impressive set of teeth before turning his attention back to his meal.

All of the 20 zombies in the clearing were acting in a similar manner. We were not presenting a threat and they had a meal right in front of them so there were not willing to risk this kill in order to chase a different one. Like it said… they were smart.

I motioned for the men behind me to start backing up, never taking my eyes off of the clearing in front of us. It was so quiet, only to be interrupted by the occasional sounds of ripping flesh and chewing.

We were lucky that these ones weren't hungry, but we would have to hurry up and get to Liu Wei's house before we ran across other zombies that had yet to have their dinner.