Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 277: Death

Chapter 277: Death

As it always seemed to happen, morning came way too early.

I could hear footsteps walking around our make-shift camp and low voices of men talking. Completely unwilling to open my eyes, I burrowed deeper into Si Dong’s arms. He was warm and comfy, and I wasn’t getting out of bed a moment sooner than I absolutely had to.

"Is she ever getting out of bed? The rest of us are ready to get a move on," came a disgruntled voice from right outside of the tent.

I snorted in my head and pulled the top of my sleeping bag higher up. I was essentially trapped in a cocoon of my own making, my body in a sleeping bag with Si Dong wrapped around me.

It was the best.

"Did you get all the supplies you want?" asked Cheng Bo Jing, clearly not amused by whoever was talking.

"We did. Because some of us start our day before noon," snapped back the man, and I wanted to groan. I have enough issues with falling asleep most nights that I don’t need to feel guilty for sleeping in past an ’acceptable’ hour... whatever that was. "All of the other girls are ready to get on the road, too."

Wait... other girls?

What other girls?

He couldn’t seriously mean....

"The ones from the mall. You didn’t think that we would be willing to just leave them there to be eaten, did you? Besides, as humans, we need to save as many of our kind as we can," grunted the unknown guy, and the ants were back with a vengeance.

I could hear screams in my ears and the sound of flesh being torn from the bodies of people I couldn’t see. My eyes flew open, trying to get me out of my vision, but all I could see was red blood dripping down.

"No!" I gasped as my vision cleared just enough to see Wang Chang Ming reaching out to me, his arm outstretched, his fingers inches from mine before he was pulled away by a zombie.

Now, instead of the screams of people I didn’t know. It was his screams echoing in my ears.

I could feel the heat on my skin as fire users tried to destroy the bodies of the zombies, only for their strength to not be enough.

The ground rumbled under my body as more and more footsteps pounded on the earth around me. I could feel a sharp shooting pain in my ribs as something kicked me, but it retreated as soon as my power came out to taste it.

"Oh look, she’s awake. Time to go." The stranger’s voice pulled me out of my vision of the future as my body turned ice cold, and I started to shiver.

"Cuddles?" murmured Si Dong softly. I could see his fingers reach up to touch my cheek, but I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t feel anything. It was as if I was...

"Dead," I whispered out, still staring at his bare chest in front of me. "Death is coming."

Si Dong paused his motion and turned still. "Little Viper?" he asked, his deep voice sending yet another shiver down my body. But this time, heat accompanied it.

The heat chased away the ice in my body, and I was finally able to move again.

"If they come, there will be death," I told him flat out. I wasn’t able to remember the full vision of the potential future, just brief glimpses. I couldn’t even say if the women were the reason everyone died or if they were just a catalyst to something bigger.

But I did know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if they came with us, everyone would die.

The strange voice let out a bark of laughter, and I realized that there was only a piece of cloth separating me from him, and he could easily hear what I had said.

"Nothing worse than a woman jealous of other women. I had originally thought that she was a sweet, innocent little girl, but if she thinks that she gets to be the only woman around—"

His voice was abruptly cut off, and I knew that Rip was currently strangling him.

"You let us worry about our woman. You don’t even think about her. To you, she doesn’t exist. Do you understand?" growled my Mountain, and I couldn’t help but smile.

It was so tiring to take everything on yourself all of the time... to know that there was someone willing to help share that burden meant everything to me... and for there to be seven people? Even better.

"I said what I said. Take from it what you will," I called out, refusing to back down.

There was a shuffle of footsteps and a shout before everything became peaceful again.

"Come on, Cuddles," smiled Si Dong, his voice returning to normal. "Let’s get you out of this cocoon and some breakfast into you. I am sure that the others want to see you, too."

----

A few minutes later, I found myself in front of a small fire, a mug of mud water in my hands, as Bin An Sha watched me drink it over my shoulder.

I didn’t know what his obsession was with the drink, but if it made him happy, then I was more than willing to keep drinking it.

Even if it did taste a bit bitter. Needed more sugar.

"What did you see?" asked Chang Guo Zi as soon as Cheng Bo Jing picked up the child and brought him into another section of the parking lot to play for a while.

Now that it was daylight, I could easily see the massive concrete lot we slept on last night. Nothing grew here, no matter how much I felt the energy under me struggling to change that.

But I was too tired to give the energy a boost of my own.

After that vision, I felt wrung out.

"I saw us all dying," I replied, looking into my mug for a moment before taking another sip. "I heard the screams of people and the sound of fleshing being torn from bodies... and I saw—" My voice caught as I remembered the look of sheer terror on Chang Wang Ming’s face as he was dragged away from me.