Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 288: Help Fight The Zombies

Chapter 288: Help Fight The Zombies

We reached the southern gates of the fifth circle before night fell. The guards took one look at us and then just stood there, talking amongst themselves.

"Sorry, the gates are closed for the night," said a younger guard, the only one to approach us since we arrived. This was the gate for people returning to the sanctuary, while those hoping to find a safe place to sleep for the night had another gate that they needed to wait at.

All that to say, my men and I were the only ones standing here.

"That’s nice. But these gates are never closed for me," smiled Bin An Sha as he walked right up to the guard. I almost felt bad for him; Bin An Sha’s smile was sharp enough to cut glass, and we still had six more gates to pass through before we even got to the core of the sanctuary.

"Ooh, tough man, huh?" smirked one of the guards, talking in a circle. His uniform wasn’t put together properly, and he just looked dirty and sloppy. "We are over here trembling in fear."

Now it was Rip’s turn to smirk. "You might not be yet, but give me a few minutes," he laughed, placing his hand on the chain link fence.

"Let me guess, you are either going to ask if we know who you are or are going to demand to speak to our manager," continued yet another man as the guard in front of us blushed in embarrassment.

"I am really sorry about this," he whispered low. "They—"

"Shut your mouth, twirp, before I shut it for you," grunted a third guard as he stormed over to the fence and slapped the boy upside the head.

The kid crouched low to the ground and wrapped both arms around his head as the guard continued to rain blow after blow onto the poor boy.

"Stop!" shouted Si Dong as he stormed toward the fence and started shaking it. "You are going to kill the guy! Stop it!"

"Awe, another bleeding heart,’ sneered the guard who had yet to talk, but the man beating the youngest guard backed off and went to stand beside his four co-workers.

The boy stayed in a ball on the ground, his arms still around his head as if to stop any more abuse from coming.

Crouching down, I got as close to the barrier as I could and pushed my hand through the holes in the links. "Here, take my hand. I can make all your pain go away," I murmured low and soothingly to him as he looked at me in fear.

His face was covered in bruises as blood trickled down from the corner of his mouth. His forearms had taken the worst of the abuse as they started to swell up right under my eyes.

"Fucking bleeding hearts. Don’t worry about him. Those love taps aren’t enough to kill him. God only knows that I have tried a few times now. Come on, Song Tian, be a man and stand up," interjected the guard who had beaten the kid.

"Don’t listen to him; let me help you," I continued, ignoring the catcalls coming from the guards.

I held my breath as the boy tentatively uncurled one of his hands and reached forward, his fingers barely touching mine before he was pulled away from me.

Okay, now I was getting a bit pissed.

"Rip? Be a dear," I said as I rose to my feet and dusted my leggings off.

Rip nodded his head and jumped over the six foot fence that separated us from the guards.

I snorted for a moment. If Rip could clear the barrier so easily, the zombies weren’t going to have any problems either. And even if they couldn’t jump it like my Reaver did, that didn’t mean that they couldn’t use the links as a ladder and climb up.

Clearly, someone wasn’t thinking this through when they built the first barrier.

"What the fuck?" screamed a guard as Rip picked him up by his throat.

"I remember you," smiled my man as the guard went pale. "You were here when we were taking our woman to the healer. You were the one that tried to refuse us entry then, too. In fact, we wasted a lot of precious time dealing with your shit."

I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming next but not needing to see it. Apparently, Cheng Bo Jing knew what was coming too, and covered Wang Chang Ming’s eyes as I heard the sound of flesh being torn off flesh.

Well, in his defense, it had been a while since Rip managed to rip anything. The man was due for some stress relief.

He snarled low at the guards as he walked over to the gate. "Aren’t you going to do something about this?" he asked, looking at Cheng Bo Jing with a raised eyebrow.

"I was giving them the chance to cooperate," sighed Cheng Bo Jing as the lock on the gate melted away and the door swung open.

After we had all filed through, he remelted the lock, closing the door but preventing it from ever being opened again.

"Now, where were we?" smiled Si Dong as he approached the guard who had been beating the boy in front of us. "Right, now I remember. I asked you to stop, and you called me a bleeding heart. Should I show you what a bleeding heart actually looks like?"

I was frozen in shock as I watched Si Dong’s hand going into the guard’s chest and pulling out his heart. It still beat a few times as blood splattered from the wound, the dead guard staring at it in fear and wonder.

"The best way to a man’s heart is through his fourth and fifth rib," smiled Si Dong as he tossed the organ at yet another guard.

Two guards laid in the dirt, their blood soaking into the dry ground under them as the last two stared at us, not sure what to do.

"Don’t hurt them," begged the boy, still lying at the feet of the guard holding the bloody heart. "We need everyone we can to help fight against the zombies."