Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 318: Hold On Until Dawn

Chapter 318: Hold On Until Dawn

I was about to go check on Wu Bai Hee before bed like I always did, but Bin An Sha quickly put a stop to it.

"Leave her. If she wants to start shit, that is fine, but we will no longer be treating her," he said as he steered me back toward the couch. "She has burnt this bridge and needs to learn that there are consequences for her actions. Seriously, a child knows that. It is time for her to understand it, too."

I wrinkled my nose, the only sigh of protest that I made. I really wasn’t interested in going there to get yelled at again, so this worked for me.

"Fine," I grumbled. "Are we sleeping in the bedroom again?" I asked, quickly changing the subject.

We had been playing musical beds every night since the zombie attacks started. Cheng Bo Jing had encased most of the windows in metal, but I refused to let him do all of them. After all, I wasn’t going to lock Hei outside if he wanted to come in.

However, that did mean that our house was vulnerable to attacks, and the guys really didn’t like the idea of me sleeping somewhere without their protection.

"We’ll do the living room tonight," answered Ye Yao Zu, keeping on schedule. I was pretty sure that the zombies were smart enough to realize that we were just going between two locations, but I could handle the one or two of them that showed up sometimes.

The ants were crawling up and down my arms, letting me know that something was going to happen. But I had been experiencing that every night for the past week or so, so I had just ignored it.

That would teach me.

We must have been asleep for a few hours when the scraping of zombie claws against metal came from the bedroom.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. I had assumed that maybe the zombies weren’t as intelligent as I had given them credit for. After all, if they were paying attention to our habits, they would know that we weren’t there.

I guess I wasn’t the only one to turn over and go back to sleep, thinking that we were safe.

The next thing I knew, Rip was standing on his feet, the head of a zombie in his hand, as he screamed for me.

"They got in!" he yelled as he threw the two pieces of the body to me. Catching them the best that I could, I drained all of the life force out of the cells, reducing the zombie to ashes before it could regenerate.

Bai Long Qiang and Fan Teng Fei stood in front of Chang Ming and me, slowly backing us away from the floor to the ceiling windows and toward the door.

In front of them stood Si Dong and Ye Yao Zu, using their alternative powers of water and earth to create yet another barrier in front of us.

Rip, Bin An Sha, and Cheng Bo Jing stood in front of all of us. Cheng Bo Jing managed to create a metal barrier around the window, funneling the stream of zombies so that they were only facing one at a time.

Rip and Bin An Sha alternated taking out zombies; Rip took off their heads with his bare hands before flinging the parts back toward me so that Bai Long Qiang was able to burn the bodies. Bin An Sha did the same from his side of the room, but he was simply cutting off their heads with a katana that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

"They are still coming!" yelled Cheng Bo Jing. "I need to cut them off at the windows. Otherwise, there are going to be too many of them soon!"

"I can’t burn them fast enough!" replied Bai Long Qiang as flames came out of both hands like he was holding onto fame throwers.

And I was utterly helpless.

My powers worked best when I was outside, but while I could kill them here and now, I needed to be able to touch them. And in order to do that, I would have to let go of Chang Ming...

Taking in a deep breath, I pushed the child up against the back of Fan Teng Fei’s legs as I dived to the side toward one of the piles of flames. Reaching forward, ignoring the blistering heat, I grabbed onto an ankle that was just within reach.

Pulling the life force from that zombie and all of the other ones it was touching, I darted over to the other pile and did the same.

I continued to go back and forth, filling myself to the top before touching Bai Long Qiang and giving him a top up as well. I wished that I could get to Cheng Bo Jing, but I knew that he would much rather I stayed safe than give him more energy.

If we got out of this place alive, I was going to forever make sure that I was always surrounded by a frigging rainforest of plants that I could take from in cases of emergencies.

There was no sign of the zombies stopping any time soon, and I quickly realized that by not leaving any zombies alive to return to their horde, I was, in fact, telling them where the biggest threat was.

And I could now guess that the sound of scratching from the bedroom was to hide the sound of scratching coming from the living room. Fuck. We were too complacent, and now this was the price. I just hope that it wouldn’t be too high.

Concentrating on the threat in front of us, even as the number of zombies started to die back, I failed to hear the sound of the door opening behind me.

The next thing I knew, I was being dragged out into the hallway by countless of hands, and I kicked and screamed. However, before anyone could hear me, a cloth of some kind was placed into my mouth, and someone hit me from behind, knocking me out.

My last thought was that I could only hope that the guys would be able to hold on until dawn when the zombies retreated.