Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 328: The Bigger Picture

Chapter 328: The Bigger Picture

Days blended together as we continued our march back to City D. We woke up, packed up camp, walked for a few hours before stopping for a meal, packed up again, and then walked for a few hours before stopping for the night.

While the ants were still crawling up and down my arms, I quickly realized that there was nothing I could do about it. Any time I tried to find out what was causing them, nothing happened. According to both my power and the guys, nothing was following us, and I had given up thinking differently.

If I was going crazy, fine. But the routine had definitely lured me into a sense of apathy. I didn’t care about anything at all.

We had yet to encounter a single zombie, let alone a whole horde. All of the East Coast zombies had probably joined that tide, and now, there was nothing left.

In fact, I almost wished there had been an attack of some kind just to justify my feelings and break up the monotony of my day.

But if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, and our routine continued until we came across the welcome sign of City D.

It had been broken in two at some point in time, and only the first half continued to cling desperately to the wooden posts. The other half had long given up the fight and rested on the ground, the ’D’ covered in muddy footprints.

I stopped for a minute to take in the skyline of the city I called home, and I let out a long sigh.

It was going to take a lot of work to get it back to how I remembered it.

The group of over 200 humans continued to track down the highway’s off-ramp but came to an abrupt stop as the smell hit us like a brick wall.

Decomposed humans mixed with backed-up sewers were not the most fragrant of things. Well, that was a lie. It was definitely fragrant but not at all pleasant.

More than a few of us gagged, while even more ended up throwing up what little food we had managed to consume as swarms of flies descended on us.

"Is it even safe to go forward?" asked Hu Wen Cheng, his eyebrows furrowed as he tried to breathe in through his mouth.

That was the worst thing that he could have done because I found that with smells like that, you tended to taste as strongly as you could smell.

I would stick to tiny breaths through my nose as I wished for Vicks.

"As long as you aren’t eating the decomposed flesh? Yeah, it’s fine," shrugged Bin An Sha as he stood beside me.

"While we are hungry, I don’t think any of us have reached that level of desperation yet," replied the guild leader as he pressed forward. The rest of us followed after him, our gaze going from side to side as he led the way deeper into the city.

We skirted around bodies that were nothing more than bleached skeletons as they lay out in the sun, easy pickings for scavengers of all kinds.

Not a single one of us spoke. I don’t know if it was because we were scared of eating one of the many flies or if none of us knew what to say. Probably a bit of both.

Entering the first hotel, we could find, Hu Wen Cheng finally broke the silence. "Welcome home," he smiled. "We are going to divide ourselves into groups of ten and each one of us is going to take a floor. If you find dead bodies, toss them out a window. If you find zombies... scream."

A nervous chuckle arose as everyone went to work, diving themselves according to directions and then taking off down the hall.

"It’s creepy," sighed Hu Wen Cheng as he leaned against the receptionist’s desk. "It’s like we are the only people in the world. The silence is starting to get to me."

"We might as well consider ourselves to be the last," I admitted with a shrug. "It might make it easier going forward."

"Well, either way, we need to deal with the dead bodies and get the city cleaned up," grumbled Bai Long Qiang as he looked outside of one of the massive windows in the lobby.

This was his city, too, and I was sure that he had just as many things going through his head as I did mine.

But we could only move forward by taking it one step at a time. The first step was to set up a semi-permanent home and then spread out from there.

Without a backward glance, Bai Long Qiang left the hotel.

"This once belonged to his family," I said as the rest of the men looked at me to see how I was taking the departure. "I think that deep down inside, he was hoping that they were alive and well here."

"They might be in hiding," suggested Si Dong. "After all, military men like the Bai’s would have a backup plan."

We all smiled and nodded as bodies started to fall from the sky and landed with a thud on the ground. Yeah, there was a chance that some of the military men would have found a bunker or something to stay in during the tide, but that was years ago.

Even if they were still alive, chances were that they had moved on.

"We can head to the base in a little bit," I agreed, as more and more things fell down, only for Bai Long Qiang to set them on fire. This wasn’t what I had in my head when I pictured coming home.

Honestly, I thought the entire city would be empty. I thought I would be able to walk into the city and live in my own little world. But as per usual, reality was different from fantasy, and we still needed to move forward and rebuild.

But I had no idea how to do it or even what the future should look like. It was like I was treading water, trying to keep my head above it, but knowing that the second I stopped, I would end up dead.

However, worrying about the bigger picture wasn’t helping right now. We needed to clear out the hotel and settle in for the night. Then we could worry about the rest.

And maybe if I told myself that a hundred more times, I would finally believe it.