Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 77: Definition Of Insanity

Chapter 77: Definition Of Insanity

A barrage of bullets cut through the quiet afternoon.

"Do you know what the definition of insanity is?" asked Ye Yao Zu as he watched the creature he had just shot down stand up again, the wounds in its body healing right in front of him.

"Why no, Doctor Phil, I don’t. Want to tell me?" joked Si Dong as he skipped out of the creature’s reach. The long black talons were so close to his face that he could feel the breeze they created as they just missed him.

"Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results," continued Ye Yao Zu as he took his tactical knife and shoved it into the temple of the creature in front of him.

"Then are you suggesting that we put down the guns and talk about our feelings?" asked Bai Long Qiang.

"Says the man who hasn’t had his gun since yesterday," laughed Fan Teng Fei. "Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to get my hands on those guns?"

Ye Yao Zu listened to the joking going around as his teammates continued to fight. They had lost even more men, and everyone still fighting knew it was only a matter of time before they died, too. But they were Country K’s soldiers. The best of the best. They wouldn’t go quietly to their deaths.

The creature in front of him seemed to just disappear, the knife stroke he was in the middle of completing simply cutting through the air instead of the creature’s neck like he was aiming for.

If only the earth would just open up and swallow these creatures. They were dead. Beyond dead. They needed to be buried so they couldn’t come back and attack them.

"They’re not zombies, right?" asked Ye Yao Zu as he spoke his thoughts out loud. "We kill them, but they don’t stay dead. They have to be zombies, right?"

"I’ve never seen a zombie like this before," barked Si Dong, his knife slicing the neck of the creature in front of him so deep that he managed to decapitate them. To bad it not only grew a head but a second body as well.

"Oh, so you’ve seen zombies before? In real life?" asked Fan Teng Fei. "Where was I for that?"

"Of course I haven’t seen one before. But in the movies and books, they were a lot easier to kill. Take off the head, and they stayed down," replied Si Dong, jumping back to avoid the two-prong attack from the creature in front of him. Fuck his life. He needed to stop creating more of them.

"So who is to say that these things aren’t zombies then?" sneered back Fan Teng Fei. "If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and fucks like a duck..."

"It’s a zombie?" smirked Si Dong. He lived for getting under the skin of his teammates. It was one of the things he excelled at.

However, even he was being stretched thin, trying to keep everyone’s spirits up. Maybe in his next life, he would be able to meet Wang Tian Mu first, and she would be his.

That thought put a smile on his face, and he didn’t move the next time a claw tried to take his head. The temporary pain would be worth it if he could be the one who got the girl.

-----

I woke up dazed and confused. I didn’t immediately recognize the room I was in, but I knew the eyes staring at me.

"Zeng Xian Liang, you’re here," I said dreamily. I wasn’t quite willing to wake up; I was just too comfortable.

"You are the only one that doesn’t call me Si Dong," chuckled the man sitting on the couch across from me and Cheng Bo Jing. "I don’t know if that makes me happy that you only call me by my name or if it upsets me that you keep trying to create distance between us."

I stuck my tongue out at him before I burrowed my face back into my pillow. This was the best sleep I’ve had in a while.

"Your room is ready for you. You and Fan Teng Fei are sharing one if that is okay with you. I put everyone’s names on the doors. The fridge and pantry are full. Make yourself at home. I’ll wake up when I am good and ready to."

"Go back to sleep, Princess. We’ll be here when you open your eyes again," smiled Zeng Xian Liang, and I could feel Cheng Bo Jing’s fingers take out the bun that my hair was in. I fell back asleep as his fingers played in my hair.

I was so happy I was no longer alone.

-----

"We are losing too many men!" shouted Bai Long Qiang as he watched yet another be dragged into the woods by his ankle. "It’s like they know our moves before we even make them!"

"Well then, fearless leader, what do you suggest?" asked Fan Teng Fei. He pulled a circular object for his pack and flicked his wrist. The object grew in length from something that was only two feet long to something that was almost six feet. The top four feet was a sharp blade.

It looked like a polearm, one of the traditional weapons that his family trained in. He had a few more hidden in his pack, but if he were going to die, he would die with the weapon that called to him.

"We know it takes them more than a few seconds to regenerate a head. How about we take their heads and then blow them up?" smirked Bai Long Qiang. He tossed the object in his hand into the air, and everyone could see the hand grenade.

"Are we going with them?" asked Ye Yao Zu, cocking his head to the side.

"I was hoping that we would be fast enough to take the head and blow them up to get out of the blast range, but we know we can’t allow them to get out of the forest and into civilization." Bai Long Qiang shrugged his shoulders as if he had no problem sacrificing himself and his men for the good of all. But he seemed to have trouble speaking around the lump in his throat as he thought about Wang Tian Mu.

He and his team tried their best to fill up the space the deaths of her family caused, and for the most part, he thought they did a good job. At the very least, she was smiling more than she had before.

But now, her second family was going to be ripped from her hands just as easily as her first one.

"Works for me," shrugged Fan Teng Fei. "I suggest you run while you can."

That said, he started spinning the polearm around, slashing and decapitating any creature that was dumb enough to get close.