Chapter 128

Flame Retardant Zombies Because Regular Zombies Aren’t Scary Enough

“What is that?” Some said.

Scratch, scratch.

An ominous sound of a body bag moving as its current inhabitant begins to move.

They say that times of strife are the one time when you truly get to know yourself. There is also the belief that every man has a fear. I must admit I thought myself to be well outside the range of fear for most things. I was never particularly frightened of Heralds, universe devouring abominations, nor spiders for that matter. In fact, given everything that I had witnessed and dealt with over my life, I felt I was well and truly safe. That is, until I saw a body bag begin to move, then another.

Normally, when one sees a body bag, you have a moment of doubt. Did I bury a living person? That is what most people think in the back of their minds at least. Healers, or rather people with Healing magic, particularly those with a passive Healing Aura don’t have such questions. In cases like mine, where we have both Healing magic and Healing Aura activated, we know. Which was why I knew the bodies that were stacked high in the corner were all dead. There was no resonance with my magic to state otherwise, meaning they were dead. Plain and simple, they were dead. So, in that moment, I might have realized I do have a fear.

Eeep!

Someone screamed.

Pyrokinesis.

WHOOSH!

A white-hot flame erupted from the body bags that were used to seal away the people who first contracted and passed away the deadly disease. A disease that up until moments ago was thought to be one hundred percent fatal to anyone who contracted it, regardless of which space faring race managed to contract the super disease.

Call me a little over eager, call me a little zealous in my approach to taking care of bodies who were infected with a flesh-eating disease. But I torched the fuckers. At least I tried to.

“Can you stop screaming like a little girl?” Día asked.

Just like that the high-pitched noise stopped. The fires that I conjured with my mind still raged. I even made sure to use Air-X to create a slight breeze so the ash off the flames didn’t spread to the rest of us and get us all reinfected.

Then I noticed something odd.

Drain.

The energy I was using to create both the flames and the air were being absorbed.

Scratch, slither, scratch.

Worse, the scratching seemed to be encouraging the flames to die down. I watched in horror as, first one, then multiple bodies began to move. There were a few of the newer bodies that did manage to catch fire at first. But the older bodies the ones at the bottom of the stack seemed to be encouraged by the flames, like they were some flame starved reptile coming out to play in the summer heat.

The entire process was a bit unnerving for me, as I felt a clench and pull on my own mana. I don’t know how else describe the sensation, other than a slight tugging sensation on my magic.

“What the?” I said, as I tried to cut off the flow of magic, but then I found that even stopping the flow of energy to my Pyrokinesis my flow of energy to my passive Healing Aura still continued to flow regardless.

Rumble.

The older bodies from the bottom of the pile of corpses began to move, while the still burning bodies on the top of the pile began to topple and shift away.

Badump.

“So, mana sapping, zombies that are impervious to flames.” I say, as I begin retreating.

Bump.

I bump into something, a small girl who was singing songs with me a moment ago. Seeing her, I pause, as I realize I am supposed to be a hero.

At this revelation, panic ensues as everyone begins to leave the confines of the back room where we held up and began healing first. From here, everyone is trying their hardest to get back and get away from us by any means necessary.

“Ah!” The girl cries out, as I see an adult male push the girl out of the way as he makes a near panic filled push to get out.

Seeing the man, causes a switch to flip in my brain. Suddenly the fear I had been experiencing moments ago from the creepy feeling of my internal energies being drained so rapidly by not just one, but multiple flame-resistant zombies is replaced by anger.

Anger that adults would do this to kids, and anger that a kid would have to grow up in a world like this.

I grab the girl and easily move her to hold her in my arms. If worse comes to worse I plan to pop out of here, save the girl and leave the others to be eaten by the zombies. Maybe, I’ll stay for Día, but the jerk who ran over the kid, leaving her as a helpless snack for the zombies. I have no problem leaving him behind.

“Wha?” The girl says, as I pick her up and carry her over my shoulder. She is now facing away from the pile of still moving zombies, which is probably for the best.

“Don’t worry, I am going to do something amazing.”

Poof.

Total Recall.

We appear in an open field with two beautiful women who look so similar that they could be sisters.

“All right, real quick.” I say, pulling the girl down and setting her on the ground. “This is a safe spot. You will not grow hungry, or thirsty here, nothing will go bad if you are here. Just wait here, and I will be back for you.”

The girl looks shocked for a second, but before she can say anything I am gone.

Poof.

Total Recall.

“Where did you go?” Día asks.

I just stare at her, “you know around.”

“Where is the little girl?”

“Safe.”

Día just stares at me for a moment, then shaking her head she turns her attention back to the challenge at hand.

“Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.” She mutters to herself, before turning to me.

By this point, the monsters are slowly clawing their way out from the bottom of the pile.

“There is some good news. The bodies can at least remember some of their prior thoughts.”

“How is that good?”

“That means we might be able to get the zz…monsters to stop for a moment.” Día says, clearly not willing to say the word zombie, for whatever reason. Honestly, I don’t quite know what her problem is, zombies have got to be somewhere down on the whole scare factor, by now. Though maybe a little bit higher given their seeming immunity to my powers.

“I am sensing a but, how can you read their minds at all? They are draining my powers when I try…”

With that Día just nods her confirmation. “That brings me to the problem, these people are being controlled by an external parasite that seems to devour magical energy. I am not quite certain what else to do, as that was as far as I managed to probe their minds.”

“So let me get this straight, flesh-eating bacteria is just a parasite that grows on a host and drains first the body and gooey flesh bits, then consumes the memories and motor functions, before taking over the full body?”

At that, Día pauses, but then reluctantly nods. “More or less.”

With that I just nod to myself. “Any suggestions?”

“Don’t die, also don’t get infected.”

I open my mouth to respond, but then stop myself there are more important things.

“GRAAH!” The first zombie growls as it begins to slowly get up on all fours.

Even still, I can feel the monster pulling energy from my aura, which it is somehow using to fuel itself and regain consciousness a little faster.

“Do something!” Día screams.

Seeing the creature, I pounce on it, only to feel parts of its flesh melt away at my touch. The parts that melt away immediately begin to burn away into my skin, where it feels like my flesh is being burned away by a sottering iron.

“FUCK!” I shout, as I pull back my hand. “Don’t let it touch you.”

“What? Don’t let the flesh-eating disease fueled zombie touch you? No, I was just going to rub its stomach to see if I could teach it to play fetch.” Día says, in an unamused tone as she begins to leave the room.

BANG! BANG!

“Let us out. For the love of the gods let us out!” People are screaming and shouting for release.

Of course, I think the whole thing is useless, as those were the same people that locked us all in to begin with, all so we could die in peace away from them. No flesh eating, mana sapping zombie will stop that.

Realizing we are running out of options, I do the only thing I can think of. I put my hand down on the burning flesh zombie and teleport.

Piff.

At least I try to teleport.

Apparently being so close to a literal drain on my energy makes it so creating interdimensional rifts in space are a lot more taxing than expected. What ends up happening is we end up teleporting only a few rooms over, with the zombie firmly planted inside the walls of a random room.

“RAHH!”

The monster struggles to move but is somehow stuck in the wall. This is perfect, as my plan had me teleporting the monster to my brother’s ship that he was assigned to, and leaving the zombie in his cabin, but this works out even better. Especially considering, I can now go back without fear of letting this monster go.

Taking my still stinging skin off of the creature I pause, to look around and see that I am in a room of a dozen or so hazmat covered employees who are all staring at me with wide eyed astonishment.

Looking around, I can see that quite a few of the people were in the middle of eating, as the utensils with food particles on them up near slack jawed lips would attest.

“Don’t mind me. We were just a little cramped down there.” I say, as I shake my hand, trying to get the tingling numbness to stop. As I move away from the mana sapping zombie and head back down.

Poof.

I return to the room to see the next zombie is within only a few crawling lunges of Día. Seeing the zombie, I lunge forward, and attempt to teleport to the same exact spot.

Piff.

Yeah so I’m two for two, on this whole teleporting a plague infested zombie to an alternate universe. In the grand scheme of things, things could be worse. At least that is what I tell myself.

This time, the zombie once again is caught in the wall, but only its head and parts of its arms are emerged from the wall.

I look around to see that it is the same exact break room, as the first zombie is still there, while the table that several people had been eating at was now vacant.

I Look over at the food and realizing that some of the food was still in a pressurized container, helped myself.

Poof.

I appear back to find Día with the others, though now the third and seemingly final zombie is just removing itself from the pile of corpses.

“Cookie?” I ask, opening up the pressurized container and popping one into my mouth.

Día just looks at me, then with a sneer asks, “tell me you at least washed your hands first?”

I pause, with the cookie part way to my mouth.

Cleanse.

“Yeah, of course.” I lie.

She looks at me for a moment, then just takes a step away, as if I was now infected with the same zombie virus.

Shaking my head, I shove the last of the cookies in my mouth before moving forward to grab the slow-moving zombie, the piff.

Yep, once again I teleport, or at least I tried to. Only to be stopped well short of an alternate universe. Still the breakroom somewhere in this facility was nice. At least I hoped it was in this facility, otherwise I might have spread this virus extremely far away.

Still, this was a good deed.

Being a break room, I found the faucet where I washed my hands with the provided soap and then went back to see Día and the other.

Poof.

“Hey. Did you miss me?” I ask.

Día has a serious look on her face. “That was the last one, but the others say you might want to hurry with burning the rest of the bodies, as the others died an hour after those three.”

At that, I pause as I realize I am going to run out of break room wall space if I continue too much.

“Yeah, let's do that.”

Pyrokinetic BURST!

I create a blazing inferno that is confined by Air-X gusts of wind.

Slowly over time we watch as the ashes get blown back, reburned, then burned again. Finally, after close to an hour there aren’t even ashes to burn.

With that, I feel exhausted. Taking a deep breath, I sit down and let my mind relax.

Finally, after letting me rest for a few minutes, Día came to me and asked. “So two quick questions.”

I nod.

“First, where is the little girl?”

At that, I pause, then disappear.

Poof.

Grab a kid.

Poof.

“She was here all along.”

“What? What happened to the sleeping angels?” The little girl asked.

Ouch. I take a breath, but fortunately before I can say anything, Día continues.

“Secondly, what exactly did you do with the zombies?”

At that, I point to her, but then bite my lip as I don’t exactly know where they are, or what universe they are in for that matter.

“Good question.”

Poof.