Chapter 21

I was usually a calm person. I never really acted out of hatred, grudges, anger, none of it. I'd actually been told before that I was a passive person, much to my detriment, whether that be in life, school, or any other aspect of a human beings existence. Even when I was child taking karate lessons, my sensei had conveyed to my parents that I most likely wasn't suited to being a fighter of any sort. There had only been precisely one instance of this aspect of myself being forgotten completely. That night that I nearly beat my father to death, when everything that made me myself had been condensed into a mindless, animalistic desire to kill.

I couldn't quite describe that feeling, that snapping of an unseen chain, whenever something I cared about was threatened. I had instances of that feeling almost returning, sure, but never in that degree of intensity. And always when something I cared about was threatened. That one time I found out that my sister had been going hungry, the kids at her school taking some of her food because of her apparent meekness. It took a lot of me to remember that they were younger than me by a significant margin. Or the time my final project idea for my freshman year of college had been stolen by a classmate. Even in that instance, that feeling inside of me rose up, threatened to make me snap again.

And yet I held it back. I never wanted to be in a situation where I didn't care about anything other than eliminating that which I believed was a danger. And yet during my entire time as Selected, that feeling had only come to rise up inside me, clawing its way to the surface to make itself known. And yet, when I saw Zach being eaten alive by that shambler, I realized two things. I cared about protecting my new found group more than I realized. And that I didn't care about holding that intense feeling of loathing back anymore.

I punched a hole in the heads of the two shamblers before me before even realizing I had moved. Their blood and bodily fluids were soaked across my whole arm, but I didn't care anymore. I flew back down the hallway towards the mass herd of the undead fuckers, my legs flying at a speed I hadn't even known they could move at. I grabbed the shambler that was currently digging its teeth into Zach, and struck downwards, straight down into the bastard's brain. His head crumpled like paper and it died in that instant. I spun around and kicked another shambler in the face, and the top half of its head flew off of its body completely.

I turned to face the rest of the horde, my face contorting into one of pure focus and anger. I flew into the horde with a blistering speed and became entangled in the mass of bodies. The smell was horrendous, but at that point I stopped noticing anything except the pure, almost exhilarating feeling of pure combat. Again, that flow of combat feeling flooded me, my senses heightened and my moves became sharper.

On some level I noticed that Zach and Hic were on the outside of the horde, trying to make a dent in the massive pile of bodies. I focused on none of their actions. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a glint, and realized that it was the hilt of my sword, the shiny metal almost calling out to me. With a roar, I pushed through the crowd before grasping my sword by the handle. In my hands, it began an arc of destruction, bodies of the undead falling and falling apart in pieces in front of me.

Slowly, the crowd thinned. Each swipe of my sword cleared more and more space, before finally, the head of the last shambler flew off and landed with a thud on the ground. And with the last undead currently headless, all of my previous strength and stamina left me. I took deep, labored breaths, collapsing on the floor and leaning on my sword, the tip buried into the ground. On and on, my breathing came out in ragged gasps, the attempts to fill my blood back up with oxygen failing miserably. And what's worse, the drugs I had been injected with had long since left my system, leaving me drained and exhausted.

I sat leaned up against a wall, dead to the world. Zach and Hic looked at me with their mouths wide open, the shock of what had just happened clear on their faces. But there was another look, one I couldn't quite place.

The pain in my shoulder started to flare up again, the adrenaline of the fight washing away. The searing agony almost made me forget my exhaustion as I raised a hand to grasp my shoulder. I hunched over as pain filled every cell of my body, and I cursed the idiot who fired that gun knowing it wouldn't work.

I heard the light tapping of heels on the floor, and glanced to my right to see Doctor Sheila hurriedly stepping around bodies to get to me. Oddly enough, she didn't even seem bothered by all the now rotting corpses around her. Actually, her body language and mannerisms almost made it seem like this is where she was most at home.

Once she reached me, she forced me to lay down on my back, my head propped up on the leg of one of the shamblers. "Another shot, please!" I gasped out.

She shook her head almost immediately. "What you just had was basically concentrated adrenaline, though mixed with some other stuff. The only reason you can even use it is because you're Selected. A regular person's heart would've literally exploded. Another one to your system so soon after the first would definitely make you go into cardiac arrest." She said all of this in a rush while tearing off the part of my shirt where the gunshot wound was.

"As it stands, you're going to need your heart to be at full efficiency if you're going to recover from this!" At those words, confusion flooded me. I glanced down at my body, and noticed for the first time just how many injuries I had sustained. There were two massive open wounds, along with a few scratches and what looked like the imprints of bite marks.

Doctor Sheila began to inspect every wound, shaking her head at the sight of them. My vision and hearing started to fade as the blood I had lost made itself known in my body. The Doctor slapped my face a few times, the light stinging sensation keeping the impending darkness at bay for a few seconds. She barked some sort of orders at Zac and Hic, but all three of them looked down towards the staircase, and I saw the look of intense fear cross Hic's face, and the look of confusion and shock cross Zach's. I struggled to twist my head to look in the other direction, and the blood I had left in my body ran cold.

Down the hallway, a somewhat short, white skinned figure made its way towards us. One of its eyes was a mess of mangled flesh and scar tissue, and the other was bloodshot and squinted. A look of pure rage was on its face, and in its hand it carried a small stick.

"Alaric!" It yelled down the hallway, still approaching us. "You got lucky, but SLOPPY!! You didn't make sure I was dead!" He started laughing maniacally, holding the stick in a loose grip in his hand. "So now, I declare you my mortal enemy! And with emphatic enthusiasm, I shall return what you did to me IN KIND! I WILL GOUGE OUT YOUR EYEBALLS, BUT NOT BEFORE MAKING YOU WATCH ME BURN YOUR FRIENDS ALIVE! THIS IS YOUR REPENTANCE! NOW DIE!!"

He lunged towards me from down the hallway, his stick coming down in a deadly arc, straight down onto Doctor Sheila's head.