Zombie Apocalypse: Creation

"Yes, I did... I certainly had met one in the past. But they were able to escape before I could catch them."

As soon as Xiaoyun finished answering, Lingang and Wen Pi looked a little surprised, especially Wen Pi, who started to realize what was behind the door.

"Lingang, your army caught the zombie leader?" Wen Pi asked, his voice sound filled with excitement.

Seeing him nod, all three of their heart skipped a beat before Lingang reached his hand over to the door handle.

"Commander Xiaoyun, should we let Wen Pi inside?" Lingang asked as he suddenly paused for a second.

"What kind of question is that? I'm all the way here already. There's no way you guys are excluding me when we're the ones who hold the zombies at bay——"

"It's fine. We can let him in."

Xiaoyun's calm answer caught Wen Pi off guard, but he didn't try to argue again as Lingang finally opened the door.

"Commander Lingang! Commander Chen!" Two soldiers inside the room saluted at the same time.

"You two can go outside," Xiaoyun ordered after saluting back.

"Yes, sir."

After both soldiers headed outside, Kate quickly closed the door behind her before resting her hand on her pistol.

The four of them could all see the living thing inside the room, fully tied up in a chair with its head covered in a paper bag.

If it weren't for its exposed skin showing a slightly transparent green color skin, they would have assumed it to be an actual human rather than a zombie.

"You can talk and understand us, right?" Xiaoyun asked right away as he chose to walk a little closer.

As the zombie remained silent, Xiaoyun walked closer once again before lifting the paper bag, revealing the zombie's face.

"What the..."

Wen Pi was in complete shock, as the zombie leader's face looked completely normal to another human.

Unlike any other zombies he had faced, the level of perfection almost looked like someone had performed plastic surgery.

All four of them felt a little creepy out by it the longer they looked at its face. A sense of uncanniness and unsettling developed in their mind.

"Hello? Can you talk?"

Xiaoyun asked again, his hands waving before the zombie's face in an attempt to have it say something.

Seeing zero reaction from the zombie, Xiaoyun felt a little puzzled as he thought back to the last time he had met with a zombie leader in Foshan.

"Weird... Maybe this one doesn't talk with humans?"

Xiaoyun's murmuring quickly caught Wen Pi and Lingang's attention, and they were both a bit shocked by the information he had just leaked.

"Commander, are zombie leaders supposed to talk with humans?" Lingang nervously asked.

"I don't know... The only thing I know when I met one of them is they were able to communicate with me."

Just as Wen Pi was about to open his mouth to ask something, the zombie leader finally opened his mouth.

"Y-You m-met with o-one of m-my kinds?"

The voices immediately crept the four of them a little bit, as it sounded like a broken record being scratched by a fingernail.

"Yes. You could say that... They seem to be a lot more intelligent than you are."

Xiaoyun's comment seems to finally trigger some sort of emotion as the zombie tries to move its body.

Within seconds, Kate quickly rushed forward to pull him back, standing before him with her gun drawn.

"W-where are t-they?"

"I don't know. Probably somewhere in the world. Or maybe they are dead. I wouldn't know."

The zombie seems to have aged several years, as its movement stopped completely. It looked to the ground as if it had lost all hope.

"Why do you want to attack us and kill us?" Wen Pi questioned, his voice trying to hold in the anger expressed on his face.

"I don't know..."

"What do you mean you don't know? You were the one who directed those zombies at us, wasn't it?"

As Wen Pi's voice became increasingly aggressive, Xiaoyun could see the zombie's frown started to appear on its face.

"I don't know..."

"You know how many people died today because of your fucking decision? Don't you feel guilty at all?"

The silence from the zombie only fueled Wen Pi's anger as he walked closer to the zombie leader.

"Zombies like you deserved to die in a ditch where no one can see you! Your kinds are the scum of this earth——"

"Wen Pi, enough. Yelling at it won't do anything."

As Lingang pulled Wen Pi back to the side, Kate's pistol moving towards Wen Pi's direction made the room fall back into silence.

"Can I ask about your past?" Xiaoyun asked softly, his mind trying to think back to the first time he had met a talking zombie.

"M-My past... I-I don't know."

"You don't know? Do you remember how did you turn into a zombie then?"

"I-I don't know."

Seeing the zombie repeating the answer for the hundredth time, both Kate's and Wen Pi's patients were running thin.

"Why are we talking to this zombie anymore? Just kill it already." Wen Pi questioned.

"Kill...?"

The word seems to confuse the zombie's mind, unable to understand Wen Pi's suggestion of death. But soon, its face started to change.

"Kill... Kill... Kill..."

Seeing the zombie murmuring the word again and again, all four of them started to feel a little unsettling as Kate pulled out her pistol again.

"Xiaoyun, should I——"

"All three of you leave. I'll handle this myself."

"Commander, are you sure——"

"Lingang, let's go."

As Kate turned around and signaled him to leave with her, he hesitated for a second before following her out of the room.

"Are you sure you want to be with that thing alone in the room?" Wen Pi nervously asked, realizing he might have caused the zombie to lose its mind.

Seeing Xiaoyun nodding, Wen Pi didn't hesitate any longer and left the room before closing the door behind him.

With everyone gone, Xiaoyun walks all the way to just one step away from the zombie's face itself.

Examining the zombie's face closer, he could feel a sense of fear—a rat's instinct to run away in fear when they encounter a cat.

"I won't kill you if you're willing to cooperate."

As Xiaoyun waited for a response, he quickly noticed the zombie's vein constantly flicking in color.

From turning red to green all the way back to red, it was almost as if its body was having some sort of internal fight.

"Hello? Can you hear me? I won't kill you if you're willing to answer me."

"Y-You won't kill me?" The zombie asked as it suddenly turned its head up, staring Xiaoyun in the eyes.

"I won't if you're willing to cooperate with me... I'll promise you that I won't kill you."

"D-Deal."

"Very well. I need you to remain silent until I tell you to talk. I need to transport you to somewhere else."

As Xiaoyun grabbed the paper bag and put it over the zombie's face, he could notice its body shaking for a second.

"Zombie can get scared?" Xiaoyun thought to himself as he reached into his pocket for his pistol.

---

"Bang!"

The loud gunshot inside the room immediately sent everyone outside into panic, but Kate immediately rushed over to the doorway before blocking it.

"Mrs. Kate, why are you preventing us from going in?" Lingang questioned, his voice sounding very concerned.

"Did Xiaoyun say anything for us to go in?" Kate questioned back, her face barely reacting to the gunshot inside.

All the soldiers fell into silence, standing outside the building with nervous looks on their faces, except for Wen Pi.

"Why are you guys looking so tense? A zombie doesn't have a gun to shoot your leaders with."

No one responded to his comment, but the soldier's face looked much calmer than before as they began to realize Wen Pi's point.

"Kate, Lingang, and Wen Pi, you can all come in."

As Kate opened the door, they could see a massive pool of blood on the floor, right next to the collapsed zombie hanging towards the floor.

Even though the paper bag covered its head, they could all see a bullet hole right in the center, with the entire bag itself soaked in blood.

"You killed it?" Wen Pi questioned with some uncertainty, his eyes constantly looking for traces of the zombie's possible aliveness.

"Unless a zombie can live through a headshot, I don't see how it could be alive... Kate, can you clean this up?"

As Kate headed towards the zombie corpses, Wen Pi still felt a little uncertain as he tried to walk a little closer to check it for himself.

"My army can clean it up instead——"

"No need. She'll clean up the body. We should head back to your army before it gets too dark."

Wen Pi wanted to argue back, wanting to keep the zombie's body for themselves. But the dark sky outside became the final nail in the coffin for him.