Chapter 396: Not A Good Thing
The plants that I was directing weren’t moving with the careful precision that I had used before.
The interrupted core experiment had left too much power inside them, and now they were responding to everything like starved dogs suddenly released into a room full of meat.
One root wrapped around an attacker’s waist and slammed him into the ceiling while another one split into narrow strands that caught fingers, wrists, and throats, pinning the men down with such happiness that I could feel it in my bones.
Wiggling my fingers without much thought, I sent a thick section of roots through the stairwell wall and drove a man over the railing. He fell into the warehouse below like a ragdoll with a thud that was almost satisfying.
The baby vine launched itself from my shoulder, both leaf-heads bit into the same attacker from opposite sides, one fastening onto his neck while the other tore at his face.
The man screamed and clawed at the vine in fear, but I wasn’t going to let him hurt my baby. No matter how vicious the little thing could be when it wanted to. I shot him between the eyes as the vine huffed back at me in frustration.
"That was mine," I told it, not impressed at just how much it had been talking back to me lately. Maybe this was the terrible twos?
The two leaves hissed at me around mouthfuls of blood even as the corridor filled with bodies.
Zhenlan stood beside me and I could feel the heat and air radiating from his body. I had no idea that he was that warm, but I found myself leaning in closer to the man I was pretty sure hated me more than anything. There was just something... reassuring about him as he continued to fight.
Chenghai was no slouch either. He held the stairwell and killed anything that survived the storm, roots, and bullets long enough to reach the top.
And because of the two of them, nothing got even remotely close enough to touch me.
But we weren’t the only ones fighting it seemed.
There was the sound of more gunfire coming from outside.
An engine roared beneath the warehouse, followed by the metallic crash of something large overturning in the freight yard. Screams rose from below as the zombie herd entered the market’s outer grounds.
The building was shaking beneath the hundreds of bodies pressing through whatever opening the guys had given them.
Wanting to see what was going on, I moved toward the railing.
However, before I could get far, Zhenlan caught me around the waist before I could put any weight on my injured ankle and lifted me over the nearest body.
Looking down at his arm around me, I thought I should fight it more, but then, I wasn’t one to refuse something that I wanted.
Okay... that was a lie, but still. I was happy and I needed to tell my brain something to stay right where I was. It was my brain that was the stubborn one. My body had long accepted it.
"You could have warned me," I said, trying my best to put a disgruntled look on my face. What could I say? Fighting brought out the best in me.
"You would have said no," Zhenlan replied, sounding very sure about himself. Right. I should be protesting. Let’s get to that point.
When I didn’t reply fast enough, he let out a long sigh and put me down beside the upper window, keeping one hand on my waist at all times.
Below us, zombies poured between two walls of shipping containers. Armored trucks sat trapped inside the freight yard, their wheels crushed and doors folded into their frames. It looked like Yuche was having fun right now.
On the other hand, market guards fired from the loading platforms while the attackers were trapped among the vehicles tried to fight both the dead and one another.
It was one of the best action dramas I had watched in a while. Then I pointed toward the horde of zombies. "Those aren’t customers," I grumbled. I mean, they could be... I wasn’t one to discriminate between dead and not so dead, but they didn’t have any money on them.
"No," Zhenlan agreed. "They aren’t."
The roots beneath the warehouse shifted toward the freight yard before I gave them any command.
My eyes narrowed as hundreds of plants hidden beneath cracked pavement and old foundations stretched toward the blood outside. I could feel their excitement pushing against me, but then I felt something else moved beneath it, pulling them in a different direction.
One that I didn’t agree with.
Then, as if the plants turning around wasn’t enough to annoy me, the entire zombie horde stopped following the sirens.
One after another, the dead turned away from the trapped vehicles and lifted their heads up, looking around like they had just caught the scent of something.
Well, it was either that or they were looking for the Money In The Bank briefcase, and I knew for a fact that it wasn’t here.
Every rotting face settled on the window where I stood, even though there were guards, attackers, and several bleeding bodies much closer to them.
Zhenlan’s hand tightened around my waist as Chenghai moved in front of me without being asked. His massive body blocked the window as though a few hundred zombies would lose interest because they could no longer see my face.
They didn’t.
The horde began moving toward us.
The old bite on my leg burned beneath my clothes like it was a fresh wound and the Devourer was standing in front of me, wanting to do it again. The pain was sharp enough that my fingers curled around the railing and I could feel my heart starting to beat faster as a result.
The plants hadn’t called the zombies, and I was more than willing to bet the house that something I didn’t want to see right now had.
And it rhymed with Evourer and stared with a D.
"Well," I muttered as the first bodies struck the shipping containers. "That’s probably not a good thing."