Chapter 372: Come To Mama
The second group of zombies came at them from both ends of the street.
Some stumbled over the bodies ahead of them, while others climbed over cars and dropped onto the road hard enough to break bones. A single runner forced its way through the crowd, its mouth open and arms reaching for Rouxi, only for a strip of metal to flash past Zhenlan’s face and split its skull before it crossed half the distance.
Yuche didn’t bother to wait and see it fall. He stood still as more metal tore free from the abandoned vehicles, twisting into thin blades that hovered around him before shooting into the horde.
Rouxi, on the other hand, stepped forward as roots pushed through the pavement around her boots. The baby vine had already carried her iced tea out of the way and was guarding it near a tree while her baby vine was curled around her wrist, opening its tiny mouths at the approaching dead.
"Try not to destroy the cores," she reminded Lingyun.
He gathered fire between his palms and glanced at the wave of zombies bearing down on them. "I make no promises."
"You will promise me, or I’ll feed you to the plants," Rouxi hissed back, her eyes narrowing in threat even though she wasn’t looking at the other man at all.
"You say the sweetest things," Lingyun replied, shooting her a wink and a brilliant smile just as the first row of zombies managed to reach them.
Zhenlan lifted one hand and released the pressure he had been holding back. Wind struck the road hard enough to lift the closest zombies from their feet and hurl them into those behind them. Before they could recover, lightning tore through the tangled bodies, jumping from one corpse to the next until the entire front section collapsed into itself.
Chenghai, his power being what it was, charged into them before the smoke cleared.
He caught one zombie by the throat, swung it into two others, and drove all three into the side of an abandoned car, causing it to cave beneath the impact. Another zombie latched onto his shoulder, getting ready to bite him, but Chenghai simply reached back, grabbed it by the skull, and tore it free before crushing its head between both hands.
Fire swept past him in a narrow line, proving yet again that Lingyun was always willing to listen to Rouxi, no matter what he said.
His flames cut through the zombies’ faces and throats without spreading far enough to engulf the bodies. The undead fell in burning sections while Yuche’s metal pierced anything that made it through. Roots caught ankles, vines tightened around necks, and grass twisted into sharp cords that pulled the dead off balance before they could reach Rouxi.
The street had become nothing more than noise and movement.
Zhenlan drew another charge into his palm, feeling the power inside his well surge higher than it had before. The lightning responded faster this time. It didn’t fight him like it used to in his past life, nor did it scatter beyond where he wanted it to go.
Rouxi glanced toward him as another bolt tore through the horde, a smile on her face. "Do that again," she ordered, raising her eyebrow in challenge.
Zhenlan, who was more like Lingyun than he was willing to admit, raised both hands as the next wave of zombies crashed toward them.
He sent the wind low this time, sweeping it across the pavement instead of striking the zombies directly. Legs tangled together as the front rows collapsed, and the bodies behind them had nowhere to go except over the top. Within seconds, the road had become a pile of arms, legs, and snapping mouths struggling to pull themselves free.
Lightning cracked from his hands before they could.
The current travelled through the tangled bodies, lighting them from the inside as one zombie after another jerked against the pavement. The smell of burned flesh thickened in the air, but Zhenlan held the charge until the last set of fingers stopped clawing at the ground.
"Amazing," Rouxi called out.
The single word sent a ridiculous spark of satisfaction through him, but he didn’t have time to enjoy it. A zombie crawled out from beneath the pile and lunged for his ankle. Zhenlan kicked it back, only for a root to whip around its neck and drag it across the road toward Rouxi.
She drove a wooden spike through its mouth without losing her smile. "Just because I compliment you doesn’t mean that you don’t have to pay attention to what is going on around you," she told him.
"I was paying attention," he hissed back before he could stop himself. Normally, he wouldn’t have bothered to justify himself, but he didn’t like the idea of Rouxi looking at him like he was weak... or not paying attention.
"You can’t be paying attention to the zombies if you were staring at me," she countered, calling him out on both things.
Lingyun laughed as he ducked beneath a swinging arm and sent a concentrated burst of fire through the zombie’s face. "You really can’t blame the man," he called out. "We all were."
Zhenlan ignored them both and pulled another charge into his hands.
The horde kept coming, filling every space they cleared. Zombies climbed over the dead without slowing, trampling bodies flat beneath their feet as they pushed closer. Some were faster than the others, their movements sharp and almost human as they darted between Yuche’s blades.
Rouxi caught the first runner with a vine around its waist and swung it into the side of a house. The impact cracked the brickwork, but the creature twisted in the air before its body hit the ground and came straight back toward her.
The smile on her face didn’t move at all.
The roots beneath the road erupted upward, catching the zombie from three directions and tearing it apart before it reached her. Rouxi laughed as blood sprayed across the grass, but Zhenlan saw the way her right hand closed around her knife afterward.
Too tight.
Her knuckles had gone white.
The expression on her face was still bright and vicious, yet something beneath it had locked into place. She had seen the runner coming. She had stopped it easily. There was no reason for her fingers to shake when she loosened them again.
Zhenlan stepped closer without making it obvious.
Rouxi noticed anyway.
"Don’t hover," she warned, sending another root through the chest of a zombie that had broken past Chenghai.
"I’m not hovering," he called back, his eyes scanning over the zombies that just kept coming forward.
"You are," she snapped. "You’re close enough that I can feel you thinking."
"That sounds like a you problem," he countered. But he was fully hovering.
Her grin widened, but it took half a second too long.
Before Zhenlan could decide whether to say anything, the pavement beneath them trembled.
The movement was stronger than before, causing abandoned cars to rocked against their tires, and a crack to race through the road between Rouxi and the oncoming dead. Several zombies stumbled, but they didn’t fall. Instead, they turned together toward the far end of the street.
A low roar rolled between the houses.
It wasn’t the broken groan of the dead crowding around them. It was deeper, heavy enough to vibrate through Zhenlan’s chest and make the surface of Rouxi’s abandoned iced tea ripple where the baby vine was still holding it beneath the tree.
The horde parted, and something pushed through the mass from behind, throwing smaller zombies aside as though they weighed nothing.
Zhenlan could only see pieces at first—a shoulder covered in grey stone, an arm thick enough to crush a man’s chest, and faint green light pulsing through cracks in the hardened flesh.
Rouxi’s attention locked onto the glow and every root around her went still.
Her smile sharpened as the creature stepped into view, towering over the zombies crowding the road.
"Come to mama," she purred.
Lingyun spun toward her so quickly that fire snapped from his hands. "I’m the only one who gets to call you that," he snarled.
Rouxi glanced at him, completely unbothered. "Then kill it before it gets here and you won’t have to share that name with anyone else."
The enormous zombie roared and slammed one foot into the pavement.
The road buckled.
For one brief second, Rouxi stopped breathing.
Then the smile returned to her face, brighter than before, as she tightened her grip on the knife and stepped forward.