They Call Me Daring

Chapter 35

The wraparound trench was nine feet deep, and just about as wide. It was well past two when we finally hauled out all our shovels and clambered up the ladders to admire our work.
    "Well. That will work nicely." Somebody said.
    "Liam, why don't you test it?" Someone else clapped me on the shoulder, leaving a muddy handprint on my T shirt.
    I raised an eyebrow at them, and wordlessly pounced into the air, flying over the gap and landing easily on the other side. "Um, guys?"
    "Great." They all moaned, collapsing to the ground. "All that work for nothing."
    "Yeah, um... You realize this wasn't it." I cocked my head concernedly. "We're gonna put stakes on the other side."
    A huge groan of exhaustion rose up from them all, and I grinned sympathetically.
    "Find wood and start making spikes. As many as possible. I'm running over to the church, and I'll be back over later. Probably." I added at second thought. You never know. And last I'd checked the church's restorations were quite a bit further behind, with considerably less bodies.
    "Liam!" Cony called across the ditch just as I began to turn away. I looked back over my shoulder. "You might need these!" He called, tossing across his sunglasses.
    I deftly snatched them out of the air and frowned at my reflection. Why...?
    "Eyes!" He called, gesturing towards his own like the word wasn't enough.
    I squinted into the dark lenses, and my heart sank when I caught the red glint. Dang. The word I thought was worse, believe me.
    "Thanks..." I called back over, unenthusiastically, as I slipped the sunglasses on halfheartedly, with the condemnation of a prisoner, and began to jog.
    It was freezing out. The sky was pale and colorless, drained of all it's color, like my skin. The whole world had been drained of color, of joy. Now all that remained was the grey. And the red.
    Blood. Red.
    My eyes.
    Red.
    I growled to myself, muttering a string of curses under my breath. I thought I had almost healed myself... but now...
    I decided it had to be because of the adrenaline bursts the other day. It was catching up to me. If I wanted to heal myself completely, I needed to stop getting so ticked off all the time.
    I rounded a bend in the street, practically fuming as I tried to keep my fury from bubbling up, and skidded to a halt.
    Instincts kicked in before I could begin to control my mind. My heart-rate cranked up to overdrive and suddenly everything was sharp and vivid, and the world slowed down.
    I threw myself sideways to the ground to dodge the creature launching itself out of the sky, and rolled to escape the grasping claw that shot out at my shoulder.
    Leaned on my hip, swung my legs out and around and heard the snap of rotting bones crumbling under the force of the blow. The zombie's legs crumpled beneath it, and it dragged itself forward by it's hands.
    I leapt up off the ground, hurtling up several feet, and brought both feet down hard on it's skull. Crack.
    Panting with the adrenaline, and still trying to subconsciously control it, I frantically examined m surroundings, expecting to see them everywhere, a suffocating swarm pressing in from every side...
    Empty.
    Hollow, a bare skeleton of the once lively city. Shattered glass strewn across the road. Old, dusty bones and grass poking through the road. Nature reclaiming the ruins of the city. No zombies.
    I ran a hand through my hair, and cursed myself. That burst of adrenaline would cost me. Why couldn't I have yelled and cowered, fled, like any normal person?
    I sighed. Because I wasn't normal. But on the bright side, I hadn't redded out that time, so maybe it was getting better after all.
    After several minutes of intense meditation, during which I willed my heart rate to slow down to a relatively normal pace, I began to jog again.
    I wondered what the Doc and the other scientists were doing back at the lab. Hopefully the bomb was coming along easily. If not....
    We were seriously screwed.