Reborn as the Zombie King

Chapter 10: Revenge

Liam and Vanessa's parents froze in terror as the front door swung open on its own no hand touching it, no warning at all.

Liam moved first, grabbing a kitchen knife and swinging hard into the nearest infected. His strength split it clean in half like a stalk of celery. But for every one he dropped, two more shoved in behind it, pouring through the doorway in an endless tide.

Vanessa's parents armed themselves with a mop and a spatula, backs to the wall, eyes locked on the windows as glass shattered inward one pane at a time. Whatever their "abilities" were on paper a matchstick flame, a light summer breeze neither one meant anything against this.

Within seconds, the three of them were surrounded on the first floor.

"Please you have to protect us!" Vanessa's mother clutched at Liam's sleeve. "Vanessa needs her parents!"

The two of them stood there in their pajamas, barefoot on cold tile, close enough to the reaching hands that their hearts were pounding out of their chests.

Liam's eyes went sharp with something colder than fear.

"You two useless old fossils were dead weight the second the powers wore off. Waste of food. Waste of space."

"Excuse me?"

Before either of them could process the insult, Liam's grip closed around both their arms his doubled strength making resistance pointless and he shoved them bodily toward the door.

He was using them as a wall. A path through the horde, paved in his own future in-laws.

"You absolute monster! I will never let Vanessa marry you after this!"

Vanessa's mother screamed something about wedding plans, of all things, as Liam physically dragged her toward the reaching hands, and even in the chaos, part of him found that almost funny. Marriage. Sure. Like anyone's thinking about that right now. Vanessa herself had cooled on the idea days ago she'd made it clear she planned on surviving this thing entirely on her own terms.

Strangely, the infected barely reacted. They parted instead of attacking, clearing a path straight to the door like something or someone had told them to stand down.

Liam felt a surge of relief so strong it bordered on euphoria. This is it. This is my way out.

Vanessa's parents thrashed and screamed the whole way, but somehow, impossibly, never took a single bite.

Then Liam burst through the front line and found Chase standing directly in his path.

Pale-faced, eyes bloodshot, Chase looked at the three of them with the calm, patient interest of someone who already knew exactly how this ended.

The infected closed in slowly behind them, piling up into makeshift furniture a throne built from bodies and Chase settled onto it like something that had crawled straight up from hell to collect a debt.

"You're... Chase?" Vanessa's mother spoke first, squinting through the changes. The face was harder to place, but the bone structure hadn't lied.

The way the infected deferred to him told the rest of the story clearly enough. All three of them understood, in that instant, exactly how much trouble they were in.

"Chase, sweetheart, you have to help your aunt and uncle! Liam just tried to feed us to the zombies to save his own skin that heartless, ruthless"

"We always liked you best, Chase, you know that! Everything before, all of that Liam forced our hand, he manipulated the whole situation"

"I always said Vanessa belonged with you"

"I don't recall giving either of you permission to speak to me."

Chase's voice came out flat and cold. A pulse of gravity dropped all three of them to their knees at once, hard enough that Vanessa's parents winced audibly knees that age didn't bounce back from impacts like that.

The pressure in the room thickened instantly. Even Liam, ability and all, found he couldn't stand back up. Cold sweat rolled down his temple.

"Chase man, listen, this is all on Vanessa! She's the one who came onto me, she's the one who told you to go get us in the first place, she's the one who told me to throw you out I had nothing to do with any of it"

"You absolute snake our Vanessa would never do something like that! You're the one who's been after her this whole time, you manipulated her"

"We kept your affair quiet, Liam. We took you in when the virus hit and this is how you repay us"

Upstairs, Vanessa was curled under her bed, shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She could hear raised voices through the floor but couldn't make sense of the argument parents, Liam, and somewhere in there, unmistakably, Chase's name.

He's supposed to be dead. Her thoughts wouldn't come together properly. He got thrown outside the wall. The zombies were supposed to

Her mind blanked entirely as a row of feet shuffled past her hiding spot some bloodied, some mummified, one set with bone showing clean through rotted skin.

They were hunting for her specifically. She could hear the wet rasp of their breathing, smell the decay rolling off them in waves, and she clapped both hands over her mouth, praying, praying they'd move on.

They didn't.

A half-collapsed body dragged itself around the corner on both arms, one eye missing from its socket, the other rolling loosely, searching. The moment it locked onto her, something that might once have been a smile twisted across its ruined face, and it surged forward with a low, wet growl that sounded disturbingly close to delight.

"NO please, don't"

Her nails tore into the floorboards as hands closed around her ankles and hauled her out from under the bed, ripping her clothes in the process. She was dragged the entire way down the stairs and across the wrecked living room, delivered straight to Chase's feet like an offering, before the infected that carried her melted obediently back into the crowd.

Vanessa looked up at him, and something in her flipped instantly to performance mode. She forced her sweetest, most fragile smile onto her face, dropped to her knees, wrapped both arms around his calves, and pressed herself against him.

"Chase... I've been so scared. You came back for me, didn't you? I've thought about you every single day"

He kicked her off before she finished the sentence. She hit the floor with a pained gasp.

"Don't touch me. You're filth."

The words landed like a slap. Vanessa's eyes welled up instantly the same tears that used to send him scrambling to fix whatever was wrong, that used to buy her anything she pointed at.

"Chase, please, I know I messed up. I never should have listened to him. Liam's the one who pushed me into all of it he wanted you gone, he planned this. I see that now. Please can't we just go back to how things were?"

She started crawling toward him again, angling her body the way she always had when she wanted something, letting her vulnerability do the talking.

"You lying bitch I wouldn't have gone near you if you hadn't come after me first!" Liam snapped at her, then immediately spun back toward Chase, dropping to grovel at his feet. "Chase I'm yours. Completely. I'll never turn on you, not ever, I swear it."

Years working the club circuit had taught Liam exactly how to flatter people with money and power rich women, mostly, though he'd taken plenty of male clients too when it paid well enough. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to perform loyalty as hard and as fast as possible.

Chase looked down at him without a flicker of warmth, and sweat rolled freely down Liam's face but he kept talking anyway, too desperate to stop.

"I know you won't betray me," Chase said quietly. "Because you're mine now."

Liam's face lit up with relief. It worked. I actually pulled it off

He opened his mouth to swear his devotion one more time for good measure and found he couldn't make a sound.

Chase's hand had already gone straight through his throat.

Nobody in the room even saw the strike happen. One second Liam was mid-sentence; the next, he was on the ground in a spreading pool of his own blood.

Vanessa screamed and scrambled backward, legs shaking too hard to hold her weight, staring at Liam's body.

Then, under the horrified eyes of everyone still breathing in that room, Liam's body rose back up on its own eyes empty, expression gone knelt briefly in front of Chase, and took its place silently among the rest of the infected standing behind him.