7 Driven by fear
It moved…
Huh?! She moved?! What?!
It was totally unexpected! My eyes stared straight at the body.
My attention was alert enough to not miss the detail of her head moving. The girl, obvious that she had done that movement with a lot of effort, had tilted her head a little to look me in the eye.
Her lips trembled and started to move.. She wanted to say something to me and was struggling to do so.
A few seconds had passed when she stopped making those unreadable mouth movements. I had no clue what she wanted to say to me, but I was confident that she was looking for my help.
What I decided to do was bash through to the metal door and haste my way to check on her. I wanted to look at and confirm the state that she was in, as that was the only thing I could do anyway, and because it seemed necessary to do so.
Initially, I wanted to feed her something or give her some water to drink. Unfortunately, none of those two options were available as aid.
Perhaps I could carry her to a wet wall, I thought. Carrying her out of that door might be a possibility too, but I was concerned about what might come after that door.
"Hey, are you o-"
Before I could finish my sentence, the frail girl that looked like she was at death's door suddenly became full of energy. Where she got that energy from, I had no idea.
Her next move gave me somewhat of a clue about her sudden burst of energy. The beastly instinct that made gobble up even poison, and that made that one boy burst out of the door with rage. This girl, perhaps because of this kind of instinct, jumped at me to take a bite at my leg!
I came to a quick realisation that I was wrong. My heart… it gave out an irregular and loud beat. An unfamiliar feeling took over me, as I found my surroundings blurring and heard the air getting sharper.
A zombie!
I panicked as thoughts of horrors overwhelmed my mind. I was afraid of death yet again, I was near death's door and I didn't like anything about it.
Thoughts of wanting to go back home filled my mind. Thoughts of living that normal and safe life!
'I'm going to reincarnate again, right?!'
As panic and fear took over my body, I even started wondering about things beyond my death.
But what if this is the worst scenario?! What if I'll be trapped inside a zombified body without being able to do anything other than experience myself move against my will?!
No! This can't be happening!
Because I was completely overwhelmed with fear, to the point that I felt cornered, resistance began to bloom. I, who wanted to live, did not hesitate to kick the undead girl's head away from my leg.
Without a second thought, I ran away from the room, not wanting to be anywhere close to the undead girl.
While running, I made a quick calculation. I thought of all the latest information I had absorbed so far, and that's when it came to me. An idea which I wasn't too confident with, but which I had to try and believe in.
My ability lets my body put up resistance against harmful substances through eating. At least that's what I assumed my ability to be, if supernatural abilities are a thing in the first place.
I ran to the rooms I remembered had a bunch of centipedes. It was time to test my theory. Either I succeed or become a zombie. If I do not succeed, then I will have to find a way to the afterlife before becoming a zombie.
Eat! Eat! Eat!
Like a famished beast, I grabbed onto the centipedes like they were a bunch of snacks. I did not care about the centipedes biting my hands or lips. They all struggled in my hands to no avail, only to get crushed in my mouth.
I ate and continued to do so. The more I ate, the hungrier I got.
It's working!
The scary sense of hunger kicked in and that's when I knew that I do have a supernatural ability. After all, eating so much, I should have been full already. Yet I wasn't in any way full. Naturally, this could only mean that the proteins were being used to heal my turning body. I did have a supernatural ability!
Because I was so afraid of turning into a zombie, I kept going from room to room, cleaning each one of them from centipedes and whatever insects lay within. I ate, but I was never full. Perhaps an hour had already come to pass, but I didn't care. I only cared about staying alive and not becoming a zombie. I was desperate.
After a while, I began to realise something. The centipedes were becoming smaller. I shook my head upon this thought, however. The centipedes were not becoming smaller.
Rather, I was becoming bigger. My hands no longer looked like those of a child but of a teenager. This is when I realised that I needed to stop eating.
Something was wrong. I was wrong…
So far, I have not become a zombie. I initially believed that it might be because my ability had a say in this, but noticing that I had grown bigger in the span of hours, I was starting to see things in a different light.
What if my ability wasn't to heal? What if it's fast growth, to the point that while rapidly growing, my body ignored defects, poison and whatever?
A character reset basically, but the opposite…
Thinking about the mystery of my own body, my thoughts began to drift back to the subject of zombification. Was zombification completely ignored too, due to my rapid growth?
Instead of my questions being solved, more time passed, and more questions would appear instead.
I should refrain from eating as much as possible…
It is a random restriction that I suddenly placed on myself, but such was what I ought to do, after coming to a certain conclusion. I had to observe myself first before I was to do things that I could not erase. With the rapid growth of my body, I had to figure out if it was a good thing or bad!
