Guilt

<One week later>

"How's he's doing?"

"He's still unconscious, but we think that he will regain consciousness this week."

"There ain't nothing you can do to reattach his arm right?"

"Unfortunately we can't do that, I'm sorry."

"It's bad, really bad, even more, when he's our leader."

"Don't be like that Paul, your brother will make something for Eric, I'm sure of that."

"You can bet on that, Andrew locked himself in his workshop for the past four days, he even forgot to eat the food we gave to him."

"You know how he is when he put his head on making something important. By the way, did the Lieutenant come back from his run?"

"Maxson and his group worked non-stop after the first day of sleep. They are feeling guilty and I understand them. We lost ten good people and our leader was badly injured just for him to escape that place. As I said, he's feeling guilty and he tries to apologize by overworking himself and his example inspires his group to feel guilty for the same reason which led to them following his example."

"The fact that our people were attacked by that thing, doesn't mean that this incident has something to do to the fact that Maxson Chapter was locked in the control room and we tried to save them. We still don't know what did they worked on in the Laboratory, which is the reason that the huge zombie appeared."

"Now, that you bring that up, did you guys found something about it?"

"Yes, he's resistant to bullets, at least frontal attacks do almost no damage to him, while the swords, knives, or any melee weapon can kill him easily, the only problem will be his attack power which can kill you if you approach him."

"Or we can use AT weapons on it right?"

"Using anti-tank weapons on something human may seem overkill for someone, but in our case, it may be the only of taking it down from a safe distance."

"Hmm, 50.cal may do the trick, unfortunately, we don't have one right now."

"Paul, I'm sorry to inform you, but we need to leave the patient alone or Gale will skin us alive."

"Roger that, ma'am!"

<Four hours later>

Waking up, I found myself in the hospital that we managed to improvise in one of the rooms of the main building.

Immediately after I opened my eyes, the pain that I didn't know I had to start acting up. At first, it was bearable, but as the seconds passed it gets worse.

Knowing that I can't do anything to make the pain go away, I decided to properly get myself up and see what the heck happen, but when I tried to clean my eyes, I didn't felt my left arm.

Slowly turning my head towards my left arm, I was shocked to see that my left arm was missing. Fortunately or should I say, unfortunately, memories of what happened in the bunker begin to appear in my head, and after five minutes of a mild headache, I managed to remember what happened.

"Trading an arm for my life seems good enough, or at least that's what most of the people will think, I, on the other hand, hate this feeling."

Thank Odin that my healing factor saved my sorry ass from bleeding to death or I would have been a zombie now or even better in the afterlife.

Just as I was about to get up, I heard a familiar voice coming from behind.

"Don't even dare to stand up."

"Good morning, Ellen,"

"Good morning, my ass! You stupid boy! How in the name of god did you manage to get that injured?"

"Mutant freak, he got us with a surprise attack, and most of us got frozen in place and before we could react, it was already too late."

"You are lucky to be alive, you know? I studied the freak and he's almost bulletproof and to not forget the fact that you were bleeding so badly that we thought you will die at any given moment! "

"I know, but I didn't survive on my own, one of my men sacrificed himself just so that I may get a chance of surviving that impendent death."

"Eric, I hope you won't do something like this again, but from how I know you, you will most likely do it again, the same thing I told to all of your soldiers, and do you know what they said to me? They said that they will gladly give their lives for you because they know that you will do the same for them. Some of them even said that without you, they wouldn't have survived that long."

When I heard Ellen's words, I begin to feel tears pouring on my face, while I smiled at Ellen.

After one hour of getting checked again and again by Gale and Ellen, I was given the green light to leave the room.

The first person to meet after I left the room was Paul, how was waiting for me outside of the "hospital".

The first thing he did when he saw me, was giving me a hug and a few encouraging words. After I told him that I was alright, both of us decided to see what Maxson was doing, as he comes back from his supply run.

When we entered the room where the Maxson Chapter was resting, Maxson was glad to see me awake, but when he looked at my left arm, his expression change into one of guilt.

"Lieutenant, good to see you."

"Eric, I'm sorry for what happened to you."

"Don't be, it wasn't your fault as you didn't know about the dangers of the Laboratory."

"I'm glad that you think so, but still it was my fault for getting you guys involved."

"Don't be like that, let's talk about what did you guys did before the shit to go real ."