Highway to Hell

by Max Brallier

  You spend the afternoons watching movies with the two children—Dewey has a big collection of old Westerns, and those put you at ease. You can feel the poison eating away at you, but you hide it—at night, you sit outside and drink and sometimes the pain has you lying prostrate, clawing at the ground, but it always passes.

  When Dewey says there’s just one day left before Iris’s finished, you rummage through Dewey’s piles of hoarder garbage, looking for a game for the kids. You end up with Chutes and Ladders. It’s nearly dawn, and you wake up the kids early. You fix them breakfast, pour a drink, and you all four sit down to play—sort of a good-bye.

  That’s when you hear the bell ring. The trip wire.

  Dewey rushes to the window, and you follow. Men in white hoods, coming through the woods.

  “Klan . . . ,” Dewey says, confused. “Ain’t been Klan in these parts for years.”

  They come closer. None carry guns. Their white robes are splashed in blood.

  Undead Klan, you realize. Like you saw on the bridge.

  “What are they doing here?” Dewey asks then, turning to you. “You lead them here?”

  “I ran one over. That was a month back, though.”

  Dewey glares. “Well, they move fucking slow, y’know!”

  They’re stumbling toward the house. A hundred, maybe more. Some coming down the path, others shuffling out from behind trees, through the woods. Flashes of white in the misty early-morning fog, like ghosts, closing in all around you . . .

  Iris is nearly done—so why stick around? If you want to take her and leave Dewey and the children to fend for themselves, click here.

  Join the fight? Help Dewey and the children fend off the army? Click here.

  DEATH IN A CAN

  You’re sprinting toward the building, racing past a bronze statue of pigs. The door is half-open. You have no weapon, save for the splintered flagpole, so you move hesitantly, nudging the door.

  Inside, it’s SPAM heaven.

  SPAM hats and SPAM office supplies and SPAM stuffed animals and SPAM umbrellas. You pass by a short history of SPAM, then into the gift shop. SPAM everywhere. Cans and cans—a pyramid, taller than you. You pull a can from the center and the pyramid breaks and cans topple to the floor.

  You rip open the can, jamming your filthy fingers inside. You shove the cold meat into your mouth, so much you nearly choke.

  You take a seat on the floor and eat slowly and steadily. After finishing your fourth can, you hear footsteps. Slow, ragged footsteps. Four zombies, shuffling in.

  Each one wears a SPAM tour guide costume. You fling a can at one, dinging it in the head.

  You slide back, behind the counter, as they charge.

  You grab a SPAM-branded rolling pin. You limp toward the first, swinging. Its glasses shatter as you crack it in the head. You whack it twice more, dropping it, then continue whacking away until the rolling pin is covered in gray brain matter.

  The next to come at you is a monster in a full-body SPAM costume. Its arms are stuck in the costume, down by its sides—not so dangerous. You give the monster a good kick, and it tumbles over. It rolls around, legs thrashing, like a turtle on its back.

  Two remain. You grab a SPAM-branded umbrella and dash forward. You open the umbrella wide and charge straight through the next one, knocking it aside. You continue running, not looking where you’re going, just holding the open umbrella out, when—

  A mangled, meaty hand bursts through it, clawing at your face. You slide to a stop and jump back, closing the umbrella, jabbing the tip into the creature’s face. Each jab pushes the thing further back. It stumbles over its own feet, tumbling back onto its undead ass.

  When it rises, it comes at you full force like a goddamn bull. You set your feet, let it come at you, and then—

  SPLURT!

  The thing runs its eyeball directly through the umbrella’s tip, stopping it cold. You grip the umbrella, keeping the monster at arm’s length as it waves wildly, trying to grab hold of you.

  Your hands slide up, opening the umbrella. Pushing with all your might, you’re able to open it, cracking the zombie’s eyeball socket. Old flesh breaks.

  You continue opening it, shattering the socket. You begin laughing, cackling, as you open the umbrella wider and wider and watch the monster’s face come apart.

  You’ve gone mad, fueled by SPAM and pain and anger and lack of booze. When the umbrella is finally wide open and the monster’s face and brain are finally shattered, you simply giggle.

  You let go of the umbrella and the thing drops.

  You find a SPAM gift bag. Fill it with about forty cans, throw it over your shoulder, then stroll out into the parking lot toward the SPAMmobile.

  Click here.

  MEAT THE CLEAVERS

  You rush forward, grabbing the meat cleaver, charging toward the undead clowns. You let out a furious, guttural howl and the crowd cheers and you raise the makeshift weapon and then—

  One swing, and one zombie clown’s head is whirling through the air, its headless body falling to the cement.

  The next clown is slathered in blue makeup. It trips over the headless one, reaching for your legs as it falls. Another clown, a juggler, stumbles over the decapitated one but keeps its balance and grabs for you.

  You swipe upward with the cleaver, cutting off the juggler’s hand, and then the juggler is poking at you with a bony, meaty wrist stub, not understanding it can’t grasp you. You bury the cleaver in the juggler’s head, then kick it in the chest, full force, and it tumbles back.

  The one at your feet digs its fingers into your calf. Your thick jeans keep it from doing damage, but you’re pissed—these are your only pants, and now they’ve got goddamn zombie-hand dirt on them.

  You lift your leg and stomp. There’s a sickening crunch as your boot smashes the thing’s skull and forces it down into the pavement. You stomp again and again until its head cracks like an egg and bits of brain leak out like yolk.

  The crowd cheers and roars and chants your name.

  You grip the cleaver and lower your stance and beckon the two remaining zombies forward, growling, “Come on, you motherfuckers!”

  They stumble forward, headlong, into quick deaths.

  The first lunges. You sidestep, it misses, and you follow through with the cleaver, hacking into the back of its head.

  Anger and murderous rage pump through you. Not because you’re forced to fight these undead idiot things, but because of Iris—you see her, driving through the wasteland, confused, lost, unsure. All because of men who care only about their own tenuous fortunes. You’ve been that sort of man, too, you know—but seeing Iris, seeing people treat her as a pawn in their silly games, it turns your blood to lava.

  You tackle the last one, grabbing it by its silly bow tie and slamming it to the ground. Kneeling over it, you bring the cleaver down, over and over, like some sort of machine on the fritz, until it no longer has any sort of face at all.

  You stand then. Breathe in and exhale slowly, calming yourself.

  You swing the messy meat cleaver through the air, showering the crowd with a red stream of zombie carnage.

  And in response, the spectators roar.

  Click here.

  THE HEALING DREAM

  The man’s cryptic words referred to a healing ceremony. It begins at sundown. You enter a tent. Sage leaves are scattered across the ground.

  The leader sits across from you, cross-legged. Another man, a healer, you think, sits beside him.

  The healer hands you a clay cup. “Peyote mixture,” he says. “Bottoms up.” The healer is shirtless, well built.

  You swallow the bitter liquid, then lie on your back. The healer holds a rattle, made of a gourd attached to a stick. He passes it over you while the other man beats a drum.

  Your eyes shut. They begin the smudging process—holding a bundle of dry herbs that burn thick, letting the smoke envelop your body. The healer says, “The smoke will cling to the illness, and when
the smoke vanishes, along with it will the illness.”

  Your body feels warm first. And then it feels like nothing at all. The ground is quicksand, surrounding you. Pulling you under. Hands, on your back, reaching up through the dirt and trying to drag you down.

  The peyote trip has begun . . .

  Your eyes blink open. The leader’s face has changed. So has the healer’s. Their faces are very pale. Horror encases you like a pair of frozen, spidery hands—an icy chill, hugging you tight.

  The tent and the buildings and the desert mountains and the cacti fall away like an old film set made of plank wood. And then you are entirely alone. Standing on an empty plain, looking up at the star-dotted sky above you.

  For what feels like an eternity, you are solitary with your thoughts. Your mind feasts upon itself, like one of the roaming monsters feasting on the living—your mind is hungry, and it devours itself whole, swallowing your sanity.

  And then the ground cracks. Men come, carrying muskets, stomping across the vast plains like great invaders, consuming all in their path. And the desert turns to dirt and the dirt turns to cement and great buildings sprout up like stony trees, constructing a concrete jungle.

  You’re back in Times Square. It’s empty of people. The buildings are shiny and untouched. Advertisements glow and commercial jingles play. And then a song: Chuck Berry playing “Maybellene.”

  You turn, looking for the source of the music, and you see the El Camino directly behind you. Headlights blinking—on, off, on, off—slowly, like the beating of a heart—like the car is some possessed thing.

  Just you and the car.

  You understand it’s a dream. A trip. Not real. Something fueled by drugs. But it feels real.

  And then they come. The monsters. The zombies. So many of them that they choke the streets and pile on and above themselves, crushing each other, like a great flood of flesh. A rushing river of bodies. A tidal wave of diseased meat, rolling toward you, stacked a thousand bodies high.

  Dread fills you. You climb into the El Camino and lock the doors.

  Suddenly, the monsters stop heading toward you and instead they rush toward each other. They’re launched through the air, whipped about, and then they join together, sticking to each other as if drawn by some great, invisible meat magnet. Undead Velcro. The bodies mix and combine until they form a single, towering beast—an undead monstrosity. Eyeballs made of bodies intertwined, forming circles. A beating heart at the center, made of a thousand zombie beings.

  The skyscraper of a beast steps toward you and the earth shakes.

  The El Camino lets out a mechanical shriek. It begins to change and transform, morphing like something out of a comic book. The driver’s seat becomes a sort of space-age mechanical cockpit—the car now a robotic man, fifty stories tall.

  You control the robotic man, wielding it with your thoughts in this dreamscape.

  You step forward and the million-ton machine steps with you. You swing your arm and the great mechanical thing swings with you. Your metal fist slams the towering zombie monster in the face, shattering it. Undead bodies whirl through the air, crashing into empty buildings and tumbling to the peyote-drawn streets far below.

  The giant zombie monster lumbers forward. It tackles your machine and you fall together. The monster stands and the machine melts away until it’s only you, alone in Times Square—a five-hundred-foot beast above you.

  The monster raises a foot made from the bodies of a thousand zombies, ready to crush you.

  And suddenly they stop, all of them—frozen—like someone simply pressed pause.

  “I did that.”

  You whirl around. It’s Iris. She has no legs. She rests on the hood of the El Camino, which is again a car, perched like an owl. Iris, dead and blood-spattered and her eyes beige and cloudy and her body smelling of formaldehyde.

  “My body did that,” she says. “And this . . .”

  She throws them all back—the bodies of the undead propelled, launched, with some telekinetic dream power. And the zombies disappear. More bodies come back, replacing them, marching down the avenues. Women carrying shopping bags. Men in suits. And the buildings all around you continue to grow, reaching up to the sky until they block out the sun.

  You feel something on your hip. The sawed-off.

  It’s yanked from its holster and flies into Iris’s hand. Iris places the gun to her head. You reach out, grabbing the gun, and she wraps her hand around yours, so together, you hold it.

  She looks at you with her big, round eyes and she says, “What will you do, Jimmy? You’re a man who has seen the horror of the human condition. You’re a man who probably thinks, deep down in his booze-filled gut, that people themselves are a plague. A glitch in God’s system. So, Jimmy, tell me, what will you do? Do we go on?”

  Do you pull the trigger and kill Iris in the strange dreamscape? If so, click here.

  If you choose to holster the gun and let Iris live, click here.

  WAXING POETIC

  There appear to be bodies stacked out front of Madame Tussauds, but stepping closer, you see they’re only piles of clothing and lumpy masses of wax. Removed from the museum, dumped outside.

  “So you need to keep a body cool, yes?” Igor says, limping past cash registers and velvet ropes and opening a door. You follow him inside, into the darkness of the attraction.

  “Yes.”

  “I can certainly help,” he says. “Certainly, certainly.”

  “Why a wax museum?” you ask.

  Igor wraps his hand around a door handle. Two big double doors, which lead to the main exhibit hall. With a disturbed twinkle in his eye, Igor says, “Oh, they’re no longer wax figures.”

  The smell hits you like a concussion grenade. You stumble back. A gale-force wind of undead stench.

  Igor holds the door open, breathes in deeply, and smiles. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

  You hold your hand over your nose and follow Igor. The wax figures have all been replaced with zombies.

  “They’re real,” he says very proudly. “The actual actors! Stars! All of them!”

  You scan the hall, not believing. You see at least forty zombified actors, each carefully placed within a set from a classic film.

  Zombies. Chained. Moaning. In costume.

  “I’ve hunted them,” Igor says. “All over Los Angeles. Undead stars and starlets.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Then why?”

  “A wax museum,” he says. “It’s just so old. So passé. Baroque even. I thought, why not the real article? Skin is better than wax, don’t you agree?”

  You follow him down a lantern-lit hallway. Film sets on all sides. Zombies moaning. One reaches out for you, brushing your shoulder.

  “I was able to track most of them down myself,” he says. “Silly, self-absorbed celebrities—they thought they’d be safe in Los Angeles. They thought the president would see to them first, I suppose. But no . . .”

  “Keeping the body cold,” you say. “Get to it.”

  Igor turns and grins. “Oh, I need something from you first, of course. An exchange.”

  You glare.

  “There is a startling gap in my collection. I’m missing one very important actress. America’s sweetheart, when this all began. You know the one—[REDACTED, LEGAL]. Oh, she’s quite wonderful. I want her, here, in my museum.”

  It’d be fun to kill this peculiar man, you think.

  “Find her,” Igor says. He pulls a slip of paper from his pocket—a photo of the girl, on the red carpet. “This is what she was wearing at the Oscars. The zombies came that night. She might have changed clothes, might have lost her clothes, but I doubt she took this off,” he says, pointing to a triangular, jeweled necklace.

  You feel like Philip Marlowe. Fitting, as you stand just off Sunset, being asked to find a missing person for a madman.

  “Find the girl with the necklace. Bring her back. And then you can
leave with your friend refrozen.”

  “In a city of four million? Impossible.”

  “Not entirely. She was attending an Oscar after-party at the home of [REDACTED, LEGAL]. His house, up in the hills, beneath the Hollywood sign. I’ve written the address here, on the back of the photograph.”

  You look at the picture for a long moment. This man is a lunatic. But lowering Iris’s temperature, being able to keep her cool, it might be your only chance of finishing this . . .

  If you’ll accept Igor’s proposition, click here.

  If you’d rather get back in the El Camino and drive as fast as you can, hoping you can get to San Francisco before Iris’s insides rot, click here.

  Would you prefer to simply kill the man and freeze Iris’s body yourself? If so, click here.

  TANNER SAYS HELLO

  The monsters come quickly—limping, shuffling death from all sides and some even over the top of the El Camino, reaching, tearing at you.

  You shoot and you swing and you punch until you and Iris have no choice but to run.

  The monsters get Iris first, barely twenty feet from the car. A zombie that was once a child hangs off Iris’s leg and drags her to the pavement, fingers digging into her calf, muscle tearing, blood red and pulpy and fresh-squeezed. You’re raising the ax, ready to cut into the small monster, when the sniper’s shot rings out.

  The ax falls from your hand and sticks into the highway cement. You clutch your gushing throat. A monster pounces on you then, teeth taking two fingers, clawing, blanketing you, dragging you down until you collapse on top of Iris.

  “I will make it,” Iris says, fighting off the zombie, struggling to squeeze out from under you. “I will make it.”

  Another shot rings out.

  The bullet enters Iris’s head just above her temple. Her eyes flash and her head mushrooms and the bullet exits, skimming along the pavement like a stone skipping across a lake.