The Doctor Is In
You’re upstairs staring at the Frida Kahlo painting, Thinking About Death, when the doorbell to the penthouse rings. You can’t remember exactly what that sound means, but a feeling deep within tells you that something edible is nearby. Your new friends hear it too and their interests are piqued as well. Then there’s a knock on the door and you know exactly what that means. Time to shuffle down and meet dinner.
“Richard?” a voice calls out. “It’s Lewis.”
A man wearing a lab coat enters. This must be the other doctor, Lewis Deleon. Not that either of you recognize his name, but Richard Phoenix heads down to meet his guest nonetheless. You’re very interested in meeting him too.
“Christ, are you high?” Deleon asks, seeing the stumble of his former partner. You continue walking toward him. “I need you to sober up. We’ve got problems—big problems.”
Phoenix makes it to Deleon, who says, “I knew I shouldn’t have gone along with you. The rats are reacting violently—”
Phoenix lunges at Deleon, mouth open and growling. Deleon instinctively raises his right arm to block his face and his coworker bites down into his forearm. You’re jealous. You shuffle toward him with excitement, racing the two hookers for who will get there next.
Deleon breaks free from Phoenix, losing the skin of his forearm in the process. Just as you’re about to join in, he slips out and sprints away from the apartment. You groan in frustration. But the good doctor was kind enough to leave the door open, and you hobble after him.
“Come on—open!” Deleon shouts at the elevator. Unfortunately for you, no one else in the building has used the lift recently and the doors open immediately. Still, you’re not far, and you’re getting closer. Only a few more steps… but the lift doors shut before you can reach him.
You beat on the doors, your entourage growling and moaning with aggravation and shared disappointment. Then Dr. Phoenix discovers that the door to the stairs is the kind you only have to push to swing open. You could kiss him. You make your way down the stairs, though there’s no way you’ll catch Deleon, but you don’t care.
Sure, you wish you could share your immortal gift with him; after all, he freed you. But you’re hungry enough that any meal will do. The world is now your oyster.
• Better get walking.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Door-to-door Anarchy
It’s tragic, really. The world’s moving so fast and now you’re moving so slowly. You’re going to live forever, but it seems as if humanity won’t last a month. What will you do? Where will you go? And most important of all… who will you eat?
Such questions don’t even enter your everlasting mind. The neighborhood shakeup is pure ecstasy. If you were gluttonous as a human being, it’s gluttony that defines you now as an immortal. Things were nice early on, when people were coming outside to see what was happening. Now? They’re all boarded up.
Just as early humanity quickly killed off any animals docile enough not to run away, so the immortals have taken care of any curious humans. The ones that remain are survivors. Maybe not badass Rambo/commando survivors—at least not most of them—but these survivors have at least figured out that there’s no reasoning with you. And that’s unfortunate.
You roam the streets with the other gods and goddesses. The wind is strong enough to bring smells of life to your nostrils; life newly snuffed out and something better: panic. The sweat and adrenaline of humanity flows like a sweet perfume, further accompanied by something even more pleasant: screaming.
“Come and get some, motherfuckers!” a man shouts from down the street. You, it would appear, are that motherfucker. And you will most certainly come and get some. So will all your friends. In a chorus of moans, this neighborhood pantheon converges on the man and his small group.
The cacophonic gurgles each individual spews forth come together in a unifying Gregorian chant, fully drowning out the taunts and jeers the men down the street feel brash enough to make. The only sound that registers above the moan is the crackle of gunshots from their leader’s deer rifle.
Some of your companions around you fall down, yet the group marches on. It’s like a military line in the civil war; you just hope it’s not your lucky day to catch a bullet in the head. You stumble-run down the middle of the street, anxious to be first in line when the food is distributed.
As you get closer, you see a group of five: three shooters plus two guys trying to cut down a utility pole. The man on your side grinds away with a hacksaw while his companion swings an axe opposite him.
These two barely register, though, as the three gunmen holler like they’re circling wagons in the Wild West. Still, the two on the pole are closer…
Just as the crowd makes it to the finish line, Mr. Hacksaw doubles back and helps his friend shove the pole—Timber! It crashes down into your mob of immortals, and you’re right there to experience it. The mess of power lines above, yanked down with the pole, are whipping and snaking violently. One goddess gets beheaded immediately by a thrashing power line.
The utility box hits the pavement and explodes, sending sparks all around like the grand finale on the 4th of July. Each power line arcs with electricity, the end blowing up like a divine sparkler, frying and boiling the brains of the immortals around you.
You’re all shoulder-to-shoulder, the power lines unifying and melting your flesh together. 35,000 volts fight back, attacking the group—you included. The electricity, no longer constrained by the wire and free to discharge where it pleases, superheats everything around. Even the oxygen burns away, leaving a scent of fried ozone.
One of the cables snaps at you like a bullwhip. All you can do is watch as it comes toward your face, like witnessing the birth of a star. Sorry, but immortal or not, you don’t stand a chance. As your eyes pop out and your roasted brain squeezes its way out of your skull, the only thing “immortal” about you now is the seared imprint you’ve left upon the concrete.
THE END
Downstairs
Phoenix leaves with the bottomless escort; it’s just you and the topless one on the couch. The chemicals running through your body prove too much for you, and you need to sit down. The couch faces a glass wall with a commanding view of the city—the lights glitter and gleam under a moonless night. The beauty before you and the drug within you make this a life-changing experience.
Then, before you even know what’s happening, the topless woman is on top of you. She kisses your neck and collarbone and the soft press of her lips proves irresistible when you are chemically enhanced, as you are now. It just feels too fucking good.
You’re paralyzed, unable or unwilling to control yourself as she kisses your chest and moves to her knees in front of you. The lights of the city grow even brighter as she starts to go down on you. Nothing has ever felt this good.
From above, a scream rings out in the doctor’s room. You turn your head toward the stairs, but see nothing. You notice that the sensation in your loins has slowed down, and the huffing noise from the hooker turns into a growl. You look down. Her eyes are hungry. To your horror, she bites down upon you. She’s hit a major artery; the bleeding is profuse.
You try to escape, but the topless zombie has incredible grip, and she’s not letting go. She just keeps chewing, and the more you struggle in your agony, the faster you bleed out.
Finally, you escape her grasp. You run toward the door, but you’ve lost so much blood that the strength leaves your legs. You manage to open the door, but your knees buckle and you fall to the floor. Blood is everywhere; your vision fades to nothing as your life leaves you. With your last moments of consciousness, you see Phoenix running downstairs and the topless zombie racing to meet up with him.
You’re dead, but that’s not the end. In a couple of hours, the Gilgazyme ® will have changed you and you’ll rise again. Good thing you left that door open.
• Time to hit the town with your new friends.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
You plumb the depths of the basement with Sims, looking over the equipment with a flashlight. “Thanks for coming with me,” he says. “It’s pretty creepy down here.” With no windows and no power, it’s like exploring a cave. Creepy, indeed.
At length, you find what he’s looking for. He toys with the wiring while you hold a flashlight for him. “Oh baby, oh baby,” he says, growing excited. “Listen, I think I can get the power back on, but I want to keep it a surprise, so…”
“My lips are sealed,” you whisper. He smiles and gets back to work.
“With power, we’ll finally be able to contact rescue. There’s a student radio station, so we’ll be able to send out a strong broadcast for help. I found some spotlights I can mount to the roof for when a chopper comes in. This is it! After tonight, we’ll be sitting pretty. But remember—”
“Not a word.”
• After he finishes up, return to the gym.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Driver
“Fuck, yes!” he shouts, offering you a high-five.
He takes an assault rifle off the trailer wall and presses the stock against your chest. You claim the black weapon, looking it over while he opens a canvas bag and fills it with banana clips. He takes a combat shotgun down as well and loads the breach full of shells.
“I’ll need to drive us first, just to get us out in the open, but we can switch in the field. This probably goes without saying, but the old man would skin us alive if he finds out—so no bragging to your friends when we get back.”
You follow him out back, where he opens a massive padlock on the rear gate, pushes it open and bids you follow with a toss of his head. Just on the other side is a combat-ready Humvee. It’s large, massive, in fact, menacing and inviting at the same time. At the passenger side he pumps the shotgun and laughs as he shouts, “Shotgun!” placing the weapon in the empty seat.
You open the door on the driver’s side, surprised at how light and almost toy-like it feels. “You want this thing in here?” you ask, holding up the rifle.
“Yup. You should see a rack. Then hop in back.”
* * *
Rows of dead corn husks, brown and brittle, stand limply across the massive field. The zombie farmer crunches the dry crops underfoot as he shuffles across his lonely home. He’s not really headed anywhere, just ambling; waiting for instinct to take hold.
As a mighty engine roar comes closer, his head snaps up like an animal’s. He moves toward the sound just as the Humvee bounds around the corner. The soldier leans out of the window and screams back to you, “Fuck him up!” Your hands are on the .50-caliber machine gun.
It swivels smoothly as you take aim. You depress the trigger and the field erupts in dirt explosions. You force the firing line up to the zombie and his body is torn to shreds by the dagger-sized bullets. It doesn’t matter if you score a headshot, and that’s a beautiful thing.
The vehicle skids to a halt in the field and the soldier hops out. “Engine’s runnin’,” he says with a grin. “Don’t be afraid to push her, she can handle it.”
You slide into the driver’s seat and look over the controls. The vehicle was designed to be used by GED-wielding seventeen-year-olds, which equates to videogame-like simplicity. As you peer out over the horizon, you see dozens of zombies coming out from the wood line. The engine noise and gunshots bring them out like flies to honey on a hot summer day. You jam the automatic transmission into drive and head toward the middle of the mob.
Dirt clods flee in terror from your spinning tires and, not without a few bumps, you thump across the terrain after the ghouls. You never had this much fun back in the real world. This is truly living! All those flesh-eating bastards coming at you from the trees have come here to kill you, but nu-uh, not this time. It’s your turn.
The machine gun erupts from above and behind, small bursts blowing apart zombies. It’s like they’re watermelons, fat and thick and ripe, and you’ve dropped a firecracker inside the sweet, juicy center. Ka-BOOM!
The soldier in the back commands the turret with expert ferocity, but there are just so goddamn many of the fiends that he can’t get to them all. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help out. You careen the vehicle into the nearest one, battering against her with a sickening thud-crunch combo.
“Double back around!” your gunner shouts. As you do so, you see the number of undead is shockingly high. A three-thousand population town may seem abandoned when you drive through it, but take all those people out of their houses and put them on your front lawn, and that same number may seem a little higher.
You fish-tail donuts into the farmer’s field. The soldier blasts the zombies apart with howls of triumph that border on orgasmic. Actually, they’ve probably crossed into that territory. Once you circle back to the woman you struck, you see she’s still crawling on the ground through broken bones. This time you put a tire over her head.
The damage the Troop lays out across their bodies is nearly unfathomable. To call a .50-cal a large bullet is a gross understatement—it’s more appropriately dubbed a small missile. Why does this weapon cause disproportionately more damage than other firearms? It’s a process called inertial cavitation. The massive bullet pushes through the body with such fierce acceleration that the resultant force creates a pressure differential and the target literally collapses inward at the point of impact. Think of throwing a stone in a lake—the water sinks in around the rock in a much greater area than simply the size of the rock, yes? So it is when a bullet hits a zombie in center mass and the ghoul is cut in half.
And just like the lake, there’s splash-back.
Even a hit to the shoulder can be fatal. Not because the explosion beheads the zombie, but because the tremendous amount of energy transferred to the bone on impact is such that a fatal concussion turns the undead brain to little more than slush.
You felt the power of the turret first-hand; the thing recoils like a jackhammer atop the mounted position, and that’s not even a slight representation of the force ripping out of the business end.
The M2 whirs loudly, purring with the satisfaction of the fifty-zombie meal just consumed. You yell back to the soldier, “Is that it?”
“That’s just the first ammo box, amigo!”
Looking to the wood line, it seems the horde is finally descending upon your farm. The sounds of havoc and destruction have them frenzied to the point where they’re stumbling at you in a half-coordinated run.
“Should we head back?” you ask, not without a hint of nervousness.
“No can do, Newjack! You want a horde of pissed-off zombs to bring back home? We gotta kill ‘em all… man oh man, if only I could call in an airstrike to this farm.”
“Can’t we outrun them? Lose them?” your voice quakes.
He just laughs and locks in a new clip for the machine gun.
• Keep fighting the good fight. They have to stop coming eventually, right?
• Try to lose the bastards. Floor it and peel down a country road.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Ears Are Everywhere
“Help!” you shout. “Come back! I’m wounded! Please help!”
Your shouts are heard and someone comes for you. But not in the way you wanted. From the neighboring house, the second-story window crashes open and a ghoul tumbles out. Just like you did. Except she’s completely unfazed by the fall and crawls toward you, despite her multiple injuries.
She’s young, or at least she used to be before she became ageless, and her black hair is pulled back in twin braids. Her skin is porcelain on her bloodless face. Despite the bite wound in her neck, her clothes are spotless. She’s dressed in her Sunday best; most likely her family planned a funeral before the news spread of the dead coming back. The image couldn’t be better designed by a Hollywood horror director.
You try to use your axe against her, but you’re incapable of a killing blow from your prone position. Have you ever tried swinging an axe whi
le lying on your back? Doesn’t work too well.
A sharp pain shoots through your body when you swing—the result of that broken ankle—and the effect is akin to being hit with a Taser. The axe cuts her shoulder, but stops at bone. She mounts you, mouth and eyes wide, ready to bite.
The zombie girl grasps you by your ears and pulls your face to hers as if to give you a kiss. She gnaws on your face and your ears rip off in her hands as you struggle to get free. As the blood pools over your eyes, you can no longer see, but you can still hear (despite your missing earlobes), and a loud noise announces a blow to her head. You feel the attack stop and her body slump off of you.
“Goddamn,” a man’s deep voice says.
“We gotta put… him? Her? Fuck, I can’t tell—whatever, it’s suffering. We gotta put it down,” another replies with deep twangs of a country accent. You gurgle your protest through the blood collecting in your throat.
“It’s okay, it’s all over now.” One blow, and you’re out of your misery.
THE END
Elapsed
You wake up, the sun pouring into the gymnasium from the skylights above at just the right angle to hit your eyes. You roll out of the body-depression you’ve made in the workout mat you were sleeping on. The other members of the group are stirring as well. Cooper sits up and looks at her watch.
“How long were we out?” you ask.
“Fourteen hours.” She looks around and sees Sims slumped against the wall near the entrance to the gym. He had volunteered for first watch when the rest of you bedded down yesterday. “Sims! Get your fat ass up!”
Now the other guys start to wake and rise. It must be early morning, considering it was late afternoon when you went to bed. Hefty looks around, then stands up with concern. “Hey, where’s the Doc?” Everyone else looks around, as if he could be hiding in plain sight. Nope, he’s not on either side of you.
INFECTED (Click Your Poison) Page 7