INFECTED (Click Your Poison)

by James Schannep

  • “No, Ma’am.”

  • “Actually, yeah. I’ll try my chances alone.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Saint Mary’s

  “Mother of God,” Deleon mutters, pun not intended, as you survey the eponymous hospital. This place was, at one point, a battleground. Police cruisers sit with doors opened, as the officers have been trained to do in a firefight. This battle, however, was one they weren’t trained for. The patrol cars’ sirens and lights are long dead, from drained batteries, as are their former occupants, from drained blood.

  Corpses line the parking lot, literally hundreds, both of slain zombies and eaten humans. And it’s not just patrol cars either. National Guard Humvees, ambulances turned on their sides, and acres of passenger cars jammed in a tangled gridlock beyond reconciliation.

  The air is thick with the stench of rotting flesh. “Is there anyone left?” you ask.

  “Let’s hope not,” Deleon replies, deliberately misinterpreting your question. “Come on.”

  He rises from behind cover and starts toward the hospital, already wielding his spiked club and hammer. You fall in line, your fireman’s axe at the ready. The two of you move through the parking lot, checking the bodies for anything useful. Unfortunately, the living appear to have done as good a job cleaning the corpses of gear as the dead have done cleaning flesh from bones. Nothing. The spent ammo casings in the parking lot tell you there probably wasn’t much to take in the first place.

  The hospital doors don’t open as you approach them—either the building lost power or the automatic doors were shut down as a security measure. Deleon slides the claw side of the hammer into the space between the doors and pries them outward. It’s easy since, since they were designed to open like normal doors, should the power shut off, allowing people to escape in an emergency. Funny that they had remained closed. But they stay open now as the two of you head inside.

  Your doctor friend points to a wall sign directing you toward the pharmacy and silently moves that way. As you round the hallway corner, Deleon stops in his tracks. There’s a man, facing away from you, in full riot gear. He stands still, looking ahead at nothing. As if he were a viper in your path, you instinctively back away. Deleon does the same.

  A breathy moan sounds from behind you. You turn to see a sickly woman in a hospital gown, her IV stand dragging along the ground next to her.

  “Oh, fuck,” Deleon mutters. You look back. The man in riot gear has now turned around—yep, he’s a zombie. “We need to get that helmet off; you have to destroy the brain.”

  “It’s strapped on,” you protest. Both zombies amble toward you.

  “Try the axe.”

  Not waiting for a discussion, Deleon rushes at the hospital gown zombie, his spiked club raised. He swings the club and connects it with the ghoul’s jaw. It stays dug into the zombie’s face as she stumbles back and slams into the wall, knocking the platitudinous framed pictures off their hooks. The nails stick and Deleon loses his weapon.

  The riot gear zombie comes at you, leaving you no choice but to fight. You baseball-swing the axe at his head, and it bounces off the helmet. The zombie whirls about from the blow, and falls to the floor, but rises again. You bring down the axe overhead, as if you’re chopping firewood.

  The axe connects with the face mask, which caves in response. Gore smears across the plastic wedge in a revolting display, but the zombie still comes for you, even without a face.

  Deleon bludgeons his ghoul with the hammer, beating her over and over again as she comes for him. He turns her face to pulp, but none of the blows prove fatal. She pounces, knocking him on his back, and is only stopped from sinking her teeth into the man by the club. The club catches its base on the ground and holds the ghoul’s face up with the nails.

  “Oh, God,” he cries from under her.

  Face peeling off from the strain, the zombie’s bite comes imminently. Yours, despite no longer having a jaw, tries biting your leg from the ground. Thankfully, the riot helmet is good for something and there’s no fluid contact.

  You bring your axe down upon him again. He’s on his stomach, and the blade lodges into his back. His riot gear softens the blow, but you penetrate nonetheless. It’s not plate mail, after all. Still he struggles. In frenzy, you hack at the undead man over and over with the axe. He goes limp. You must’ve struck spine and disconnected the brainstem. He’s not dead, but he’s not moving either.

  Looking back to Deleon, you see his attacker rip her face free from the club, just as he raises his arm to defend against a bite. Her teeth scrape against the cast, in the exact spot as the wound Dr. Phoenix gave him. Deleon rolls with the woman, putting her on her back, rises up, and slams the hammer down upon her forehead. Her brain coats the linoleum.

  You’re both huffing, but unscathed. Then the rest of the hospital arrives: an entire horde of undead, writhing and foaming in expectation of your demise. That must be why the doors remained closed: no one alive inside to open them.

  “Run!” You realize the voice is yours.

  “Emergency exit!” Deleon suggests from behind you as you race through the corridors.

  You follow the signs for such, hoping the crowd behind you means that the parking lot is clear. You sprint much faster than they do—careening down the hall behind you—but the distance between you is not that great.

  Around the next corner lies the emergency exit: it’s barricaded closed. What kind of idiot blocks a door that can’t be opened from the outside? The kind who gets eaten by zombies, evidently. You double back, still ahead of the horde, but that detour cost you.

  The undead mob fills the hospital wall-to-wall, clawing and stumbling to get at you with excited fervor. The collective moan reverberates deep within you, vibrating from your body cavity up to your throat. They’re right on your heels, but you and Deleon run with an adrenaline-fueled intensity.

  The next turn down the hall leads to a painful sight—a dead end. The hallway is cordoned off with waiting-room couches and coffee tables, secretaries’ desks and filing cabinets. There must be a couple thousand pounds of office furniture between you and the next area of the hospital: the cafeteria.

  And more shocking still, there’re people on the other side. Living people. You can see their blood-stained faces looking at you with terror through the glass portholes in the double doors beyond the barricade. A nurse shakes his head at you. A patient mouths, “Sorry.” Pain is in their eyes. They turn away rather than watch you and Deleon get devoured.

  The crowd of undead catches up, and with two hundred hungry mouths, there won’t be anything left of you. You wish you could send your past self a warning: hospitals are not the best place to go when the sick compulsorily turn to cannibalism.

  THE END

  School’s in Session

  Tyberius moves back up to the glass, examining first his own filthy reflection and how he’s deteriorated over the weeks, then looking past himself to the zombies and how fit—healthy, even—his former coworkers look in their preternatural agelessness. It’s like they’re cadavers, cut up in some lab, their flesh open where wounded but without any red. No blood, no raised or swollen skin. The flesh is sallow, nearly porcelain.

  He beats his chest and jumps at the ghouls, trying to assert dominance. They don’t flinch; just bite and mouth the glass. “God damn,” he says sourly.

  “All right, school’s this way. Finally, a good place to wait for rescue, so…”

  “Sims, get it through your fat fucking head. There’s no rescue,” Cooper answers. He refuses to meet her gaze. The rest of the group looks away, too tired to be drawn into either side of the argument. Deleon looks at his watch, feeling the crunch of getting to the school quickly.

  After only an hour of walking, you arrive. It’s not exceptionally large or glamorous, but to you it’s beautiful because it’s exceptionally pristine. No broken glass, no sign of forced entry. Evidently, there’s been no struggle here. A school isn’t the first place people th
ink to go when the dead start to eat the living, and odds are most people died wherever that place was.

  Cooper breaks the reverent silence. “We’ll all do a quick sweep, then one team will secure the school under the Doc’s supervision while I lead a team to the gun store.”

  “You want us to walk another two hours right away? Fuck that,” Tyberius says. “I’ll be on the ‘stay here’ team.”

  You notice several bicycles parked in a rack in front of the store. “The bikes! Quick, silent, maneuverable.”

  “Brilliant!” Deleon declares, bringing a smile to your face.

  “Fine,” Cooper says. “We’ll need some lock cutters from a janitor’s room. Just because the place doesn’t look invaded, doesn’t mean we’re alone. Game faces.”

  With solemn nods, the group prepares to enter. Axe raised high, you search the school, and… the halls are wonderfully empty. Granted, Cooper doesn’t give you time to check every classroom, but zombies aren’t known to open doors and most people probably don’t get infected, then lock themselves into high school classrooms to die.

  During this first look you note the location of the main office, the gymnasium, the cafeteria, and the nurse’s station. Once you go by the janitor’s storage room, Cooper claims a pair of bolt cutters and proclaims her work done. “Don’t go looking for trouble,” she says. “We’ll be back in an hour.”

  • “I’ve got two tickets to the gun show. And by that, I mean I’m coming with you to pick out my own gun.”

  • “I’ll stay here. We might need my axe to defend the school while you’re gone.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Sealed In

  The alarm within automatically sends a signal to the police station back in town. On a good day, help should arrive in around half an hour. But guess what? Today’s not a good day. There’s been no contact with the police for several days now and your little blinking light currently goes unnoticed. Good thing you had this room installed.

  Okay, so what do you have? Dry food rations and water, for one. A comfy chair and a camping toilet, so that’s nice. You have control over the building’s power, and security cameras placed strategically throughout, with live feed on the screens before you.

  You watch as these brigands overtake your compound. They sweep the area efficiently; obviously these guys hail from one of the law enforcement or military message boards you frequented in times of yore. They take out your cameras, you take out the power.

  Then they seal you in.

  • How much food did I store again?

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Search

  You’ve got the new hatchet axe and an aluminum baseball bat. Sims carriers a slingshot and an ornamental samurai sword he sharpened. Together, you’re out to look for the good doctor. After yesterday’s revelation to the group that he’s been hiding his infection, you can tell everyone’s on edge. How much of that serum could he possibly have left after several days out in the open? And now he’s spent fourteen hours alone. You can’t shake the thought that it’s more than enough time to transform.

  Sims is smothered in guilt. “I just figured, he’s working on a cure, right? Why not let him go work on it?” You don’t respond. He takes your silence as a concurrence to his guilt. “I mean, I just feel like I’m useless. I’ve given fourteen years to the Air Force as an electrician and now, here I am, an electrician in a city without power. Deleon can actually do something, ya know?”

  “We need you, Sims,” You say, trying to comfort him. “You got us here, remember?”

  “I’ve been faking my P-F-T, my fitness test? For years now. I figured what’s the point, since I don’t see combat, so… But here we are at the end of the world. Is that ironic?”

  “I bet there’s an emergency generator around here somewhere you could find. You can still use those skills.”

  He nods, internalizing whatever thoughts he has. You walk in silence, looking for whatever might be a science lab. You pass by scores of generic classrooms, chalkboards at the front, filled with desks. The doors have window slits, so you’re able to peek in as you walk past. Then you come upon something different, an alcove indentation in the hall that’s essentially two classrooms merged into one.

  The door is cracked open.

  You look into the slit and see a chalkboard covered with a mess of rambled jottings. Instead of desks, you see lab stations that look like kitchen islands, each with their own sink. They’re all alive with active experiments, but there’s no sign of Deleon. You nod to Sims and pull the door open.

  “Doc?” you call out. No answer. You move in, Sims right behind you, and search the lab. Beakers boil and bubble, sending formula through tubes. Not seeing the doctor, you turn around.

  “He’s got all this running off redundant generators and battery packs, pretty genius stuff,” Sims says just as a shadow moves behind, eclipsing him. Is it Deleon? You crane your neck around to see—it is the Doc, but he’s standing too still. His skin has sallowed, his eyes are depressed and the flesh around them is saggy and dark.

  “What?” Sims asks, staring at you. Deleon reaches out to him, and you try to warn him, but your throat is dry and full of cotton. The doctor puts a hand on Sims, who spins around to meet him.

  “Sims,” Deleon says.

  Whew. “Christ, you scared the shit out of me,” Sims says.

  “Likewise,” you add.

  Despite his wraithlike countenance, Deleon musters a smile. “I’ve done it. I’ll have the first batch in a few hours.”

  “You’re cured?” Sims asks.

  Deleon shakes his head and points at a whirring centrifuge. “I’ll need to test it. But the formula works on the cellular level.”

  “Have you been up all night?” you ask.

  He nods. “I’ll sleep now.”

  Sims radios back to the group that you found him, and then you walk Deleon back to the gym, where everyone’s already gathered. Cooper moves to the middle and crosses her arms. “It’s time to really get a feel for what we have here. Let’s get some breakfast, then we’re gonna make this place defensible. Make this… our home.”

  Eat your camping food, then where to?

  • Help Tyberius set up the barricades.

  • Check the nurse’s station with Hefty.

  • Loot the lockers with Cooper.

  • Try to turn the power back on with Sims.

  • Explore the cafeteria with Guillermo.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” Rosie says. She turns toward the canyon and prepares to cross, testing the ropes for firmness.

  “It’ll be all right,” Lucas assures you. “This is newly built, tested, and used—sturdy. If you want, you can walk in the middle.”

  Rosie starts on the bridge, a hand securely on each rope and lunging forward to the first step. One more step and she’s out on the bridge. It sways in a serpentine motion once her weight is fully supported. Now it’s your turn.

  Your hands and feet tingle with the sudden rush of blood. You sweat. It’s high up, precarious, and each step spells certain death. Your head expels any sense of well-being to make room for the growing vertigo, pressing like swelling cotton within your skull.

  Heights suck. But heights with a fate worse than death waiting at the bottom are in a league of their own. You grasp the rope, the coarse fibers itching at your sweaty palms, and take your first step out over the abyss.

  “Don’t look down,” Lucas Tesshu says. Great fucking suggestion, you think. What do people always—always—do when they’re told not to look down?

  You peer beyond your feet, the foreground fading away and the zombies below coming in with sharp clarity. It’s like a Hitchcock shot; or the shark coming at you in a sickening dolly zoom in Jaws, but it’s happening in real life. The bridge all but disappears and the writhing mass of ghouls jumps up at you in telescopic intensity.

  You fall to your knees and vomit. “Hold on
to the ropes!” Lucas shouts.

  The undead canal below comes to life with the introduction of your lunch and the shouts of your partners next to you. It’s a concert of moans, all echoing off the canyon like an amphitheater and coming at you in a booming drone. They struggle further, reaching up to you in hopeful expectation.

  You need to get off this bridge. You need to get off this goddamn bridge! Lucas is right behind you and Rosie has stopped only two planks ahead. You stand, the bridge swaying forcefully in response, and start to move forward.

  “Hurry up,” you mutter.

  “You okay?” Rosie asks.

  “Get out of the way. Hurry up—hurry up!”

  “Okay, chill out.”

  She starts to move, but it’s not enough for you. You’re having a full-blown panic attack; you can’t breathe, see, or think. You’re on her heels, trying to overtake her.

  “Hey! Cut it out!” she shouts. The zombies are screaming now too.

  She’s stopped on the bridge. That won’t do at all. It’s wide enough; you can pass her. You lunge forward, stepping onto the same plank as Rosie. The resulting swing, as if the two of you were trying to stand upon a literal playground swing, is enough to knock both of you off-balance.

  “Stop!” Lucas shouts, trying to reach out and restrain you. But it’s too late. You fall back, landing perfectly upon the thin air between two planks. A sickly feeling of malaise flows over you as you pass through the bridge.

  From above, you can see Lucas reaching out, still hoping to catch you. Rosie falls as well, and catches the rope with one hand, but her body weight coupled with gravity is too much force and the rope tears away from her grasp.

  The two of you tumble down the canyon and land with a crunch atop the thrashing, palpitating undead throng. Arms worm their way around you, holding you down and tearing you apart in the same motion.