“Looks cozy,” she replies.
• Continue to the Cathedral.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Who’s the Boss?
Your new friends escort you out of the house and into the streets. One of them gives some kind of code-whistle/bird call, then waits. Stillness on the afternoon air. Within thirty seconds, more survivors pour out of other houses, four of them in total, to round out the group to six.
One of them seems perturbed, a woman who walks up to you with purpose. “Who the hell is this?” she asks.
She’s probably in her early thirties, though it’s certainly possible the last few weeks have aged her. She’s dirty just like you, but she’s beautiful in a hard-as-nails sort of way. Black hair and blacker eyes. She wears an unbuttoned mechanic’s shirt with a fitted undershirt beneath. The embroidered nametag reads, “Cooper.”
She slaps a giant monkey wrench in the open palm of her hand whilst looking you up and down. “Ain’t got a tongue?”
You’re about to introduce yourself when Hefty speaks up. “Ty and I met the newbie when we was looking for food.” He points to you, “This here’s good people. You shoulda seen it, just obliterated this head-case, brains everywhere and—”
“Tyberius, you vouch?” Tyberius nods. She looks you over once again, judging your fitness. “Alright, you can travel with us, so long as you know I’m the boss. You’ve already met the twins. This here’s Jose.” She points to a man, most likely in his forties, who wears the stained whites of a kitchen worker from a hole-in-the wall restaurant. He’s Latino, short, plain, and has a calm countenance on his pockmarked face.
“Mucho gusto,” he says.
“And over there is Tyberius and Hefty.” Both are in their twenties and look like the ordeal has made them feral. The first is a handsome black man in tattered business casual. He wields a gigantic sledge hammer and has a police baton tucked in the waist of his slacks. The other one is a white guy, thin as a rail, and clearly a redneck. Plain white-tee kind of guy. He holds a heavy length of pipe about the size of a baseball bat.
“You can call me Cooper, and what I say goes. You got a problem with that?”
• “No, Ma’am.”
• “Actually, yeah. I’ll try my chances alone.”
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
With Friends Like These…
Remember those late nights over coffee talking about your Zombie Contingency Plan? Well, you don’t “remember” it per se, but you’re inexplicably headed to the house you all agreed to flee to anyway.
Odds are, they’ve had enough time to seal themselves in, but maybe you can tug on their heartstrings, appeal to their emotions so they’ll let you in, and then you can chew on their heartstrings. Your appearance hasn’t changed too much from a healthy human yet, and even the uninfected look strung out on stress and anxiety. So maybe, with any luck—
And then you’re at the house. Without even realizing it, you arrive. You pound lightly on the door. Eyes appear through the cracks in the boarded windows. Exciting!
“Holy shit, look who it is!” your best friend says. Other eyes arrive, each with their own cursed proclamation at your arrival. They call your name. You look their way and slap your palm against the window. They mistake your interest as recognition and your excitement for desperation.
They let you in.
All smiles and open arms, except for one. You know that friend who’s part of the group even though they don’t really belong? No one knows who invited them, or who even met them first, but here they are. That’s the friend who sees through you, and that’s the friend you bite. You never liked that tagalong anyway.
Now the cursing really starts. A baseball bat cracks against your ribcage, most likely fracturing one or two ribs and successfully pushing you off your prey. The one who swung it? Your next-closest friend—the third wheel who always joined in with you and your best bud on outings. The ensuing strike comes at your head, shattering your jaw.
Did you know you can still bite with a shattered jaw? Without pain receptors, there are limits your body can reach that you’d never have thought possible—back when you had the capacity for such thought. You show your friends just how well you can operate with a shattered jaw and clench down on that third wheel.
“Hey, asshole!” screams your aggressive friend. The gregarious one, with the boisterous laugh, the one who’s an overwhelming drunk. You look back just as they slam the bolt-action home on a rifle. Oh, yeah, that’s why you guys chose this house: it’s the one with all the guns.
Your brain splashes across the back of the room before the kaboom registers in everyone’s ears. Wasn’t that grandpa’s big-game rifle? Still works great—don’t make ‘em like they used to.
Yet your legacy will live on. You’ve infected two of your friends, and before the end of the night, they’ll rise again to finish what you started.
THE END
Women and Children First
Just like the airplane safety videos: please kill your own zombie before killing infants or children or the disabled. She’s the bigger threat, so you go for her. As the four-armed, two-mouthed beastie comes at you, you set your stance, digging the soles of your shoes into the pavement. You raise your arms high, looking like a great swordsman to any who might be watching; ready to strike at the start of a duel.
You chop down at the mother, aiming for the center of her forehead. An inexperienced killer, you’re all nerves and sinew. Like a lathe, your axe skims across her forehead, jarring her head back and breaking her neck in a sickening crack. She reels back, almost falls, but catches her balance and comes at you again.
You chop once more, but this time it’s more of a down motion than it is a forward strike. Her head creaks like an egg against a mixing bowl and when you pull your axe out of her skull, the body slumps toward you.
You fall back, trying to stay away from her, but the maneuver is awkward and you both fall down together. Before you can do anything, the infant is out of its carrier and suckling against your breast. A preferable surrogate. You scream out as you feel hell’s leech latch down upon you, and you shake in search of freedom, but freedom doesn’t come.
Deleon is over to you, his lab coat spittled with blood, and rips the unwholesome thing off. He slams the creature against the pavement, his hands on the little legs and beating the fiend against the ground like a toddler taking out a tantrum on a porcelain doll.
You stand and step away from the violence. You check yourself for blood and wounds, but there are none. A red ring where it had attached itself will leave a nasty hickey. Then you understand—the little bastard was toothless. It just gummed at you… with a surprising force and pressure, but you’ll be all right.
You laugh. You can’t help it; it seems inappropriate, but you laugh. You’re not bitten! There was no fluid transfer, so there is no infection. You show the red ring to Deleon, who laughs as well.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he says with a large grin and a slow shake of his head. As if at a loss for how to proceed, he shakes your hand. “C’mon, it’s just up ahead.”
* * *
This particular station hasn’t exploded… yet, though there are plenty of drugstores that are not so lucky. Maybe it’s because of the “Sorry, No Gas” signs up on the pumps, or because it’s too close to the heart of the city—anyone who wanted to evacuate probably planned on filling up on the way out. Still, it’s eerie to see such a popular locale with no patrons.
You go up to the front door, looking in through the glass façade. As evidenced from the orderly shelves within, you see that people have yet to loot the road-trip snacks and caffeine-laden drinks. They may not be the most nutritious diet, but they’re high in calories and chock-full of preservatives, so they’ll do while you’re on the move.
Ready to be over and done with it, your bring your axe down into the glass.
“Wait!” Deleon yells.
Too late. The glass crashes open under the power of the axe blade. You lo
ok back to the doctor.
“There could’ve been an alarm,” he says, looking at the destruction. “Or…” He approaches the door and pulls it open; it was unlocked. The familiar convenience store ding sounds as Deleon turns to you with brow raised. Guess that works too.
The two of you step into the dark store and immediately notice that people have indeed been here. Some food and drinks are missing, though the looters were kind enough to leave some for you.
“Oh, no,” Deleon mutters. You follow his gaze. The door to the pharmacy in the back is open; through the portal you see that a car has smashed its way in. Deleon heads back there, frantically looking for what he needs, stepping over downed cinderblocks and debris.
“Well?”
“Raided,” he says, throwing an empty box to the ground. “This won’t work at all. We’ve got to get moving—hospital or supermarket?”
• “Hospital. The supermarket’s probably been raided already.”
• “Supermarket. Hospitals scare me; especially when the sick try to eat you.”
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Yacht Club
Who doesn’t like a booze cruise? It’s even better when it’s on a floating multi-million-dollar luxury home. There’re no party crashers; everyone here is special—and in an effort to stay that way, most suck up to you pretty hard.
You’re in your private room, which you’ve been in while the guests arrived. It’s been six hours since you took the Gilgazyme ® and soon it’ll be time for your grand entrance. People will toast in your honor, and when they say, “May you live a thousand years!” it will actually be possible.
Still, despite your floating castle filled by people specifically here to make you feel good, you experience no joy. In fact, you don’t feel anything. You’re not excited by this party, but you’re not dreading it. You’re not happy to be immortal, but you’re not regretful either. You’re in the perfect doldrums of emotion. It’s almost like you’ve found some sort of Zen enlightenment where you’ve transcended all human feeling. There is nothing in the world that you want.
Then Stacy quietly opens the door, so as not to disturb your meditations. But she brings with her something sweet and potent: you can feel life flowing through the doorway with her. Now you know what you want, and now that you know it, you’ll never be able to find enough of it.
“We’re ready for you,” she says.
You turn toward her and she must see the hunger in your eyes—you can see it inversely reflected by the concern in her own. But ever your loyal assistant, she ignores her instincts as you move in toward her.
“Is everything okay?” she asks, her voice quivering.
It is now. You lunge the final step toward her, biting down firmly on her neck, your teeth sinking into the softest part of her flesh and freeing that life blood you so desperately crave. She gives you one final act of assistance, and screams out. Thus bringing the other guests right to you.
When they arrive, you drop Stacy. You want more, and you want it fresh. Brad, never able to hold an opinion of his own, now has no opinion over whether he should run or fight. So you give him a piece of your mind by taking a piece of his.
As for Stacy, she’s down but not for good. Your Gilgazyme ® works within her now, and in only a matter of hours, she’ll rise again. Don’t let it be said you never gave her anything.
Word spreads across your yacht that you’ve lost your mind. You walk calmly through your domain, playing the best game of hide-‘n’-seek ever conceived. Olly-olly-oxen-feed! You couldn’t ask for better rules: as soon as you find someone, you bite them, they scream, someone comes to defend them, and then you bite that person too.
Tony smashes a bottle of your finest champagne over your head, as if christening you, and you latch onto him for his trouble. You continue on, having the time of your afterlife, and soon make it above-decks. People flee and jump over the sides, which you think is a grand idea, and you follow them right overboard.
Unfortunately, you can no longer swim; so you sink. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter, since you no longer breathe. So you walk along the bottom, looking up and following the kicking legs toward shore. As the seabed rises to become beach, you’ll meet again.
In only a couple of hours, those you shared the gift of immortality with will rise from home base, and switch from hide-‘n’-seek to join your team in a worldwide game of tag. But why wait? No need to cover your eyes and count; the other team is already running and hiding.
Land’s up ahead.
• Better get walking.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
You Always Need Rope
“This dolly might help,” the engineer says, indicating a wheeled cart, large and flat. Lucas nods his thanks and clears the sound equipment off it.
With a fresh clip loaded in your shotgun—what is that, number three?—you prepare to head out. Lucas agreed to go for the water jugs while Rosie escorts the engineer. You take the lead, while Lucas trails in the rear with the dolly.
There are a few undead already in the hall, but nothing a depress of the trigger on your AA-12 can’t handle. You teleport their faces down the hall with a loud boom. It’s quick work, and you make it to the entrance with ease.
Lucas peels off to get the water jugs, but Rosie and the engineer tuck in tight behind you for cover. You rush out, blasting away at the crowd that’s gathered, and run toward the jeep. Eastwood remotely controls the CROWS system, systematically destroying any zombie that comes within its range. Using the machine gun as cover, you reload your shotgun.
Then you take the rope and run.
• Meet up with everybody by the tower.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Your Call
You’re hiking again. Lucas complied with your choice, but you can tell he’s unsettled as to if it was the right one to make. You start to make small talk, but he interrupts, “Pardon the request, but I need some time with my thoughts.” You shrug; fair enough.
You hike on, burning calories and daylight. It’s quiet and serene, this picturesque landscape, and yet you cannot get the ghouls from your mind. The dead and dying leaves serve as ubiquitous reminders of the moribund world in which you live.
Then a more ghastly sight infects the environment: A zombie, tangled in a heap of barbed wire, crawls across the forest floor. His torso is disconnected and he paws at the earth, inching forward at a snail’s pace. Trailing behind him is a thirty-foot-long mottle of barbed wire—at the end of which his legs are dragging in the mess. You surmise he got stuck in a farmer’s fence and struggled until he’d cut himself in two. It’s amazing he’s able to make any progress, what with the mass he pulls along.
Though, to be fair, he has help. Two other zombies, one male and one female, walk with him, each tangled in the web as well. Lucas skins his katana.
“This,” he says, “Is black and white. There’s no help but release for these. Come on.” He runs down the hillside toward the undead.
• Join him.
• Let him do his own thing.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
You’re Fired
Oops. Caught red-handed.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, right? I’m standing right here,” he says. “Stay where you are; I’m calling security.”
Didn’t really think this one through, did you? So much for infiltrating the company. Oh, well, back to your normal life.
• Pack up your things and leave.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
You’re Really Sick
Well, you’re obviously a lazy zombie, so you go for the closest easy prey. As it turns out, it’s some kind of YMCA or Big Brothers/Sisters program headquarters. You know the after-school types. From the looks of things, many parents were unable or unwilling to come and claim their child after all hell broke loose.
As a group of gods and goddesses feed upon the adult chaperone, you know there’ll be plenty of unattended morsels ripe for the taking. You shamble past the gorging immortals into the courtyar
d beyond.
Small eyes look up toward you, doughy faces reddish-pink with tears, like fresh, plump strawberries. Juicy. You shamble toward the bunch, and they flee, like so many games once played with laughter on this very ground. The screams tickle and titillate your senses.
This is fun. Some of these kids are quick, but lucky for you, most aren’t. There was an epidemic before yours—childhood obesity—and now you reap the benefits of the fatted calf. One particular chunky-monkey stands out; he’s out of breath just thinking of fleeing.
Your immortal dodder is faster than his waddle. He’s so out of shape that you catch him only by shambling. Someone call the mothers against bullying, this just isn’t fair.
You feast. The virginal muscle tissue, never used, is sweet and tender. You want to thank his parents for using the TV as a babysitter and a bag of potato chips as a pacifier. He’s a veal cutlet.
The children chum the waters with their screams. Soon, every interminable being within four city blocks arrives. You get frantic; better move on to more before they’re all gone!
Alas, soon they are. Nothing lasts forever… except you. Where to next?
• There’s a pawnshop across the street; maybe I can help these humans trade in their old life for the new.
• Corner grocery. When hunting, hang out where your food feeds.
• Follow the cars—you may be the tortoise, but the hare is bound to run out of gas sooner or later.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
You’re Right
“You know, I was just thinking the same thing. Not enough people appreciate the need to live it up,” Phoenix says. “On the eve of our triumph, Deleon’s off running more calculations. The thing works! Soon, the whole world will know it, and we’ll be the two richest guys on the planet—forever!”
INFECTED (Click Your Poison) Page 37