A large, newly plowed and seeded tract of land and a modular home sit like a glorious beacon in the moonlight. It’s got everything—a well, horse stables, remote location, even solar paneling. Guy was certainly prepared.
A dozen para-military vehicles sit parked out front; looks like a few others had the same idea. There’s a Jeep in the ditch alongside the road with a shattered windshield and bloody interior. When you park and step out of the Camry, you see several of the vehicles parked out front have bullet-holes as well. Just off to the side are several large mounds of fresh dirt; each one is about 7’x3’.
“Nice gas-mask,” a voice calls from upstairs. “What was your username?”
He’s standing up on the balcony, assault rifle in hand. More survivalists come out from the compound. You swallow hard and say, “Ninja-Guidon.”
“Ahhh, I remember arguing with you a few times. I’m Rebel_Yell_1997, but you can call me Duke,” he says. When you don’t respond, he continues, “Look, Ninja-G, I’ll level with you, we got enough fat white guys here already.”
“No, I totally get it. That being the case, I’ll just be on my way, so…”
“Not so fast. We can always use more supplies, and from what I recall, you were a regular. I’m guessing you brought us a nice care-package, yeah?”
“Is that all this was?” you say, trying to buy time, and angle towards the M4. “You invented Preppy Long Stalking and catfished other survivors into bringing you their gear?”
The man grins. “Nah, the Prepster was real, and served as the bait, we just came and put the hook on. You’re the third forum member to show up and donate to the cause.”
His eyes go to the mounds of dirt. There’s no way you’re getting out of here alive, so you might as well take out as many asshole rednecks as you can. He wants a donation? Time to donate some lead to this motherfucker! You claim the M4 and go down in a blaze of glory.
THE END
At a Loss
After a few hours’ walk on a beautiful sunny day, you arrive at the Ranger Station. The parking lot has several official park vehicles, as well as a school bus and a decked-out Cadillac Escalade. The bus is gray with red trim and has “Boy Scout Troop 1408” stenciled on the side. The Caddie is midnight-blue and fresh from a detail; clean even in the wilderness, it looks like something off Pimp My Ride. The vanity plate reads, “DRIZZY.”
That’s when you hear the crying.
It’s wailing; a weeping despair that permeates the still of nature. For some reason, you think of a mother who’s lost a child. Jason shivers and rubs away goosebumps.
The front door is unlocked; a simple push/pull—no handle or knob. You’re not sure how smart Zulu are, but part of you hopes that any inside pushed their way out, and any outside couldn’t figure out how to pull their way in.
When you slowly open the door, the weeping grows in intensity. Whoever it is, she’s inside. Despite the sunshine out in nature, it’s dark and cold inside the building.
“Do Zulu cry?” Jason whispers. “Because I need to shoot whoever that is.”
You clear a lump from your throat, ready your weapon, and say, “Hello?”
The crying stops. Great, you think, the lump returning.
“If there’s someone here, show yourself,” you say.
“We’re here to help, but we’re armed,” Jason adds.
There’s a sniffling from the back office and then a meek voice says, “Please, it’s not safe. They’re still here.”
You step over to the office door, which has a chest-high section of safety glass. A woman appears before you, and you try not to jump. She’s a park ranger, her uniform smattered with gore and her face red from crying.
“That rap star guy—his people brought him here. He was sick. He took that new drug, and… They brought him here. Then the children, oh God….”
You turn back to gauge Jason’s reaction and catch sight of a small shadow behind him. A kid hiding under the table? Your heart jumps, and you want to fire, but what if it ain’t Zulu?
“Look out!” you cry.
Jason flips around with his shotgun shouldered, but too high. The kid lunges at your brother’s legs. Jason stumbles back, kicking at the kid.
When the hellion comes back, you finally get a good look at him in the light from the doorway. He’s a scout, in uniform, and definitely Zulu. Trying to earn his devour-the-flesh-of-the-living merit badge.
You dart forward and raise your rifle. The kid chews on a section of fabric torn from Jason’s pants. Dead-eyed, but enjoying the taste of your brother’s scent. Crack—you shoot the tyke in the head. The Ranger screams from the office.
Jason clutches his thigh, where blood pools out between his fingers. He looks up to you and says, “Awww, fuck monkeys. Now what?”
• Don’t draw it out, like with Daddy. Shoot your brother and be done with it.
• Ask the Ranger for a first-aid kit. It might just be a scratch…right?
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Away from the Herd
“Christ, lady. You got a death wish, that’s on you,” Hefty says. “C’mon, Ty. We ain’t wanted here.”
Tyberius looks saddened, but follows his friend away. Angelica has the same lost puppy look, though she follows you as the group splits ways. Jose simply waits patiently for your next move. You could use a dozen like him, that’s for sure.
“I don’t know that we need to be that careful,” Angelica says.
“Exactly. You don’t know. But I’ll tell you this: Good, gentle people were probably the first to die. If you’re the kind of person who sticks your neck out to help your neighbor, you’ll get a bite to the jugular as thanks.”
You continue walking through the zoo in silence until a zebra crosses in front of you.
“Que?” Jose says.
The zebra looks back, then takes off in the opposite direction. How the hell did a zebra get out? You look to the zebra, to Jose and Angelica, then to the shadow on the pavement. You turn back just in time to see something yellow and black leap from the top of the ice cream shack. As the leopard pounces, you raise the wrench to defend yourself, but you’ve got no chance against this apex predator.
Oh, and poor choice of last words.
THE END
B&E
The pipe goes through the glass like you’re only clearing cobwebs. Once it’s shattered, you can simply reach in, unlock the doors, and let yourself in. After you smash the glass of the inner set of doors, an alarm kicks off. Dee-doo, dee-doo, doo-doo. Shit, shit, shit.
You step in with the pipe raised, ready for more nutters, but your senses are thrown off by the wailing alarm and the darkened store. Better get that turned off posthaste.
When you open the doors and head in, a shadow steps forward, arm raised, a police baton in his hand. It’s too dark to get any details.
• Fuck him up. Shoot first, ask questions later.
• Call out for a truce. Nutters don’t hold weapons.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Backing Out
You lock the dojo from the inside and consider leaving a note, but Melissa’s impatience wears on you. Breathing deeply, you find a measure of calm, but that evaporates as soon as you head out the back door.
It’s a thin road, the kind that’s perpetually wet and cold from a lack of sunlight and natural drainage, built to house each of the business’s dumpsters. If you were to run to the left, it would lead toward St. Mary’s Hospital.
Heading right, the alley opens into another street full of shops: a tattoo parlor, a payday loans building, a strip club, and a liquor store. You don’t often see this side, and less often do you really look at it. When you were a child, coming to this very spot for your own Kendo training, you rode a bicycle to and from class. On the day you passed the level three test, you celebrated at an ice cream parlor where the tattoo shop now sits. Not long ago, the strip club was an arcade. Before that, it was a dressmaker. Change is the way of the world, you tell yourself.
/> “Damn, we’re too late!” your sister yells.
Snapping out of it, you see that the area is already barricaded by the military, and now the National Guard soldiers head towards you.
“Stay where you are!” one booms from behind his gasmask.
“Our only chance is to run for it,” she says.
“Melissa, look around you! Master Hanzo can’t run. We have children!”
“They can’t catch us all.”
“No,” you growl. Then to the children, “Stay together, live together.”
“Obey your sensei,” Hanzo adds.
A terrible sadness washes over your sister’s face. “We’ll meet again, Luke. In this life or the next.”
“Don’t….”
“Come find me,” she says, then takes off running.
“Imouto!”
The soldiers are upon you now, but their attention turns to Melissa. One frightened young man raises his rifle. Not even thinking, you step in front of his weapon.
“Outta the way!” the man shouts.
“Infected don’t run,” another soldier says.
That seems to work, and the first soldier lowers his rifle.
“We’re taking you to the containment camp,” a third says. “You’ll be safe there.”
• Go quietly, for the sake of your group.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Battle of the Bees
The students gather in a semi-circle while Master Hanzo bites on his empty pipe. He clears his throat, closes his eyes, and begins, “This story takes place almost a thousand years ago, when Japan was very much a wild place. To this day, the mountains of Kasagi remain wild, and with it, the memory of Yogodayu’s victory. But victory was not always assured. Yogodayu had a feud with his wife’s brother, who attacked Yogodayu’s fort and sent him, badly beaten, into the mountains for safety. Yogodayu—”
“That’s a funny name,” Liam says.
“Shhh!” some of the other kids say before you have the chance to shush him yourself.
“Yogodayu had only twenty-some warriors with him, and he greatly feared that his brother-in-law would come to finish him off. While he was hiding in the caves, he found a bee trapped in a spider’s web struggling to get free. But no matter how much the bee tried, it only seemed to become tangled further.
“Yogodayu took pity on the bee, and, as he cut it loose, said, ‘Be free! It is always good to grant freedom to others, even when you yourself are pursued.’
“That night, Yogodayu dreamt of a man in yellow and black robes who came to him and said, ‘It is I, the bee you rescued! And now I want to help. Collect as many jars as you can, and the next time your enemies attack, the bees of the wild will be with you.’”
“I knew it was the bee,” Haley says.
“So Yogodayu told his men of the dream and they each went to their home villages to recruit more warriors and to bring back jars to the fort. They gathered eighty men, but thousands of jars, and the bees came down from the mountains to live in the jars. Yogodayu’s brother-in-law heard word of the gathering warriors and came to attack again.
“This time, they released the bees. There were three thousand bees per enemy and the attackers quickly fled, some losing their minds.”
“The moral,” you add, “is to always help those in need, for you too will need help one day.”
“Goodnight,” Master Hanzo says.
The old man abruptly extinguishes the candles with a sweep of his robe, and the room goes dark. The children whisper to themselves for a time, but eventually you all fall fast asleep.
* * *
Sometime in the middle of the night, you’re awakened by an urgent pounding on the doors. It takes only a brief moment to exit the dream-state of sleep before the memories of what’s out there come flooding back.
It’s an urgent, almost animal-like intensity, rapping upon the door, pulling at the handles and groping for a way in. With no streetlights, you can’t see who it is—or how many—out in the shadowy black of night. A huffing voice shouts something, but you can’t make out any words, or be certain there are any to make out.
• Leave the doors closed. You can’t defend against a mob with a wooden sword.
• Open the doors. Bushido demands you help any way you can.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Bearing Down
Turns out there are no Humvees with military bearing. Not any with open seats, anyway. If you don’t want to get left behind, you’ll have to find an alternate form of transportation. Time being of the essence, you end up taking your trusty old Toyota Camry.
You manage to pull in behind the last Hummer just as the convoy departs. The gunner swivels around to aim the .50 cal your way, and you frantically wave so the team will ID you as friendly. It’s Captain Nobody and his psychotic gunner, Simecek. Great.
Luckily, he doesn’t shoot. At you, anyway. He does, however, open fire at a crowd of fleshies too far off in the distance, wasting ammo and drawing more undead to the commotion.
“Jackass!” you cry.
A figure stands on the roof of a hardware store, a hunting rifle in one hand, slashing a Kill the commotion! gesture with the other. Simecek opens fire at him as well. That’s when you notice the woman on the roof. In one smooth motion, Hardware Man drops to one knee, aims down the scope, and hits Simecek with a headshot.
It’s chaos. Other Guardsmen open fire at the hardware store, and the drivers all take evasive action. The bulk of the convoy runs into a concrete flood drain. Keeping your head down, you follow.
The Hummers take the concrete canyon easily enough, but no such luck for your Camry. The tires can’t find purchase on the algae sludge that coats the base of the runoff, and your front-wheel-drive sedan spins sidewise and gets caught against the edges of the drain, pinned bumper-to-bumper.
The convoy leaves without you.
Not ready to accept that your car is caput, you gun the engine. Terrible shrieks come from the tires, but no traction. Might as well be a dinner bell. The undead come tumbling down the sides of the steeply-sloped ditch, but they’re quick to rise again.
Taking the M4 in hand, you stay hunkered down in the ravine, not sure if Hardware Man is still up there taking headshots or not. Would it be so bad if he were? Better than being eaten alive, surely.
You sprint up the side of the ditch, but the scum coating the ravine sends you sliding back into the arms of two dozen ghouls. There won’t be enough left of you to rise again.
THE END
Beaten
You flip the cot and disconnect one of the legs. The cot was designed to be collapsible, so the metal beams separate with ease. You weigh the beam in your hand to assess the possibility of the new bludgeon. That’ll do.
By now the fiend is right on top of you, so you lash out with an uppercut to the jaw. The former woman staggers back, then moans. Not with pain, but excitement. She wants you, and she wants you bad. Her movements are random, though predictable—she’s coming right for you.
You leap off the ground, adding as much of your weight to the blow as you can, and slam the club against her head. Other people in the tent are awake now, and a few are screaming.
The screams bring in the guard from outside, and he stands with his rifle at the ready. “Another two Turned,” he says into a chest-radio. “Go for a transfer to aggressor tent.”
In response, four more soldiers rush in. The woman is already down—you’ve seen to that—so the soldiers focus on you. One drags her corpse while the others fight to immobilize you. You think they’re just trying to break up the conflict, so you don’t put your full effort into resisting, but it’s enough that they switch to beating you with their rifles.
The three men drag you out of the tent and through the military compound, back to an alley where two other guards let you pass. Once you make it through, you find yourself among dozens of bodies—some charred and burned, but most freshly dead.
“Wait…” you cry, but they’re not listening.
Apparently they’re unable to make any discernment between an aggressor and one who’s Turned. Either that or they just don’t care.
The men open fire.
THE END
Be Careful What You Wish For
The doctor nods, still obviously shaken, then leaves the tent without another word. Ten minutes later, a dozen soldiers enter, each carrying a set of vehicle strap-downs. One man shouts, “Listen up! For your own protection, lie down on your cot, arms by your side and do not move. Any movement will be taken as aggression and will be dealt with harshly.”
This is not what you had in mind. But with a dozen armed men, what choice do you have? They use their straps to bind you to your cots, despite your protests that you’re not infected. They’re the kind of thick nylon belts you usually see securing goods on the back of flatbed trucks, and the soldiers ratchet them down tight.
Once finished, they turn off the lights and leave you in darkness, nothing for comfort but the labored breathing of your fellow patients. Eventually, that just becomes white noise. At some point, as boredom sinks in and adrenaline sails off, you fall asleep. You really weren’t planning on sleeping tonight, but despite your best efforts, sleep comes. Exhaustion has a way of doing that.
You have a nightmare that you’re in church with mama and the choir is singing, but you can’t understand the words. You know she wants you to sing along, and you don’t want to disappoint, but you can’t tell what they’re saying. It’s not even in English; it’s not in any language. It’s moaning. A chorus of the damned.
When you wake up, everything is still dark, but the soft low moans from your dream are here with you. At least they can’t get to you, right?
…right?
• Call out for the doctor.
PATHOGENS: Who Will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? (Click Your Poison Book 4) Page 4