“Number 10. The perfect 10! How could I let the world end and not save you?”
Your number from the motorbike circuit? Oh, God. A fan, you think, heart sinking.
“Big into Motocross?”
“You really don’t remember me, do you?” he says, seemingly amused with the situation.
“I’m sorry, I sign a lot of autographs, but—”
“Let me refresh your memory. You, after a race, me, stupidly saying, ‘I’d give my left nut for a date with you.’”
You can’t help but laugh again; this is unbelievable. “I meet a lot of drunk fans.”
“I wasn’t drunk!” he screams, slamming his palms on the table, making you jump at the sudden outburst. Then, just as suddenly, he calms down completely and says in a low voice, “I was in love.”
“And you really thought that was the best way to get my attention?”
“I said it was stupid, didn’t I? That’s why I wanted to do it better this time, not fuck it up…”
“You can’t force someone to love you.”
He growls to himself and takes his steak knife, carving it into his opposite forearm while he groans “Stupid!” over and over. The whole display lasts about a minute and then he is calm once more.
“I want you to learn to love me. I’m king of this castle, and you can be my queen. I have bikes and a garage for you to work in. You can have anything you want!”
He becomes quiet as Bud brings out dinner—steak. Bud refills your wine, then leaves and shuts the door behind him. This Duke guy is clearly a nut job. Time to act.
• Give him a “nut job.” Make him redeem that date offer, the hard way.
• His knife is dirty. Play nice, offer to cut his steak, then go for the jugular.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Demanding
“Out of the question,” Captain Delozier says after you’ve finished your appeal.
“Due respect, sir, but you need to get her. I’ll go with you.”
“Look, I get it. We all love our mothers. But this is a secure perimeter around the hospital and nothing more.”
“Just let me through, then! I’ll go get her.”
“Ty, bud, let it go,” Sam says.
“She’s all I got, man. Picture Lily alone, not knowing what’s coming.”
“I suggest you listen to your friend,” Delozier says. “If she stays home, she’ll be fine. In a day or two you’ll be back together. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“Fucking coward!” you cry, not ready to admit defeat.
“I’m letting you stay here out of respect for the Colts. But if you push me, I’ll be forced to—”
“What, huh? What’re you gonna do? Nothing, that’s what. You don’t give a shit, do you?”
“That’s it. Open the doors, Sam. Not a request.”
Sam sighs and Lily looks away. “I’m sorry, Ty,” he says, before pulling open the doors.
Not much of a choice here:
• Looks like you’re now property of the US Army.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Devoured
The pain of having lost everyone you know—and worse, not knowing their fates—eats at you. You feel like a walking corpse yourself. Each city block that you pass has an abandoned military containment section. Yours was the epicenter, with the grocery store parking lot allowing room for tents, while the store itself must have provided your daily meal rations. How many people were quarantined? Did they run out of food? Or run out of hope for safety?
As you continue on, you see that this small command post was in fact a fiefdom to a larger, central kingdom. Soon, you approach suburbia, and with it a more fortified, yet equally abandoned, wall. In the vast distances you still hear gunfire and sirens.
Turning back, you see the hospital on the horizon, caught ablaze. Walking corpses, you think again. If your sister was right, the quarantine at the dojo was only meant to slow the march of the dead, while this must be what they were protecting: the command center. The castle of this new military kingdom.
That’s when you hear the moaning. It had mixed into the wind, like an Old West ghost town. Or, perhaps more likely, your shock at seeing the dead city had dulled your senses.
That doesn’t matter now. All that matters are the half-dozen people who stumble forward. Seeing them up close, all your skepticism of the concept of the living dead vanishes. One man has seven bullet holes in his chest, yet stumbles and gropes at you all the same. There’s a woman whose lower jaw is missing; completely ripped off. Her tongue lolls out of her exposed throat, like a dog on a hot day. Each walking corpse has injuries that don’t bleed and skin so pale, it could glow.
As they come, you suddenly feel very vulnerable. You wish you’d brought your Kendo armor, and what’s more—a weapon. Your martial arts training should serve you well, but it’s been far too long since you’ve faced an opponent while unarmed.
With your back to the wall, they come from all directions, converging like an eclipsing crescent moon. You lash out with strong blocks against their grasp, but sensing the life in you, they simply grow more excited. Most opponents tire after a few attempted strikes, but every time the dead come for you, it is with a never-fading intensity.
Their moans and growls are answered in chorus by dozens more voices on the other side of the wall behind you. Your mind scrambles for a way out, for a way to break through their ranks, when you’re taken from behind.
Several hungry arms have broken through the canvas skin of the barrier, forcing their way in-between the wire frame and grasping onto your limbs. If only you could cut through! Instead, they hold you in place with the collective strength of legion while those out front eat you alive.
THE END
Dinner is Served
There will be hell to pay, that’s for sure. The guards will certainly find a file out in the open, especially when it’s the size of Ron Jeremy’s penis. Are there cameras outside that could have recorded the contraband dump? How did you just now think of that? Dammit.
By the time the dinner call goes out, you’re shitting bricks from nervousness. Your undershirt is soaked with sweat to the point of bleeding through to your inmate jumpsuit. Why did I have to look? you think over and over again on the way to the cafeteria. Curiosity killed the cat.
You arrive, surprised to see a few inmates already seated. One is your cellmate. Looks like they opened the SHU and dumped out the contents. Celly nods at you in recognition.
Damn it! your voice roars inside your head. What’re the odds he was getting out tonight? He’s going to be expecting that file. You look away, figuring if you break eye contact, he’s less likely to see the guilt all over your face.
The other inmate you recognize is simply known as Solitary. He’s the guy everyone in here recognizes. A lifer who prefers solitary to the yard, they say. Even now, he wears wrist and ankle cuffs, the two shackled together so the man can’t raise his hands over his head—the price of being a repeat violent offender.
You sit, pretending to focus on dinner, thinking only of how screwed you are, when someone starts screaming. The cafeteria forms a ring around the fighters, just like high school. Only something is terribly different. It’s not two men fighting, it’s one man biting another.
The guards rush in and pull the victim away, and the aggressor snaps his jaws and lunges at the guards, managing to catch one, who screams. There’s a blur of movement in your peripheral vision, and you flinch as Solitary darts past. Despite the shackles limiting his movement, the man moves like quicksilver.
Solitary sweeps the frenzied attacker’s legs out from beneath him, then stomps on the man’s head, again and again, until he stops moving.
* * *
Celly shaves his head at the sink, completely bald, down to the skin. The whole time, you can’t help but think about that nutter eating the other guy. Jesus, you think. I mean—
“What the fuck?” Celly says, rifling through his blankets. “I thought today was contraband
day, hombre?”
He steps towards you, and his hulking frame would be scary enough, but seeing his ink up close makes it worse. Three tear tattoos drip down from under his right eye. You swallow, hard. He rubs the Christian cross tattooed on his chin in contemplation.
“You know something about this, esse?”
• It’s just a white lie: Deny, deny, counter-accuse, deny.
• Once they find the file outside, he’ll know. Tell him you did it to be on the safe side. Offer to buy him another…shank maker.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
The Dirty Half-dozen
Once you make it out and past the walls, you’re able to think clearly once again. Those walls that would have helped keep the undead hordes out should now serve to keep them in. For a little while, anyway. Long enough for you to find a new safe place, far, far away from here.
After running for a few minutes, you direct the group to a gas station convenience store. It’s been broken open and raided, but there are still a few sundries left within. Everyone grabs a drink and a snack. Sims snags a tin of chewing tobacco. Angelica looks for feminine products, trying to be discreet.
“That’s a nasty habit,” Angelica says to Sims, scrunching her nose.
“Yeah? Well, you know what they say, Old Habits and Die Hard.”
“We’re moving out. The sun’s going down and this place isn’t secure. Any ideas?” you ask.
“The hospital is FUBAR,” Sims says.
“No churches,” Angelica adds.
“I done used up my ideas,” Hefty says.
“Yeah, whatever you think is best, Coop,” Tyberius replies.
“As long as we find a radio. I’m going to signal rescue, at all costs. So…” Sims says.
All eyes are on you, trusting your leadership. It takes an effort not to smile. Even though the park went to shit, you’ve got something better than a wall. You’ve got your very own group of survivors.
“Let’s move out,” you say. “We’ll find somewhere safe enough for tonight, then somewhere safer tomorrow. We stick together, we stay alive.”
Click to Continue…
Ditch
You leap from the tram into the lazy river just before the first car smashes into the crashed cart. It’s a soft landing—mostly. The moat isn’t very wide, and you hit your shoulder against the concrete wall, which hurts but isn’t a debilitating wound.
The gasmask starts to try to filter the water, but it’s not designed as a SCUBA mask, so you pull the thing off to breathe. The current isn’t very strong, but all the same, you can’t stand in one place, so you have to go with the flow.
The sides of the lazy river are impossible to climb out of “for your own safety,” but there’s bound to be a bank downstream where you can get out. And indeed there is, but it’s completely clogged. With no lifeguard to fish out the extra tubes and various detritus, there’s a natural dam formed in the moat.
And it’s filled with corpses, some of them undead fleshies.
You swim as fast as you can against the current, but with all your sodden battle gear, it’s no use. Like a sloth of bears (yep, “sloth” is the name of a group of bears), waiting for spawning salmon, the zombies grab hold once you’re forced by the stream into their midst.
With any luck, you’ll drown before you’re eaten.
THE END
Doesn’t Add Up
“Call in the goddamn chopper!” you scream.
Belliveau nods and makes the call. You cover him while he does so and fire on two zombies. The first goes down with a bang, but then your slide stays open. That’s it, mag’s empty. In that moment of surprise, the second fleshie grabs you. Before you can bring out your knife, it digs in with its teeth.
Belliveau shoots the zombie and it falls off you.
“Evac is inbound!” he says.
But it’s too late…
You’re INFECTED!
Dojo
You rush over to the building with its glass front and pull on the double-doors. Locked. Frustrated, you shake them, rattling their hinges. The children inside range from maybe seven-year-olds to high schoolers, and they shrink back at the sight of you. The master of the dojo is a middle-aged Japanese man. His face is placid, sad even, and he shakes his head at you.
You nod back. Yes, let me in! But the man doesn’t budge. Then, fearing that a rifle shot is imminent, you back away and look for cover behind a stalled car. The National Guard soldiers jog towards you.
Locking eyes with the man in the dojo, you sprint at the glass doors, ready to break them down. He gets it, and rushes to disengage the door lock and let you in, precisely when you would have smashed through.
“Good call,” you say.
The man wears a classic white karate-gi and holds a large wooden staff, a mock-sword, you realize. The way he holds it tells you he knows what he’s doing.
“I am sorry,” the man says. “But I cannot allow you to endanger my pupils.”
Slowly and deliberately, he raises the wooden sword.
• Prepare to defend yourself. His 5’8” and 150 pounds versus your 6’3” and 225.
• Appeal to his humanity and plea for help. He doesn’t want trouble any more than you do.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Do the Right Thing
You rush in to help open the inner doors just as the convict smashes through the glass. Not wanting to get cut, you step back, police baton at the ready, should any of the fiends follow the guy inside.
As he pushes through, the store’s alarm goes off—Dee-doo, dee-doo, doo-doo—must be battery-operated. Seeing you, the convict shouts, “Same team, same team!” and you back away, realizing he’s taken you for a threat.
He spins back, then holds up a nail gun to address the pair of infected that have followed him into the entrance way. He puts the nail gun up against the first ghoul’s head and it drops, with a steel Bindi dotting her forehead. Equally as fast and effectively, he puts down the second undead.
“Christ, you almost gave me a heart attack,” you shout over the alarm.
The guy is skinny, thin as a rail, really, and his orange jumpsuit hangs off his lean frame. His eyes go to your police baton and he says, “You some kinda cop? Like security, errr….”
“Fuck, no. You some kinda psycho killer?”
“Ain’t psycho, but I’ve had to put some a’ them nutters down,” he says in a thick Southern drawl.
“The infected?”
He nods and you look away, swallowing a knot of emotion as the memories of your mother boil to the surface. At length, you say, “Guess we all have.”
“Can we shut this goddamned alarm off?”
“Lemme see your pipe,” you say.
He hesitates, but hands the weapon over. With a great slam of the pipe, you break open the cover to the alarm fuse box, find the right switch, and shut off the wailing alarm.
“How’d you know to do that?”
“We have the same setup at my job,” you say, handing back the pipe. “Thanks. I’m Ty, by the way. Tyberius, but to my friends it’s just Ty.”
“Mine call me Hefty.”
You nod. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Today, why? Oh…yeah, I always been this skinny. I could use some sleep though. We could run together, if the jumpsuit don’t put you off. I’ll watch your back, you watch mine. Deal?”
“My brother wore one of those once, so no, I don’t mind. But I’d need a favor. I need to drop off a dress somewhere. We can look out for each other, and if you don’t ask me what it’s for, I won’t ask about what you did to survive, neither. We leave the past where it belongs.”
“I’d best get a change of clothes, then,” he says.
“There are other department stores in here. And a mattress store. You look like you could use a few hours first.”
“Then what?” he asks all of a sudden. “After you drop off your dress, I mean.”
Probably just kill myself, a voice inside says, shocki
ng you, even though you know it’s the truth. After the funeral, you didn’t have any plans, because you didn’t have anything left to live for.
He continues, “Once the past is past, we stick together, yeah? Find someplace safe?”
That’s really what mama would want—for you to survive. As long as you remember her, she’ll live on. Like one of those movie stars in the black-and-white movies she used to watch. Long gone, but remembered and beloved.
You put out a hand for him to shake. He grins and takes it. “Just came from a construction site near here; could probably get you somethin’ suited to a man of your stature. Sledgehammer, maybe. Those nutters won’t even know what hit ’em.”
Sounds good to you.
Click to continue…
Down with the Sickness
The streets leading to the hospital are absolute chaos and grow worse, the closer you get to downtown. Cars flipped over and burning. Police cruisers, ambulances, and fire trucks litter the suburban roads; sirens blazing, but seemingly abandoned. Pedestrians chase one another to and fro. Lions lay with lambs, pigs fly, and politicians tell the truth—you know, the end times. They’re nigh.
“How did it get so bad so fast?” Jason wonders aloud.
“It already was bad, right under our noses,” you say. “Denial is a dangerous foe.”
“Thanks, Freud.”
The road ahead is completely barricaded, but you can see the hospital just beyond. “Hang on,” you say, flipping the Jeep over to manual 4x4. Jason grabs the oh-shit bar above the passenger window as the Jeep hops the curb and rips across the green median. The back tires throw up chunks of sod in your wake as the Jeep slides around the barricade and back to the road.
PATHOGENS: Who Will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? (Click Your Poison Book 4) Page 11