PATHOGENS: Who Will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? (Click Your Poison Book 4)

by James Schannep

  “Their parents are probably dead,” he says, unblinking.

  “Perhaps. In which case, my duties increase. You don’t know much about my dojo or even kendo, but we practice more than swordplay. In ancient Japan, the word for ‘Samurai’ came from the words for ‘to protect and serve.’ A life without honor is no life at all.”

  He shakes his head. “You want to get yourself killed, that’s up to you. And tomorrow, it’s solely up to you.”

  “It is true courage to live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die.”

  “Sure. See you in the morning.”

  One last supper, one last breakfast. Then what?

  • Head out once the barricades are lifted and take your pupils home.

  • Stay in the dojo and wait for the parents to come.

  • Go straight for this “Salvation.” He’s right; the parents are probably dead.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Timesuck

  You log onto your workstation computer and pull up the Internet browser. It’s one of those generic search-engine homepages with news, gossip, and cat memes. Up top, there’s a photo of Lady Gaga in her “meat suit” accompanying a headline for her latest PR stunt: “Celebrity turns Cannibal, Police Claim Helplessness.”

  Fame Monster, Celebrity Cannibal, blah blah blah. There’s another article about Joaquin Phoenix walking through his neighborhood naked, but your growing disgust for more Hollywood BS has you skip down to the next section.

  PETA was protesting the use of rodent testing for Gilgazyme® at the Human Infinite Technologies lab and evidently chose to show their animalistic anger by biting each other bloody. The next feel-good story tells how several Wall Street CEOs have broken international law, intentionally it would seem, but are planning on living in Brazil until the statute of limitations wears off. Thanks to the new longevity wonder drug, they’ll still be in their prime upon return to—

  “Morning, Kay,” Craig says, setting his stuff down on his work station. “What’s new?”

  “Oh, not much. Murder and corruption.”

  “I said ‘what’s new?’” he replies with a chuckle.

  “Yeah. Nothing, I guess.”

  “Same shit, different day,” Brian says from the other side.

  Stephen comes in from the lobby, a full mug of shit coffee and a grin to match it. “You guys hear about Warren Buffett? They’re calling his latest billionaire get-together ‘The Warren Buffet.’ The other hedge-funders fuckin’ ate the guy.”

  “Gross. If I was gonna go cannibal, I wouldn’t eat some old dude, know what I’m sayin’?” Josh asks, coming from the bathroom.

  “First it was Eastern religions and healing crystals, then it was that Scientology crap, now they’re getting their kicks seeing if they can get away with murder,” Stephen says.

  “Is cannibalism a belief system?” Brian asks. “Or more of a diet thing, like Paleo? Genuinely curious.”

  “Let’s get some work done, huh?” you say. “Big day ahead of us.”

  * * *

  You’re elbow-deep in a spark-plug replacement, feeling around for the little bastards on the inside of a Ford pickup. It takes full concentration, so it takes you by surprise when Craig snaps his fingers right by your ear. In instinct, you reach up and grab his hand in your own grimy fist and twist.

  “Agh! Hey, watch it!” he cries.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Jesus, Kay. You were off in la-la land. I said, ‘Are we taking lunch breaks or ordering in?’”

  “Sorry, Craig. Let me go check with Owen.”

  Wiping your hands on a rag, you head towards the lobby and front office. Now that you think about it, you are fairly hungry. What time is it? The clock shows 12:20, but could it already be that late?

  Josh is in the lobby talking with Owen when you open the door. Owen’s saying, “It’s not just a problem on our end. I tried calling the phone company from my cell and they’ve got that dead ‘deet-deet-deet’ sound, like a phone of the hook.”

  “Man, I haven’t heard that tone in decades,” Josh says, then noticing you, adds, “Our landlines are dead. Some kind of problem with the phone company.”

  “Great. I was about to ask if we should order some lunch, but sounds like we’ll have to get carryout with the phone problems.”

  “I’ll go,” Josh offers.

  • “Yeah, okay. Just don’t take too long, the guys are already getting hungry.”

  • “No, I’ll go.” I could use some fresh air.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Togetherness

  “Right,” Owen says. “Okay, lock the gates and turn off any lights we don’t need. Pull down the garage rollers and lock the doors. I think we all have a pretty good idea what’s coming, so let’s get ready for rioters, looters, and…”

  “…others,” Stephen finishes.

  “Good start, but then we need to inventory food and use the bathroom sink to fill up whatever clean containers we have. We don’t know how long the water will stay on,” Craig says. Then, almost sheepishly, “I spend a lot of time on prepper message boards. This was kind of my hobby. I’ve got a generator and powdered goods back home.”

  Brian’s eyebrows go up and he shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Well…that’s good. Then what do you think our priorities should be?” Owen says.

  “Just as I said. Rule of threes, boss. The average person can only survive three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food.”

  “And three seconds while being eaten alive,” Stephen says.

  Craig ignores him and goes on. “Water, that’ll be our first chokepoint. There are six of us in here and we need a half gallon per day each just for bare-bones survival. That’s…over sixty gallons of water if we hope to make it long enough to even need to worry about starvation.”

  “Brian and Stephen, you guys clean out those fifty-gallon drums. Kay, why don’t you and Josh—”

  “Where is Josh?” you ask.

  The guys look around, like he might be tucked away. Just a misplaced tool. The toilet flushes and Josh comes out of the bathroom, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  “Looking a little green around the gills, champ,” Craig says.

  “When I was outside, that guy….” He pushes up his sleeve to show a grisly bite wound just above the wrist. The skin is as pale as porcelain and the veins beneath appear almost black.

  “Christ, man,” Stephen says, just as someone pounds on the garage door. A second later the service buzzer goes off.

  “I’m here to pick up the Hummer!” a man cries from outside.

  You look through the window to catch a glimpse. It’s not one man, but five. They’re decked-out in paramilitary gear and leather. Clean-cut types with hard arms and soft bellies. Each holds at least a handgun on his person. You also notice several large knives. One has a belt of grenades…are those real?

  “Let him in,” Craig says. “Can’t leave people without a set of wheels.”

  “Just toss him the keys. We finished that job hours ago; it’s parked out front,” Brian says.

  “He’s still gotta pay. Maybe he’ll give us something useful?” Craig says.

  “Like the barter system; not bad,” Stephen agrees.

  Owen looks conflicted. Most likely, he’ll listen to you.

  • “Keep the doors closed, boss. Pass his keys through the mail slot.”

  • “We don’t have much in the way of food; let’s open up and broker a trade.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Tone Deaf

  “C’mon, you bastards!” you scream, picking up an enormous monkey wrench from the garage tools. Owen gets the idea and takes a four-prong tire-iron. Stephen grabs a large pipe nearby.

  You put Josh out of his misery with one quick stroke, trapping your former coworker’s head between the wrench and the pavement and leaving nothing in-between but skull fragments and p
ulp.

  “Craig! Look after Brian,” Owen barks.

  That’s when you see face-to-bloody-face what you’re dealing with. These really are corpses, animated and given life once more. Their flesh hangs in ribbons and many have gunshot or stab wounds somewhere on their body. Wounds that don’t bleed.

  Owen smacks one of the fiends with a backhand from the tire iron, but it just staggers away, head bobbing from the impact. A blow like that to a living man would’ve put somebody in the hospital, but this ghoul just keeps coming.

  “Back into the garage!” you shout.

  The group falls back and Craig smashes the controls to send the rolling gate back down. The fiends keep coming though, even as you batter them back. You can see something deep red, almost black, come oozing from the hairline fractures on their skulls, but that doesn’t even seem to register.

  The door groans as one of the undead—a small boy—is caught in the track of the rolling gate. The heavy gate crushes the boy, but that doesn’t matter. Not to the group, anyway. You’re backed into a room you’ve sealed off and the growing horde of undead is at the only entrance.

  Their moans bring others to the feast. This won’t end well.

  THE END

  Too Attractive

  The night air cuts right through the dress, sending a chill deep into your core. The good news is that the dress is sheer black. Those roving patrols shouldn’t be able to see you, with any luck. To be honest, you have no idea where you’re going, but the Hummer didn’t drive that long. You’ll be able to make it to safety if you just keep walking. And if you find a road? Well, maybe the dress will come in handy, trying to hitchhike with anyone who might pass by.

  As you reach the woodline on the outskirts of the camp, you can still hear everyone behind you with shocking clarity. Laughing, yelling, even gunshots as they fight off the dead. Casting a glance back, you see the former farm glowing with off-the-grid power. It must be visible from miles away. You smell it too; someone’s BBQing. Maybe everyone gets a steak dinner?

  Then you smell something, much, much worse. When you turn back around, you slam into one of the dead. She grabs at you, but you shove her away; her fingers rake against your bare arms and curl back ribbons of skin.

  You howl in pain and a group of them moans back. They’re all headed straight for the compound, you realize, because it’s the only beacon of civilization for miles on end. But it’s something you realize too late. Death before you and torture at your back; this won’t be pleasant.

  THE END

  Tooth and Nails

  You grab an electric saw, plug the thing in, and carve perfectly-sized planks from the pile of lumber. Solitary catches each as you toss the finished product his way, then uses the nail gun to bolt the wood across the windows.

  For a few glorious minutes, all you have are the sounds of the saw and the nail gun, but as more and more of the nutters gather outside, their collective moans and growls drown out the power tools. Has it really been long enough to infect that much of the prison population?

  There’s a shattering sound, and the groans are suddenly much louder. One of the window boards breaks loose and a pale, bloodless hand paws its way inside. Solitary grabs the man’s forearm and nails the dead hand against the other boards, using the fiend himself as a barrier.

  No fluid comes from the flailing dead hand. It would seem no pain, either. The animated corpse just keeps pulling until flesh and bone part and the hand is free once more. Another board pops out and a skinhead bites through, for which Solitary rewards the undead man with a nail through the forehead.

  You take one of the other windows with your saw, and when an arm breaks through, you attack it with the blade. The whirring teeth send crimson-and-black plasma spraying across the workshop, and the arm twitches for a moment even after you sever the limb.

  Then the door breaks open and the Nazi bastards flood into the workshop. You drop the saw and go for a pickaxe. Solitary uses the nail gun until it finally dry-fires empty. It’s a valiant effort, but the noise of your machinery and the frenzy of the crowd has drawn in every infected nutter in the whole prison and you’re quickly overwhelmed.

  THE END

  Trainwreck

  A scream brings you back. It’s a woman, her scream perfectly evolved to pierce the cave-man part of your brain into action. When you open your eyes and look around, you see the battered train car, and slowly the memory of the wreck comes back. The train is on its side and you’re lying atop shattered glass and concrete against what used to be one of the windows.

  You push yourself up and the woman screams again. No, wait, that time it was you. Your left arm is inflamed and incredible pain unlike anything you’ve ever experienced shoots through you. Wriggling your fingers, you still have motor control, but barely. Broken? You don’t think so. Dislocated, maybe.

  The woman screams again (for real this time) and when you stumble out of the tram car, you see a blonde running from a pack of three crazed admirers. She locks eyes with you and heads your way. You unsheathe Isabelle and mentally steady yourself.

  With your left arm all but useless, it’s not going to be easy. The tried and true tactic of grabbing the ghoul to stay your aim as you slam Isabelle into their skulls won’t work with one arm. You’ll have to improvise.

  Luckily, the blonde isn’t totally useless. She wields a gaudy candlestick and together, the two of you take out the three fleshies. It’s difficult, and sloppy, but somehow you both make it through unscathed.

  “You saved my life,” the blonde says. Then she kisses your gasmask, leaving a perfect lipstick print on the plexiglass.

  “Brave, but fuckin’ stupid,” a man says with a thick Southern accent.

  When you turn, you see a black guy in tattered business casual with a sledgehammer and a thin redneck-type with a formidable length of lead pipe.

  “Well, I’m glad he did it,” the blonde says with a glare.

  “I’m sure you are!” the big guy says with a laugh. “I’m Tyberius, you just saved Angelica, and my man here is Hefty. So what’s your deal, Darth Vader?”

  “Sergeant Sims. US Air Force electrical maintenance specialist.”

  “Are you working with the guys doing all the roadblocks?”

  “I don’t…I don’t think that’s a thing anymore, but no.”

  “Then what are you doin’?” Hefty asks.

  Your head swims. All you can think to say is, “I’m going to signal rescue, at all costs. So…”

  “You should come meet our, well, our leader,” Angelica says with a smile. “Fair warning, she can be a real bitch.”

  Your brain is still trying to process your shoulder injury, so you simply nod. These people seem nice enough and you’re better off getting on their good side while you wait for rescue to arrive. Not much of a choice here:

  • Follow the group to meet their leader.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Tranquility

  It takes a bit of time, but you find a building that fits the bill for the night in the form of the zoo’s security offices. Angelica claims a Taser, but with limited charging stations on the move, you’re certain she’ll be carrying nothing more than a brick in a day or two. Jose turns his nose up at the pepper spray, but you? You’ve now got your very own tranquilizer gun.

  With its long, slender barrel and calming green stock cradled in your arms, you fell into a deep sleep. In a windowless room, the sun doesn’t wake you. Instead, it’s men’s voices. The real world blends back from dreams of a return to the survivalist compound.

  You jump up in a cold sweat, take the rifle, and rush out. There waiting are Jose and Angelica, along with two others. Jose stands with his back to the corner, the cast-iron frying pan in one hand and his butcher’s cleaver in the other.

  Angelica, however, seems completely at ease. The men do too. They have the look of men who think they own the world. One of them is a tall, well-built black man wearing tattered business casual and wielding a sledgehamm
er. The other is a thin-as-a-rail redneck-type with a plain white tee and jeans, who holds a lead pipe.

  “The fuck?” you say.

  “Whoa, lady!” the big guy says, raising his hands at sight of the rifle.

  “She ain’t gonna shoot us, she’s just scared,” the redneck says.

  So you point the rifle at him.

  “Let’s all just calm the fuck down,” his friend says.

  “We’re just talking,” Angelica adds.

  “Did I say you could talk?” you say, not looking over to her.

  “You the leader of this group?” the big guy asks.

  “That’s right.”

  “Ain’t nobody the leader of nothin’ no more,” the thin guy says.

  “I’m in charge of this rifle, and if you don’t want me to prove it, I suggest you shut the fuck up.”

  That does the trick, for a bit. “You won’t waste a shot on the living,” he says at length.

  “Won’t I?”

  “Lady, I think we all just real tired and probably hungry. It’s been a long couple of days, yeah?” the big guy says, repositioning his sledgehammer.

  • Lower the rifle and say, “You’re right. I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

  • Say, “Throw your weapons in the corner by Jose, then we talk.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Trouble

  The National Guard soldiers take you, and they’re rough about it. It’s hard to tell if it’s out of anger or fear, but those emotions are really two sides of the same coin, so take your pick. It all happens so fast that it’s hard to remember the order of things. Your skull is throbbing. They struck you, to be sure; multiple times, from the way your body feels after.

  There will be no cell phone video of police-state brutality. No, there’s something far worse “going viral” right now, so the other citizens on the street turn a blind eye as you’re clubbed and dragged away.