INFECTED (Click Your Poison)

by James Schannep

  “Thanks for the help,” you huff out.

  The woman looks over at the bodies you just dispatched. “Did either of them bite you?” she asks. You shake your head.

  The cook slides his cleaver back into his belt. “Vienes con nostros,” he says, welcoming you with a wave of his hand.

  “Wait, I didn’t say you could join us,” the woman says, taking control of the situation.

  • “Do I have to say pretty-please?”

  • “I didn’t say I wanted to. Good luck to you both; I travel alone.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  The Final Call

  Inside the student radio hall, you find and key the microphone. “Hello?” you say, unsure what else to say.

  There’s an immediate response. “This is Colonel Arthur Gray of the civilian camp, Salvation. Are you with Sergeant Sims?”

  “He’s not… I’m the last one, sir,” you say.

  There’s a moment of silence as the man on the other end accepts the gravity of your words. “What’s your situation over there?”

  “I’ve… been cured,” you reply, unable to believe it yourself. “They’re all dead but me.”

  “Listen, just stay tight, we’ll have a team out in the morning,” he responds, a sad desperation in his voice. You’re much more his hope than he is yours, you realize.

  “Colonel, the cure wasn’t a reversal. I know that much. I still have something new in me, but I’m human—mortal—again. And yet they no longer try to attack me. It’s like they see me as one of them. I can simply walk to you.”

  After a moment, the voice returns to the radio, more strained by emotion than ever. But it’s relief now. “He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague stopped.”

  Is that scripture? It certainly has the ring. “Keep the lights on, I’ll see you soon,” you say.

  And that’s it. You really can just walk through all the death and destruction without fear. If it was a scripture he quoted, a more appropriate one might be Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. For Deleon is with you, his legacy will be the immortality of Gilgazyme®.

  You push out the broken barrier, the one Sims was supposed to cover, the one the zombies breached and made it through. It’s hard, shoving your way through the walking corpses, but you make it out just as a woman’s scream pierces the night air.

  Turning back, you look up toward the roof. Zombie Deleon is up there, and he’s covered in blood. You raise a hand toward him, waving goodbye one last time. Maybe you’ll see him again, when the cure is widespread, but maybe not. His arm moves up, almost a wave back.

  “Thank you, Lewis Deleon,” you say. “The man who saved the world.”

  You smile, turn around, and walk away, running your fingers over the raised bump where your bite wound is healing.

  • Click to Continue.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  The Final Countdown

  The master-of-arms soldier leans out the trailer window and looks at you with a grin. “How’d that combat shotgun treat you?”

  “Good,” you reply.

  “But not great, eh? Well, time to pull out all the stops.” He steps back into the recesses of the trailer and appears with a much larger grin and an equally proportioned weapon. It looks like the prehistoric ancestor of your shotgun; all muscle and built to terrify. Just looking at it, you feel like an ’80s action star.

  “AA-12 combat shotgun,” the soldier says, handing the olive drab behemoth off to you. He holds up what looks like an old film reel, but what you realize is the ammo clip. “Twenty rounds in each of these, and I’m giving you ten drums. But be careful: it’s full auto, and those drums will empty out in four seconds if you hold down the trigger.”

  Then he holds up a white ammo drum, pops open the side and removes a bullet that looks like it was torn from the pages of a sci-fi pulp comic. It’s all silvery-chrome and has fins at the base, like some kind of mini-missile. “Frags,” he explains. “High-explosive anti-personnel round with a nine-foot blast radius. Accurate at well over five football fields. Remember the white drum—this one takes you up to eleven.”

  Trying not to cream your pants, you step into the sunlight and inspect this pinnacle of shotguns. Rosie steps up to the counter and asks for more ammunition. “Oh no, ma’am, I have something special for you,” the soldier replies.

  “I told you, I already got my rifle.”

  “Of course, but what about a secondary weapon? How about a pistol that uses the same .22 long-rifle ammunition? And what if that pistol had a one-hundred-round capacity?”

  “Shut up. Tell me you don’t have a Calico M-110.”

  He produces a black pistol, long and sleek like a blaster from Star Wars. Rosie fawns over the thing like a kid at Christmas.

  “Where does the magazine go?” you ask, seeing only the short pistol grip and the oversized top.

  “It is the magazine!” she exclaims, popping off what would be the slide on a normal pistol. It’s a hefty black cylinder, like a cucumber on growth hormones, and she shows you where the tiny bullets feed out.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Wizard cannot give me anything new,” Lucas Tesshu says with a kind smile. “I think the sword and grenade combo is just fine.”

  The soldier produces a belt of grenades that are more like energy drink cans with pull-pins at the top. “We’re gonna switch you over to concussion grenades; frags might get you in trouble in close quarters. Take these MK3s instead.”

  “I don’t have much else to offer, it’s true. What do you buy the man who doesn’t want anything? I thought you might not mind these.” The soldier slides several shuriken-throwing stars across the counter.

  “Why would you have these?” Lucas says in disbelief.

  The soldier grins. “Clearly, you don’t know any American soldiers.”

  “Why don’t you come with us?” you ask. “We could really use your help.”

  “I bet you could!” he says with a laugh. “But don’t you want a safe place to come back to? Tell you what, how about we go for the best of both worlds?”

  He leads you around to the motor pool, where your jeep is at the ready. Except this time, there’s a modification to the rear. Behind the passenger seats, nestled securely where the cargo would go, a belt-fed machine gun looks out at you. There’s something off, though. It’s raised on a swiveling base, and opposite the ammo storage is a large, multi-lens camera array.

  “This is CROWS,” the soldier explains. “I’ll be remotely operating it from the trailer. So in a way, I’ll be right there with you.”

  “What’s your name?” Rosie asks. The man merely grins and shakes his head.

  “I like it this way,” he says. “Like I’m the man-with-no-name in one of those Clint Eastwood movies.”

  “All right, Eastwood. Thanks for the help,” you say.

  • Ride out!

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Fire in the Hole!

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good…” Rosie says, trailing off as she watches Lucas pull the quick release on all ten grenades and toss the thing over the rail. The belt tumbles down sixty feet and the undead crowd below reaches up as if receiving manna from heaven.

  Then there’s the boom.

  A wave expands across the undead in a black and red ball. You fall back onto the platform as a result of the shockwave, but then the tower lurches and you realize it’s not that at all—the grenade belt must’ve knocked out one of the legs of the tower. Looking back over the edge, you see several zombies getting back on their feet, several more crawling through the blast zone in pieces, and a new wave of undead ambling toward the tower. The structure groans with instability.

  “Come on!” you shout, moving toward the stairs. There are no ghouls on their way up anymore; the explosion must’ve shaken them off. You run down, keeping a hand on the rail as the tower collapses. Rosie and Lucas are right behind you.

  “Start skippi
ng steps!” Rosie yells.

  You bound down the tower, making it to the bottom just as the structure starts to collapse. The metal-on-metal screeching roars out like you’ve just slain Godzilla. You let off five quick shots with the combat shotgun, blasting apart as many zombies in as many seconds. Then a sixth blast sounds out: it’s the glass from the tower smashing against the ground.

  “They will certainly come now, my friends. We must hurry.” Lucas unsheathes his sword in preparation for slicing through the crowd.

  “Over here!” a faint voice shouts. You squint, trying to pinpoint the sound despite the ringing in your ears. “Help, please!” A figure leans out a window from the terminal. It’s the doctor!

  • Get going to the terminal!

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  A Fisher of Men

  Well, you don’t have a pole. Maybe you could try noodling? Just stick your hand in the beclouded sludge, wiggle your finger like a worm, and wait for food to latch on. No, you’re smarter than that. The demolished home nearby has plenty of suburban shards that are more than capable of serving as a spear for this endeavor.

  With your new implement in hand, you hover over the deep end of the pool, waiting for those ripples to appear once more. When they do it’s just a—thrust—and you’ve hit the good stuff! First try, and you’ve speared something big.

  You widen your stance, bend at the knees, and pull up with both hands. With a great perturbation, the water churns and welters and your catch bursts forth from the surface. Not sure what you were expecting, but it’s a zombie—an undead teenager who wandered in a straight-line right into the pool and couldn’t wander back out.

  Despite the fact that he won’t decompose, a medley of other horrific things have happened to his flesh. He’s bloated and swollen from the water, and microorganisms have started growing on him. His eyes are wide and yellowed, and he vomits the swampwater in an effort to moan.

  You’ve speared him in the chest and he tries his damnedest to reach out to you. “What are you, an idiot?” someone yells from the tree house.

  You look up, dropping the spear, and see a man in his late thirties with a woman in her fifties behind him. He’s decked out in military gear and a little overweight; by her demeanor and clothing, you can tell she was a privileged housewife back in the world. “Look out!” she cries.

  Yeah, all that splashing that wasn’t going away? That was the zombie still trying to get you. And now he’s got a hand on your leg. Your shoe doesn’t hold well on the slick concrete (no running by the pool!) and he brings you down on your back. Ouch.

  The couple rushes over to help, but they’re a second too late as the zombie pulls you into the pool. As you go under, the last thing you hear is the guy saying, “Dumbass.”

  A crocodile will drown you so you’re not struggling when it eats you. A zombie will give you no such luxury; this will be a painful death.

  THE END

  Flame On

  You don’t need to tell him twice. He’s got a ninety-nine-cent lighter from the rack and is already rolling back the thumbwheel. Hefty and Tyberius stand by the glass doors waiting for their cue.

  “All right, one…” Sims says as he lights the rag. “Two…” He runs toward the doors. The guys batter against each side, knocking the ghouls down. Tyberius beats them with his hockey stick and Hefty does the same thing with his machete while Sims runs out.

  “Three!” Sims hurls the Molotov cocktail as hard as he can over the zombies’ heads. There’s already quite a crowd gathered; in unison, the undead watch the flaming implement sail over them.

  Sims threw the device too hard and it explodes in a ball of fire, completely missing the living corpses. In one simultaneous motion, they slowly turn to look at Sims… and moan. Sims makes it back in, panting from the run. The doors are pulled shut. “Man, you suck,” Tyberius says.

  “What now?” Deleon asks.

  The front glass shatters and Hefty screams the obvious. “They’re breaking in!”

  • “There’s still the service entrance, right?”

  • “Umm… Hello? We just got new weapons, let’s use them!”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Flight Reflex

  You know the old joke, the one where the bear starts charging two friends. Then one begins to lace up his shoes and his buddy says, “You can’t outrun a bear!” only to have the other reply, “I just need to outrun you.” Well, two things are true: you can’t outrun a bear, and there’s no one here for you to outrun instead.

  There’s a lot less food in an undead world, and that’s true for more than just humanity. You’re now on the menu! With your legs pumping as hard as they can, you’re out of the kitchen in a flash, but you don’t even make it to the front door before the bear brings you down with a swipe of his mighty paws. The claws slash sinew and tendon, and your back breaks under the blow.

  This bear will have a harsh winter indeed, but the feast that you provide will at least give him a fighting chance.

  THE END

  Food Generator

  You walk toward the low grumble, having pinpointed the sound to a ridge above the city. As you hike toward the source, the siren and lights turn off behind you, so you feel like you made the right choice. Now if the people at the generator site leave before you arrive, you’ll really be peeved.

  But no, there’s a new sound that tells you you’re not too late at all: gunfire.

  When you clear the ridgeline and move through the trees, you see an odd sight. A jeep with a turret on the back is blasting your fellow immortals to bits, but… there’s no gunner. It’s some kind of automated drone turret, and the .50-caliber machine gun slaughters gods wholesale, with no danger to the shooters—wherever they are.

  The jeep sits out in front of a radio station, a medium-sized concrete building with a gigantic radio tower in the back. But the building doesn’t interest you. You move toward the machine gun, like a moth toward a flame. You can’t help yourself. The turret swivels, doing the most damage it possibly can, and slowly rotates toward you. But then three figures emerge from the station: a young girl with a scarlet ponytail and paintball armor, a geeky-looking scientist, and a swordmaster in kendo armor.

  The engineer sprints toward the outside of the building, around back to the radio tower, escorted by the swordsman. The girl sprints toward you and the jeep, so that’s where your attention goes.

  She has some kind of freakish pistol, and pops round after round into the pantheon around you. With quick, nimble moves, she makes it in and claims a large spool of rope, turning and fleeing just before she would’ve aimed the pistol at your head.

  Now she moves toward the back of the building, and you follow. Stepping over the corpses of former immortals, you rush as fast as your uncoordinated legs will carry you. Around the back, the scientist dangles on the radio tower while the samurai and the girl deal death. Wisely, you head toward the tower and the dangling food.

  He climbs higher and higher, the rope securely around his waist. You wave your hands high above, hoping he’ll fall on you. Eventually he makes it to the top and the tower hums with new life. Electricity flows through as the thing powers up. You can hear the power move down the tower and feel new vibrations come down onto the concrete pad on which you stand.

  Your feet can’t move; it’s like you’re glued down. The electricity arcs through you and you can no longer control your muscles. You superheat and your flesh cooks on your bones until eventually—something smells like copper-coated popcorn, and your cooked brain pours out your ears. The engineer ziplines down the rope to safety and the trio escape to the jeep.

  THE END

  Foragers

  With your axe held in front of you, you move around into the kitchen. Good news! There are no zombies inside. Bad news? A bear, large and brown, turns away from digging in the pantry and stands up when you enter. It paws at the air and snarls with menace. Its large fangs drip with strawberry jam.

  Your move.

&nbs
p; • Attack the bear!

  • Turn and run.

  • Play dead.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  For Guns and Glory

  The school was gloriously abandoned, at least in the cursory glance you gave it as a team. Unfortunately, the longer you go without sleep, the lower your attention to detail. So hopefully they’ll be all right without you. It’s a good thing the sporting goods store is only fifteen minutes away on bicycle. You should be back at the school and asleep within an hour.

  The store sits right up against the trees, all marsh and forest behind it. Wilderness creeps forward toward the city at this boundary, green arms reaching out behind the building, but within the woods there is only silence. No animal or insect noises. No birds. Just the wind rustling through the leaves.

  You cross the concrete savanna parking lot. The sign above the store reads, “MAILAR’S SPORTING GOODS.” Sims spreads his arms wide like he’ll hug the store, then spins back to the group, arms still raised, and declares, “Heaven on Earth, my friends. Heaven… on… Earth…”

  It’s you, Cooper, Sims, and Guillermo. The others stayed back at the school to scrounge for supplies. Hefty requested a shotgun, Tyberius a pair of handguns, and Deleon a cowboy lever-action rifle. You don’t even know what you want; there could be any combination of wonderful things within.

  “Take it slow,” Cooper says. “We don’t run. I know we’re happy; we’re getting guns. But we don’t know what’s in there. Game faces.”

  “Let’s go. We’re not alone,” you say. A faraway zombie meanders toward the store.

  The doors open with a ding! and you enter the main floor with silence, axe at the ready. The mechanism must be battery-operated; there’s no electricity. Yet it’s not dark inside. The multiple sky-lights illuminate the store; not fully lit, but it’s enough.