INFECTED (Click Your Poison)

by James Schannep

  Looking for more, you see dozens of zombies coming out from the woodline. The engine noise and gunshots bring them out like flies to honey on a hot summer day. You never had this much fun back in the real world. This is truly living. All those flesh-eating bastards coming at you from the trees have come here to kill you, but nu-uh, not this time. It’s your turn.

  The weapon was designed to be used by GED-wielding seventeen-year-olds, which equates to videogame-like simplicity. The machine gun erupts from your fingertips, the seemingly endless stream of bullets blowing apart the zombies. It’s like they’re watermelons, fat and thick and ripe, and you’ve dropped a firecracker inside the sweet, juicy center. Ka-BOOM!

  “Try not to blow your load too fast!” the soldier screams. “Short bursts!”

  You nod at him and look up for more undead from the forest’s edge. They steadily trickle in, to the point where they’re appearing faster than you can kill them. The soldier spins donuts, allowing you a constant “refresh” of your target zone.

  Your arms pulsate from the recoil shudder, combined with your own adrenaline. You squint, aiming carefully at a female ghoul—probably the farmer’s daughter—and blow her to bits. The troop drives you through the thick of it, trying to ram into the ghouls before you get a chance to shoot. It’s like a game; who’ll kill the zombie first? You jolt as he crunches into one zombie, its head smashed beneath the tire.

  The damage you lay out across their bodies is nearly unfathomable. To call a .50-cal a large bullet is a gross understatement—it’s more appropriately dubbed a small missile. Why does this weapon cause disproportionately more damage than other firearms? It’s a process called inertial cavitation. The massive bullet pushes through the body with such fierce acceleration that the resultant force creates a pressure differential and the target literally collapses inward at the point of impact. Think of throwing a stone in a lake—the water sinks in around the rock in a much greater area than simply the size of the rock, yes? So it is when a bullet hits a zombie in center mass and the ghoul is cut in half.

  And just like the lake, there’s splash-back.

  Even a hit to the shoulder can be fatal. Not because the explosion beheads the zombie, but because the tremendous amount of energy transferred to the bone on impact is such that a fatal concussion turns the undead brain to little more than slush.

  The M2 whirs loudly, purring with the satisfaction of the fifty-zombie meal just consumed. You yell to the soldier, “Is that it?”

  “Another ammo box—look to your left. No, my left. Other left!” He leans his entire torso out of the driver’s side window, trying to point it out to you.

  Then you see it. You lift the box for him to confirm and something catches your eye—the Humvee’s about to smash into an irrigation ditch. You open your mouth to warn him just as the front end dips down into the water and the bumper smashes against the concrete lip. The momentum makes the tail of the vehicle fly forward. You’re launched from the turret like a catapult.

  The dirt is soft and gives some cushioning as you smash into the field. Fortunately. You rise and spit earth, popping your joints and groaning with pain. The Humvee sits on its roof, wheels still spinning. The driver’s door pops open and the soldier rolls out with a grunt. He lies prostrate on the ground, arms spread and looking to the sky.

  You move to help him up, looking out for approaching zombies. As you do so, you see that the number of undead is shockingly high. A town of three thousand may seem abandoned when you drive through it, but take all those people out of their houses and put them on your front lawn, and those three thousand become an army.

  And looking to the woodline, it seems that most of the zombies are finally descending upon your farm. The sounds of havoc and destruction have them frenzied to the point where they’re stumbling at you in a half-coordinated run.

  “Lots of zombs?” the soldier asks from the ground. He can see the look in your eyes. “Goddammit.” He scoops himself off the dirt and scurries back into the vehicle, emerging a second later with both weapons, tossing you the shotgun. “You ready for this?”

  The undead are almost here. Angry and multitudinous.

  • “Ready to get up and run?”

  • “Let’s do this—put the extra ammo between us and keep the Hummer at your back.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Hammer Time

  You run at the zombie, screaming to embolden yourself, hammer raised high. Such a non-thinking entity surely won’t attempt to dodge, so you get as big a windup as you can and slam-dunk the tool at his head.

  Zombies may not duck, but they don’t stay static, either, so you have to adjust your trajectory mid-bludgeon. Your blow hits the thing in the skull, glancing off and causing the head to bounce. It’s not propped up against any sort of backboard, so essentially you just push its head away—albeit very hard. The attack would have at least incapacitated a man, probably causing death from internal bleeding.

  But not an undead man. These ghouls don’t bleed, and a fractured skull is not enough to destroy the brain. The fisherman isn’t fazed in the least, and grabs hold of your arm, even while his head still recoils. With the zombie holding your primary arm, you can’t do anything with the hammer. He bites down.

  You can’t help but shout from the pain. His two fishing buddies enter the cabin behind him with hungry eyes, looking forward to helping their friend finish you off. This doesn’t look good.

  Just as you think this is it, with what sounds like a small firecracker the first zombie’s brain sprays out the front of his head. As he hits the ground, there’s another pop and the second zombie goes down. The third falls in just the same way. What just happened? Before you have time to put two and two together, the shooter runs into the cabin and with a sweep of the rifle, comes to point at you. It’s a teenage girl in paintball armor.

  “Are you bit?” she yells.

  You can’t help but look at your arm, at the deep red gouges, clearly in the shape of teeth. You’re infected. You look back to her. She raises her rifle, and with another firecracker pop, puts a bullet squarely into your head.

  THE END

  Hanging Around

  You skirt the outside of the entry, taking extra care to keep your distance from the dangling ghoul. He lurches, swatting at you, trying to keep you in his sight. As a result, he’s swaying and twisting like mad. Figuring you don’t know how well that rope will hold, you move on quickly.

  The back patio catches your attention: there’s a radial arm saw jury-rigged to perfection; it stands at neck height, waiting to engage and decapitate anyone who might hazard upon it. The door remains closed, yet the glass in the door is broken. Being the detective-type, you notice that the glass lies on the floor inside the house, meaning it was broken from the outside. Even so, there’s no blood on the saw blades.

  The home remains perfectly intact and pristine on the inside as well. Even the furniture sits where it would have before the pox descended upon the other houses. Only one element sticks out: two pairs of dirty footprints, leading from the patio to the kitchen.

  • I’ve seen enough; time to move on.

  • Only two sets of footprints? Let’s see what’s in the kitchen.

  • Maybe the upstairs has some good loot.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Hanging Out with Dr. Armageddon

  Dr. Richard Phoenix has an amazing pad. Right in the middle of downtown, top floor, large glass walls. He must have anticipated the wealth Gilgazyme ® would bring, and spent himself into massive debt. There’s literally no other way he could afford this place. Everything is sleek and modern, meticulously decorated according to the latest trends. When you arrived, the girls—a pair of escorts—were already strung out on cocaine. They must be expensive as well; they’re gorgeous. One has her top off and the other girl wears nothing but a bra. Two empty Gilgazyme ® inhalers sit on the coffee table.

  “Welcome!” he yells from the railing on the second floor, when the bottomle
ss hooker lets you in. He rushes down to meet you, channeling Hugh Heffner in a scarlet silk bathrobe. With arms wide open, he greets you, embracing you in a hug and offering a kiss on each cheek. “Janitor, so glad you could make it.” He’s manic from the cocaine. “What’s your poison?”

  From the look on his face, you know that “No, thanks” is not an option, unless you want to turn around and go home. You say:

  • “You have a full bar, yes? Top-shelf cocktail please.”

  • “I guess draw me a line…when in Rome, snort as the geneticists do.”

  • “Gimme-gimme-gimme that Gilgazyme!”

  • “No, thanks.” It’s always an option. You turn around and go home.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Hanging with Hefty and Tyberius

  Tyberius looks inside parked cars as the three of you walk down the road. “What’re you hoping to find?” you ask.

  He shrugs. “Don’t know. But I tell you, always check parked cars. Know why?”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause think about it. People’re fleeing. Fleeing for their lives. Where’s all the valuable, important stuff, in their houses? No. It’s with them. In their cars.”

  “That’s pretty smart,” Hefty says. “Not bad.”

  “Yeah, stick with me, Hef. You’ll go far.”

  “Oh, get off your own nuts.” They chuckle.

  A loud crack opens in the air. You turn to see Cooper within an inch of Deleon’s face. She looks as much like she could kiss him as punch him. A broken handheld voice recorder lies on the ground next to them.

  She whispers something to him, and you can’t hear it, but then intentionally loudly she says, “Why don’t you explain what we’re up against, if you’re such an expert?”

  The whole group now waits on Deleon. “All right, good idea. Let’s see… I’m guessing you know that the head is the only weakness. All right, fine. You know they’re attracted to any commotion or human sounds and smells. Including their own moans, right?”

  She whispers again. “I want to know how someone becomes one.”

  “Well, a bite, even a small one will fester until the person eventually transforms. The gene-therapy is delivered essentially like a virus, meaning for all intents and purposes, this is a blood-born pathogen.”

  Cooper finally looks intrigued. Deviously, she asks, “Really? So we should check people for bites?”

  “After every skirmish, generally.”

  “And there’s no hope once you’re bitten?”

  “There will be. Once I finish my cure,” he smiles meekly.

  A man screams out. You look back, just as Tyberius nearly gets yanked into a car. He screams as a zombie trapped in a seat belt tries to pull him in. “Get this fucking thing off me!” he shouts.

  “All right, all right, pull back,” Hefty commands.

  Tyberius pulls away the best he can and Hefty brings his length of pipe down on the ghoul’s arms over and over. The bones snap, but the grip holds. “Hold on.” Sims uses his ridiculous Rambo knife to cut Tyberius’ dress shirt in half from the back.

  Tyberius manages to slip out and away from the car, his musculature on display in a wife-beater-style shirt.

  “Kill it!” Angelica shouts, helpless with panic. Seatbelt Zombie moans.

  “Hold it, Sims,” Tyberius says. “Hefty, do me a favor.”

  “You got it.” Hefty stands at the back of the car. The zombie leans as far as it can, torso out of the car, growls, snarls, and moans at Hefty. Tyberius finds the giant sledge hammer he carried; as he claims it from the ground, its end scrapes the pavement. Sparks jump from the metal head.

  “Kill it now!” Angelica shouts again.

  Tyberius raises the weapon slowly and deliberately, then with an athletic fierceness, spins a three-sixty—ending with the zombie’s head caught between the car frame and the full weight of the hammer.

  Another five zombies come out of nearby buildings. You’re surrounded. You axe one in the back, sending it towards Guillermo. Guillermo swings his meat cleaver and frying pan as if clapping them together; the zombie’s head caught in the center where they meet. The damage is disgusting.

  Angelica and Deleon manage to knock a zombie down and beat it with candlestick and hammer, respectively. The other three ghouls move in. Cooper shouts for the first time: “Hit the pavement!”

  You and Deleon look over toward her as the rest of the group dives to the ground. Cooper lets her length of motorcycle chain slide off her shoulder and it unravels to the concrete. She steps forward and begins to swing the chain. Finally, you and Deleon duck. With a whip-like motion, she connects the chain with a zombie’s skull, which gives off an incredible crack. The twice-dead zombie slumps to the ground. She takes out the other two with similar finesse.

  The streets are silent now. The group rises from the ground. “We’re getting off the street for the night,” Cooper says. You realize the sun is setting.

  “Where?” you ask. She points forward. You all look: a gothic Cathedral sits ahead—stark and menacing. The spires shoot up through the start of dusk, like the claws of some great beast.

  “Looks cozy,” she replies.

  • Continue to the Cathedral.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Head for the Hills!

  Just like granny would’ve said when she thought Commies were invading. You don’t have much, but what you do have, you throw in the back of your car. Some camping gear and whatever staples look like they’re the densest and highest in calories. That emergency kit you thought was a lame Christmas present might actually come in handy.

  Lucky for you, your gas tank is full. And you’ve even got a head start out of town. Well, you could’ve left a few days ago, but you weren’t really that surprised when Lindsay Lohan ate a member of the paparazzi.

  Still, the more proactive citizens are out and about in your city, preparing for whatever is to come. Traffic is heavy and you keep thinking, it’s now or never. Wait a little while longer and these roads will probably be permanently closed.

  On your way out of town, you pass through the suburbs. You drive past somebody mowing his lawn; poor bastard. Another few houses later, you see two men wrestling on a driveway. You’re not sure if the scourge has already made it this far, or if the looting has begun. You drive on.

  With the open road before you, you’ve got plenty of miles to contemplate your next move:

  • I know there’re some cabins only a couple of hours away. Maybe there’ll be some people I can meet up with or at least supplies stashed there?

  • There’s supposed to be some caves up north. I want to avoid people at all costs.

  • I’ll stop before dark and set up the tent. I want to stay mobile, and tomorrow is another day.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Hello, Mr. Scientist

  He crawls across the tiled floor, too wounded to run. You shuffle toward him, both of you knowing full well you’re gaining. He musters his final strength and rises to his feet, grunting angrily as he tries to flee on a broken leg. The doctor rushes toward a classroom, opening the door in an effort to escape.

  Oh no, he doesn’t! You stumble-run after him, lunging at the last moment and falling into the classroom with him. He slams his pickaxe against the floor in front of the door, breaking through the tiles and preventing any further immortals from entry. Big mistake!

  You attack him: clawing, scraping, and biting. He wrestles with you, but he’s not really trying to kill you. Instead, he’s trying to get to one of the desks. This is the science lab, not really a classroom at all, but that shouldn’t matter. Except that he grabs a vial of something, inserts it into a syringe, and stabs you with it—injecting you full-on with the liquid.

  Whatever, you attack him still. But then, after a moment, you stop. You… don’t want to eat him anymore. What’s happening? You look at your hands, and see an odd sight: blood actually begins flowing out of your wounds. Your heart starts to beat and you take a breath in, let it o
ut, then take another.

  You’re human again.

  “How?” you ask through an incredibly sore throat.

  He smiles. “The cure, it’s in you now.” He’s in terrible shape. Almost turned, he gasps, “Take my notes… find the others… radioed from the prison.”

  The door crashes open. You freeze, your eyes closed, but nothing happens. You open your eyes. The ghouls stand in the room, evidently without a purpose. They just look ahead, lifeless, paying you no mind. Slowly, you move forward. There, looking you right in the face, is a zombie—the walking corpse stares right through you.

  You move without fear amongst them. You’re cured, yet they still see you as one of their own. After a moment, Deleon—the doctor who just cured you—walks past as well, without pain—newly undead.

  • Go radio in to the other survivors.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  He Wasn’t Bluffing

  “Look, this one’s infected!” the man in the suit shouts. Automatically, you look to see who’s around to witness. No one’s close enough to see you’re plainly healthy. Shit. CRACK—the baseball bat connects cleanly to your temple. A lesson you no longer have the brain to learn: in these early stages, your fellow humans pose more of a threat than the zombies.

  To him, that handgun represents protection for his family. People will do crazy things to protect their loved ones. And in a world where mankind is turning into monsters and eating each other, you’re one less hungry mouth.

  THE END

  Hiding Out with Dr. Apocalypse

  Deleon’s apartment is nice, but nothing too upscale. It doesn’t come close to the opulence of Phoenix’s penthouse. The living room and kitchen have been converted into a makeshift lab: beakers and test tubes are everywhere, and various notes adorn his home. Without delay he sets to work on the cure, which, you glean from the notes is called, “Formula of Rememdium.”