INFECTED (Click Your Poison)

by James Schannep

  You unload the equipment from the company, along with rations and other emergency supplies. After that, you set to securing and boarding up the apartment—he was remodeling his bathroom, so tools and lumber are plentiful—all the while keeping a close eye on Deleon and a tight grip on his hammer, just in case that bite gets any worse. An hour goes by. He works feverishly, knowing he doesn’t have much time. Once you finish your fortification, you follow the doctor, watching his every move.

  Deleon sweats profusely. He starts to look pale and sickly, but you’re not sure if it’s because he’s turning into a zombie or because the realization of what he’s started is finally sinking in. He removes a digital voice recorder, and speaks into it: “The formula proves… troublesome. It seems we designed the delivery vehicle for the altered genetic code too well. I can stave off the transformation for a time, but I can’t seem to reverse it completely.” The man acts like you’re not even in the same room. No cure? You hold the hammer close.

  He continues, “I can feel my mental faculties slowing considerably. It’s like my motivation to live is just fading out. I’ll have to resort to provisional measures.”

  Deleon sets the recorder down, then inserts a vial of formula into a syringe. He turns his palm up, showing the bite. It’s not exactly festering, but something is happening, and the visual results are equally as unsettling. The wound is hideous. It oozes pus and thick, black, veiny lines appear around it like the rays of some ungodly sun.

  He finally looks at you. Then, with a sigh of uncertainty, he injects the formula into his bite wound. “This isn’t a cure,” he says, “but it’ll work for now. Complete infection takes only six hours; I’ll have to give myself this inoculation every three.”

  * * *

  It works. So long as the doctor shoots up every three hours, he won’t become a zombie. Over the next month, Deleon does nothing but work on his cure, taking an injection break every three hours. He’s always making more of the liquid, but the thought of his finite ingredients weighs heavily on you.

  You spend most of the time on edge. You try de-stressing with calisthenics and strength exercises (you might just need them), but it doesn’t help much. Screeching cars and powerful explosions from the world outside grate on your nerves. Then the silence of the world weighs on you even heavier.

  Between the early news reports and the tests done on infected rats, you learn a few important lessons about your undead pursuers that—God willing—you’ll never have to use: 1) the only way to kill one is by destroying the brain. At least zombie fiction should prepare most people for that; 2) they’re attracted to any human sounds, and will come to investigate with ravenous frenzy; 3) although they don’t breathe, and their hearts don’t beat, they’re not truly dead; they’re simply preserved. The Gilgazyme® worked, kind of, and that means there’s no waiting them out.

  To pass the time, you look through the memorabilia in the home—old family photos, book collections. The power went out, at least to this building, so you’re relegated to the daylight hours. One book stands out: Sociality Abounds: A Novel by Jacques Deleon. There’s a sticker canted sideways on the cover, “Nobel Prize Winner.” The inside cover is simply signed “TO MY SON.”

  Deleon takes the book from you, puts a picture of his parents inside, and says, “We’re going. Get packed up.” He’s constructed a makeshift cast for his forearm out of the bathroom drywall, and slides the cast on. “We’re bound to see other people, and I don’t expect them to understand about my wound. So say nothing about it.”

  You nod in acquiescence. He dictates into his recorder once more, a sight you’ve grown accustomed to this last month. “I could stay here comfortably for a few more weeks at least, but I’m leaving. In search of the limiting ingredient—niacin. I’ve left a copy of my cure notes in case anyone ‘stumbles by.’”

  With this, the doctor looks to you, smiling at his own macabre humor. He then fashions a bandolier around each calf, in which he keeps the vials of his formula. Each one is labeled “Cure attempt 3.1.” After pulling his pant legs down over them, he sets his wristwatch alarm for three hours. The countdown begins.

  He rips off a leg from one of the tables and hammers several nails through one end so they protrude on the other side; a spiked club. Your hiking backpacks are stocked, and now it’s time to pull up the boards and leave.

  Which way?

  • Fire escape. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  • Front door. No one made it to our porthole in the last month…

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  High School Reunion

  You meet the rest of the group in the entry to the school, but it’s not because they were anxious to see your supplies. Deleon is seated against the long row of lockers, his arms secured behind his back. Tyberius and Hefty are watching him, with a baseball bat and a pair of gardening shears in their hands. It’s obvious he’s their prisoner.

  “What’s going on?” Cooper asks, sliding her pack off. The rest of you unload as well, moving tentatively toward the men. “We ran into some trouble,” she says in response to her new buzz cut.

  “So did we. He’s been bit,” Hefty spits out.

  “We missed one when we looked? Where was it?” Sims asks.

  “No,” Deleon says firmly, desperately. “I’ve been bitten since long before I met you.”

  Cooper raises an eyebrow. “But how? That was so long ago—how are you still… living?”

  “I have a cure.”

  The group confabulates in anger. They’re shouting their betrayal, and Deleon holds up his hands to calm them. He wants to explain. Bad move. All Guillermo sees is the bite wound and he chomps his teeth twice, then says, “Mordido!”

  Guillermo jumps to his feet, cleaver raised, and charges at Deleon, who backs away, hands still raised. “Hold on, estoy bien! Medicina!” The doctor ducks into Guillermo, evading the cleaver but still taking the force of the chef’s tackle.

  It’s a sight too familiar since the end of the world, that of two men wrestling on the ground while one’s trying to kill the other. Sims and Hefty get Guillermo off Deleon, then Tyberius helps the doctor to his feet. Guillermo paces around, ranting in Spanish about the crazy people he’s with.

  Cooper is not pleased. “I knew there was a reason I wanted to kill you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us you have a cure? Why lie?” Tyberius looks legitimately hurt.

  “Well… it’s not finished. But as long as I take this inoculation every three hours—I just need to find a lab to finish it—look, I tried to say stay away from me, but you guys wouldn’t—”

  “Where the hell are all the guns?” Hefty asks, interrupting.

  Sims looks down and shakes his head. “Raided,” you say. “But we still got new clothes and weapons.”

  “God damn it, we are so fucked,” Hefty says. Sims removes the hunting bow and quiver, and hands it over. “Oh what, just because I’m from the South means I can use this? That’s racist.”

  “Can you use it?” you ask.

  “Well… yeah.”

  “Just shut up, everybody. I’m too tired for this shit,” Cooper says. She’s deep in thought, staring at the floor. Then she looks at Deleon. “How much of that stuff do you have left?”

  The doctor’s face is covered in sweat. He looks around nervously. “Enough for now.”

  “We need sleep. We’ll post a guard and decide what to do with you in the morning.”

  • Get some rest.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Hold Your Ground

  This is it. You’re tired but fueled by adrenaline, afraid yet furious. Too long have you been the victim; it’s time to take matters into your own hands. You’ve done nothing but run since this great calamity, and that ends now.

  “Form a line!” you shout, barely recognizing the intensity in your own voice. “They can only come through in twos and threes, so make your kills count and then recover at the end of the line!”

  Cooper look
s at you with fierce eyes, the kind she uses when she thinks her authority is being questioned. “You’re up, boss!” You say to her. “Show us how it’s done.”

  She lets out her homemade flail, the business end clinking against the linoleum floor. It’s fashioned from a section of climbing rope, with a bundle of crampons and sharp mountaineering implements on the other side. She swings the thing around, the rope stretching from the weight at the dangerous end, and with full-body momentum connects the spike bundle to the first zombie’s head. The blow sticks in and connects with such power that it lifts the ghoul off its feet. As the body slams against a sale rack, Cooper has her crowbar out and engages the second zombie, slamming the straight end through an eye socket.

  As she holds her boot against the twice-dead corpse’s neck to wrench her crowbar free, a new batch of zombies flows in. Guillermo runs forward with his shovel and nearly decapitates the first one, the head dropping back to barely hang from a tendon. Flipping the weapon around, he further pops this fiend in the chest, sending it the ground. With two more expertly placed blows to the foreheads of the victims, the pair of undead collapses. He finishes the first off, then calmly walks to the back of the line.

  The glass in the entry breaks further, and now the zombies enter the store four abreast. Without a cue, Sims moves in. Sims flings a shot with his slingshot, but it’s a miss. He tries again and gets very, very close… but still misses. In frustration, he unsheathes the sword he’s sharpened and rushes in to attack. He gets a kill, but the replica shatters upon the second impact, leaving him weaponless. Two zombies grapple him and you rush in to help. You kill the undead attackers, but not before Sims screams out under the pressure of a bite.

  Guillermo and Cooper rush in to help you. Sims staggers backward, leans against a shelving unit, then slowly sits down. “I just need a minute,” he says. Blood pours down over his knuckles, trickling in thick streams down his forearm. Guillermo pants heavily, his arms at their limit from thrashing the shovel with enough power to deal a killing blow. Combined with the blade dulling after each kill, his effectiveness is sharply dropping off. His next swing only batters the zombie away, peeling off some of its scalp.

  You go on a brief but glorious killing rampage and deal real damage with your axe, slamming a skull with a leftward blow using the bladed side, then reversing and slamming the pike end into a fiend on your right. And yet it’s not enough. The fire outside must be drawing them in from all over the city, where they fall in line toward the store like craven lemmings.

  Cooper has taken her muscles to their limit with the crowbar. You’re feeling the strain with your axe as well. Everyone’s just getting exhausted, and yet the flow of undead is relentless. Sims has lost consciousness. A zombie that was only wounded grabs Guillermo around the legs and trips him down to the floor. With Cooper’s help, you free him from the ghoul, but with each setback like this, the horde comes closer.

  Then it happens all at once. There’re five zombies for each human, and the numbers don’t add up to your favor. Then Cooper goes down, unable to combat so many foes with merely a crowbar. It’s impossible, there’s too many of them, and that adds one more zombie for the rest of you to deal with while taking away a good fighter.

  You hear Guillermo’s screams just as you let out your own. It was a valiant effort, but a foolhardy one in the end. You took quite a few of them down with you, and you won’t add to their ranks either—there’s enough undead eating you alive, that there won’t be enough left to rise again.

  THE END

  Homebody

  Splitting up is not your favorite idea, especially when you’re the third wheel on a badass bicycle, but time is scarce. Plus you have your shotgun now. You’ll be okay, right? You ensure a round is chambered, but you’re not allowed the satisfaction of a pump, as this is a semi-automatic combat shotgun.

  You push the door to the farmhouse open with the gun barrel, wincing at the loud creak of the hinges. Okay, seeds. If you were a seed, where would you be? You head into the kitchen, looking for a large pantry, but find nothing more than a few foodstuffs and certainly nothing you can plant.

  At the back of the kitchen is a thin stairwell leading up. Might as well check out the rest of the house. You slowly ascend, shotgun at the ready, and come out into a hall with an open door ushering you inside. It’s the master bedroom, and within is a grisly sight. The bed is ruffled and soiled, stained yellow from some mixture of sweat and vomit. There are ropes along the bedposts, evidence that someone was once bound here. The pieces of flesh on the bloody, discolored knots show that they escaped.

  A whistle pierces the air from outside, and you poke your head through the open window. Down below, Rosie looks up at you. “Come on down, we found plenty in the barn!” You nod and duck back inside, just in time to meet face-to-face with the farmer’s wife.

  She’s in a grisly state, having escaped from the ropes, and lunges at you.

  Without thinking, you raise the shotgun and pull the trigger. After a loud boom, she no longer has a head. Your heart pounding, you quickly make your way out of the farm house. “Everything okay?” Rosie asks.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” you say, feeling super-cool.

  “Good. Grain-o-plenty in the barn; give us a hand.”

  You follow her into the barn, and the first thing you notice is a gigantic combine harvester sitting at the ready. Past that, Lucas works feverishly, filling a wheelbarrow. One full wall is covered in shelving filled with oversized glass jars of seed. On the side of the shelves are mountains of stacked seed sacks the size of sandbags. Jackpot!

  Running to and fro with your arms full is even more terrifying than searching with the shotgun. You’re essentially defenseless when you’re weighed down with seeds, so you jog to make the process faster. The undead are almost certainly closing in, but this delivery could get the prison fortress through the winter, so you push hard. Fifteen excruciating minutes later, the jeeps are filled to the gills.

  You arrive outside and are preparing to leave, but you’re blocked. A veritable zombie army marches down the dirt road, diverted from their tributaries in the fields and forest and funneled out onto the main road. This might prove too difficult for the jeeps. If only you could somehow cut them down, chew through them like wheat at harvest…

  “I’ve got an idea,” Rosie says. “Lucas, take the wheel.” She hops out and runs back into the barn.

  After a moment, a diesel engine roars to life and the combine harvester emerges, with Rosie at the controls. The threshing wheel begins spinning and she lowers it down to ground level. You pull your jeep off the road and Lucas does the same, allowing Rosie full access to the horde approaching the farm.

  In a disgusting confabulation of wet slicing and dry crunching, the combine rips through the crowd. It’s slow going, but Rosie’s in no danger, as the cab is enclosed and there’s no access to it without being ground up by the rotating blades. After a full five minutes of driving, she’s destroyed several hundred zombies and turned the road from dirt to red muck.

  Once she’s clear of the farm road, she shuts off the blades, but leaves the engine running. She’s panting heavily when she jumps into your passenger seat. “That. Was. Disgusting.”

  “Why’d you leave it running?” you ask.

  “It’s louder than the jeeps. Oughta help prevent us from being followed. Let’s go. I need another shower.”

  • Return to Salvation.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  How High…

  You sprint over to the window, slide the pane up, and jump out like you’re in an action movie. And yet you tumble to the ground and break your ankle like you’re a normal person. Crack! You instinctively reach for the wound, gritting your teeth and mashing your tongue against the roof of your mouth to prevent yelling out in pain.

  Your foot looks like something you’d see in a YouTube compilation of extreme stunts gone bad. Bones are sticking out at weird angles, where previously there were none. You l
ook around to ensure your safety; luckily no ghouls are within eyeshot.

  Backing across the moistened grass and into the bushes, you hear a commotion within the house. Someone is killing a zombie… or vice versa. Then come the familiar sounds of a body slumping to the floor, and two men talking as they run away.

  • Call out for help.

  • Crawl around to the front to ensure the coast is clear.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  How Incredibly Pedestrian

  “I told you, Newjack—there’s no going back if we’ve got a tail of zombs.”

  “Don’t you have any sort of escape plan?” you yell as the undead masses amble closer. “Or were we seriously supposed to kill every last one of them, just the two of us?”

  “Well, yeah, there’s the backup route, but—”

  “No buts! Backup route! Let’s go!” You help him to his feet, hand him the assault rifle, and get familiar with the combat shotgun on the run. The soldier clearly favors his right leg, but he can still jog-limp faster than the undead can stumble-run. Barely. “Which way?”

  He stops running, raises the rifle, takes aim, and with four shots downs four zombies to the west. “That way.” You start running toward the twice-dead ghouls, keeping your shotgun at the ready. “I’ve got more ammo—I’ll clear a path; you fuck up any zombs when they get too close. Don’t shoot until you see the yellow of their eyes,” he says. At least he still has that sardonic sense of humor.

  Every fifty feet or so he stops and pops off a few rounds in the section of woodline you’re to enter. You haven’t needed the shotgun yet, but you imagine that’ll change when you enter the forest proper.