INFECTED (Click Your Poison)

by James Schannep

  It’s muscle-tearing, backbreaking work—strenuous work—but you lift another desk atop the current one, completely sealing off the door. Then, just for good measure, you add a third and a fourth desk behind these two, so that there are several hundred pounds between the hallway and you.

  “That oughta do it,” Sims says, wiping sweat from his brow.

  “Are you there, Soldier?” Arthur Gray asks over the radio.

  “Roger,” Sims replies.

  “Our combat team is out on mission right now, but we might be able to pick you up in the morning.”

  “That’ll make for a long night, sir. They’ve found us—all of them.”

  “Then God bless you and keep you safe.”

  Sims releases the microphone, then mutters, “Gee, thanks.”

  And that’s when the zombies arrive, clawing at the doorway like rats in the walls, with great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Somehow they know you’re in there, somehow they always know. You just stare at the desks, watching them vibrate under the furious pounding of the collective group in the hallway.

  A ghastly moan sounds within the room, and Sims turns to you. “Not funny.”

  “I didn’t—” you start, but your breath is taken away when a zombie bites into Sims from behind. You turn to see four others in the room with you, and still another pushing from behind a curtain at the back of the room. This must be one of those lab-style classrooms where the desk-and-chalkboard learning happens on the other side, and the students come here for their hands-on.

  Well, that sucks. The undead are here for their own hands-on portion. Without another moment’s hesitation, you slam the pick side of your axe into the ghoul attacking Sims. It drops to the ground, leaving your companion standing in bewilderment.

  Although his hand is pressed firmly against his neck, blood shoots out from in-between his fingers at the rate of his newly quickened pulse. Still, to the man’s credit, his next move is to pull out his sword and batter the nearest ghoul. Then he drops to one knee, his pulse already slowing from loss of blood.

  You attack the other three fiends with your aluminum baseball bat, destroying them all with fury, but more rush in through the curtained partition. With no way out, this won’t end well. The new crop of zombies pours in, paying no mind to Sims—which means he’s already dead.

  Cracking your bat against the skulls of the first two, you’re a little too close to the third, and he takes you down. The crowd helps. In six hours, Sims will rise again, but there’s won’t be enough flesh left on your corpse.

  THE END

  Killed With Kindness

  You can’t… somehow you just can’t do it. Cooper lacks the strength to get up and force you, and the first round of zombies swarms over Tyberius as he screams. It’s like you’re paralyzed. Cooper crawls over toward you and the rope, but the next throng of undead viciously attacks her.

  You try your best to fight them off, but it’s like trying to plug an ant hill with your finger—all you end up with is an ant-covered hand. But this swarm is a little more brutal, and soon you’re overwhelmed as well.

  The three of you are split up and divided amongst the multitude like five loaves and two fish, and there won’t be enough of you to miraculously rise again.

  THE END

  Lady Killer

  She’s much, much faster than you, but you’ve caught fast prey before. She sprints away out of your view, but you know exactly where she is. You can hear her steps pounding down the hallway, tearing away as fast as she can. You can hear her open the door to a room and scramble through the gear within. You can hear her labored, grunting breaths as she comes back out of the room and continues running down the hall—this time carrying a full load of supplies.

  You make it to a stairwell, certain that she fled this way. It’s a simple push door (no doorknob, bad choice) and you move in. It’s the roof access and you climb your way up the stairs. It’s slow going, what with not being very coordinated at all, but you make it to the top step and the door out to the roof. This one has a handle, but the door is propped open by a can of corn. That’s convenient.

  You push your way out the door, just as a blinding light sweeps your way. Looks like the roof search lights are back on. Still, despite the momentary blindness, you move toward her exact location. When you kick through her supply pile, she turns and spots you.

  An angry look flashes across her face. She moves in toward you, unafraid, her grip tightened on the crowbar. You raise your hands to receive her, but with gritted teeth she slides in-between your grasp and shoves the prying end right through your right eye socket. As she swivels the metal, scrambling your brain, you fall limp.

  Shouldn’t have messed with the badass.

  THE END

  The Last Supper

  Guillermo escorts the group to the cafeteria, then gestures for you to sit at the table nearest the kitchen and wait. After a few minutes, the chef wheels out a cart full of food—he’s prepared you a gourmet meal. The cafeteria had all the fixin’s for tacos, but there’s no way a school meal was ever this good. The food melts in your mouth and bursts with flavor. What this man did with canned beef is nothing short of amazing; simply wow. You haven’t had a home-cooked meal since this whole thing began.

  “This is delicious!” Sims says. “Gracias, Jose.”

  “Guillermo.”

  “Guillermo to you too.”

  Tyberius snorts a laugh. “You are so fugnorant. Guillermo—his name is Guillermo.” The group laughs, Sims just shrugs and takes another bite.

  “This takes talent, and this is why I said you should know your people, Cooper,” Deleon says, stuffing his face some more.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she replies.

  “You know, I got a talent,” Hefty offers. “It ain’t all this, but…”

  “Let’s see it,” Cooper says.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, why not?” She smiles. For once, she seems completely at ease. “Now that we’re safe and secure—now that we’re home—let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “A talent show!” you suggest, chiming in.

  “Exactly,” Deleon says, pointing at you.

  Hefty stands and picks up the compound hunting bow he’s been carrying everywhere. He looses his arrows at the posters on the walls, cleanly lodging the bolts between the eyes of firemen, cops, cartoon carrots, smiling crossing guards, sports role-models, and schoolchildren alike. He makes some incredibly skillful shots, bull’s-eyes two arrows at once, and even does a behind-the-back. All in all, pretty amazing. For the grand finale, Tyberius hurls a basketball and Hefty pops it in the air.

  After the applause for Hefty dies down, Tyberius says, “Come on, everyone, I’ve got something for you too.”

  You all follow him down the halls, wondering in silence what possible talent you could offer up to the group. When was the last time you performed in front of a group? Does the school even have what you need? What will everyone else do?

  He takes you to the music room, where you each find a seat on the choir bleachers while Tyberius sets up the piano. He flips through the sheet music, cracks his fingers, and after a few false starts—plays a beautiful piano concerto. After a few moments, Tyberius closes his eyes and plays by memory alone.

  You sit back with a full stomach and let the music overtake you; it’s a classical selection, and he plays it well. You suddenly realize, with the onset of goose bumps, that you haven’t heard music in weeks. Maybe living here won’t be so bad! There was a serious chance you’d never hear a piano again, and your throat constricts in a knot as the thought that this might be the last time you ever hear music dawns on you. It’s like all the tightly woven stress is being loosened, untangled and unwound, strand by strand, with each note keyed in under deft fingers. It’s hard not to cry.

  When he finishes playing, the room is left speechless.

  Finally, Deleon breaks the silence. “I’d like to go next. My talent comes to you in the form of an apology. It p
ains me to say I… caused all of this. I made a mistake, and it’s time I admit it.” But no one acknowledges his admission.

  “Where’d you learn to play like that, Ty?” Cooper asks.

  Deleon removes a Gilgazyme ® inhaler from his pocket. “Do you recognize this? I’m the scientist who developed it. That’s why I was working on a cure. Gilgazyme—makes you live forever. Gene therapy was the wave of the future. Genes, carried on the back of chromosomes, the basic units of heredity. Normally, gene therapy is used to treat genetic disorders. In most cases, you insert a ‘normal’ gene to replace the ‘abnormal’ gene causing your disorder. We did the opposite. We had the abnormal gene sent in. And it worked! But like a failed organ transplant, our patients rejected it within four days.”

  “But if you knew what was going on, why didn’t anybody speak up to stop it?” Sims asks.

  “It was an Amyclaean Silence. No one wanted to admit what was happening. In ancient Greece, the people of Amyclae were so incensed by constant rumors of a Spartan invasion that they actually made a law banning anyone to speak of it. When the Spartans finally did arrive, the Amyclaean guards were too frightened to declare invasion. The town was quickly overtaken.

  “I mean, zombies? We couldn’t believe it ourselves, and it was right in front of our eyes. I hid my bite from you, my cure from you, but I don’t want to hide my blame from you. Gilgazyme—all of this—is my fault.”

  Again, silence. No one looks at Deleon, until finally Hefty shoots him a look of scorn. “We know, dickweed. What, you think none of us watched the news?”

  Deleon’s mouth and eyes pop open, and he just sits there in surprise. “Lessons,” Tyberius says, answering Cooper. “My mom… she…” He slowly looks down into his hands. He stays there for a while, not moving, just staring at his hands.

  “Taught you?” Sims offers. Hefty punches him in the arm.

  Tyberius looks up finally, his eyes red and wet, and rubs the back of his fist on the tears. His shoulders heave up and down; it looks like the strong man has finally broken. This is how it happens; it only takes one minute of soft relaxation to completely tear down your barriers. That must be why Cooper kept the group so cold and uninvolved, you realize.

  “Hey…” Deleon starts, moving toward him.

  “Not you, motherfucker,” Tyberius says, anger replacing his angst. “Oh, does that surprise you? You say it out loud, and suddenly it doesn’t exist? She’s dead now, because of you. Did you even lose anyone?”

  Deleon looks to the floor like a scolded child. “My parents died before all this.”

  “Not the same!” Tyberius roars out. “So you don’t know what it was like. Watching her die, and then, and then become one of those—things. You know, maybe I coulda forgave you that. She would want me to. But I can’t forgive you the cure.” He stares at his hands once more, at his palms, the fingers spread open and curled taut, like he’s wrestling some invisible fiend.

  “The things I did… I thought I did to survive, ya know?” he continues, sniffling a stream of mucous. “But now you tell me I didn’t have to? That she wasn’t really lost? That she could have been cured? No, I can’t forgive you that.

  “So you better make things right,” Tyberius says, his voice breaking from the strain of emotion. “You better cure the rest of them.”

  Deleon nods, then his eyebrows rise and he breathes out, “I will.”

  No one else says anything, but you know what they’re all thinking: those zombies they killed weren’t ghouls or monsters or anything like that. They were people, people who could’ve been cured. How many have you killed?

  “All right, guys,” Sims says, clearing his throat. “I was saving this as a surprise, but I think we could use a pick-me-up right about now, so…”

  Cooper presses her temples in the telltale sign of a headache. She closes her eyes and huffs a breath out her nose. “Sims, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Trust me, you guys are gonna like this,” he says. He pulls out his radio, turns it on, announces he’ll just be a minute, and leaves the room. But it’s a long few minutes; everyone is trying not to look at each other, consumed by thoughts of past guilt.

  Then the lights above the music room flicker on.

  The radio crackles to life, and Sims’ voice comes through, “How about that, ha ha ha HA! And he said, let there be light.”

  The group instinctively jumps to their feet. Hefty whoops and cheers, Guillermo gives you a hug, and Tyberius actually starts laughing. Cooper kisses you impulsively before grabbing the radio. “Sims! That’s fucking amazing, you actually did something right!”

  “Okay, meet on the roof for part two. Sims out.”

  • Head to the roof.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Leap of Faith

  Driven by an instinctual desire to be near the traffic sounds coming from below, you walk out on the balcony. Without even thinking, you keep walking right up to the railing and careen forward over the superficial barrier. The rail acts like a fulcrum for your waist, tipping you head-first out into the open air.

  As the thirteen stories fly by, the sounds of civilization grow louder and you grow hungrier. You see pedestrians right below you. Only a few more feet and they’ll be yours. In your excitement, you begin to groan in anticipation. You stretch your arms out and open your jaws wide.

  Then you hit the pavement. Your brain splatters all over the street like a bug against a windshield.

  THE END

  Les Toilets

  Well, aren’t you the industrious one. You go into the bathroom and you… clean the toilets. Exciting stuff, right? But your hard work pays off and you’re promoted to, wait for it, “Head Janitor” (there’s a pun here). Nothing strikes you as out of the ordinary in the bathroom and it appears that, despite discovering an end to aging, the good doctors’ shit does indeed stink.

  Where to now?

  • Staff Offices… Maybe there’s some paperwork worth stealing, or perhaps you’ll spy on the famous doctors?

  • Rodent Testing Labs… They’re bound to have something valuable lying around.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Let me Axe You a Question

  She gives you the open-palmed wave meaning, “be my guest.” You move forward in the woods, Rosie trailing behind you, straight toward the Ranger zombie. He sees you after only a few steps and immediately starts toward you in pursuit. He moans loudly and stumble-runs with feverish excitement.

  It’s not a sprint, but he’s closing the football field between you faster than you’d like. Your adrenaline is pumping and the face-ripped-off, open-mouth wound is more intimidating than you’d care to admit.

  When he gets within striking range, you bring down the axe over his head like you were splitting firewood. You don’t hit exactly in the middle of his head, but it doesn’t matter—his skull cracks open and the metal wedge smashes the brains within. He falls dead. You turn to Rosie with a grin of pride.

  “It’s good to be confident with your primary weapon, but did you think about that moan he gave? Every zoo within earshot is hungrily coming to this position right now. A pop from my rifle would make some noise, sure, and they’d come to investigate. But now they’re coming hungry and fast, whereas they only shuffle over out of curiosity toward my 10/22.”

  She slips off her backpack and removes a fifty-round drum magazine, which would make her rifle look like a Tommy-gun if she attached it.

  “See this? That’s fifty dead Zulu. You should know how to use it, especially if something happens to me. Distance is your friend, buddy. If that Ranger would’ve bit you, I was ready to shoot you—don’t forget that.”

  • You look away. “We’d better get going.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Life Attic

  You pull the cord above you, bringing down the retractable ladder. With a backpack full of canned food and a few bottles of water, you head into the crawlspace above your home. You pull the ladder up, push boxes of Christmas de
corations out of the way, and prepare to wait them out in silence.

  It’s not long until the undead have breached inside your house. The alarm, the moaning, or both—proved more effective than you might have thought, and soon your home is swarming with them. Even though you can’t see down, you can hear enough to know it’s totally full down there.

  They search in vain, unable to grasp the concept that you’re in the ceiling, and eventually they start to leave.

  * * *

  Well, a long thirteen days pass by. Your hiding spot has held! Your food supplies, however, have not. You’ve got about a day’s worth left and water is running low too.

  • I don’t care; I’d rather starve than be eaten.

  • Back down the stairs. I know I left some food in the house.

  • Out onto the roof. The advantage is the high ground.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Lighten the Load

  You hurl the garbage bag against an oncoming zombie, the load thudding against her like a sack of flour. It’s not enough to knock her down, but it’s enough to buy some distance between you. You’re considerably more fleet of foot, and you run away with ease.

  But she’s not the only hazard. Yes, they only lunge and lurch—the more excited and able-bodied of them stumble-run at you—but there’s just so despairingly many of them that you’re in a veritable minefield of grasping arms.

  If you were a world-class soccer player, you’d juke your way through the crowd with relative ease. Relative because, despite their apparent lack of cognitive thinking, or perhaps because of it, these ghouls are impossible to fool. You can’t feint to the side, tricking them into following you. They almost preternaturally home in on your movements, meaning you either beat them outright through athletic prowess… or you die.