INFECTED (Click Your Poison)

by James Schannep

  “It’s too late for that. There’s no stopping them now.”

  They take a moment to contemplate, and you rack your brain as well. What now? Where else is there to go? What else is there to do? Cooper reaches out, grabs Deleon, and enters into a passionate kissing embrace. They finally release and Cooper gets out her crowbar. She takes a deep breath and lets it out. You wonder if she’s decided to slow them down after all, to charge headlong into the massing crowd.

  Nope. She bashes Deleon in the knee with her crowbar. He cries out in pain and falls to the floor. “You bitch!”

  “You’re dead anyway, you’re turning,” she says. “And who knows if your cure even works? But hey—thanks for slowing them down for us.” She backpedals a bit, then looks to you to see what you’ll do.

  “Please, help me get to the lab; it’s our only hope,” Deleon begs of you.

  • Help the wounded doctor to the lab.

  • Follow Cooper.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Three Weeks Later…

  You are now three weeks older. Sorry, life isn’t fair. But you’re also three weeks wiser. Strange things have been happening in the world. You’re plugged into the TV, and you’ve been following the news. It’s on right now.

  “More upset in Tinseltown. A gruesome attack at a movie premiere, only days after the third in a string of incidents where a Hollywood set was shut down for the violent mental breakdown of a star. We’ll go to the tape right now; the following footage is graphic and it is suggested you look away if you’re squeamish.”

  You lean in close to your TV. On the red carpet, the stars and starlets pose for cameras in designer garb. Something strange catches your eye: Joan Rivers shuffles over toward the newest young-hot-thing to grace the silver screen; her gait is almost a drunken stumble, yet there is some degree of control. She stares aimlessly with glazed eyes, her jaw is slack and her face is morbidly still. When she looks at the budding celebrity, she grows hungry. Not that any of this is strange—the strange part is that she holds no microphone.

  She grabs her victim by the shoulders and bites down on the supple neck.

  Those around her move quickly amidst the calamity. George Clooney accepts the call to action and pulls Joan off, only to receive a bite for his trouble—right onto his gorgeous face. Screams of panic ring out. A man in a tux shoots out from the theater, missing an arm and blood gushing everywhere. His date follows him, holding and gnawing on his arm, his life stained crimson upon her mother-of-pearl gown.

  The footage falters as the cameraman runs for cover, returning the show to the newsroom and the supermodel reporter. Oddly calm, she reads from the teleprompter, “In an ironic twist, it seems many of those killed are users of the new longevity wonder drug Gilgazyme®. It’s still unknown if there is a connection between the drug and the homicide sweep hitting major urban centers across the country. No spokesperson for the creators of Gilgazyme® has agreed to comment as of this broadcast…”

  The television is suddenly taken into local control and your community Sheriff appears on the screen. You change the channel instinctively, but it’s all the same. You’re not sure, but it seems that something like this hasn’t happened in decades. With so many channels…

  “The Governor has declared a state of emergency,” the Sheriff announces. “But we are as of yet unprepared for any sort of mass evacuation. We’re working as hard as we can to set up aid stations and sanctuaries. In the meantime, work with friends and neighbors. Find a group. Nobody can beat this thing alone. And… we need all the help we can get.”

  There you have it; the zombie apocalypse is upon you. The movies, genre books, comics—all of it is coming true—and it wasn’t Bath Salts. All because a few bastards wanted to live forever and got their wish the hard way. George Romero is probably on his way to “I Told You So” Ranch, and all the survival nuts are toasting in eager anticipation.

  What’s your plan?

  • Hole up right here. Boards and nails. I can survive off my ramen noodles and Kraft easy-mac until the government figures this thing out.

  • Out the door, right now, going into the woods. I’ll call Mom from the car. Zombies love cities, and I hate zombies, so it’s see-ya-later.

  • Shit, I knew I needed to go shopping. Time to fight the crowds for Blackest Friday, the biggest looting day of the year. Guns, batteries, powdered water; I’ll take it all!

  • Are you kidding me? I’m one of those survival nuts! After a quick ‘See? I wasn’t crazy!’ email, it’s off to the compound. This is the day I’ve been waiting for.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  To the Rescue!

  It’s only a single strip cleared out of the forest, a control tower, a hangar, and a terminal. This is not the large commercial airport you’re used to; this one is used almost exclusively by private aviators and hobbyists. The doctor must’ve been hopping from station to station, refueling when she could and searching endlessly for a safe zone while the chaos below her appeared as nothing more than ants at war with one another.

  “I hate airports,” Rosie says.

  You can see what must be the doctor’s private plane parked in front of the hangar. Dozens of undead roam the airfield and many more are clustered around the buildings. Soulless eyes turn to you as the jeep moves nearer. The colonel said contact was lost. If the sinking feeling in your stomach is any indication of the reason for that radio silence, this might not end well.

  “There are too many cadavers for us to split up,” Lucas Tesshu says. “Where do you think we should search first?”

  • “The call came from the control tower; let’s look there.”

  • “The terminal. If she’s been running for long, she’s probably hungry.”

  • “If it were me, I’d hide in the hangar. Probably the most defensible of the three.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

  Your eyes slowly open in the morning light. The air is cool and moist. For a moment, you forget about the new world you’re living in. Only seconds ago you were reliving a childhood memory, but now that dream is gone and the waking nightmare has returned. You yawn and for the first time since you can remember, it feels satisfying. You must’ve slept all night.

  As you turn, you see Lucas cleaning and polishing his blade. He notices you’re awake and nods with a smile. “Hey, you didn’t wake me up for my shift,” you say.

  “I figured you could use the extra rest. I wasn’t feeling much like sleep anyway.” Noticing you take inventory of the filthy rag he uses on the sword, he adds, “We had a visitor last night.”

  When you think of a post-apocalyptic world, your mind draws images of leather-clad brigands roaming the countryside in gangs, warring over gasoline and canned food. You certainly never pictured a just-south-of-middle-aged man whose very temperament is a study in devotion and chivalry. Lucas Tesshu, a man who defied both the odds and expectations.

  “Only half a day left,” he says. “Shall we be on our way?”

  • “We shall.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Tower of Terror

  Lucas helps you offload the water jugs from the dolly. He clusters them around one side and you do the same on the opposite side, allowing for maximum exposure when the time comes. Rosie tosses the rope up to the engineer in a whirling motion, as if it was a grappling hook, and the rope finds its hold in the latticework just above him. He hooks the rope to himself and continues to climb.

  The tower reaches up into the air at a staggering height. It must be at least 250 feet tall, but the engineer scales rung after rung as if it were nothing. As you blast away at the walking undead, come to eat your flesh from bone, you can’t help but feel like he’s the brave one up there, dangling precariously in the wind.

  Rosie unravels the rope as the engineer climbs. “I hope to hell we’ve got enough,” she says. It’s on a thick spool and there must be several hundred feet of it. You try to remember your geometry classes. What
was it? 〖a〗^(2)+〖b〗^(2)=〖c〗^(2) right? That would give you the length the rope needs to be if the guy’s going to zipline down the thing. Stay in school, survive the zombie apocalypse.

  The undead are really starting to crowd you out. Rosie ties the end of the rope securely to a bush; the center branch is thick and hearty, and the leaves are enough to hopefully slow the engineer’s descent. Once she’s finished, she unslings her rifle and provides some much-needed extra firepower.

  After another long minute, the tower begins to echo a clang the engineer is sending from above. That’s the signal he said he’d give when he was preparing to power the thing up. “This is it!” you yell, running back toward the crash zone of the zipline.

  The undead cluster around the tower, intrigued by the sounds coming off the metal and the hollering of the man in the air above. Those in front stumble toward you, but you hold your fire so as to keep as many of them near the water jugs as possible.

  You can see the engineer high above, a stick figure atop the tower, hooking what must be his carabiner into the rope. That’s your cue. You pop off your ammo drum and dig into your backpack for the white drum: the one with the FRAG-12 ammo.

  He leaps off the tower, the rope snapping taut under his weight as gravity pulls him down the line. It sounds like the rope is whirring but as he approaches, you realize it’s his scream. “It’s working!” Lucas yells. At the base of the tower, the half dozen ghouls close enough to be affected dance under the shock of electrocution. Almost time…

  The bush nearby explodes in a fury of leaves when the engineer careens into it. Now! You fire the first FRAG-12 mini-missile. A split second later, the base of the tower erupts in a balloon of red mist as the fragmentation element bursts open like the Fourth of July. Several ghouls go down from the resulting shrapnel, but it’s the rupturing water jugs you look for. They spray into the air and coat the concrete pad around the base. Now tenfold as many undead do the electrocution dance, their brains frying inside their skulls.

  That worked perfectly. You release one more shot toward the other side of the tower and the water jugs there erupt under the countless punctures in exactly the same way. Now the resultant area is fully wet, allowing the electricity to arc its way through the crowd. It’s hard to suppress your grin.

  “To the jeep!” Lucas yells. You follow the group around the building to the sitting jeep. Firing another FRAG-12 round into the crowd in front of the vehicle, you clear your escape route. You blast off another round into the largest cluster of ghouls just for the hell of it—you’ve got ten of the things and the damage it does is incredible. It’s not much different from a shotgun blast, if your shotgun had a barrel the size of a floodgate.

  Lucas Tesshu drives the jeep away, the CROWS system chewing out rounds from the back, and you release one more explosive shot into the zombie horde for good measure. For now it would seem you’ve done it. The final mission is complete. Yet so much feels undone. Will you make it through winter? Will you still survive? How can this be it?

  “I think that was my sister,” Lucas Tesshu says. You look back, clearly seeing an undead girl alongside the road right the way you came. Yeah, she could be Japanese, and without the massive dermal abrasions, could hold a resemblance to Lucas.

  • “No, it’s not. Rosie’s your sister. This engineer here? He’s your favorite cousin. And I’m your best friend. Keep driving.”

  • “Let’s stop and check it out—what’s the worst that could happen?”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Under Control

  You head up the hall, Lucas backpedalling to slice and dice the zombies flowing in through the station entrance behind you. This is the only way to go, so the control room has to be this way. Your suspicions are soon confirmed when you come to the end of the hall. The doors to the sound studio are thick and heavy, intended to block out the sounds of those who might otherwise accidentally interrupt a broadcast.

  The engineer goes to work straightaway as you enter, working to reroute the controls from an original source of communication to that of a hub for those waiting back at Salvation. The walls to the outside are glass, giving the broadcasters full view of the city, but that won’t give you much protection should the living dead completely surround the building.

  Still, the doors to the station ought to buy you some time, so you use the lull in the action to refresh. There are bottles of water intended for the radio show guests and you help yourself. You walk over to the back wall, overlooking the city. There should be a stunning view of the town illuminated at night, but all you see is darkness.

  You turn away to check in on the engineer, Rosie taking your place at the glass wall. “Hey, look at that,” she says. Turning back around, you see new lights in the city. One building is now illuminated, alone in a sea of dark. It’s larger than a private residence, but it’s low and wide, rather than tall and thin like a skyscraper.

  “They just turned on?” you ask. She nods. Some of the window lights flicker.

  “Almost done,” the engineer announces. “Then I just have to activate the tower, and we’re out of here.”

  “Provided we don’t get electrocuted,” Lucas says with a smile. Is that sarcasm? You laugh, some water from your bottle trickling down your chin.

  The water gives you an idea. “When the landing gets a shock—will it just be a jolt, or will the flow be constant?”

  “Constant, why?”

  “Remember all those water jugs in the control room? We could end up frying a whole lotta zombs if we play this electrocution card right. Wet the landing and watch the current spread.”

  “Yeah, but how would I get away once it’s powered up?” the engineer asks, sliding his glasses up his nose once more.

  “There’s some rope in the jeep,” Rosie says. “We can make a zipline!”

  “Sounds desperate,” the engineer replies, just as a fresh batch of ghouls slap against the glass façade of the recording area.

  “These are desperate times,” Lucas says.

  You look out the window, back toward the lone illuminated building. A pair of searchlights comes to life atop the building, waving their arms across the sky like a marooned shipwreck victim trying to signal a plane far above. A massive red and blue police-style siren accompanies the searchlights. “Desperate, indeed,” you say.

  • “I’ll get the rope.”

  • “I’ll make sure the engineer makes it out to the tower.”

  • “I’ll start collecting those water jugs.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Underneath It All

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

  Basements are good for a lot of things: kids’ sleepovers, storing wine, hiding from a tornado. What they’re not good for is avoiding crowds of flesh-eating ghouls.

  Just as the barriers in your house fall to the zombies, the barrier to your basement—a locked door with random clutter barricading—also falls. The movies have this idea wrong. Now they’re coming down to get you, and you’ve got no way out.

  Still, you search your home in desperation: dusty boxes, a laundry basket, an old ping pong table, that nail-gun dad gave you. Wait, what the f—how in the hell did you miss the nail gun when you were securing your home?

  Instead of questioning the God-send, you pick it up and pray it works. Just as the first undead man makes it down, you turn and squeeze off a nail into his forehead. His head knocks back and he falls dead. Awesome.

  Dozens of hellions stream down your staircase, but as long as you keep your wits about, you’ll be okay! That’s when a ghoulish woman ruins everything. Her teeth are broken into almost shark-like fragments, and as she moans and champs her teeth in preparation of meeting you, the drawstring of your basement light snags in her fragmented face.<
br />
  Click, lights out. Time to play “seven minutes in hell” while your amorous companions rush down to suck face. In the pitch black of the basement, you’re left no option save for an excruciating death.

  THE END

  Understanding Sims and Guillermo

  You walk next to Sims, Guillermo on his other side. Sims removes a shoulder strap on his backpack, allowing it to slide around to his front. From inside, he removes a can of chewing tobacco. He offers it to you, then to Guillermo. “You want some, Jose? Quiero?”

  “Me llamo Guillermo.”

  “Yeah, no idea what you just said,” Sims replies. “I know you don’t speak a lick of English, but that’s pretty much the extent of my Spanish, so…”

  Guillermo stares blankly while Sims puts some of the chew tucked inside his lip. Guillermo points to the pack and says, “Comida?”

  Sims gets out a can of food for Guillermo. “Ah, I know that one, but that’s all. Well, other than ‘gracias’ I guess… Gracias?”

  “De nada.” He opens the can of tuna.

  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?”