More and more noises come from outside. You also hear gunfire far away.
If you… Go to…
Force the doors open Section 190
Climb up the elevator’s shaft Section 191
Section 163
Take the elevator and head for the sub level 47
The elevator takes you all the way down to the sub level 47. It takes a while to reach the bottom of the bunker.
The doors of the elevator open into what looks like a construction site. It is clear that this level was not completed, maybe on purpose. You examine the large foundation structures that hold the entire bunker above you. The floor is wet and muddy. The air is warm and humid.
You wonder around, amazed at all the construction equipment abandoned so far away from the surface. You follow a tunnel, deep into the darkness waving a torch you found inside a digging truck. After a few hundred meters, the tunnel makes a sharp turn to the right. Here, the rocky walls turn into soft concrete. The path splits into two.
If you… Go to…
Go left, to the digging site Section 192
Go right, to the camp Section 193
Section 164
Fight the cultist out of the way
Whit the rest of the room in chaos, this cultist focuses on you. She holds a long knife in one hand. She’s mean and as big as a bear (and with the same figure too).
You grab a torch from the wall and swing it like a sword. She blocks you with her arm, but flaming oil flies over into her face. She screams in pain and rolls to the ground putting out the flames. You kick her in the head. She looses consciousness.
“That will keep her busy, without killing her.” you tell the children. You hear some “a-hums” and move on.
The children follow you through the machine room, and then out through the corridor. You try to lock the door behind you, but it’s stuck. They will come after you soon. You leave the door and run with the children. In your haste, you notice the pipes by the side of the corridor. Gas. Perfect. You open a valve and let the gas out. Then, you look at your hand. You are still holding a torch. Not that good.
“Run, run!!” you tell the kids. No need, really. They are already gone way ahead of you.
You all come out of the tunnel, outside the parking lot and the fence. Behind you, you throw the torch and close the door. You head for the highway carrying the smallest in your arms. Lucky strikes, when you find a minivan with the keys on. All the children fit in, and you drive north. You adjust the mirror to see the mall behind, when a ball of fire climbs up the sky. The cultist won’t bother you anymore.
YOU SURVIVED
If you… Go to…
Start from the beginning Section 1
Section 165
Find another way out
The cultist has a large machete in her hand. You grab a torch from the wall, but doubt it will do any good. You wave it as a sword, and she cuts it in half. She steps forward, and you step back with the children behind. The cultist disappears all of the sudden. A zombie just tackle her down and has her pin down on the floor. Perfect. The children cheer for the zombie. Inside, you do too.
You run away with the children, locking the engine door behind you. The museum hall will be the doom of that cult.
As you walk through the tunnel, the screams end and silence falls. It is the sign that all is over behind you. Once in the open, you will find a truck or a van and drive these children to safety. Something tells you to go north.
YOU SURVIVED
If you… Go to…
Start from the beginning Section 1
Section 166
Climb down the elevator’s shaft
With some difficulty you manage to get the doors open. As you suspected, on one side of the shaft there is a service ladder going all the way down. The darkness below gives you the creeps. You gather courage and climb down the ladder.
Big mistake.
The ladder is covered in some sort of oily slime. You loose footing right away. Good thing you had a good grip, so you don’t fall down. Desperately, you try to pull yourself back up. It takes what it looks like an eternity, but you manage to get out of the elevator, back into the restaurant.
Exhausted, you take some time on the floor to put your thoughts together. Why would someone put oil on the ladder? Where they trying to prevent someone from coming down… or up? It doesn’t matter now. You only have one option left.
If you… Go to…
Take some time to inspect the roof. Section 55
Section 167
Try the stairs
You remove the lock on the door and remain quiet. There is no sound coming from the other side. Still, you wait several minutes and then open the door just enough to take a pick. The room is so dark that you cannot see anything. Then, you try to open it a little bit more. The moment you do, dead eyes glitter in the darkness right in front of you. Bony hands reach out to you and scratch your face. A horde of zombies, all crammed in the tiny space burst out, like a badly shaken soda. The burst throws you back against the wall. Dozens of undead come at you.
You hit and kick, trying to fend them off. They are too many, too fast, and too hungry. You can only hope to pass out soon. You’ve seen some people lasting hours to die while the zombies dine on them. You scream as every inch of you becomes a meal for the undead. They bit you so hard, that your head rolls out.
YOU DIED
If you… Go to…
Start from the beginning Section 1
Section 168
Head towards the city.
Rather than facing an unknown, you head towards the city. With a truck full of supplies, you may survive on your own for some times until you figure out what to do next. Plus, there may be some gas stations to refill the tank before hitting the road again. In the way that you see it, you have the heck of a great motor-home, and the world is yours.
The lines in the speedway coming away from the city are packed with abandoned cars. Your lane, instead, is mostly empty. It makes you wonder if you are making the right decision. Who knows what is the right decision?. For now, you’re alive and better prepared than when you left the city. Maybe you’ll find other survivors along the way.
YOU SURVIVED.
If you… Go to…
Start again. Section 1
Section 169
Head away from the city
Of this, you are certain: you’re not going back to the city. It is infested with the undead. You left there alive once, no need to test your luck again.
You head out of the city, driving on the clear lane. For miles and miles you find abandoned cars, corpses, and a few zombies here and there. It is the remains of an exodus that never happened. The plague that caused the zombie apocalypse spread like wild fire. Nobody was safe.
After a few hours of driving, you decide that is time to make a stop. Fearing to go out of the truck, you use the habitat facilities for several days. You feel secure inside, and have no reason to come out. Following the map, you head north to where the star marks a survivor’s camp. It takes days, but you make it.
You arrive to a gated community. A large palisade decorates the landscape. It looks similar to the one in the mall, but this one is live with people guarding it. You are relief to see others alive.
As you approach, someone signals to open the gate. They welcome you in, and also your supplies. Here you’ll have a new life in an zombie free zone. Still, you have questions about the shopping mall, the vaccination, and why everything was abandoned as you found it. You may never know, but at least, you are alive.
YOU SURVIVED.
If you… Go to…
Start again. Section 1
Section 170
Come down and surround the crowd to reach the exit
Thinking that you can run around the zombie mess, you come down in a hurry. A misstep makes a box of hinges fall down. With horror, you turn to watch the zombies. They are frozen, as if someone pressed the “pause” button. As if well coordina
ted, they all turn their heads in your direction. Their glittering dead eyes pierce the dark looking for you.
Cover blown, you run down the corridor away from them. By the end of the line, you quickly turn right and stop when you see a horde of lab coats waiting for you. Quickly turning around, you discover that the path is blocked by dead soldiers. You are surrounded.
If you… Go to…
Fight your way through Section 194
Climb again the storage shelves Section 195
Section 171
Enter the service tunnel
The iron hatch opens with a loud, rusty noise. The horde stops fighting. The head your way. You struggle to open the heavy hatch door. The zombies take speed. You manage to get enough room to slide down. The heavy door slams above your head, right on time to keep the zombies at bay.
Padding the wall around you, you hit a switch. The tunnel gets lit by a flickering light. A damp breeze carries the stench of humidity around. In your previous life you would have run away from such smell. As far as you know, your options are limited.
Though dim and flickering, you take a moment to admire the wonders of electric light. It’s been months since you’ve seen a clear sign of civilization. This light tells you that there is electricity, power, and possibly something else down here.
The tunnel opens up in two directions. A rusty sign point with arrows in both directions. The names for each location have long faded away. Above your head, the zombies roar and moan, desperate to get to you. You stare at them like wild animals in a zoo cage.
If you… Go to…
Go left, to the machine room Section 196
Go right, to the exit tunnel Section 197
Section 172
Look for a way into another building
The roof is close to other buildings of the mall. The next one, you guess it must be the one holding the food court. It is a tricky jump. With enough momentum you can make it. Below, the zombies stare at you, waiting, in silence. Once you thought that the sound of a zombie moaning was the worst thing in the world. Now, you lean towards their silence.
Gathering all the courage you have, you take some distance and run as fast as you can. With a long jump, you fly through the air. You almost make it. You’re a few inches short of stepping in. Frantically, you manage wave your arms and reach the edge. You grab as hard as you can. It works. With much struggle, and fighting for your life, you succeed to pull yourself up. Your muscles hurt, but you’re alive. Laying on the roof, face to the sky, you breath heavily until you feel strong enough to stand up.
An hour may have pass before you venture to explore around. All exit doors that lead into the building are locked. The next building nearby has a helipad and a roof restaurant. You come to the edge and look down. It is too far away. There is no way to jump over there this time.
You look around, thinking hard for a way out of the roof. Behind some air conditioner fans, you see a tied rope. You follow it all the way to the edge and look down. It leads to an open window, some stories below.
If you… Go to…
Climb down the rope Section 198
Accept defeat and stay Section 199
Section 173
Find a way into a lower level
On a side of the building there is a scaffold left by some repair work. Carefully, you use it to move alongside the building until you find an entrance. This new part of the building is still under construction. Maybe some kind of expansion or deep remodeling. Who cares.
You walk inside, looking for a door or another way into the mall. In the dusty floor however, there is a trail of light blue slime that sticks to your shoes. It is hard to walk on. You touch it, and while cold, it burns your skin. You wipe it off really fast.
The slime trail ends behind a curtain made with construction plastic. Something large moves behind it. Behind you, there is the exit. You could head for the exit, but any noise may attract whatever is behind the curtain.
If you… Go to…
Follow the exit sign, out of the construction area. Section 200
Check behind the plastic curtain Section 201
Section 174
Attack first, make questions later
Lizard Warrior
You are under attack and must fight this monster. If you win, keep reading. If not, find the You are dead page at the end of the book.
You fight the lizard warrior, and you win. The creature, still drowsy from hibernation, reacts slow to your attack. Your advantage pays off. He lays down at your feet.
Defeating the lizard warrior was not easy, but you made it. Sadly, it bite you in your left arm before going down. You can feel how a poison runs through your veins, burning you, changing you. Your fingers turn to claws, your skin grows scales. You’re turning into the foe you just defeated.
In horror, your mind goes wild. It hits you, that if the lizard warrior was engineered to fight zombies, it may be virulent as well. For some reason they locked it up. Maybe a “lizard apocalypse” was exactly what they wanted to prevent.
Foreign thoughts rewrite your brain. The memories of the warrior become your own as well. Your thoughts abandon you. The programmed objective becomes your reason to live. You walk out of the lab feeling powerful, strong. You are a zombie-killing machine.
YOU SURVIVED
If you… Go to…
Start from the beginning Section 1
Section 175
Step back, out of the room and think what to do next
While menacing, the noises don’t seem to be directed at you. The dark figure in front of you is detaching itself from a multitude of cables and tubes. As the steam dissipates, the emerging figure becomes clear. It is some sort of humanoid machine. He walks towards you with an authoritative attitude. Strong, menacing sounds remind you of a lion’s roar. He says in a robotic voice:
“Solution X: Start up ready.”
“Primary objective: protect human life.”
“Human detected. Bodyguard mode enabled.”
It takes a few minutes for your brain to shake off the surprise and process what you just heard. You ask a few questions, but the robot remains silent. It follows you around. Its only purpose of existence is to protect you at all cost.
You are sitting by a desk, thinking what to do next, when a horde of zombies breaks in. The robot jumps into action and kills each one of them, with extreme prejudice. Is almost like a dance. The zombies have no chance against it. Each punch, kick and hit is precisely measure for optimal results. He turns the walking dead into wet puddles of gooey stuff. In matter of seconds, the room is cleaned from zombies.
Suddenly, the zombie apocalypse is not that scary anymore. You can go anywhere you want, knowing that this wonderful machine will keep you safe from any harm. As the days pass, you inspect every place, every room and every corner of the shopping mall. The robot clears up every single location, making it safe for you. When more survivors arrive, this place will be safe for them as well.
YOU SURVIVED
If you… Go to…
Start from the beginning Section 1
Section 176
Search for a deep sleep capsule
Your heart picks up speed, as you look around the complex. Soon, you find a gallery, filled with deep sleep capsules. Most of them are occupied with men and women. As far as you can see, there are several open capsules on ready state.
A quick look around, and you find the equipment you need together with a manual of operations. Bless be the military, that requires to have a hard copy of everything. It takes you several hours to read it through, but at the end you are confident to handle the capsule by yourself. Most of it is automatic anyway.
As soon as you have your futuristic deep sleep suit on, you connect the multiple end points to the capsule and drink the liquids mentioned in the manual in the correct order. You walk into the capsule with confidence. The sleep sequence starts as soon as the lid locks in place. A gas fills the capsule. You fall asleep without a care
in the world.
You have dreams, many of them. A sweet music wakes you up. The capsule opens with a blinking message stating: “process complete”. The light blinds you for a moment. It takes longer than usual for your eyes to adapt to daylight. You walk out of the capsule on fresh grass. Around you, others come out to deep sleep as well. The lab is gone. The capsules are in the open. There is no sign around of zombies, or any trace of any apocalypse. Nature has reclaimed its place. This new world has new species around, and once again: humans.
YOU SURVIVED
If you… Go to…
Start from the beginning Section 1
Section 177
Follow the escape tunnel
Considering that nobody is here, and the place outside is flooded with zombies, you supposed that the people from this lab has taken the easy way out and escaped to a better place. After all, there are no signs of struggle anywhere.
You seek for the secret escape tunnel. You find it right away. It was conveniently labeled “escape tunnel”. It must have been one of those ISO regulations that force the people to label the secret tunnel.
You walk into the tunnel, confident. Just like with the lab, it is dark. As you walk in, automatic lights turn on. You wish they didn’t.
You are inches away from a very hungry zombie horde. The scientists from the lab got trapped in this fake “secret escape tunnel”. They are all here. They starve, and never tasted flesh. You will be the first one. It’s your turn to be part of the team.
Zombie Mall Page 12
