INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (101 page)

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The dead are rising; a cemetery seems appropriate to continue my own personal horror movie.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

T
yberius moves back up to the glass, examining first his own filthy reflection and how he’s deteriorated over the weeks, then looking past himself to the zombies and how fit—healthy, even—his former coworkers look in their preternatural agelessness. It’s like they’re cadavers, cut up in some lab, their flesh open where wounded but without any red. No blood, no raised or swollen skin. The flesh is sallow, nearly porcelain.

He beats his chest and jumps at the ghouls, trying to assert dominance. They don’t flinch; just bite and mouth the glass. “God damn,” he says sourly.

The group starts off toward the gun store. “I’m gonna be like
boom boom
—” Hefty mime-shoots a shotgun “—Mutha Fucka!”

Deleon stews and grumbles, making calculations on his fingertips. Truth be told, you’re excited about the prospect of firearms. Attacking a zombie with a fire axe is cool and all, but it’s a little too up-close and personal for your likes. You’re musing over this, and how it reflects the evolution of warfare from personal conflicts to dehumanized enemies who can be obliterated in droves with a simple touch of a button, when suddenly you arrive.

The store sits right up against the trees, all marsh and forest behind it. Wilderness creeps forward toward the city at this boundary, green arms reaching out behind the building, but within the woods there is only silence. No animal or insect noises. No birds. Just the wind rustling through the leaves.

You cross the concrete savanna parking lot. The sign above the store reads, “MAILAR’S SPORTING GOODS.” Sims spreads his arms wide like he’ll hug the store, then spins back to the group, arms still raised, and declares, “Heaven on Earth, my friends. Heaven… on… Earth…”

“Take it slow,” Cooper says. “We don’t run. I know we’re happy; we’re getting guns. But we don’t know what’s in there. Game faces.”

“She’s right,” Deleon agrees.

“I know I’m right. We don’t have many weapons, so treat this like your first time.”

“So to speak,” Sims whispers,
sotto voce
.

“Let’s go. We’re not alone,” you say. A faraway zombie meanders toward the store.

The doors open with a
ding!
and you enter the main floor with silence, axe at the ready. The mechanism must be battery-operated; there’s no electricity. Yet it’s not dark inside. The multiple sky-lights illuminate the store; not fully lit, but it’s enough.

The group fans out at the entrance. You look around for any signs of life… or death. Tyberius finds a nearby bargain-bin of aluminum baseball bats and takes one out. He clinks the bat against the linoleum floor and everyone freezes; they stand in silence, waiting. He’s hoping to draw them out, you realize. No response.

“That doesn’t mean there’s not one in a back room. Take it slow. And keep an eye out for crawlers,” Cooper says.

Sims motions in the military style, with two fingers extended. “Guns are this way.” You all follow him through the outdoor apparel section. This is going to be just like Christmas! Past the clearance section. Guns, guns, guns, guns—guns! Past the sports equipment. Hopefully they have holsters and shoulder straps, so you can carry more. He leads you past everything, in fact. Perhaps they hide the firearms in the back so as not to frighten young children and hippies, or perhaps it’s like the milk in the grocery store: in the back, so you have to walk past everything else to get to what you came for. There
is
a lot of nice stuff here; it’ll be fun to root through after—“Drum-roll, please,” Sims says, interrupting your thoughts.

Around the corner to the firearms section…. The entire place is barren. No guns, nothing. Your stomach turns. Your vision tunnels. Once you breathe in again, you see the faces of those in your group have become sorrowful. This must be what you look like.

Sims is the first to speak, with just a simple, “Oh, no.”

“I was thinking it; I just didn’t want to jinx it,” Tyberius whispers.

“Then you shouldn’t have thought it!” Sims shouts.

“Oh, come on. We were all thinking it,” Deleon spits out. He’s obviously angry you didn’t go straight to the school. “Why the hell wouldn’t it be raided?”

Hefty scoops a box of bullets from the shelf and cradles it against his chest with one arm as if it were a sleeping kitten. With the other hand he opens the box, removes a bullet, and tosses it at Sims. “Bang.” Sims recoils and catches the thing as it bounces off his chest. Hefty tosses one more, “Bang.” And another—“Bang.” The bullets
tink
off the tiled floor.

“This is not my fault! You can all blow me.”

Suddenly you’re speaking. “Hey, hey, hey. All is not lost. There’s a lot of good stuff here.” Who appointed you group cheerleader? You’re not sure why, maybe it’s because you can’t have walked here for nothing—you just
can’t
have—but you need to make a lemonade gun out of these lemons. “That’s a nice bat, Ty.”

“You want it? Here.” He hands you the aluminum bat.

Cooper’s suddenly excited. “It’s true, we can re-supply. Camping food, survival gear. We’re not fucked yet. There’s new weapons here, maybe not guns, but still.”

“And everybody get a change of clothes,” you add.

Still in a state of shock, the group blindly follows the order and disperses into the store to search for gear. You walk the aisles with the fireman’s axe on one shoulder and the baseball bat on the other, watching as your cohorts pick out new weapons and clothes.

Deleon looks over a mountaineering pick-axe. Gives it a couple of quick, jerky swings and then thumbs over the tip to check sharpness. He picks out some new hiking clothes and boots. As he holds up the shirt and looks in a mirror, his wristwatch alarm goes off. He looks down to silence it, and when he looks back up, Cooper has materialized behind him. “Handsome.”

“Oh? Th-thanks.” He waits for her to leave, then skulks over to the bathroom, looking suspiciously over his shoulder as he enters. Presumably he’s going to try on the new clothes, but there’s something guilty about his grimace. Maybe it’s the hard-to-shake the feeling of shoplifting?

Guillermo is already in new clothes by the time you come across him. He puts a pocket-knife in his camping shirt, finds a shovel, and then gets a knife-sharpening kit. He starts sharpening
the shovel
. Damn, that guy is prepared for anything.

Hefty gives you the thumbs-up in a brand-new white-tee and jeans, essentially a clean version of what he was already wearing. He finds a giant machete and a compound hunting bow with quiver for his new weapon set.

Tyberius finishes putting on new clothes—all Underarmor-style tech gear. Finds a hockey stick and straps it across his back. Claims some two-and-a-half pound weights. Nearby, Hefty looks at the tiny dumbbells. Tyberius sees his smirk and says, “Go ahead, laugh it up.”

Sims finishes making a Molotov cocktail out of some camping lantern oil. He’s in new clothes already too. Surprise, surprise—hunter’s cammo. He’s smart enough not to have chosen orange; deer are color-blind, zombies are not. He tries out a slingshot, then gets the sharpening kit from Guillermo to sharpen a decorative sword.

Tyberius and Hefty watch. “Look at Douchery Dan over here,” Tyberius says. You can hear them snickering, but Sims cannot.

“It’s pronounced ‘d-bag’, the ‘ouche’ is silent,” Hefty replies.

Cooper has changed into sport-tech undergarments, but has covered them up with motorcycle gear. Tight, durable, light, and armored—not a bad idea. She looks even more badass than before, like she’d be the villain in the next
Terminator
movie. She holds a crowbar and slides it into a belt loop. She gets a length of rope and begins forging what can only be a homemade flail.

Now it’s your turn. First, it’s top-of-the-line hiking boots. Then you pick lightweight, breathable travel clothes. The kind that resist odor on the microbial level. Who knows when you’ll get to change again, so you’re going for something you could backpack through Europe in. You find some face wipes and take a bath in the things; it’s incredibly refreshing. You snag a headlamp, knowing it could come in handy soon. As for a weapon, the aluminum bat isn’t bad, so you’ll keep it, but what really catches your eye is a tactical tomahawk-style axe. The edge is razor sharp and the reverse side has a pike tip (much like Deleon’s ice pick) perfect for skull penetration. It’s much lighter than your dulled fireman’s axe, and the ergonomic grip begs you to swing it.

The
ding!
of the front door rings through the store, reverberating in your teeth like an alarm clock after a sleepless night. Any feeling of comfort and safety is now gone. You all look back at the entrance, but the door view is obscured by rows of tall shelves.

Like wraiths in the shadows, you all flow toward the door in a wide sweep, slowly placing each foot in front of the other until you’re in view of the door—and nothing’s there. Blazing daylight comes through the glass doors, but there’s no sign of whoever entered.

“What the hell?” Hefty breathes out.

You see something outside; a woman—a ghoul, to be sure. She approaches the door awkwardly, with a broken leg, and places a gnarled hand against the glass door. She sees you and mouths at the door, her tongue leaving a trail of slime across the glass like some great slug.

She pushes on the door, and though all she’d have to do is pull to open it, the pressure extends the edge far enough in to trigger the
ding!
once more. The woman looks up to the bell, curiously wondering if it’s something she can eat. The group lets out a collective sigh as the feeling of danger passes.

Then Cooper screams.

You all wheel about to see a zombie behind her, its hand full of hair and wrenching her head toward his mouth. Her neck is taught with resistance, but it’s an odd angle and the fiend is winning this game of tug-o-war. Guillermo’s closest to her and comes in with his razor-sharp shovel. For a moment, you think he’s going to behead her, but instead the shovel takes off the zombie’s hand at the forearm. She drops to the floor and an instant later, the zombie’s head snaps back. A hunting arrow protrudes from his forehead.

Hefty lowers his bow and blows across the front curve of it as if he’d just shot a rifle. The zombie falls to the floor and Cooper rises, the hand still holding tightly to her hair.

“That’s a good look for you, Coop,” Tyberius says.

She smiles at him sarcastically. “Sims, let me see your knife.” He complies and she cuts a chunk of her hair out to free the hand. She tosses it to the ground and returns the knife.

Another zombie slams against the glass door. “How did this one get in?” you ask.

“Got lucky,” Cooper replies. “Let’s not stick around to see if it happens again. Newbie, you and Sims go grab the Doc and let’s get out of here.”

Sims moves quickly and you follow closely, keeping an eye out for anything worth grabbing. Iodine tablets and a water purification kit? Yup. You make a note to come back to the hydration packs as well; ideally, you should each have one on.