INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (106 page)

You’re about to introduce yourself when Hefty speaks up. “Ty and I met the newbie when we was looking for food.” He points to you, “This here’s good people. You shoulda seen it, just obliterated this head-case, brains everywhere and—”

“Tyberius, you vouch?” Tyberius nods. She looks you over once again, judging your fitness. “Alright, you can travel with us, so long as you know I’m the boss. You’ve already met the twins. This here’s Jose.” She points to a man, most likely in his forties, who wears the stained whites of a kitchen worker from a hole-in-the wall restaurant. He’s Latino, short, plain, and has a calm countenance on his pockmarked face.

“Mucho gusto,” he says.

“And over there is Tyberius and Hefty.” Both are in their twenties and look like the ordeal has made them feral. The first is a handsome black man in tattered business casual. He wields a gigantic sledge hammer and has a police baton tucked in the waist of his slacks. The other one is a white guy, thin as a rail, and clearly a redneck. Plain white-tee kind of guy. He holds a heavy length of pipe about the size of a baseball bat.

“You can call me Cooper, and what I say goes. You got a problem with that?”

•
 
“No, Ma’am.”

•
 
“Actually, yeah. I’ll try my chances alone.”

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

R
emember those late nights over coffee talking about your Zombie Contingency Plan? Well, you don’t “remember” it per se, but you’re inexplicably headed to the house you all agreed to flee to anyway.

Odds are, they’ve had enough time to seal themselves in, but maybe you can tug on their heartstrings, appeal to their emotions so they’ll let you in, and then you can
chew on
their heartstrings. Your appearance hasn’t changed too much from a healthy human yet, and even the uninfected look strung out on stress and anxiety. So maybe, with any luck—

And then you’re at the house. Without even realizing it, you arrive. You pound lightly on the door. Eyes appear through the cracks in the boarded windows. Exciting!

“Holy shit, look who it is!” your best friend says. Other eyes arrive, each with their own cursed proclamation at your arrival. They call your name. You look their way and slap your palm against the window. They mistake your interest as recognition and your excitement for desperation.

They let you in.

All smiles and open arms, except for one. You know that friend who’s part of the group even though they don’t
really
belong? No one knows who invited them, or who even met them first, but here they are. That’s the friend who sees through you, and that’s the friend you bite. You never liked that tagalong anyway.

Now the cursing really starts. A baseball bat cracks against your ribcage, most likely fracturing one or two ribs and successfully pushing you off your prey. The one who swung it? Your next-closest friend—the third wheel who always joined in with you and your best bud on outings. The ensuing strike comes at your head, shattering your jaw.

Did you know you can still bite with a shattered jaw? Without pain receptors, there are limits your body can reach that you’d never have thought possible—back when you had the capacity for such thought. You show your friends just how well you can operate with a shattered jaw and clench down on that third wheel.

“Hey, asshole!” screams your aggressive friend. The gregarious one, with the boisterous laugh, the one who’s an overwhelming drunk. You look back just as they slam the bolt-action home on a rifle. Oh, yeah, that’s why you guys chose this house: it’s the one with all the guns.

Your brain splashes across the back of the room before the
kaboom
registers in everyone’s ears. Wasn’t that grandpa’s big-game rifle? Still works great—don’t make ‘em like they used to.

Yet your legacy will live on. You’ve infected two of your friends, and before the end of the night, they’ll rise again to finish what you started.

THE END

J
ust like the airplane safety videos: please kill your own zombie before killing infants or children or the disabled. She’s the bigger threat, so you go for her. As the four-armed, two-mouthed beastie comes at you, you set your stance, digging the soles of your shoes into the pavement. You raise your arms high, looking like a great swordsman to any who might be watching; ready to strike at the start of a duel.

You chop down at the mother, aiming for the center of her forehead. An inexperienced killer, you’re all nerves and sinew. Like a lathe, your axe skims across her forehead, jarring her head back and breaking her neck in a sickening
crack
. She reels back, almost falls, but catches her balance and comes at you again.

You chop once more, but this time it’s more of a down motion than it is a forward strike. Her head creaks like an egg against a mixing bowl and when you pull your axe out of her skull, the body slumps toward you.

You fall back, trying to stay away from her, but the maneuver is awkward and you both fall down together. Before you can do anything, the infant is out of its carrier and suckling against your breast. A preferable surrogate. You scream out as you feel hell’s leech latch down upon you, and you shake in search of freedom, but freedom doesn’t come.

Deleon is over to you, his lab coat spittled with blood, and rips the unwholesome thing off. He slams the creature against the pavement, his hands on the little legs and beating the fiend against the ground like a toddler taking out a tantrum on a porcelain doll.

You stand and step away from the violence. You check yourself for blood and wounds, but there are none. A red ring where it had attached itself will leave a nasty hickey. Then you understand—the little bastard was toothless. It just gummed at you… with a surprising force and pressure, but you’ll be all right.

You laugh. You can’t help it; it seems inappropriate, but you laugh. You’re not bitten! There was no fluid transfer, so there is no infection. You show the red ring to Deleon, who laughs as well.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he says with a large grin and a slow shake of his head. As if at a loss for how to proceed, he shakes your hand. “C’mon, it’s just up ahead.”

*     *     *

This particular station hasn’t exploded… yet, though there are plenty of drugstores that are not so lucky. Maybe it’s because of the “Sorry, No Gas” signs up on the pumps, or because it’s too close to the heart of the city—anyone who wanted to evacuate probably planned on filling up on the way out. Still, it’s eerie to see such a popular locale with no patrons.

You go up to the front door, looking in through the glass façade. As evidenced from the orderly shelves within, you see that people have yet to loot the road-trip snacks and caffeine-laden drinks. They may not be the most nutritious diet, but they’re high in calories and chock-full of preservatives, so they’ll do while you’re on the move.

Ready to be over and done with it, your bring your axe down into the glass.

“Wait!” Deleon yells.

Too late. The glass crashes open under the power of the axe blade. You look back to the doctor.

“There could’ve been an alarm,” he says, looking at the destruction. “Or…” He approaches the door and pulls it open; it was unlocked. The familiar convenience store
ding
sounds as Deleon turns to you with brow raised. Guess that works too.

The two of you step into the dark store and immediately notice that people have indeed been here. Some food and drinks are missing, though the looters were kind enough to leave some for you.

“Oh, no,” Deleon mutters. You follow his gaze. The door to the pharmacy in the back is open; through the portal you see that a car has smashed its way in. Deleon heads back there, frantically looking for what he needs, stepping over downed cinderblocks and debris.

“Well?”

“Raided,” he says, throwing an empty box to the ground. “This won’t work at all. We’ve got to get moving—hospital or supermarket?”

•
 
“Hospital. The supermarket’s probably been raided already.”