INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (18 page)

Would you have made it this far without Rosie? Probably not. But what does that matter? There won’t be a sign out front saying, “Only Those Strong Enough To Make It Here On Their Own May Enter.” At least… you hope to hell there won’t be.

She’s asleep right now. You’re giving her that—the gift of sleep under a watchful eye. Restful sleep. Maybe she wouldn’t have made it this far without
you.
You’re helpful, and if nothing else, you’ve proven that other people are alive. Hope is invaluable.

There’s a crunch on the leaves in the distance. This would have to happen while you’re on watch, wouldn’t it? You strain your eyes, trying to see out in the darkness, but the cloud covering the moon makes this night darker than humanity’s future prospects.

You look back to Rosie; she’s sound asleep, cradling her rifle. She’ll be ready in case you need to wake her. You look back toward the sound. There’s a human silhouette creeping in toward you, but it’s much smaller than normal. As it gets closer, you realize it’s a young Boy Scout, lost from his troop. Kind of makes you wonder: did he get lost before or after he became a zombie?

You move away from the tree, lift your axe, and prepare to do your gruesome deed. Even if he’s undead it still feels wrong to kill a kid. But it’s easier when you realize that if you don’t, he’ll just try and earn his
Feed on the Living
Merit Badge.

You take him out with swift ease, slightly appalled at just how natural your movements felt. Now you wonder why the heroes in movies with evil kids or dolls had such a hard time dispatching said devil-spawn. Stuff like that doesn’t scare you anymore, now that there are real monsters in the world.

When you turn back toward the tree, you see Rosie awake and holding her rifle. You didn’t even hear her stir. “It’s almost dawn,” she says. “Let’s pack up and get out of here.”

*     *     *

The marshes. Despite the bright day around you, you see darkness within as you approach. The canopy blocks out much of the light, giving the swampland a dim but still visible appearance. You’re immediately glad you waited until morning.

It starts to form slowly, with a few steps wetter than just the morning dew, the foliage growing denser and greener, until the forest transforms into almost a jungle. Soon the puddles of stagnant water do more than just squeeze out from the grass underfoot, and you find swamp pouring into your shoes from above. The water rises to mid-calf level before you’ve even immersed twenty yards into the bog.

“Much further?” you ask.

“Quiet.” You keep moving forward, Rosie a few yards to your side with her rifle, searching for threats. Some steps sink lower than others, but the overall trend is a deepening of the marsh. You’re now wading in brackish water up to your thighs.

There’s a thick film of algae on the surface, which you break when you wade through, and the stale water beneath is brown and cloudy. You’re hoping it won’t get much deeper. There’s an eerie silence. To your horror, you realize this is patently wrong. In a place as rich and biodiverse as this, there should be frogs or insects at the least.

“Shouldn’t there be animal noises?” you ask.

Rosie stops and so do you. Both of you stand frozen, listening. No sounds, just eldritch silence, save for the sloshing water settling into place. A few bubbles percolate in the pool ahead of you. Then they grow in intensity. Rosie Points her rifle at them, just as bubbles start appearing on her side as well. These globules of rank air escape from below and soon you’re surrounded by blistering froth, rollicking something deep from within.

A wetland zombie comes at you from behind a tree, catching you off-guard, almost as if the bubbles were a planned ruse. “Goddammit—get out of the way!” Rosie shouts. You’re between the zombie and her line of sight, and there’s not enough time for you to flee. You’re forced to fight.

You crack your axe against the ghoul, instantly collapsing his forehead with the blow. Then another rises from the murk. Dramatically. Slowly. Up from a curled position, one vertebra at time, like a yogi exiting a pose.
Crack!
Rosie sinks a round into his forehead.

More of the undead rise from the marsh, four of them, thick brown sludge pouring off their bodies. They’re not decaying, but the flesh is missing in chunks and most of the skin has been picked away by the swamp’s other inhabitants.

You swing at the one closest to you but the weapon’s too large and ungainly and gets caught in the vines and branches. The nearby zombie moves in on you. Rosie plugs away at the other fiends, taking each of them down with a crack from her rifle.

Thinking quickly, you pull a knife from your belt and jab it into the ghoul’s eye, pushing it all the way in. The zombie drops. Two more come from behind the trees and barely get a moan out before Rosie fires a round for each; headshots. The bog is silent once more.

Rosie lowers the rifle with a smile. “You owe me, buckaroo,” she says, already reloading with a fresh clip. “Just you remember this when it comes time to do the cooking at camp.”

You’re about to say that sounds pretty good to you, but you don’t get the chance. With an unexpected speed and ferocity, one last zombie bursts out of the water behind her and grabs a handful of her hair. Rosie screams and the ghoul brings her down splashing into the water below. You try to rush in and grab her, but you’re greeted with only empty slough below the surface.

From ahead, through the swamp, another figure rushes in. He’s armored, but running with incredible ease. Although you hold your axe at the ready, you can recognize him as a human man wielding a katana sword and moving with such effortlessness, he’s practically skimming across the surface of the marsh.

He wears a Kendo uniform—simply put: practice samurai armor.

He locks in on the commotion in the moor and sinks his blade into the water right where Rosie went down. With quick, clean movements he cuts at something beneath the surface. “Here!” he shouts, tossing you his blade. You look at the sword, its fine edge coated in viscera and algae.

From beneath, the man pulls up Rosie; she coughs up water and holds onto her hero with panic. Her eyes are wide and black sludge pours out of her mouth.

“Are you alright?” you ask.

She nods, coughing still. “I swallowed some swampwater, but other than that…”

“No bites?” asks the mystery man.

Rosie still has hold of her rifle, and moves it defensively between her and the man. “No bites,” she says, all business.

“That is good,” the man says. He turns to you and holds a hand out for his sword. “I am Lucas Tesshu. I head toward sanctuary on foot, would you care to accompany me?”

Rosie looks at you.

•
 
“Absolutely! We’re headed there ourselves.”

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou were either born with extra courage or lacking in prudence, but either way, you go to town on these zombies. They break out the boards on your living room window and you crack their skulls open as they start to crawl through. One, two, three zombies down. Your adrenaline is really pumping now.

From the moaning outside, it’s certain they’re still coming, but there’s a break in the action so you start boarding the window back up. You get two boards up when you hear a crash from your kitchen. There’re a couple of ghouls back that way. Just as you finish fixing the front window, they break the boards down in the kitchen window.

You sprint back and smash the baseball bat against them as hard as you can. It sometimes takes two or three hits, but you release their brains like hitting a piñata with your eyes open. You take out the two who tried to breach the kitchen but there isn’t time to board the windows back up because the zombies are coming in through the living room again.

Despite arms that are burning with exhaustion, you keep going strong. The stench of the undead is fearsome, and their bodies start to pile up. The alarm, the moaning, or both—prove more effective than you might have thought, and your home is soon swarming with undead.

They’re coming through the kitchen and the living room at the same time and then you hear the crash of the glass from your bedroom window. It’s too late to make it down to the basement or up to the attic, and they’ve got your house surrounded, so there’s no chance of escape.

This is it. It’s just your homerun-slugger versus the dozens of hellspawn streaming into your house. You won’t go down without a fight, and you manage to take two more to the grave before you’re overwhelmed and eaten alive. You watch in unbearable pain as your innards become outards.

They’re ravenous and don’t leave enough of you to rise again.

THE END

M
eticulously clean and spartan, this is the office of someone with an OCD-standard of cleanliness. The only object worthy of interest is the computer. There’s an audio file up on the screen, and you figure it’s worth finding out what kind of music the guy listens to, so you hit Play. But it’s a voice recording, not music. You won’t find out which bands appeal to genetic researchers today. Instead, you turn the volume low and move your mop back and forth across the floor while listening closely.

Phoenix:
I need you to sign this, endorsing the product. Then let’s break out the bubbly.

Deleon:
I don’t know, I’d like to do more tests.

P:
What? Since when? What’s happened?

D:
They just seem… bored.

P:
Bored? Who gives a shit? Let ’em decide how to spend their time after they’ve handed us their life savings.

D:
Certain test groups have stopped sleeping, they don’t eat—

P:
Hell, maybe this’ll end world hunger too!

(pause)

P:
Okay, look, Deleon, all we have to do is slap something on there saying “Not evaluated by the FDA” and we’re golden.

D:
I’d like to start a new batch; see if I can cut out these outlier groups.

P:
Fuck that. It could take years! You’re still young, but I need this!
(pause)