INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (2 page)

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Right to the pawn shop! You’ve got a good head start—my kingdom for a firearm!

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

“F
ine,” you say, hands raised in the air. You jog toward the back of the warehouse, the twenty or so hungry ghouls watching your movement like cats seeing a mouse come out of its hole. They moan in chorus and come toward you with outstretched arms.

You pull the alarm on the far wall, which was intended to be used in case of an industrial accident. The machinery shuts down and in its place, a flashing light and wailing alarm shine and sound above you. The commotion brings other zombies out of the woodwork, as well as those who were congregating by the entrance.

The cop hides near the hall that you walked through to come in, waiting as the undead march in a steady stream toward you. You’ve got no way out; you’re trapped. What did you think would happen?

His plan works perfectly, and you see him slip out of the warehouse, just before the crowd tears you limb from limb.

THE END

A
s you run around the side of the building, you find yourself facing an HVAC system—the building’s air conditioning unit. On the other side of this wall, guns wait like ripe crops ready to be harvested. Fortunately for you, this pawnshop’s owner was too cheap to install professional central air and instead purchased a shoddy knockoff. You slap your axe against the unit only once before the plastic cover breaks free.

The blade waiting within is a different story. The large metal fan swings quickly in a deadly arc. The undead amble toward you. This may be your best shot, so you shove your axe into the air duct like a knight spearing a dragon—the fan roars appropriately for the metaphor—metal screeching painfully upon metal. Your axe is destroyed, but so is the fan.

Just as the punk zombie arrives, you’re ready to enter the vent. In a near-comedic twist of luck, the zombie’s baggy pants slide to his ankles and trip him. This gives you just enough time to pull yourself into the vent before he arrives. But you must move quickly, for the whole neighborhood will surely follow your trail.

You tumble into the pawn shop, clattering into heirloom jewelry and ornamental faux samurai swords alike. There’s just so much junk in here. But there are also guns. The sound of a shotgun pumping, the shell sliding into the breach, greets you.

You stand up with hands raised and see the greaseball proprietor pointing the business end of a weapon at your face. His hair is slicked back, face pockmarked and angry, and he wears enough gold rings to look like brass knuckles.

Then the first zombie falls out of the air duct behind you. You move away, and the shop owner turns away from you to blast the zombie. “Goddammit!” he says. “Go grab a gun and make yourself useful, fucktard.”

He tosses his head back toward the counter, where several firearms are locked and loaded. Grabbing an AK-47, you turn back to kick some ass. The air vent grumbles and rattles with the oncoming flesheaters. Their moans echo throughout the aluminum system, giving the impression that the building itself is calling for your blood and brains.

The cheap, particle-foam ceiling tiles lurch and give way. A dozen undead fall into the pawnshop at once, and for the moment that they’re lying prone on the floor, it’s literally like shooting fish in a barrel. The deafening roar of the shotgun erupts once more.

You crack off shots from the AK, surprised at how little recoil there is, and blast chunks off zombie faces. It’s harder than the movies would have you believe to get a direct headshot, but the holes you leave show you how to adjust so that your next round scores a cranial explosion.

In a moment of stillness, the pawnshop owner reloads his shotgun and you take the cue to inspect your rifle. But more zombies drop in—a lot more. You pop off round after round, and your killing rate goes from one in five shots to one in four, after only a few minutes’ experience.

The flow of undead is unending, but your ammo supply is not. The AK clicks empty and you rush back to the counter for more. There’s a few more banana clips at the ready, but the influx of hellspawn is such that you’re better off just grabbing another firearm. The wall where the vent was collapses under the weight of twenty-five zombies. How the hell did that many fit in at once?

The closest weapon is an old WWII surplus Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle. That’ll do. You crack off a shot at the nearest zombie’s head; the caliber is such that a headshot allows you to see clean through the ghoul. With a satisfactory slide of the bolt, you chamber another round.

The pawnshop owner tosses down his shotgun and removes dual nickel-plated pistols from the case. Desert Eagles. What. An. Asshole. He lets loose his hand cannons and tears apart everything except brains. One shot hits the ceiling and the next the floor. Looks like the onus is on you to defend this pawnshop.

You’re able to kill a zombie about every three or four seconds. That’s pretty good, and you’re getting better. They say bad news comes in threes, and this situation is no different: 1) the pawnshop owner isn’t doing shit; 2) the zombies are arriving at an average rate of one per second; and 3) available ammo is finite.

It’s time to grab the next weapon. Black and deadly, a Vietnam era M-16. Your first shot pumps out three rounds in short succession. That more than takes care of the fiend in front of you, but you’ve got the wherewithal to switch the firing mode from “burst” to “semi” and make each round really count.

Unfortunately, the rifle clicks with a jam on your next shot. You toss it and grab a hunting rifle. The pawnshop owner runs behind the counter and removes an UZI 9mm. Letting out an impressive spray, he downs half a dozen zombies in three seconds. Then his ammo is gone.

The supply of firearms is starting to run out! The situation is desperate. There are now fifty healthy zombies coming at you. Your lever-action cowboy rifle cannot possibly take out that many. The pawnshop owner knows it too. He comes around from behind the counter and hands you something small and round: a grenade. In his other hand; one of his own.

“Thanks for letting them in, asshole,” he says as he pulls the pin of his grenade.

It was a valiant effort. The pair of you, after the resultant explosion, will have taken out in excess of 200 zombies. The world needs more people like you if humanity is to have a fighting chance to survive. You pull your own grenade pin and in a few seconds, you’re blown to smithereens in stereo.

THE END

T
he doors on this house aren’t just wide open; they’ve been ripped off their hinges. Still, it couldn’t be less inviting. You don’t need to be a Sioux tracker to piece together what happened here: the zombie horde was intent on making it inside, excited more than usual(probably by the hysterical screaming coming from within), and they converged
en masse
.

Just as a school of fish is more than the sum of its parts, so is a throng of undead humanity. 10,000 pounds of motivated flesh, unrestrained by the pain of organic tensile limitations, can accomplish a lot. The evidence is all over the foyer of the home. Smeared blood and gore coat the entryway, caught on the splintered doorframe.

Inside, it’s not much better. Violence and viscera, that’s the new fall fashion in the undead apocalypse. There are the remains of furniture, probably an antique sofa table, now ground into dust underfoot from the multitudinous undead.

Finger-grooves are almost worn into that fireman’s axe, so often do you strangle its handle. As you move into the house, you get the feeling you’re entering some sort of cavern. All the accoutrements have been pushed to one side and are coated with a fine patina of innards. Well, odds are the zombies skipped the cupboard, so that’s good news for you.

Heading toward the kitchen, you hear a faint rummaging. Do you go in?

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Nope! Curiosity ate the survivor.

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Nothing ventured, nothing gained. What could a peek hurt?