INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (21 page)

THE END

P
hoenix leaves with the bottomless escort; it’s just you and the topless one on the couch. The chemicals running through your body prove too much for you, and you need to sit down. The couch faces a glass wall with a commanding view of the city—the lights glitter and gleam under a moonless night. The beauty before you and the drug within you make this a life-changing experience.

Then, before you even know what’s happening, the topless woman is on top of you. She kisses your neck and collarbone and the soft press of her lips proves irresistible when you are chemically enhanced, as you are now. It just feels too fucking good.

You’re paralyzed, unable or unwilling to control yourself as she kisses your chest and moves to her knees in front of you. The lights of the city grow even brighter as she starts to go down on you. Nothing has ever felt this good.

From above, a scream rings out in the doctor’s room. You turn your head toward the stairs, but see nothing. You notice that the sensation in your loins has slowed down, and the huffing noise from the hooker turns into a growl. You look down. Her eyes are hungry. To your horror, she bites down upon you. She’s hit a major artery; the bleeding is profuse.

You try to escape, but the topless zombie has incredible grip, and she’s not letting go. She just keeps chewing, and the more you struggle in your agony, the faster you bleed out.

Finally, you escape her grasp. You run toward the door, but you’ve lost so much blood that the strength leaves your legs. You manage to open the door, but your knees buckle and you fall to the floor. Blood is everywhere; your vision fades to nothing as your life leaves you. With your last moments of consciousness, you see Phoenix running downstairs and the topless zombie racing to meet up with him.

You’re dead, but that’s not the end. In a couple of hours, the
Gilgazyme
 ® will have changed you and you’ll rise again. Good thing you left that door open.

•
 
Time to hit the town with your new friends.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou plumb the depths of the basement with Sims, looking over the equipment with a flashlight. “Thanks for coming with me,” he says. “It’s pretty creepy down here.” With no windows and no power, it’s like exploring a cave. Creepy, indeed.

At length, you find what he’s looking for. He toys with the wiring while you hold a flashlight for him. “Oh baby, oh baby,” he says, growing excited. “Listen, I think I can get the power back on, but I want to keep it a surprise, so…”

“My lips are sealed,” you whisper. He smiles and gets back to work.

“With power, we’ll finally be able to contact rescue. There’s a student radio station, so we’ll be able to send out a strong broadcast for help. I found some spotlights I can mount to the roof for when a chopper comes in. This is it! After tonight, we’ll be sitting pretty. But remember—”

“Not a word.”

•
 
After he finishes up, return to the gym.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

“F
uck, yes!” he shouts, offering you a high-five.

He takes an assault rifle off the trailer wall and presses the stock against your chest. You claim the black weapon, looking it over while he opens a canvas bag and fills it with banana clips. He takes a combat shotgun down as well and loads the breach full of shells.

“I’ll need to drive us first, just to get us out in the open, but we can switch in the field. This probably goes without saying, but the old man would skin us alive if he finds out—so no bragging to your friends when we get back.”

You follow him out back, where he opens a massive padlock on the rear gate, pushes it open and bids you follow with a toss of his head. Just on the other side is a combat-ready Humvee. It’s large, massive, in fact, menacing and inviting at the same time. At the passenger side he pumps the shotgun and laughs as he shouts, “Shotgun!” placing the weapon in the empty seat.

You open the door on the driver’s side, surprised at how light and almost toy-like it feels. “You want this thing in here?” you ask, holding up the rifle.

“Yup. You should see a rack. Then hop in back.”

*     *     *

Rows of dead corn husks, brown and brittle, stand limply across the massive field. The zombie farmer crunches the dry crops underfoot as he shuffles across his lonely home. He’s not really headed anywhere, just ambling; waiting for instinct to take hold.

As a mighty engine roar comes closer, his head snaps up like an animal’s. He moves toward the sound just as the Humvee bounds around the corner. The soldier leans out of the window and screams back to you, “Fuck him up!” Your hands are on the .50-caliber machine gun.

It swivels smoothly as you take aim. You depress the trigger and the field erupts in dirt explosions. You force the firing line up to the zombie and his body is torn to shreds by the dagger-sized bullets. It doesn’t matter if you score a headshot, and that’s a beautiful thing.

The vehicle skids to a halt in the field and the soldier hops out. “Engine’s runnin’,” he says with a grin. “Don’t be afraid to push her, she can handle it.”

You slide into the driver’s seat and look over the controls. The vehicle was designed to be used by GED-wielding seventeen-year-olds, which equates to videogame-like simplicity. As you peer out over the horizon, you see dozens of zombies coming out from the wood line. The engine noise and gunshots bring them out like flies to honey on a hot summer day. You jam the automatic transmission into drive and head toward the middle of the mob.

Dirt clods flee in terror from your spinning tires and, not without a few bumps, you thump across the terrain after the ghouls. You never had this much fun back in the real world. This is truly living! All those flesh-eating bastards coming at you from the trees have come here to kill you, but nu-uh, not this time. It’s your turn.

The machine gun erupts from above and behind, small bursts blowing apart zombies. It’s like they’re watermelons, fat and thick and ripe, and you’ve dropped a firecracker inside the sweet, juicy center. Ka-BOOM!

The soldier in the back commands the turret with expert ferocity, but there are just so goddamn many of the fiends that he can’t get to them all. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help out. You careen the vehicle into the nearest one, battering against her with a sickening thud-crunch combo.

“Double back around!” your gunner shouts. As you do so, you see the number of undead is shockingly high. A three-thousand population town may seem abandoned when you drive through it, but take all those people out of their houses and put them on your front lawn, and that same number may seem a little higher.

You fish-tail donuts into the farmer’s field. The soldier blasts the zombies apart with howls of triumph that border on orgasmic. Actually, they’ve probably crossed into that territory. Once you circle back to the woman you struck, you see she’s still crawling on the ground through broken bones. This time you put a tire over her head.

The damage the Troop lays out across their bodies is nearly unfathomable. To call a .50-cal a large bullet is a gross understatement—it’s more appropriately dubbed a small missile. Why does this weapon cause disproportionately more damage than other firearms? It’s a process called
inertial cavitation.
The massive bullet pushes through the body with such fierce acceleration that the resultant force creates a pressure differential and the target literally collapses inward at the point of impact. Think of throwing a stone in a lake—the water sinks in around the rock in a much greater area than simply the size of the rock, yes? So it is when a bullet hits a zombie in center mass and the ghoul is cut in half.