INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (29 page)

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

T
he school was gloriously abandoned, at least in the cursory glance you gave it as a team. Unfortunately, the longer you go without sleep, the lower your attention to detail. So hopefully they’ll be all right without you. It’s a good thing the sporting goods store is only fifteen minutes away on bicycle. You should be back at the school and asleep within an hour.

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…”

It’s you, Cooper, Sims, and Guillermo. The others stayed back at the school to scrounge for supplies. Hefty requested a shotgun, Tyberius a pair of handguns, and Deleon a cowboy lever-action rifle. You don’t even know what you want; there could be any combination of wonderful things within.

“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.”

“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 four of you fan out at the entrance. You look around for any signs of life… or death. Sims puts his forefingers in his mouth and lets out a piercing whistle. Everyone freezes, standing 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.”

“
Las armas
?” Guillermo says.

Cooper grabs a box of bullets off the shelf and throws it across the way to another shelf. The box bursts and bullets rain down with metallic
tinkling
against the tile floor.

“Raided,” you say, feeling the bile build up in your gut as the word crosses your lips. And why wouldn’t it be? The
grocery store
was raided.

“We can re-supply,” Cooper says, fighting her anger. “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 disperses into the store to search for gear. You walk the aisles with the fireman’s axe on one shoulder, watching as your cohorts pick out new weapons and clothes and keeping an eye out for what to bring back to the school.

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.

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.

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, 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 an 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. After securing the new axe to your person, you snag an aluminum bat as well.

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…” Sims 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 taut 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. You don’t even remember moving, but the pike-end of your new axe is deep in his forehead and your hand tightly grips the handle. The zombie falls to the floor and Cooper gets up, the zombie’s hand still securely in her hair.

“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 some supplies for the others and let’s get out of here.”

You head off and start collecting gear with a new sense of urgency. New clothes for the guys, food packs, and weapons. Sims brings a compound hunting bow and hockey stick. “Good reach,” he says. “And maybe Hefty can shoot?”

“Because of the redneck thing?” you ask.

He shrugs. Packs filled with gear, you return to the front of the store. Cooper uses a set of battery-operated clippers to buzz off her hair in its entirety, while Guillermo watches in fascination. Her thick, black hair is no more.

A loud
thud
and corresponding
ding!
reminds you that the zombies are still outside. And now there’s a lot of them, all trying to press their way in. They’ll be in soon, that’s inevitable.

The entire parking lot is filled up with meandering ghouls. It seems as though they don’t know what’s going on inside, but something has piqued their interest. “How do we get out of here?” you ask.

Sims brandishes his Molotov cocktail and says with a grin, “Problem solved. I throw this, distract them. Then we escape while they’re engulfed in hot flaming goodness.”

“Or you leave your toy and we use the service entrance,” Cooper suggests.

So what’ll it be?

•
 
“Sims, light it up.”

•
 
“One backpack on your chest, the other normal. We’ve got a lot to carry—move out!”