INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (36 page)

Tyberius is a man who works out regularly; survival of the fittest, indeed! Hefty is the opposite of his namesake, thin as a rail. Angelica is well-toned for someone her age. There must’ve been spin classes or Pilates in her past.

Cooper has a taut, muscular frame, but enough fat in the right places to keep her look feminine. As a matter of fact, her athletic body makes you swallow hard. She clearly stares at Deleon. Judges him openly, sizes him up. Then she looks at you, making no effort to hide her appraisal. Noticing your own gaze, she raises an eyebrow.

You look away.

“What about that cast?” Sims asks. “What’s under there?” Deleon folds his arms across his chest, the cast close against his body. “How do we know you weren’t bit?”

Deleon has a look of being persecuted, and is suddenly filled with more shame than mere naked exposure would cause. The group stares in silence. Tyberius breaks in, “‘Cause he’s not trying to eat you right now, dumbass.”

“He’d be all pale, and sweaty, and—if he were turning,” Angelica adds.

“All I’m saying is, what’s under there, so…”

“A fractured radius,” Deleon answers. “Once infected, a person only has six hours before the incubation is complete, and symptoms start as early as the first hour. I was having my bathroom remodeled. Instead I made this.” He holds his arm cast up for examination.

The group falls to silence, looking at each other for bites once again. Angelica and Sims cover their private parts.

“Aw, what the fuck?” Tyberius says to Hefty. “Put that shit away, man.”

You can’t help but look, just like the rest of the group. Hefty smiles and glances down at his growing manhood. “That’s why they call me Hefty.”

You all try not to notice, giving cries of disgust and disapproval.

*     *     *

Everyone is dressed once more. Suddenly, you hear a moan, soft and distant. You lift your axe and look about for the source. “What was that?” you ask, seeking the far-off sound. The group stops and listens. The faint moan continues.

“The souls of the damned,” Angelica says.

Sims points above. “It’s coming from the air vent.” He dons his gas mask.

Deleon walks over to the vent. “Must be in the main church.”

“Gear up,” Cooper says.

Everyone grabs their melee weapons and candles are handed out. Following Cooper, you slip into the cathedral halls. The group moves, silent and fleet of foot. Shadows leap about from the candlelight. Passing through the long, ornamentally decorated corridor, you eventually make it to the cathedral doors. Large, wooden, and barricaded.

The moan comes from behind these doors. “Are we sure we want to do this?” Tyberius asks.

“What, are you scared?” Sims responds.

“Hell, yes.”

You’re all nerves-pressed-against-cheese-grater. You have to bite the inside of your cheek just to keep some semblance of composure.

“Look, they know we’re here,” Deleon says, “There’d be scratching and scraping if they were right on the other side.”

“So, it’s safe?” you ask.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“If we’re going to sleep here, we need to silence them,” Cooper says, moving forward to tear down the barricade.

•
 
“I don’t think we should disturb them.”

•
 
“Just be ready to re-seal that door, just in case.”

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

“T
hat’s the spirit! But… no fucking way. She’s my baby. Yeah, I admit it, I’m that spoiled kid and it’s my toy.
My toy!
” The last bit he screams out in a child-mimicked squeal. Then he laughs a wide-eyed titter and you suddenly feel like you may have accepted a ride from the wrong stranger.

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, so you can ride in the back for a bit… Ah, fuck it—I’m no asshole. We’ve got two boxes of ammo for the thing, and you can have the first. Don’t let it be said I never did nothin’ for nobody. Oh, and 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.

Looking for more, you see dozens of zombies coming out from the woodline. The engine noise and gunshots bring them out like flies to honey on a hot summer day. 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 weapon was designed to be used by GED-wielding seventeen-year-olds, which equates to videogame-like simplicity. The machine gun erupts from your fingertips, the seemingly endless stream of bullets blowing apart the 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!

“Try not to blow your load too fast!” the soldier screams. “Short bursts!”

You nod at him and look up for more undead from the forest’s edge. They steadily trickle in, to the point where they’re appearing faster than you can kill them. The soldier spins donuts, allowing you a constant “refresh” of your target zone.

Your arms pulsate from the recoil shudder, combined with your own adrenaline. You squint, aiming carefully at a female ghoul—probably the farmer’s daughter—and blow her to bits. The troop drives you through the thick of it, trying to ram into the ghouls before you get a chance to shoot. It’s like a game; who’ll kill the zombie first? You jolt as he
crunches
into one zombie, its head smashed beneath the tire.

The damage you lay 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.

And just like the lake, there’s splash-back.

Even a hit to the shoulder can be fatal. Not because the explosion beheads the zombie, but because the tremendous amount of energy transferred to the bone on impact is such that a fatal concussion turns the undead brain to little more than slush.

The M2 whirs loudly, purring with the satisfaction of the fifty-zombie meal just consumed. You yell to the soldier, “Is that it?”

“Another ammo box—look to your left. No, my left. Other left!” He leans his entire torso out of the driver’s side window, trying to point it out to you.

Then you see it. You lift the box for him to confirm and something catches your eye—the Humvee’s about to smash into an irrigation ditch. You open your mouth to warn him just as the front end dips down into the water and the bumper smashes against the concrete lip. The momentum makes the tail of the vehicle fly forward. You’re launched from the turret like a catapult.

The dirt is soft and gives some cushioning as you smash into the field. Fortunately. You rise and spit earth, popping your joints and groaning with pain. The Humvee sits on its roof, wheels still spinning. The driver’s door pops open and the soldier rolls out with a grunt. He lies prostrate on the ground, arms spread and looking to the sky.

You move to help him up, looking out for approaching zombies. As you do so, you see that the number of undead is shockingly high. A town of three thousand 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 those three thousand become an army.

And looking to the woodline, it seems that most of the zombies are finally descending upon your farm. The sounds of havoc and destruction have them frenzied to the point where they’re stumbling at you in a half-coordinated run.

“Lots of zombs?” the soldier asks from the ground. He can see the look in your eyes. “Goddammit.” He scoops himself off the dirt and scurries back into the vehicle, emerging a second later with both weapons, tossing you the shotgun. “You ready for this?”

The undead are almost here. Angry and multitudinous.

•
 
“Ready to get up and run?”