INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (40 page)

You spend most of the time on edge. You try de-stressing with calisthenics and strength exercises (you might just need them), but it doesn’t help much. Screeching cars and powerful explosions from the world outside grate on your nerves. Then the silence of the world weighs on you even heavier.

Between the early news reports and the tests done on infected rats, you learn a few important lessons about your undead pursuers that—God willing—you’ll never have to use: 1) the only way to kill one is by destroying the brain. At least zombie fiction should prepare most people for that; 2) they’re attracted to any human sounds, and will come to investigate with ravenous frenzy; 3) although they don’t breathe, and their hearts don’t beat, they’re not truly dead; they’re simply preserved. The
Gilgazyme®
worked, kind of, and that means there’s no waiting them out.

To pass the time, you look through the memorabilia in the home—old family photos, book collections. The power went out, at least to this building, so you’re relegated to the daylight hours. One book stands out:
Sociality Abounds: A Novel by Jacques Deleon
. There’s a sticker canted sideways on the cover, “Nobel Prize Winner.” The inside cover is simply signed “TO MY SON.”

Deleon takes the book from you, puts a picture of his parents inside, and says, “We’re going. Get packed up.” He’s constructed a makeshift cast for his forearm out of the bathroom drywall, and slides the cast on. “We’re bound to see other people, and I don’t expect them to understand about my wound. So say nothing about it.”

You nod in acquiescence. He dictates into his recorder once more, a sight you’ve grown accustomed to this last month. “I could stay here comfortably for a few more weeks at least, but I’m leaving. In search of the limiting ingredient—niacin. I’ve left a copy of my cure notes in case anyone ‘stumbles by.’”

With this, the doctor looks to you, smiling at his own macabre humor. He then fashions a bandolier around each calf, in which he keeps the vials of his formula. Each one is labeled “Cure attempt 3.1.” After pulling his pant legs down over them, he sets his wristwatch alarm for three hours. The countdown begins.

He rips off a leg from one of the tables and hammers several nails through one end so they protrude on the other side; a spiked club. Your hiking backpacks are stocked, and now it’s time to pull up the boards and leave.

Which way?

•
 
Fire escape. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

•
 
Front door. No one made it to our porthole in the last month…

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou meet the rest of the group in the entry to the school, but it’s not because they were anxious to see your supplies. Deleon is seated against the long row of lockers, his arms secured behind his back. Tyberius and Hefty are watching him, with a baseball bat and a pair of gardening shears in their hands. It’s obvious he’s their prisoner.

“What’s going on?” Cooper asks, sliding her pack off. The rest of you unload as well, moving tentatively toward the men. “We ran into some trouble,” she says in response to her new buzz cut.

“So did we. He’s been bit,” Hefty spits out.

“We missed one when we looked? Where was it?” Sims asks.

“No,” Deleon says firmly,
desperately
. “I’ve been bitten since long before I met you.”

Cooper raises an eyebrow. “But how? That was so long ago—how are you still… living?”

“I have a cure.”

The group confabulates in anger. They’re shouting their betrayal, and Deleon holds up his hands to calm them. He wants to explain. Bad move. All Guillermo sees is the bite wound and he chomps his teeth twice, then says, “
Mordido
!”

Guillermo jumps to his feet, cleaver raised, and charges at Deleon, who backs away, hands still raised. “Hold on,
estoy bien!
Medicina!
” The doctor ducks into Guillermo, evading the cleaver but still taking the force of the chef’s tackle.

It’s a sight too familiar since the end of the world, that of two men wrestling on the ground while one’s trying to kill the other. Sims and Hefty get Guillermo off Deleon, then Tyberius helps the doctor to his feet. Guillermo paces around, ranting in Spanish about the crazy people he’s with.

Cooper is not pleased. “I knew there was a reason I wanted to kill you.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you have a cure? Why lie?” Tyberius looks legitimately hurt.

“Well… it’s not finished. But as long as I take this inoculation every three hours—I just need to find a lab to finish it—look, I tried to say stay away from me, but you guys wouldn’t—”

“Where the hell are all the guns?” Hefty asks, interrupting.

Sims looks down and shakes his head. “Raided,” you say. “But we still got new clothes and weapons.”

“God damn it, we are so fucked,” Hefty says. Sims removes the hunting bow and quiver, and hands it over. “Oh what, just because I’m from the South means I can use this? That’s racist.”

“Can you use it?” you ask.

“Well… yeah.”

“Just shut up, everybody. I’m too tired for this shit,” Cooper says. She’s deep in thought, staring at the floor. Then she looks at Deleon. “How much of that stuff do you have left?”

The doctor’s face is covered in sweat. He looks around nervously. “Enough for now.”

“We need sleep. We’ll post a guard and decide what to do with you in the morning.”

•
 
Get some rest.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

T
his is it. You’re tired but fueled by adrenaline, afraid yet furious. Too long have you been the victim; it’s time to take matters into your own hands. You’ve done nothing but run since this great calamity, and that ends now.

“Form a line!” you shout, barely recognizing the intensity in your own voice. “They can only come through in twos and threes, so make your kills count and then recover at the end of the line!”

Cooper looks at you with fierce eyes, the kind she uses when she thinks her authority is being questioned. “You’re up, boss!” You say to her. “Show us how it’s done.”

She lets out her homemade flail, the business end clinking against the linoleum floor. It’s fashioned from a section of climbing rope, with a bundle of crampons and sharp mountaineering implements on the other side. She swings the thing around, the rope stretching from the weight at the dangerous end, and with full-body momentum connects the spike bundle to the first zombie’s head. The blow sticks in and connects with such power that it lifts the ghoul off its feet. As the body slams against a sale rack, Cooper has her crowbar out and engages the second zombie, slamming the straight end through an eye socket.

As she holds her boot against the twice-dead corpse’s neck to wrench her crowbar free, a new batch of zombies flows in. Guillermo runs forward with his shovel and nearly decapitates the first one, the head dropping back to barely hang from a tendon. Flipping the weapon around, he further pops this fiend in the chest, sending it the ground. With two more expertly placed blows to the foreheads of the victims, the pair of undead collapses. He finishes the first off, then calmly walks to the back of the line.

The glass in the entry breaks further, and now the zombies enter the store four abreast. Without a cue, Sims moves in. Sims flings a shot with his slingshot, but it’s a miss. He tries again and gets very, very close… but still misses. In frustration, he unsheathes the sword he’s sharpened and rushes in to attack. He gets a kill, but the replica shatters upon the second impact, leaving him weaponless. Two zombies grapple him and you rush in to help. You kill the undead attackers, but not before Sims screams out under the pressure of a bite.