INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (42 page)

“I
 told you, Newjack—there’s no going back if we’ve got a tail of zombs.”

“Don’t you have any sort of escape plan?” you yell as the undead masses amble closer. “Or were we seriously supposed to kill every last one of them, just the two of us?”

“Well, yeah, there’s the backup route, but—”

“No buts! Backup route! Let’s go!” You help him to his feet, hand him the assault rifle, and get familiar with the combat shotgun on the run. The soldier clearly favors his right leg, but he can still jog-limp faster than the undead can stumble-run. Barely. “Which way?”

He stops running, raises the rifle, takes aim, and with four shots downs four zombies to the west. “That way.” You start running toward the twice-dead ghouls, keeping your shotgun at the ready. “I’ve got more ammo—I’ll clear a path; you fuck up any zombs when they get too close. Don’t shoot until you see the yellow of their eyes,” he says. At least he still has that sardonic sense of humor.

Every fifty feet or so he stops and pops off a few rounds in the section of woodline you’re to enter. You haven’t needed the shotgun yet, but you imagine that’ll change when you enter the forest proper.

The farm ends and wilderness begins with a clear demarcation. It’s the spot where the farmer stopped chopping the trees for his property; beyond is all thick timber. You go from a thousand yards of visibility to only ten in just a few steps.

The first zombie arrives from the side to flank you. You point the shotgun at the vicinity of his face and
BANG,
it’s gone. For close quarters, nothing’s more effective than the shotgun. You continue running, but the responsibility of zombie-slaying switches from the soldier to you as visibility worsens.

“Zomb at three o’clock!” he shouts, falling back so you can get a clean shot—blowing away an undead woman’s head. Not exactly
clean
per se, but successful nonetheless.

The woods are dense and foreboding. Nothing looks like a path, and you’re back to the feeling of dread you had hiking with Rosie and Lucas Tesshu only a day ago. You sure hope the soldier knows where he’s going. Another three undead come at you from your right, all moans bubbling out of bloody mouths. With three shots in half as many seconds, they’re on the ground and no longer a threat.

“Nice work, Newjack! Fuckin’ badass!” The combat shotgun is amazing, but you’re acutely aware you’ll need to reload at some point.

The next few steps are out of the woods and onto a paved road. You realize with a sense of déjà vu that you’re on the same road you walked to Salvation on. These
were
the woods you traversed for so long. The soldier takes aim down both sides of the road and kills half a dozen undead each way. From behind, another ghoul stumbles out, but you make short work of his face.

The soldier hobbles past a “BRIDGE OUT” sign just as his rifle clicks from lack of ammo. “Almost there!” he shouts. Around the final bend in the road, a clearing comes into view and you see a bridge—a bridge that collapsed many years ago. A dead end.

But the soldier doesn’t stop, so neither do you, and as you get to the concrete landing where the road ends, you see a footbridge set up to cross over the canyon below. You look over the edge. It’s a rocky canyon, maybe a forty-foot drop, with sheer stone walls on either side. The floor below is covered in half-crippled zombies, writhing and crawling over one another, unable to escape from the sheer walls of the canyon.

The footbridge has wooden planks and rope, spaced out once every three feet. The result? To cross, you need to take enormous steps, stretching and lunging your way across the bridge. And zombies can’t do that. So there they are, at the bottom of the canyon, where they fell when pursuing the other survivors. Now all you have to do is cross, but already the undead pursue you.

“Best be quick about it, Newjack,” the soldier says, lunging out to the first plank. He cries out as he extends his wounded leg, but the pain doesn’t slow him down. The bridge sways violently, so you give him space enough to settle before it’s your turn. The first zombie arrives for you, and you blow his head off like the others.

It’s your turn to be out on the bridge because the crowd ambles onto the concrete loading zone behind you. For the hell of it, you take one last shot, but the shotgun dry-fires from lack of ammo. You lunge out to the bridge, the ropes swaying from side to side under the unaccustomed weight. The soldier, about three-quarters across, steadies himself before continuing.

The first zombie lemmings out onto the bridge and, unable to perform the complex move, tumbles to the canyon below. What she does accomplish is to rock the bridge violently. Your stomach turns as the bridge oscillates. You take another step. Another zombie crashes against the planks and slips off, to the canyon floor.

You won’t get any respite, so you force yourself to continue. Eventually you make it to the other side, where the soldier offers you a hand to safety. By now you’re far enough away that the ghouls do not plunge into the trap. No bait, and they won’t take the hook, it appears.

“We made it!” he says, slapping you on the shoulder. “But we can’t say one goddamn word about this whole thing, you hear me? Not a peep. If word gets out, I’ll skin you myself. You let me worry about the Hummer, you just get to the Command Post and pretend that nothing has happened. Next time we meet, you don’t know me.”

•
 
Continue to the Command Post
.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

S
plitting up is not your favorite idea, especially when you’re the third wheel on a badass bicycle, but time is scarce. Plus you have your shotgun now. You’ll be okay, right? You ensure a round is chambered, but you’re not allowed the satisfaction of a
pump,
as this is a semi-automatic combat shotgun.

The barn entrance isn’t locked. You push open the large doors and head in. It’s filled with shadows, and you open your eyes wide to use the ambient light. The back door to the barn is already open, which allows some light in, but that’s disconcerting, as there is little room for security. There could be an undead fiend behind any corner.

In the center of the barn sits a parked combine harvester, its large-bladed wheel raised for storage. Along the western side is a row for what must’ve been cattle processing, although no livestock are present. At the end of the row, there’s an odd-looking gun hooked up to several lines of pressurized tubing. You pick it up, examining the captive bolt pistol a little more closely.

Then, with a growl, an undead hitchhiker is upon you. You turn toward the sound and reflexively hold the cattle gun up to his head. With a simple squeeze of the trigger, a bolt shoots forward with enormous force, punching a hole through his skull and brain before returning to the recesses of the gun. The zombie falls, and a pink mist floats past the light pouring in from a window on the opposite side. Resting against that opposite wall are rows of shelves holding stacks of oversized glass jars—each filled to the brim with seeds.
Jackpot!

You drop the cattle gun and jog back out to the front. Rosie picks off another ghoul in the distance, then turns around in reply to your shouts. “It’s in here!” you bellow with excitement. She nods, lowering the rifle.

With two fingers in her mouth, she releases a piercing whistle to bring Lucas out from the farmhouse. He emerges a moment later from the second-story window and leaps down from the eave, rolling across the dirt and onto his feet with fluid movements. The bulky kendo armor doesn’t slow him down in the least.

Re-entering the barn with your two companions, you take full inventory of the seeds. In addition to the jars, there’s several pallets of bagged seeds, roughly the size of sandbags. “C’mon, let’s load up the jeeps,” you say.

Running to and fro with your arms full is even more terrifying than searching with the shotgun. You’re essentially defenseless when you’re weighed down with seeds, so you jog to make the process faster. The undead are almost certainly closing in, but this delivery could get the prison fortress through the winter, so you push hard. Fifteen excruciating minutes later, the jeeps are filled to the gills.

You arrive outside and are preparing to leave, but you’re blocked. A veritable zombie army marches down the dirt road, diverted from their tributaries in the fields and forest and funneled out onto the main road. This might prove too difficult for the jeeps. If only you could somehow cut them down, chew through them like wheat at harvest…

“I’ve got an idea,” Rosie says. “Lucas, take the wheel.” She hops out and runs back into the barn.

After a moment, a diesel engine roars to life and the combine harvester emerges, with Rosie at the controls. The threshing wheel begins spinning and she lowers it down to ground level. You pull your jeep off the road and Lucas does the same, allowing Rosie full access to the horde approaching the farm.

In a disgusting confabulation of wet slicing and dry crunching, the combine rips through the crowd. It’s slow going, but Rosie’s in no danger, as the cab is enclosed and there’s no access to it without being ground up by the rotating blades. After a full five minutes of driving, she’s destroyed several hundred zombies and turned the road from dirt to red muck.

Once she’s clear of the farm road, she shuts off the blades, but leaves the engine running. She’s panting heavily when she jumps into your passenger seat. “That. Was. Disgusting.”

“Why’d you leave it running?” you ask.

“It’s louder than the jeeps. Oughta help prevent us from being followed. Let’s go. I need another shower.”

•
 
Return to Salvation.