INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (47 page)

There were more than a few times your friends thought you were overreacting when you lambasted the President, and said you knew this country was going down the toilet. Even your family wasn’t always supportive when you spent large chunks of your savings on gas and solar generators, massive seed banks, and of course, firearms.

But here you are, your seeds planted, your generators running, ready to survive the apocalypse. Escape Plan Zulu is running flawlessly. You had your first ghoul wander onto your property yesterday, and it only took five shots from your hunting rifle to score one in the head. You’ll get better. But that home-brew you cracked open in celebration of your first kill was the sweetest thing you’ve ever tasted.

And now, as you survey your property with your tactical Marine-surplus binoculars, you can’t help but feel a sense of pride. You thought of everything. All those know-it-all college students you debated online are probably dead and dying. Heck, if you’re lucky, they’ll stumble your way and you can finally put one right between the eyes.

Then, off in the distance, something catches your attention. It looks like a dust cloud but it’s moving linearly. You adjust the focus on the binoculars and soon you realize: it’s a convoy. There are a dozen vehicles all headed your way. It’s just starting to dawn on you; there’s one crucial mistake you made in your preparation for the end of the world. You told other people about it.

And if you build it, they will come. Your bragging, both in person and online, to anyone who would listen, will be your undoing. Remember that forum for other survival nuts where you showed off Google-maps images of your compound? That, “See? I wasn’t crazy!” email you sent is coming back to haunt you. People believe you now, unfortunately.

This is only the first wave. Here come the thirsty, the starving, the infected. Wretched immigrants illegally crossing your border and taking what’s rightfully yours. Maybe you won’t go down without a fight, but it doesn’t matter. Even if you accepted them with open arms, you don’t have enough to feed and defend everyone. Attacks will start occurring from within.

The worst part? Even though they know you’re right, they’re not here to listen to you. They won’t accept your leadership. They’re here not only to take, but also to give: you’ll share their fate. If you’re lucky, it’ll only be a matter of days before your fields will burn and your home will be overrun. If you’re not lucky, that caravan is armed and you’re about to go down, Wild West-style. Either way, this is the end for your compound.

•
 
I prepared for this too. Blow it and go. Evac-pack and geo-cache.

•
 
Stay and fight, go down in a blaze of glory.

•
 
Into the panic room.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

T
he undead rush up the landing, desperate to get to you while you play tug-o-war with Hefty’s life. “I have to,” Deleon says. “For the cure.”

The doctor pulls the release. For a fraction of a second, before the bramble of heavy furniture collapses from the nets above, time freezes. Oh how you wish you were up there with Deleon, the treacherous bastard. But even though you’re aware of each millisecond, soaking in the world with perfect clarity, there’s no time to move—save for a wide-eyed, jaw-open stare to the ceiling above.

A desk, upon which some student had carved the anarchy symbol, careens down toward your head. As the particle-faux-wood and steel furniture falls, the last thought you have is:
Anarchy, huh? I wonder how that kid liked having his wish fulfilled.

The slam upon the landing is so forceful, you don’t even feel the crunch. At least you’re granted that small mercy. Your grave is now the two inches between the laminate flooring and the ton of office furniture heaped upon you.

THE END

A
s you exit the student radio hall, you’re immediately in trouble. A zombie is right there to meet you, his hands clenched around your throat before you even realize he’s there. You put your own grip firmly around the undead man’s neck in an effort to keep his teeth at bay and the two of you wrestle in this stance like a badly choreographed fright from an old pulp sci-fi film. Only Sims’ quick reaction with his sharpened samurai sword frees you. He sticks it into the zombie’s ear and the man falls limp.

“Thanks,” you cough out, rubbing your sore neck.

“Thank me later,” he says, turning to face the other two ghouls in front of you.

You take your aluminum bat and go to work. The hatchet axe will work better for close quarters, so best to keep it sharp for your descent into the boiler room. After you slay these two, you follow Sims down the hall. He stops for a moment, looking down toward the barricade you were supposed to cover.

The hall is crawling with undead. The barrier has been flattened into the hallway and they flow in through the door without any signs of ceasing or slowing down. There’s a flickering light at the opposite end of the hall, and the hellions all march toward it. Sims curses under his breath, but continues away from them.

Around the corner, he tries his handheld radio again. “Guys, are you there?” he whispers urgently. No response. He shakes his head with a grimace.

Sims opens a heavy “Faculty and Staff Only” door and flips on a flashlight as you head down the stairwell. Hopefully that door will keep them at bay for a while. He’s been down here several times now, and makes it to the fuse box he connected his alert system to. The switches are labeled in his handwriting. He flips on the “strobe” and “search” switches, but leaves the “siren” switch in the off position.

“Why the hell did you even make a siren?” you ask.

“I figured most survivors probably have their windows boarded up,” he says with a shrug. “Anyway, c’mon. Rescue’s on its way and we need to see if the gang’s still…” Sims looks down, unable to finish the sentence.

“Okay, let’s go,” you say.

The two of you hustle back up the stairs. On the other side of the door, the hallway’s most likely filled with zombies. You take a deep breath in preparation, hands ringing around the grip of the baseball bat. Sims draws his slingshot tight and aims at the door. “Open it.”

You push the door and, sure enough, there are undead out there. Sims releases the slingshot, and the steel ball flies the two feet so fast you don’t even see it. The only sign that a projectile was sent is the zombie’s head collapsing in at the side. “Shit, yeah!” Sims hoots as it falls dead.

And now the others want you.

You swing your bat like a kid going after a piñata, doing your best to clear a path through the hallway. Sims follows you, releasing steel shot at any who venture close enough to guarantee him a clean hit.

“Stairwell!” you shout, remembering the plan to close them off and fortify the second story of the school. Hopefully they haven’t sealed you off yet. True, the rest of the group could easily be dead, but they could also assume the same about you and abandon you.

This realization gives you a new boost of energy, and with untold ferocity you smash through the undead with your bat. But you swing and miss, somehow. You put your whole body momentum into the attack and lose your balance as a result. You stumble and fall forward, ending up face first on the ground.

You roll onto your back, ready to defend yourself with the bat, and quickly realize where the error came from—your aluminum bat has bent. At over ten pounds on average, with over a quarter of an inch of thickly packed calcium defending it, the human head will warp an aluminum bat after prolonged use. You swing at the ghoul who falls atop you, but the queerly bent bat doesn’t do as much damage as it used to, and he simply keeps attacking you.

Sims kicks the ghoul off you as you stand and brandish your hatchet-axe. Together you keep going down the hallway, but you stop when Sims begins screaming out obscenities. Turning, you see that his ornamental sword has failed and broken at the hilt, leaving him weaponless against the crowd.

“It said battle-ready!” he complains, bashing the nearest ghoul with the sword’s pommel. It breaks the fiend’s teeth, but doesn’t come close to incapacitation. Another grabs onto him, and you see the stairwell just ahead.