INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (52 page)

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou pull the cord above you, bringing down the retractable ladder. With a backpack full of canned food and a few bottles of water, you head into the crawlspace above your home. You pull the ladder up, push boxes of Christmas decorations out of the way, and prepare to wait them out in silence.

It’s not long until the undead have breached inside your house. The alarm, the moaning, or both—proved more effective than you might have thought, and soon your home is swarming with them. Even though you can’t see down, you can hear enough to know it’s totally full down there.

They search in vain, unable to grasp the concept that you’re in the ceiling, and eventually they start to leave.

*     *     *

Well, a long thirteen days pass by. Your hiding spot has held! Your food supplies, however, have not. You’ve got about a day’s worth left and water is running low too.

•
 
I don’t care; I’d rather starve than be eaten.

•
 
Back down the stairs. I know I left some food in the house.

•
 
Out onto the roof. The advantage is the high ground.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou hurl the garbage bag against an oncoming zombie, the load thudding against her like a sack of flour. It’s not enough to knock her down, but it’s enough to buy some distance between you. You’re considerably more fleet of foot, and you run away with ease.

But she’s not the only hazard. Yes, they only lunge and lurch—the more excited and able-bodied of them stumble-run at you—but there’s just so despairingly many of them that you’re in a veritable minefield of grasping arms.

If you were a world-class soccer player, you’d juke your way through the crowd with relative ease. Relative because, despite their apparent lack of cognitive thinking, or perhaps because of it, these ghouls are impossible to fool. You can’t feint to the side, tricking them into following you. They almost preternaturally home in on your movements, meaning you either beat them outright through athletic prowess… or you die.

You’re not totally unencumbered without the food bag. Your backpack could still be a deadly hazard if a gnarled, bloody hand with ripped-off fingertips managed even a tenuous hold on one of the straps.

Hammer in hand, you tear across the pavement in an effort to catch up to the group. A zombie reaches out at you from a curbside sewer drain, but you see the fiend just in time to hurdle over the outstretched arm.

An undead teenager tackles into you, but you refuse to be knocked over. You duck down, legs bent, and throw the man off you like a wrestler in the ring. He clutches at your leg, and you bring the hammer down on his head twice; ending the encounter.

You make it back to the group just as the neighborhood ends and you’re out to a larger road. The bulk of the horde is behind you, but still you must jog to keep ahead of it. No one else has their trash bags of food either.

“Where to?” Tyberius asks, looking to Cooper.

“Supermarket,” she huffs. “We
will
eat today.”

•
 
Continue to the Supermarket.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou slam your axe against the lock with your full strength. However, even the most miserly of pawnshop owners invest in badass padlocks, and you get more feedback rushing up your arms than the heavy steel receives.

Still, that wasn’t the only swing you had in you. Even if you have to shatter your axe in the process, you’re getting in! Again and again you rattle the cage with your axe, sure to keep the lock square between blows. Small metal filings chip off the lock—progress!

The first zombie announces her presence with a hot moan on the back of your neck. You turn and cleave the axe against her temple with redoubled effort.

“I don’t have time for this shit!” you yell as she hits the pavement.

Killing the fiend reenergized you, and the lock doesn’t stand a chance. Its clatter to the pavement is sweet music to your ears. You wrench the gate back and try the door—locked. Of course. Well, get ready to scream, “Here’s
Johnny!
” Wood jumps away from the door as you pummel it with the axe. Of course, this is no mere closet partition, this is a thick security door. It’s going to take a little while.

Two more zombies show up behind you with moans and growls—isn’t it nice of them to announce their arrival? You turn toward them and in your frenetic frenzy, you’re more annoyed with the hassle of dispatching them than you are frightened.

You crush the skull of the first as easily as your previous attacker, then duck down to evade the grasp of the second. With the gritty pavement securely under one palm, you bash his kneecap with a firm kick. His legs snap backward in a sickening insect-like way. As the ghoul falls, you rise and then it’s just like chopping firewood before he’s twice-dead.

Examining the horizon, there’s a hard truth: the next wave will be nine undead together. You’ve got about thirty seconds. Reeling around to the door, you set your stance wide, right foot back, and make quick work of the door.
Popeye
and his spinach have nothing on you and your can of need-to-live.

You scream, fiercely drowning out the drone of the undead, and finally get a break—the tip on the axe finds open air behind the door. Almost there! You smash it harder and harder. With the same hot growl, the pack of undead are behind you and in range. In one more burst of fury, you smash into the door and burst through it.