INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (54 page)

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou go your own way, looking back not out of indecision or regret, but only to ensure that you weren’t followed. On your own, you roam the wilderness of the apocalypse. You’ve never been a fan of other people and now your misanthropy is justified. After all, the undead pursue the living, so it’s best to avoid both, right? Hiking is nice, but not when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder. Not when you’ve got blisters growing on top of blisters, either.

In the four days since you struck out on your own, you haven’t seen a single zombie, but you’ve slept in trees just in case. You’ve been slowly whittling down your food supply. In fact, it is this impending hunger that brings you close to civilization once more. You can only be a nomad so long when you’re pursued every hour of the day. The undead scare away any wildlife you might hunt, and it’s not like you can settle down and grow your own food. But scavenging is a different matter altogether.

You’ve reached a farm, and now it’s time to look for something to eat. There are a couple different options for procuring sustenance:

•
 
Check the fields. Something smells like strawberries; maybe it’s harvest time?

•
 
There’s a large aluminum pre-fab barn up ahead. It looks windowless and secure, so something’s bound to be stored inside.

•
 
The farmhouse. All the goods should be dried or canned already.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou traverse the fields and fountains, moors and mountains all night long, but this marsh is labyrinthine and the dense canopy negates the possibility of navigation by starlight. So you trudge the trenches, unsure of what progress you’re making or if you’re even headed in the right direction.

*     *     *

The sun has long since risen. You’ve walked all night and never found your way out of the bog. The air is humid with the heat of day, but your swamp stays dim and shaded. A young undead woman walks over to you, but then it’s as if you’re invisible. She looks right through you and continues walking past. Maybe she’s not interested because you’ve been bitten?

Your blood is thick with fatigue. No, not quite fatigue, but your hike slows to a lackluster crawl nonetheless. It’s almost like you’re bored. Like you don’t give a damn one way or another if you make it to shelter. Unless…shelter…full of people. Scratch that—you want to find this place.
Desperately.

You’re on the move with purpose again. You
must
find this compound, and liberate those within! They live a life of fear and bondage, and you know deep down you can free them of that. Not to mention that you’re hungry, and those people will surely feed you.

There’s a man in the distance, walking through the marshes. He can feed you right now! You stumble toward him in anticipation, arms out front. What a sight you must be, like a wilderness survivor on the brink of death finding a park ranger at long last.

A moan breaches the still of the morning, penetrating the deepest reaches of the woods. The moan, you realize, is coming from you. Then another one rockets out from behind. Without looking, you know it’s that same undead woman; the
other zombie.
Zombie is such a crude term for what you are. The other
immortal
. The goddess.

Now the man is onto you. He turns, giving you a good look at the kendo uniform he wears—simply put: practice samurai armor.

The folds of his robes and armor move fluidly like some great bird of prey. Your quarry seems confident, but you don’t care. You just want to eat him. He removes a katana from its sheath with a metallic
shing
and before you even know what’s happened—your head falls into the swamp with a
ker-plunk
of backsplash and sinks, but you’re not dead yet. You can see the murky waters and the detritus floating within. After a moment, you come to rest on the muddy bottom on the right side of your face.

What now? Perhaps you can get some food when someone else wanders through the swamp? You could bite their ankles if they get close enough, or maybe—nope—the katana slices into the water and finds your head.

Damn, this guy is thorough.

THE END

Y
ou’re on a balcony five hundred feet in the air. It’s the balcony of your suite. The wind fluffs your hair and sets your finest duds to dancing. You look out at the strip below. Glittering lights, hordes of people, and wealth passing hands faster than anywhere else in the world. You will seldom find a place more accepting of high rollers than Sin City, and you most certainly fit in that category. This is a city where the rich are literally propped up by the poor; the money of losers built the very floors beneath you. Officially, the hotel only has thirty-six floors, but you’ve got the room on the thirty-seventh. It’s usually reserved for celebrities and foreign dignitaries—you’re the suite’s first immortal.

But even though you’re on top of the world, you don’t feel it. If anything, you feel
bored
. Your party awaits you back inside the room; they’re all gathered for your dramatic entrance. Could it be that, knowing you’ll live forever, life has lost its meaning? Perhaps the beauty of a fleeting moment is dulled when you could just repeat the moment a hundred years from now.