INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (6 page)

“There’s like a warehouse not too far up the road. We should probably look there, you know? Not another thing for miles and miles,” he says.

*     *     *

The roads are surprisingly devoid of traffic. Granted, there’s an overturned car every mile or so, and plenty of deserted vehicles, but at least they had the decency to head into the grass before abandoning their transportation. You’re just about out of gas too.

You pull off the highway to the warehouse exit. It’s a major potato chip processing plant and shipping facility. That may not be the healthiest snack, but it’ll feed you for the time being. As it’s the only thing around “for miles and miles,” you notice cars clustering around. The parking lot is nearly full. Several RVs are here as well.

“Shit, looks like people had the same idea, homie,” your partner says. “We better be on the lookout. Do a lap around first.”

As you drive around the building, you pick up a tail—three zombies, on foot. You lead them slowly, allowing them to stumble after your car until they lineup at the back of the building. Once they’re as far from the entrance as possible, you gun the engine, taking the vehicle to the front, far ahead of the ghouls.

“Hey, that’s smart,” he says, tapping his head. “That’ll buy us some time. I like the way you think.”

You follow the hulking policeman from the parking lot to the warehouse. There’s a large set of automatic double-doors at the front, and as you arrive, the doors prove that electricity is still working in this area. That’s a good sign—maybe you can phone or radio for help once you’re inside.

The lights are on inside, and you breathe a brief sigh of relief that the entry isn’t thick with the undead. You know better than to fully celebrate, though; there could be more of them around any corner. The entry splits three ways: a hall on both sides, and a wider hallway leading you forward.

As you near the first turn ahead, you hear scraping on the linoleum behind you. You both look back—a zombie in a convict-orange jumpsuit crawls along the floor. The ghoul is badly wounded; his legs are all but worthless.

“Fucking
pendejo!
” your companion yells as he pumps his shotgun.

“Wait!” you call out. “The gunshot will attract them from every last room. This one’s too slow to be a problem.”

“All right, let’s just get some food and get out.”

You’re thinking more of the control room and the radio than you are of potato chips, but you nod and continue on. The zombie moans at you, but he’s slow enough that he’s only calling the other corpses away from you. Might make escape tricky, though, should they stay clustered at the entrance.

You and your cop buddy wind through the hall, eventually coming to the main room. It’s wide open, with hundreds of pallets of potato chips. The conveyor belts are still running, and the low hum of the equipment prevents the zombies from hearing your footsteps. There are maybe half a dozen ghouls visible in the large room—three in convict orange and three in warehouse uniforms with hardhats. Evidently there was a large-scale prison break, with many inmates choosing this warehouse as their sanctuary, possibly bringing the scourge with them.

Wrought-iron stairs lead up to the control room above, and there’s a large glass wall overlooking the floor of the warehouse. This must be where management oversaw the day’s shifts; it’s your best bet for radio communication.

Still, you can’t help but feel this endeavor is foolhardy. The place is crawling with corpses, and you can easily imagine yourself trapped, the way the workers were when the inmates arrived. The cop ravenously digs into a nearby pallet of chips; he must not have eaten for days. The crunching and crinkling of the bags of chips alerts a nearby zombie. His moan alerts the rest of them.

“Look, homie, I can kill all these
Diablos
. Then we can just
stroll out
, you know?” He pumps his shotgun in preparation. Then, almost as if their shift has begun, a dozen zombies walk out of the break room. Goddamn unions. Other workers emerge from behind pallets and crates.

“Shit, man. We gotta get out of here. Let’s push one of these carts out. Maybe we can steal an RV?”

You shake your head. There will be other chances for food. “We need some kind of distraction,” you say, looking around for other exits.

He slings the shotgun over his back, takes out his sidearm, and picks up a box of chips with his free hand. “Look! There’s an alarm on the back wall. Go pull it!”

“No way,” you say. “I’d be trapped.”

“I knew you were a smart one,” he says. He pulls back the hammer on the pistol, cocking it, then aims the weapon at your chest. “You’re my ticket out of here, homie.”

•
 
“You’ll have to shoot me.”

•
 
Sprint for the control room!

•
 
Listen to the guy with the gun and pull the alarm. Maybe there’s another way out?

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

T
he horde of a hundred undead swarms the entrance to the store, filing in one by one. They’re hungry and anxious, and throngs more are arriving from the surrounding area by the minute. Something shoots out from behind the crowd: seven figures on bicycles are leaving by the service entrance, speeding by in the background. It’s your group, escaping like a wily cartoon character slipping out from under a pile of animated foes.

You speed away from the danger on your bicycles, but your daring attempt is by no means foolproof. You bob and weave through the stragglers, who are quick to realize their meal is trying to escape. Ahead there’s a body-builder zombie so large it puts 1980s Schwarzenegger to shame. It moves to tackle you with its enormous meat hooks, but you veer away. With a furious roar it tries to stumble-run after the group, almost like a gorilla, but they split around him like a flock of birds and the zombie has no chance to catch up.

For a time, you ride in silence. The only sounds are the zombie moans and the airy whirring of tires. It doesn’t take long until you’ve escaped the thick of them. Feeling victory, Deleon rings his handlebar bell with a smirk.

*     *     *

What would’ve taken an hour if you were walking whizzes by in less than twenty minutes. You’ve stopped on your bikes and are looking up at the school entrance. It’s not extra-large or glamorous, but to you it’s beautiful because it’s exceptionally pristine. No broken glass, no sign of forced entry. Evidently, there’s been no struggle here. A school isn’t the first place people think to go when the dead start to eat the living, and the odds are that most people died wherever that place was.

Cooper breaks the reverent silence. “Let’s get inside, find a secure room, take shifts guarding, and get some rest.”

“Amen,” Hefty replies.

•
 
Get some rest.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE