INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (61 page)

Y
ou turn and flee. Through the marshes. Alone. At night. Perhaps if you were sitting in an armchair contemplating the zombie apocalypse, you’d know better than to sprint into the dark void just because of a single zombie. But then again, perhaps not—after all, you chose to enter one of the most dangerous ecosystems in an infected world. And now you’re alone. At night.

Either way, you’re too fueled on panic and adrenaline to think rationally now. All that exists are the strides you take. You slosh noisily through the water, each step becoming more difficult than the last as the mud sucks at your legs. Muscle fatigue comes quickly, but you keep moving.

The uneven ground proves treacherous. Every time you step down, the bottom of the bog is at a different level. Sometimes you’re climbing, other times you’re sinking. Once you even fall into chest-deep slough. But the real danger is in your footing. One stray root can twist an ankle, and then your chance of survival plummets to around zero.

Without a flashlight, you can’t see anything. Even the moon is blotted out by clouds and forest canopy. You’re so blind you have to keep your hands up to protect your face, as the dark green foliage, black in the night, cuts and scrapes against your body without warning.

Then your feet give out from under you and you slide down a slope you didn’t even know was there. Thick mud pours down with you and before you know it, you splash into a turbid pool, choked with sediment. You sink down into the earth; it swallows you whole.

The muck has you trapped from the groin down, and the water surrounds you up to chin level. You search the area with frantic eyes, hoping for a vine or something you can grasp to pull yourself free. The closest thing is a mass of wood and debris—rotten fallen logs—just out of arm’s reach.

But you’ve still got your axe! You stretch forward as much as you can, knees buckling and shins bowing under the strain, and hook the axe head over the biggest log. You pull, and the bunch breaks free. You’re able to grab a hold of the big log, but you quickly realize that the water level is rising. You’ve just freed a dam; either it’s clogged runoff or a beaver home.

Despite your grip on the log, the bog’s grip on you doesn’t wane. The gross water rises up over your mouth and you tip your head back to breathe. Nonetheless, it keeps rising, over your mouth, nose and even your eyes.

Now you’re truly blind, and unable to breathe. You struggle hard, pulling and tugging at your legs, but you only get more firmly rooted in and waste more breath. Soon, the life leaves your body as you get sucked deeper into the estuary.

Goddamn beavers.

THE END

Y
ou head toward the building with the searchlights, but shortly after you begin your walk, the sirens and lights shut off. The main building still shines with electricity, so you keep going. By the time you finally arrive at Montgomery-Packard High School, the crowd of immortals numbers in the hundreds of thousands. This is the only action is the city, and everybody wants a piece.

One of the entrances is already breached, and you rush in with the rest of them. Once you’re inside, you see several humans down the hallway—
jackpot!
One shoots an arrow above your head and explodes a bag of blood that was secured in the corner. Human blood drips down the wall and you stop to lick it.
Hey, that’s not a living person…

Frustrated, you turn and continue toward the human group. There’s a guy you might recognize as Dr. Lewis Deleon (if you still recognized people), the redneck with the bow, an athletic black man, and a tough-looking woman in motorcycle gear. They head up the stairs to the second level of the school.

The redneck stays on the landing and prepares to fire another arrow, but a god reaches up under the rail and grabs his leg. He screams out as he’s dragged down and gets trapped against the rail. You manage to sneak in and get a bite of glorious flesh.

Then the athletic man pulls a rope release, felling a pile of rubble from the ceiling and crushing the redneck in the process. As he dies, so does your interest in him. That wasn’t very nice. Some members of the pantheon try to scramble through the rubble, but you join those who spread out in search of another way up.

Eventually, you find another landing and walk up the stairs, gods and goddesses trailing behind you. As you make it up to the second floor, you see the tough woman and the scientist/doctor skid to a halt. They were running toward this stairwell, probably to seal it off—but they’re too late.

She turns and kisses him as you stumble forward. Perhaps she sees the end coming, and rightly so. You are death, come to bring them eternal life. But then she pulls away and bashes him in the leg with her crowbar—not so sentimental after all. He falls to the floor and she runs away.

•
 
Follow the running woman.

•
 
Go after the injured scientist.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou step toward the pair, calm and collected, the way you’d want to look if anyone were watching. Four hungry arms reach out toward you. You bring the axe back and prepare to slam it into the child like you’re ringing the bell in the carnival strong-man tower. The thing that strikes you (before you strike it) isn’t anything in the infant’s appearance per se, but the singularly unbabylike manner in which the baby behaves. Not cooing or crying, but moaning. Not soaking in the world around it, but focused solely on you with lucid clarity.

Your axe connects cleanly with the baby. You look away and mash your face in a clench, trying to block out the sickening
squick
that follows. It sounds like you just slammed your axe into a mudpot. The infant’s too young for fully-fused bones, so the axe slides right through the baby and into the mother’s chest cavity.

You weren’t expecting such little resistance. Your momentum keeps pressing you toward the momma, and in an awkward flying slouch, you slap into her. She bites you right in the jawbone. Aaarrrgh! That hurt.

You bounce back, ripping the axe out of her and tearing part of your cheek off in the process. With a surge of anger you cleave the axe sideways, beheading the ghoul. Her head bounces off the pavement, skipping across the street and rolling to where Deleon sits atop the fat man, pounding final bits of his skull with the hammer.

Deleon rises from the corpse, wipes his sleeve across his brow and looks to you. He’s smiling slightly, proud of his kill, but that look stops immediately. Blood pours out of your face. Thick, nearly black blood.

“You’ve… you’ve been bitten?” he asks in vain hope. You don’t say anything.

The doctor rips his sleeve off and applies it to your face. “Keep pressure on it. The drugstore’s just up ahead, we’ll get you some gauze and wrap it right.”

“You can cure me, right?” you ask, like a child asking a parent to make it better.

There’s pain in Deleon’s eyes. “Of course. I just need more niacin. C’mon.”

With axe in hand, you follow him to the drugstore.

*     *     *

This particular station hasn’t exploded… yet, though there are plenty of drugstores that are not so lucky. Maybe it’s because of the “Sorry, No Gas” signs up on the pumps, or because it’s too close to the heart of the city—anyone who wanted to evacuate probably planned on filling up on the way out. Still, it’s eerie to see such a popular locale with no patrons.

You go up to the front door, looking in through the glass façade. As evidenced from the orderly shelves within, you see that people have yet to loot the road-trip snacks and caffeine-laden drinks. They may not be the most nutritious diet, but they’re high in calories and chock-full of preservatives, so they’ll do while you’re on the move.

“Smash the glass,” you say, one hand still pressed against your wound.

“What if it attracts more?”

“So what? We’re both infected,” you reply drily.

“They still want to… eat us.” He shakes his head and looks at the door. It’s unlocked, and he pulls it open. The familiar convenience store
ding
sounds as Deleon turns and smiles at you. Guess that works too.

The two of you step into the dark store and immediately notice that people have indeed been here. Some food and drinks are missing, though the looters were kind enough to leave some for you.