INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (72 page)

Y
ou head out to the front of the hospital through the automatic doors and stare blankly across the parking lot. You stand at the half-circle where patients are normally dropped off, but you’re suddenly unsure what comes next. What were you doing, again? There’s the delicious smell of burning gasoline coming from somewhere… maybe you should investigate?

“Excuse me, but can you—” someone asks. You turn toward the voice, a man propping up his wife. She’s been seriously injured, but not bitten. You’re not sure how, but you just
know
this.

“Oh no, it’s one of them!” she calls out.

That’s your cue. You lunge forward toward the man, but he won’t let go of his wife, so you just bite into him without any resistance. Sweet, savory, crunchy goodness. She falls to the ground despite his efforts to keep her upright. When she hits the pavement, she stays down. The blanket that was wrapped around her comes loose and the garden trough sticking into her leg twists.

A crowd of fellow immortals comes out of the hospital to help you feed. The woman’s dying quickly, and it’s too hard to tell if she’ll be able to rise again; she may’ve lost too much blood. Either way, your work here is done.

Seemingly from nowhere, another man runs out of the hospital. You grab his hospital gown and he whirls around from the force; your grip holds. You bite down on his arm—
crunch.
Wait, are those your teeth? You’ve just bitten into a prosthetic. He slips out of the hospital gown and runs stark naked down the street.

Dropping his false arm, you rush to catch him, but he’s much faster. Eventually, you can’t see or smell him anymore. Oh well. Where to?

•
 
There’s a pawnshop nearby; maybe I can help these humans trade in their old life for the new.

•
 
Corner grocery. When hunting, hang out where your food feeds.

•
 
Follow the cars—you may be the tortoise, but the hare is bound to run out of gas sooner or later.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

T
he megastore lies ahead. It’s one of those buy-in-bulk-for-a-reduced-price warehouse types. The parking lot is eerily bare, a concrete savanna before you. “Think we’ll find food?” you ask.

“It’s probably been raided,” the doctor answers. “But it doesn’t matter, we’re here for niacin.”

You cross the parking lot and Deleon starts to pry open the door of the megastore, but it’s not locked. Looking inside, there’s a faint red glow coming from within.

“Emergency generator’s on. Still, get your flashlight out. I’d worry less about finding food and more about ending up as it. This must have been a hotspot in the early days—keep that axe handy.”

You nod, flick your flashlight on and enter behind the doctor. The megastore is as much a disaster zone as the outside world, if not more so. Entire shelves are overturned. Food containers broken open, rotting. Describe it in a word?
Raided
.

The place has an atmosphere the opposite of its day life. Jungle gyms and trampolines cast ominous shadows. DVD displays reflect your flashlight beam with devious glares. You start down an aisle, then—the shuffle of feet. Shoes squeal on linoleum flooring.

Deleon nods to you to run with him. You both take off down the aisle and steps follow. So do labored breaths. You turn the corner, axe raised in preparation for mortal combat, only to be met by a man in a gas mask and several others.

You only stop your attack because a blonde woman in the group screams. Deleon and the men halt at the sound of a living person as well, but another woman has to be restrained from attacking.

She steps out of the crowd. Probably in her early thirties, though it’s certainly possible that the last few weeks have aged her. She’s dirty, just like you, but beautiful in a hard-as-nails sort of way. Black hair and blacker eyes. She wears an unbuttoned mechanic’s shirt with a fitted undershirt beneath. The embroidered nametag reads, “Cooper.”

She slaps a giant monkey wrench in the open palm of her hand while looking you and the doctor up and down. She devours your features, digests them within, gesticulates upon some sort of conclusion, then finally shits out, “Give me one reason we let you live.”

“What?” Deleon replies in shock.

“He’s a doctor!” you blurt.

She looks at him with dark seriousness. “Got some ID?”

He hands her his badge. Line 1: “DELEON, LEWIS M.D.”; Line 2: “GENETICS RESEARCH DIVISION”; Line 3: “HUMAN INFINITE TECHNOLOGIES.”

“Research doctor?” she says aloud. “Who gives a shit?”

“Most of my research was with these—things—we’re dealing with now. I’m probably the foremost expert on the planet.”

No kidding,
you think,
I wonder what this ragtag band of survivors would do to him if they knew he created the damn things.

“Uh-huh. And that pack you’ve got there, full of supplies?”

“Yes.”

“And this one…” she points her giant wrench at you, “is with you?” Deleon nods.

“All right, Doc. You and your pal can travel with us. Over there is Tyberius and Hefty.” Both are in their twenties and look like the ordeal has made them feral. The first is a handsome black man in tattered business casual. He wields a gigantic sledge hammer and has a police baton tucked in the waist of his slacks. The other one is a white guy, thin as a rail, and clearly a redneck. Plain white-tee kind of guy. He holds a heavy length of pipe about the size of a baseball bat.

Cooper continues with, “Sims and Angelica.” You look over to see a man in his late thirties with a woman in her fifties behind him. He’s the guy with the gas mask, decked out in military gear and a little overweight. She’s the blonde, and by her demeanor and clothing, you can tell she was a privileged housewife back in the world.

“And this here’s Jose.” She points to a man most likely in his forties, who wears the stained whites of a kitchen worker from a hole-in-the wall restaurant. He’s Latino, short, plain, and carries a calm countenance on his pockmarked face.

“Me llamo Guillermo. Mucho gusto,” the cook replies.

“You can call me Cooper, and what I say goes. You got a problem with that?”

“No.”

“All right, so we’re gonna—”

“You didn’t let me finish,” Deleon says, cutting her off. “I don’t have a problem with that because I’m not going with you.”

Cooper sizes him up. “All right, Doc, you can leave. But before you go, we’ve got a hurt man here. Can you help him?”

“I’m mostly a research doctor.”

“But you still went through some kind of med school, right? It’s just a bum shoulder. Sims, c’mere.”

Sims moves forward. His left shoulder hangs oddly. Funny, you hadn’t noticed until it was pointed out. Makes you wonder who else might be nursing injuries. Deleon sighs, “First, take off that ridiculous gas mask. It’s not airborne.”

“How do you know?” Sims asks, muffled by the mask.

“Because none of these fine people are trying to eat you. Besides, this pandemic is my specialty. They would’ve come to me for help had the whole network not gone to shit. Now turn around, please.”

Sims takes off the mask and faces away from Deleon.

“It’s dislocated. You’ll feel a sharp pain.” Deleon cracks the shoulder into place. Sims cries out, but moves his arm about; it’s fixed.

“Welcome aboard, Doc,” Cooper says with a slap on Deleon’s back.

“No, no, no. Glad to help and all, but I’m traveling solo.”

“No, you’re not. You’re valuable, so you’re coming with us.”

Deleon looks at their desperate faces. They all see him as hope. “I’m looking for niacin, to develop a cure. If you guys want to walk toward a hospital or a lab, that’s where I’m going.”

Angelica, the blonde housewife, steps forward. “You have a cure?!”

“I said I’m
working
on one.”

“Well, now you’re definitely coming with us,” Cooper says. “Sims, go with the Doc to the pharmacy. Help him find whatever he needs. Everybody else, split up and look for supplies.”

•
 
Go with Sims and Deleon.

•
 
Go with Cooper, Guillermo, and Angelica.