INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (77 page)

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

“H
efty, let’s go!” Deleon yells as Cooper and Tyberius run down the hall. Hefty is oddly confident for a lone man among a horde of flesh eaters. He looses one more arrow, then trots up the stairs and stops at the landing, greeting you with a smug grin.

“One more blood bag,” he says.

“Let’s go!” Deleon protests.

“Just one more.” He turns and aims over the black wrought iron handrail. The arrow flies off with a
whisp
, the sound barely audible above the moaning. It hits clean, and the undead cluster around the exposed blood leaking down the wall. It only fools them for a second, but Hefty gets enjoyment from it nonetheless. “There,” he says, turning around. But it’s a second too late.

A hand reaches up through the bars from below and grabs Hefty’s ankle firmly. His face changes from smug to
oh shit
in an instant as he falls to his chest. Another arm comes up to claim his free leg and he’s dragged toward the edge.

There’s not enough room through the bars to pull him through, but they feast on Hefty’s legs while he screams. Without thinking, you rush down and grab his hands. But you can’t pull as hard as the collective groping arms and biting mouths below.

“We’ve got to leave him,” Deleon says, his voice devoid of emotion.

“No!” Hefty screams.

“He’s dead.”

“No, I’m not, motherfucker!”

“Leave him,” Deleon says. His eyes are on the other undead ambling their way up the stairs. The doctor puts his hand on the rope release, the one that will drop the furniture dangling above the landing, but he stops before pulling it. All he has to do is tug the rope and a dozen desks, cabinets, and chairs will collapse upon the landing and seal off the stairs.

•
 
“Never leave a man behind!” Keep trying, damn it!

•
 
“Hefty, I’m so sorry…” Head up the stairs.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

S
lowly you push the door open. A dozen hospital employees huddle inside, unsure for the first time what to do in a stressful situation. Huh, that was easy.

You moan and stagger in toward them. There’re some shrieks, so that’s nice. One of the humans hiding from you has a sidearm and plugs an entire clip into your chest. Lucky for you, he was one of two things: either not a fan of the zombie genre or not willing to believe the zombie apocalypse could happen. Goody for you: no headshots.

You attack him, ripping out arteries and veins like a magpie pulling worms from freshly moist soil. One of the doctors (not the handsome one or the overly nerdy one, but certainly the sexually frustrated one) attacks you with the same manic fury you use when eating the guard. However, the living aren’t willing to bite the dead, and you don’t feel pain, so you win.

Another victim falls limp before your strength.
Dink!
An oxygen tank smacks against your head. Did something crack there? You look back; it’s the sexy nurse. Seriously, who brought an oxygen tank into a staff office? Did they think they’d be gassed or—

Dink!
She slams the oxygen tank on your head again, right in the same spot. In reaction, your body goes limp and you fall to the floor. The reaction, as it turns out, is because she killed you. That bitch.

THE END

S
he snorts, “Don’t we all.” Then, with what might be a hint of sadness in her eyes, she shakes her head. “I don’t think safety exists anymore.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” you say.

“Except in numbers,” says one of the men. He’s in his mid-thirties, decked out in military gear, and a little overweight.

Cooper looks at him like he might be challenging her authority, but decides he isn’t. “Smart guy here is Sims. You’ve already met Angelica. 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 has a calm countenance on his pockmarked face.

“Mucho gusto,” he says.

“And 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.

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

•
 
“No, Ma’am.”

•
 
“Actually, yeah. I’ll try my chances alone.”