INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (8 page)

•
 
Kill her and keep going.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou tug the rope, releasing the cluster of heavy furniture from the nets above. The slam upon the landing is so forceful you don’t hear the crunch of Tyberius and the zombies. At least you’re granted that small mercy.

Cooper rises to her feet, still nursing the bruised flesh of her neck. “Goddamn, Newbie. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

•
 
“Let’s just go find the others.”

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

“C
lose, quick, easy in and out. I like the way you think,” Deleon says, a finger tapping his lip as he muses. “Low inventory might be a problem, but it should at least tide us over. Let’s do it.” He stabs his finger at you with approval before he starts walking. “There’s a really nice market a couple of blocks away. Well, the mini-mart is closer, but the other place stocks organic, so I usually—”

He stops at your look:
Really?
“Right, let’s just go to the gas station pharmacy.”

As you walk down the streets behind Deleon, you’re consumed with the eerie feeling you’re being watched. Shadows move about behind windows—survivors or undead? You don’t feel like waiting to find out. You’re overtaken with panicked thoughts. Where will you sleep tonight? What if everyone is already dead? What happens when all the canned food is gone? Is anyone still farming? Maybe a fishing boat…

“Get down!” Deleon whispers forcefully. You slide behind a wrecked and overturned car. Your backs are hot against the cool blue metal. “Another infected, next intersection.”
Another
infected? Is he referring to himself as one of
them
?

You peer under the inverted hood of the car. There is indeed a zombie not fifty feet away. He looks unharmed and well-dressed. A pot-gut, wears a cowboy hat, sequined shirt, and boots. Maybe a country music producer or an oil tycoon; he could be from the original strain, having dosed himself with the drug in search of immortality only to receive it in the most ironic form possible. There’s none of the I-just-got-off-a-horse swagger you know he exuded in life. In death, he shuffles.

“If you used the cure on him, would he…?” you ask.

Deleon shakes his head. “As of yet, I can’t reverse the trend. I’ve only found pause. Not even stop, much less rewind.”

The zombie ambles toward you. Has he made you out? Deleon peers over the underside of the car. “Look how he moves. A pure automaton, like Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s Monster, but real—flesh and bone, living and yet not.”

The ghoul’s mouth drops and his arms raise like bars at a tollbooth letting cars go through. His moan permeates the air. Another undead rounds the corner toward the call, this one a mother with a baby zombie strapped to her chest in a Babybjörn. The two reach out and moan in unison, stumbling toward you. The little bundle is the spitting image of momma.

“Umm, Doc?” you ask, more than a little worried. You strangle the fire axe.

“Look—communication! Primitive as it may be, but… they seem to be alerting one another, perhaps as they find prey.”

“That’s us!” you say, shaking him out of his impartial observations. You stand, axe in hand, prepared to do battle. The mom and tot come around to your side, while Tex heads toward Deleon. Do you attack the baby or the mother?

•
 
Baby zombie gives me the creeps. I’ve got the ultimate pacifier, time to use it.

•
 
Mom. Why would I take out the one that’s only ten pounds two ounces of terror?

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou watch while she sinks beneath the mire, but Lucas does not. He flies over to aid her, practically skimming across the water’s surface.

He locks in on the commotion in the moor and sinks his blade into the water right where Rosie went down. With quick, clean movements he cuts at something beneath the surface. “Here!” he shouts, tossing you his blade. You look at the sword, its fine edge coated in viscera and algae.

From beneath, the man pulls up Rosie; she coughs up water and holds onto her hero with panic. Her eyes are wide and black sludge pours out of her mouth.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

She nods, coughing still. “I swallowed some swampwater, but other than that…”