INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (89 page)

One lone zombie, the wandering ghoul from when you first left home, has finally found you. His moan carries on the wind, straight into your bones.

“There he is, just one,” you say.

“Goddamn it!” Cooper says, suddenly flustered. “Jose, Tyberius, run—
andele
!”

The two of them take off down the road, Tyberius obviously faster than his backup. The group watches as he closes in.

“You think more are coming?” Angelica asks, her voice quivering.

“Always,” Hefty answers. Grim.

“You guys don’t have long-range weapons? No guns?” you ask.

Cooper turns, anger in her eyes. “Do you?”

You watch in your binoculars. Tyberius sprints the last twenty yards and closes in on the ghoul. Even with his gigantic sledgehammer, he’s incredibly fast. At last, he discus-spins around and cleanly connects his hammer across the zombie’s face. Even at this range, you see the pulp smatter as his head is obliterated. The man makes killing look easy.

You lower your binoculars and look to the trash bags full of food, wondering if you’ll be able to eat after having just seen that. Then your attention is pulled back to the distance when you suddenly realize the moaning hasn’t stopped. You look into your binoculars once more.

The zombie is certainly dead, but the sound still permeates the air. Jose or Guillermo or whatever his name is stands next to Tyberius, both of whom look to the wall. The moaning, far too powerful to come from a single living corpse, comes from behind them.

Tyberius and Guillermo turn and run back toward you. There’s a great reverberation and, lest your eyes fail you, the wall itself is
moving
. No, despite the adrenaline, what you see is not a trick of your optic nerves shuttering. The whole wall shakes and creeps forward, testing the joints of the disaster relief tool. A test, as it turns out, that the wall fails.

Bursting forth like too many parasites from a distended stomach, the zombie horde demolishes the barrier under their collective weight. There are hundreds if not thousands of the fiends, all marching forward, excited and frenzied at the sight of the two men running. The moan, like a buzzing beehive on a massive scale, comes at you with sound such that it could drown out a freight train.

“Grab a food sack, newbie!” Cooper yells to you, lifting one herself. “Sims, did you rig the place?” The man nods, picking up a sack. “Good. Light it up!”

Sims removes a baggie filled with garage door openers. He sets the trash sack back down so he can use both hands. He removes the first remote and looks at you. “I rewired the security system on a few houses. I was an electrician in the Air Force.”

With some ceremony, he lifts and pushes the first remote. A house on the left of Tyberius and Guillermo screeches with alarm as the home security is activated. A few zombies peel off to investigate, but most continue after the men—toward you.

Sims fishes another remote out of the bag. “Hurry the fuck up,” Cooper says. “Just mash ‘em all.”

The electrician complies. Four houses in total scream in panic, diluting the horde but not eliminating the threat. Hefty grabs the last trash bag, and the group takes off as the two runners arrive. There’s the tidal wave of beasties behind you, but that’s not your only worry. With the alarms and the chorus of moans, any and all zombies come out of the woodwork. Crashing out of windows, tearing their flesh through planked fences, seemingly birthed from the homes themselves, the neighborhood becomes ensconced in undead.

“Where are we going?” you ask.

“Away!” your leader screams.

The horde behind you isn’t the problem now, it’s those ahead of you; coming at you as you run. You feel like a football player, running down the gridiron, bag tucked to your chest, trying to avoid the reaching hands.

One of the undead grabs Hefty’s sack, tears it open, spilling the food across the street. Serving as a light at the end of the tunnel, you see the exit of the neighborhood ahead; a nozzle of street out of the suburbs toward downtown.

The other members of your group start to pass you, and you clearly see Hefty speed up after he loses his cargo. Yours is filled mainly with canned food and weighs heavily. The thought crosses your mind that you’d be faster and more agile without it. What do you do?

•
 
Toss the food; don’t become it myself.

•
 
Try harder! Can’t run without food forever.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

T
he next morning, you share breakfast together, and Lucas asks you to tell him your story. It’s not very cinematic or detailed, but you comply. After you do so, he agrees to return the favor.

“I run a kendo dojo back in the city. We practice ancient combat with non-lethal gear. This sword, however, was my father’s. His family came here from Japan after the war. I was raised in a strict household and adopted bushido—a code of honor I take very seriously. That is why I must help others when I can. You must understand this when traveling with me: if we see others in danger, we will stop to help.”

The way he speaks of his life before the outbreak in present tense assures you somehow. He offers you one of his biscuits. “We should eat that which might spoil first.” He tears off a piece of his own, swallowing the bite before continuing, “I hope to find my sister at this shelter. I stayed back to look after my students, but she fled right away. Come, let us walk.”

When he mentions his sister, his eye contact breaks. He reloads his pack, removes a large axe and hands it to you. It’s not the sharpest; intended for chopping firewood, but if it can split a log, it can split a skull. You nod your thanks, then follow Lucas Tesshu as he leads you through the woods.

“We mustn’t panic. My sister fled without thinking, without a plan. As these cadavers do not decompose, the problem could go on a while. I’m sure you’ve noticed they lose very little blood and fluid, because there’s no blood pressure without a beating heart. Somehow their bodies continue to operate even when dead. It makes no sense. And without decay, who knows how long the scourge will last?”

He stops, stiff against the cool morning air, a hand on the hilt of his blade. Then you hear it too: a moaning on the wind. Lucas motions for you to fall in line behind him. You do so, trying to step as lightly as possible, yet it’s only your steps you hear.

Soon you’re upon the zombie. It’s a middle-aged man with a beard, most likely a hermit who never saw it coming. His leg is clinched in a large bear trap, the steel teeth ripping flesh from bone as he struggles to get loose.

“We’d do well to look for other snares like this one,” your guide tells you as the ghoul snaps his jaws. “This was set by someone looking for living corpses, not bears.” Lucas sighs, rubbing his stubble in contemplation.

“What are we waiting for?” you ask, uncomfortable at the close proximity to the fiend, whose soulless eyes stare at you with hunger.

“I don’t know what to do. The code says I must help him, but I’m not sure how. Should I kill him, to end his suffering? Or do we leave him be? If there’s a cure, he’d only need that leg amputated. He’s perfectly preserved and healthy otherwise. But if he breaks free, he could follow us and call other ‘Preserved’ to our camp. What do you think?”

•
 
“Kill him. He’s not human anymore, so I doubt your code applies.”

•
 
“I guess he’s not going anywhere. Let’s just move quickly.”