INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (93 page)

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Out the door, right now, going into the woods. I’ll call Mom from the car. Zombies love cities, and I hate zombies, so it’s see-ya-later.

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Shit, I knew I needed to go shopping. Time to fight the crowds for Blackest Friday, the biggest looting day of the year. Guns, batteries, powdered water; I’ll take it all!

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Are you kidding me?
I’m
one of those survival nuts! After a quick ‘See? I wasn’t crazy!’ email, it’s off to the compound. This is the day I’ve been waiting for.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

I
t’s only a single strip cleared out of the forest, a control tower, a hangar, and a terminal. This is not the large commercial airport you’re used to; this one is used almost exclusively by private aviators and hobbyists. The doctor must’ve been hopping from station to station, refueling when she could and searching endlessly for a safe zone while the chaos below her appeared as nothing more than ants at war with one another.

“I hate airports,” Rosie says.

You can see what must be the doctor’s private plane parked in front of the hangar. Dozens of undead roam the airfield and many more are clustered around the buildings. Soulless eyes turn to you as the jeep moves nearer. The colonel said contact was lost. If the sinking feeling in your stomach is any indication of the reason for that radio silence, this might not end well.

“There are too many cadavers for us to split up,” Lucas Tesshu says. “Where do you think we should search first?”

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“The call came from the control tower; let’s look there.”

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“The terminal. If she’s been running for long, she’s probably hungry.”

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“If it were me, I’d hide in the hangar. Probably the most defensible of the three.”

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
our eyes slowly open in the morning light. The air is cool and moist. For a moment, you forget about the new world you’re living in. Only seconds ago you were reliving a childhood memory, but now that dream is gone and the waking nightmare has returned. You yawn and for the first time since you can remember, it feels satisfying. You must’ve slept all night.

As you turn, you see Lucas cleaning and polishing his blade. He notices you’re awake and nods with a smile. “Hey, you didn’t wake me up for my shift,” you say.

“I figured you could use the extra rest. I wasn’t feeling much like sleep anyway.” Noticing you take inventory of the filthy rag he uses on the sword, he adds, “We had a visitor last night.”

When you think of a post-apocalyptic world, your mind draws images of leather-clad brigands roaming the countryside in gangs, warring over gasoline and canned food. You certainly never pictured a just-south-of-middle-aged man whose very temperament is a study in devotion and chivalry. Lucas Tesshu, a man who defied both the odds and expectations.

“Only half a day left,” he says. “Shall we be on our way?”

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“We shall.”