INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (94 page)
Read INFECTED (Click Your Poison) Online
Authors: James Schannep
Tags: #zombie, #Adventure, #Fiction
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
L
ucas helps you offload the water jugs from the dolly. He clusters them around one side and you do the same on the opposite side, allowing for maximum exposure when the time comes. Rosie tosses the rope up to the engineer in a whirling motion, as if it was a grappling hook, and the rope finds its hold in the latticework just above him. He hooks the rope to himself and continues to climb.
The tower reaches up into the air at a staggering height. It must be at least 250 feet tall, but the engineer scales rung after rung as if it were nothing. As you blast away at the walking undead, come to eat your flesh from bone, you can’t help but feel like he’s the brave one up there, dangling precariously in the wind.
Rosie unravels the rope as the engineer climbs. “I hope to hell we’ve got enough,” she says. It’s on a thick spool and there must be several hundred feet of it. You try to remember your geometry classes. What was it? 〖
a
〗^(
2
)
+
〖
b
〗^(
2
)
=
〖
c
〗^(
2
) right? That would give you the length the rope needs to be if the guy’s going to zipline down the thing. Stay in school, survive the zombie apocalypse.
The undead are really starting to crowd you out. Rosie ties the end of the rope securely to a bush; the center branch is thick and hearty, and the leaves are enough to hopefully slow the engineer’s descent. Once she’s finished, she unslings her rifle and provides some much-needed extra firepower.
After another long minute, the tower begins to echo a clang the engineer is sending from above. That’s the signal he said he’d give when he was preparing to power the thing up. “This is it!” you yell, running back toward the crash zone of the zipline.
The undead cluster around the tower, intrigued by the sounds coming off the metal and the hollering of the man in the air above. Those in front stumble toward you, but you hold your fire so as to keep as many of them near the water jugs as possible.
You can see the engineer high above, a stick figure atop the tower, hooking what must be his carabiner into the rope. That’s your cue. You pop off your ammo drum and dig into your backpack for the white drum: the one with the FRAG-12 ammo.
He leaps off the tower, the rope snapping taut under his weight as gravity pulls him down the line. It sounds like the rope is whirring but as he approaches, you realize it’s his scream. “It’s working!” Lucas yells. At the base of the tower, the half dozen ghouls close enough to be affected dance under the shock of electrocution. Almost time…
The bush nearby explodes in a fury of leaves when the engineer careens into it.
Now!
You fire the first FRAG-12 mini-missile. A split second later, the base of the tower erupts in a balloon of red mist as the fragmentation element bursts open like the Fourth of July. Several ghouls go down from the resulting shrapnel, but it’s the rupturing water jugs you look for. They spray into the air and coat the concrete pad around the base. Now tenfold as many undead do the electrocution dance, their brains frying inside their skulls.
That worked perfectly. You release one more shot toward the other side of the tower and the water jugs there erupt under the countless punctures in exactly the same way. Now the resultant area is fully wet, allowing the electricity to arc its way through the crowd. It’s hard to suppress your grin.
“To the jeep!” Lucas yells. You follow the group around the building to the sitting jeep. Firing another FRAG-12 round into the crowd in front of the vehicle, you clear your escape route. You blast off another round into the largest cluster of ghouls just for the hell of it—you’ve got ten of the things and the damage it does is incredible. It’s not much different from a shotgun blast, if your shotgun had a barrel the size of a floodgate.
Lucas Tesshu drives the jeep away, the CROWS system chewing out rounds from the back, and you release one more explosive shot into the zombie horde for good measure. For now it would seem you’ve done it. The final mission is complete. Yet so much feels undone. Will you make it through winter? Will you still survive? How can this be
it
?
“I think that was my sister,” Lucas Tesshu says. You look back, clearly seeing an undead girl alongside the road right the way you came. Yeah, she could be Japanese, and without the massive dermal abrasions, could hold a resemblance to Lucas.
•
“Let’s stop and check it out—what’s the worst that could happen?”
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Y
ou head up the hall, Lucas backpedalling to slice and dice the zombies flowing in through the station entrance behind you. This is the only way to go, so the control room has to be this way. Your suspicions are soon confirmed when you come to the end of the hall. The doors to the sound studio are thick and heavy, intended to block out the sounds of those who might otherwise accidentally interrupt a broadcast.
The engineer goes to work straightaway as you enter, working to reroute the controls from an original source of communication to that of a hub for those waiting back at Salvation. The walls to the outside are glass, giving the broadcasters full view of the city, but that won’t give you much protection should the living dead completely surround the building.
Still, the doors to the station ought to buy you some time, so you use the lull in the action to refresh. There are bottles of water intended for the radio show guests and you help yourself. You walk over to the back wall, overlooking the city. There should be a stunning view of the town illuminated at night, but all you see is darkness.
You turn away to check in on the engineer, Rosie taking your place at the glass wall. “Hey, look at that,” she says. Turning back around, you see new lights in the city. One building is now illuminated, alone in a sea of dark. It’s larger than a private residence, but it’s low and wide, rather than tall and thin like a skyscraper.
“They just turned on?” you ask. She nods. Some of the window lights flicker.
“Almost done,” the engineer announces. “Then I just have to activate the tower, and we’re out of here.”
“Provided we don’t get electrocuted,” Lucas says with a smile. Is that sarcasm? You laugh, some water from your bottle trickling down your chin.
The water gives you an idea. “When the landing gets a shock—will it just be a jolt, or will the flow be constant?”
“Constant, why?”
“Remember all those water jugs in the control room? We could end up frying a whole lotta zombs if we play this electrocution card right. Wet the landing and watch the current spread.”
“Yeah, but how would I get away once it’s powered up?” the engineer asks, sliding his glasses up his nose once more.
“There’s some rope in the jeep,” Rosie says. “We can make a zipline!”
“Sounds desperate,” the engineer replies, just as a fresh batch of ghouls slap against the glass façade of the recording area.
“These are desperate times,” Lucas says.
You look out the window, back toward the lone illuminated building. A pair of searchlights comes to life atop the building, waving their arms across the sky like a marooned shipwreck victim trying to signal a plane far above. A massive red and blue police-style siren accompanies the searchlights. “Desperate, indeed,” you say.