Zombocalypse Now
Zombocalypse Now. Copyright © 2009 by Matt Youngmark. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First edition, August 2009
Chooseomatic Books and the Chooseomatic Books and Atherton Haight logos are registered trademarks of Atherton Haight.
www.chooseomaticbooks.com
Interior illustrations by Matt Youngmark
Cover illustration by Matt Youngmark with color by Thuy Tran
LCCN: 2009908367
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 13: 978-0-9840678-0-0
ISBN 10: 0-9840678-0-9
1
You sit in a booth by the window, waiting for your date with a mix of anticipation and dread. Internet dating has not been kind to you in the past—that one night at the bowling alley will likely haunt your dreams forever—but hope springs eternal. Also, desperation. But you try not to think of it that way.
This particular match seemed promising when the two of you were exchanging e-mails, but experience has taught you to keep expectations low. Photos tend to be a few years old (or self-portraits taken from just the right angle to mask an extra chin), and the wit and charm of a carefully crafted e-mail doesn’t necessarily translate to in-person social skills. Granted, it’s possible that you haven’t been one hundred percent forthcoming yourself. Throughout the week-long back and forth with your prospective date, you may not have gotten around to mentioning that you’re a stuffed bunny.
The fact that you’re a stuffed bunny hasn’t actually come up.
Of course, your last match was fine with the bunny thing, but couldn’t believe you didn’t mention that you smoke. That much you fixed; you’ve been a non-smoker for almost 72 hours now. And lord, you need a cigarette.
You check the time (still two minutes before seven, though it feels like you’ve been sitting here for hours) and then start absentmindedly reviewing the appetizers listed on the plastic table display. Sweetbread? Ew—isn’t that cow brains or something? The restaurant is a spaghetti house, and you never knew that dish was Italian. But then, the “deep-fried ravioli blasters” don’t sound terribly authentic, either.
Suddenly you feel a hard bump against the table, which knocks two glasses of water square into your lap. Yiiiee! You jump to your feet, grabbing your napkin in a vain attempt to mop up your clothes, and risk a glance at your assailant.
Sure enough, your date has arrived.
Some vague approximation of the person portrayed on PerfectForeverLoveMatch.com plops down across from you. Missing from the ad, though, were the vacant stare, the slack-jawed expression, and the exaggerated slouch. There’s no apology for the spill, or even an acknowledgment that water is still dripping from the table. Yeah. The bunny thing’s a deal breaker, you think. Your disappointment ends quickly, though, as you catch a whiff of something powerful and rancid. The singles profile had mentioned working as a dental hygienist, and yet hygiene is clearly not your date’s top priority.
You introduce yourself with a slightly forced smile and get a low grunt in return. Classy. Okay, time to launch into the mind-numbing small talk. “So, you work in a dentist’s office, huh? My aunt actually works for a . . .”
“Nnnnnnngggg,” your date cuts you off.
“You’re right. Let’s not talk about work.” You were going to tell a story about a free promotional tube of toothpaste, and you realize with embarrassment that it was the most potentially interesting thing you had up your sleeve. “Uh, should we ask for some more water?” What you actually need is a towel, since you’re still sopping wet from the spilled drinks. “Do you want to get an appetizer or something?”
“Brrraaaaaaains,” your date replies.
Splendid. You were hoping to get food on the table as quickly as possible so you’d both have something to distract from the strained conversation, but if it comes to a choice between trying the sweetbread and actually talking to your dream date here, you’re not sure which appeals to you less. You glance at your watch—7:03—and can’t help contemplating escape routes.
If you say you’re heading to the restroom to dry off your clothes and then break into a run as soon as you’ve cleared your date’s line of vision,
turn to page 4.
If you stick around just a little longer—it’s humiliating, but you have to admit that so far this is only your third or fourth worst blind date—
turn to page 7.
4
“Hey, I’m going to dry off a bit,” you say, getting up from the table. “Be right back!” That last part came out a little abruptly, and as you casually stroll toward the restrooms, you feel a twinge of guilt for lying. Then you hear your date aggressively ordering the appetizer.
“Braaaiinns! Brrraaaaaaaaaiiiiiiinns!” You skip out the front door and realize you’ll have to go around the whole block to avoid passing the window where your date is sitting. As you round the corner, however, a woman runs past you in the other direction, screaming. You catch a whiff of the same odor you smelled a moment ago at the table, and see one man kneeling over another on the street. He looks up at you, although his eyes don’t seem to be focused on anything. Both men are covered in gore, and you’re shocked to discover that the first one appears to be eating the second.
“Brrrraaaaaiiiiinnnns,” the attacker moans, getting up from his victim and starting toward you in a slow lurch. It’s clear that he hasn’t satisfied that particular craving, considering he’s been gnawing on the other man’s leg. You may be slow on the uptake in awkward social situations, but you’ve seen enough horror movies to recognize this threat in its proper context.
That, my friend, is a zombie.
If you flee to alert the authorities before the zombie threat endangers the whole city,
turn to page 9.
If you try to fight the zombie, since there’s a slim chance the man on the ground can still be saved,
turn to page 14.
5
Cowardice has gotten you this far. Why mess with a good thing? You run as fast as your plush bunny legs can carry you. The good news is that when you’re running for your life from zombie policemen mounted on nightmarish undead steeds, you don’t need to outrun them. You only need to outrun the person next to you.
The bad news is that Mittens can outrun you. For the record, she does make it to her car, and blows away the zombie horses and their riders with a sawed-off shotgun she keeps in the trunk. She then goes on to lead a group of survivors into the mountains where she founds a new organic farming-based society that waits out the global plague and repopulates the planet after a few decades when the zombies die off.
This isn’t much consolation for you personally, though, as you feel zombie hooves bear down on you. You’re already dead when you hit the ground, before the feast of your organs even begins.
You get eaten by a zombie pony.
THE END
6
“We’ve kept alive this long by sticking together,” you say. “And every one of you that gets bitten out there just makes one more animated corpse for me to deal with. So we stay together. And we head toward the valley.”
You help Isabelle to her feet and start down the trail. To your mild surprise, your pep talk seems to work, and the whole group follows. It’s slow going, however. You can hear the zombies following not far behind, and from the sound of it, their numbers are growing. Eventually you come to a narrow path between two steep cliffs. The campsites lie just on the other side. “Hold up!” Daryl says, opening his duffel bag. “My explosives! If I set them off here, this whole mountain will come down. We can crush those undead bastards under a landslide!”
Again with the explosives. The zombies aren’t far behind you, and you have about as much faith in Daryl’s homemade dynamite as you did in Isabelle’s homemade soup. “No, I read all about this stuff online,” he insists. “Organic fertilizers have like eight times more ammonium nitrate than the regular stuff. I stayed up all night mixing it with all that kerosene. This will work!”
What he’s saying, you realize, is that it’s almost dark and you have no kerosene. Things are getting desperate. Is it possible Daryl’s on to something?
So far, all of Daryl’s ideas have been uniformly bad. If you decide to skip the explosives and keep marching your troops into the valley,
turn to page 72.
Then again, maybe he’s due. If, against your better judgment, you decide to trust Daryl and his fertilizer bombs,
turn to page 206.
7
Although your instincts are screaming at you to leave, you can imagine how awful it would feel to have someone abandon you three minutes into a date. And even though this evening is shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster, no human being deserves that.
You flag down the waiter (with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm) and ask for one order of sweetbread, an order of chicken wings, and a gin and tonic. You’re resigned to being pleasant, but you’ll be damned if you’re going to do it sober. The waiter gives you a curt little sneer as he leaves the table, and you can’t tell if he disapproves of interspecies dating or if he simply caught a whiff of your companion.
It only takes eleven minutes for the appetizers to arrive (you know because in the interim you check your watch twenty-seven times), but by then the conversation has completely ground to a halt and the two of you are just staring into space. Suddenly, though, your date seems extremely excited at the prospect of the sweetbread and leaps from the table, knocking two more glasses of water all over you. The shock of ice water, though—again!—is the least of your worries. Your date has grabbed the waiter and seems to be trying to grind on him or something. Enough, you think! This has almost gotten as bad as that time at the bowling alley!
If you think your date and the waiter make a lovely couple and use this distraction as an opportunity to sneak out,
turn to page 16.
If you try help the waiter, who doesn’t seem terribly interested in the affections of your reeking date,
turn to page 24.
8
Since you have no reason to believe the toothpaste is even being manufactured for retail sales yet, chasing down phantom crates would just be delaying the inevitable. “I think we have to hit Crogaste HQ,” you say.
Your poor Celica is banged up almost beyond recognition, and the engine is doing a sputtering thing that doesn’t bode well. You park on a hill overlooking the building, though, and realize that your car is the least of your worries. It looks like some kind of beehive, if bees were zombies and hives were 14-story office buildings spattered liberally with blood and gore. “I don’t know that we’re going to pull this off,” you say.