Zombocalypse Now (11 page)
Living, human ones.
At this point you’re one hunchbacked minion away from the full-blown mad scientist thing, anyway. If you go ahead and commit to it,
turn to page 274.
If you try to hang on to the tiniest shred of your sanity and destroy all of your research before things get way out of hand,
turn to page 168.
92
A gun would be nice, but the truth is, you don’t know how to shoot one, anyway. And the idea of traversing six zombie-infested city blocks with nothing but your wits isn’t terribly appealing. You hurry down the street to the hardware store and see a crowd of people storming out the front door. “We’re closed!” shouts the last one as he fiddles with his keys for a moment and then, thinking the better of it, jumps in a pickup truck and drives away with tires squealing.
That can’t be good. You gingerly open the door and steal a glance inside. All seems quiet. You look around for a makeshift weapon, but nothing immediately presents itself. A plunger? That’s no good. There’s a lot of duct tape; you could try to fashion something. No, that’s ridiculous. You grab an oversized hammer from a rack of tools, but you’re certain you can do better than that.
Then, right in the middle of aisle two, you see it. The undead corpse of a solidly-built woman in overalls is hunched over a more traditional still-dead corpse, stuffing organs into her mouth. The zombie spots you and stumbles to its feet, apparently hungering for a fresher kill.
You run, casting about frantically for something to defend yourself with. Bolt cutters! No, that’s not practical. A caulking gun? How does that even make sense? You could hit it over the head with that toilet seat! Now you’re just panicking, you think. Calm down. Hey, power tools. That sounds promising. What about that circular saw! No, you need something cordless. A power drill? Hmm, maybe in a specific situation, but it’s not very all-purpose. Then, displayed at the end of the aisle and gleaming like a gift from the heavens, you see the answer to your prayers.
A chainsaw. Now we’re talking.
You grab the saw from the display and turn to face the zombie following close behind you. “Sorry, sweetheart,” you say as you pull the starter cord. “You don’t make the cut.”
Nothing happens. Not a sputter. Of course they don’t keep display model chainsaws filled with gasoline! The zombie is almost upon you, so you fall back on plan B, snatch your hammer up from the floor where you dropped it, and smack the thing on the head. It stumbles, so you hit it again and knock it to the floor. You keep pounding it in the face until its brains are splattered across the linoleum. It completely ruins your one-liner with the cutting and everything, but at least it gets the job done.
You’re going to need to stop by a gas station if you want to make use of that chainsaw. On the other hand, surely the National Guard or somebody will be coming to clean up this mess. Maybe you should just barricade yourself in the hardware store and wait it out.
If you decide to lock yourself in the shop, leaving the whole zombie situation to somebody better prepared to handle it,
turn to page 32.
If you take matters into your own hands, bring the chainsaw, and try to find a gas station,
turn to page 140.
94
The truth is, you feel a whole lot safer doing things Mittens’s way. “Let’s show Clampy Pete there’s a new sheriff in town,” you say.
Mittens’s first move is to set up shop in her favorite bar, which turns out to be the spaghetti place where you first met. Rather than challenge the captain directly, she decides to simply put an alternative operation in place and try to clean up the town herself. “We’re going to see if we can do this bloodlessly,” she says, although a couple of her new deputies look somewhat disappointed. Still, they spread the word, and within a few days about half of the city’s cops have abandoned the force and joined up with Mittens’s posse. In the week that follows, you’re pleased with the amount of progress you make toward eliminating the zombie menace. Not reading the undead their rights before shooting them, alone, saves quite a bit of time.
Alas, your luck doesn’t hold. As Mittens is giving assignments one evening, plotting the massive full frontal assault on Cardinal D’Amato’s church that you’ve been gearing up for, you hear the sound of a bullhorn coming from outside.
It’s Clampy Pete. “We have you surrounded!” he barks. “I won’t put up with this vigilante crap in my town!” You rush to the window, and sure enough, camped out in the Bed, Bath & Beyond across the street is a group of uniformed officers at least as big as your own. The ex-cops around you all draw their weapons, and you follow suit, busting through the glass with your gun’s muzzle to get a clear shot. “You’re all suspended!” Clampy Pete yells.
“Don’t fire until I give the order,” Mittens growls to a general muttering among her troops. “See that guy on the left?” she whispers to you. “That’s Broflosky. Keep an eye on him—if anybody here is going to shoot first in the name of proper police procedure, he will.”
“Dammit, Captain, listen to yourself!” she yells across the street. “And look at the streets around you! What we’re doing is working. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there’s nothing in the procedures manual that covers zombie invasion! Just this once, it has to be about doing what it takes, and not about doing things by the book.”
Silence falls, and the moment seems to stretch out forever. You squint and see Broflosky reach into his coat, never taking his eyes off Mittens. If he’s going to shoot her, you have a split second to fire first and save her life! But she said to wait for the order . . . if you fire your weapon, everyone else might shoot, too! What do you do? There’s no time to decide!
If you open fire at the officer before he can shoot your friend,
turn to page 278.
If you hesitate and wait for Mittens’s command before doing anything rash,
turn to page 258.
96
You suspect that you’re not thinking clearly, so elect not to make any rash decisions. You finish your cereal and craft a makeshift pillow from a couple of rolls of toilet paper. The day’s constant stress and occasional bouts of exercise have left you more tired than you knew, and soon you manage to nod off.
You’re awakened by scratching and moaning sounds, which in a zombie-infested supermarket is almost never a good sign. They must be right outside the door, and they’re trying to get in. Either they finally figured out there was food in there (and you’re not talking about Cocoa Krispies, either) or they just need to use the can, but the door is shaking and the hinges are creaking, and you realize that it can’t possibly hold much longer.
You switch the light on just as the door gives way, bursting from the weight of lord knows how many undead monstrosities. Your eyes fall upon the empty cereal box on the bathroom floor, and the look on those tiny elfin faces tells you everything you need to know.
Damn you, Crackle!
Daaaaaamn yooooooou!
THE END
97
No good can possibly come of this, so you strike out on your own. You’re a renegade, you decide. A lone wolf. That’s your new mantra: what would a lone wolf do? Not get itself killed by hanging around with that bunch, that’s for sure.
The streets, by now, are a huge, frothing zombie mess. But your keen lone wolf instincts lead you away from the crowds and to a secluded, abandoned manor on the outskirts of town. Whoever lived here must have left the instant trouble started, and you make the empty, well-stocked mansion your new home. After a few days of isolation, though, you’re bored out of your mind. There’s no phone, television, or internet, and lone wolf or not, you start to go stir crazy. You’re contemplating heading back into town to see how the whole zombie apocalypse is coming along when you hear a scratching noise coming from out front.
The undead remains of a zombie mailman are at your door, trying to get up the stairs and onto the porch. He’s missing a fair chunk out of his left leg, however, and can’t seem to climb more than about two steps without slipping and tumbling back down. From your safe spot on the porch, the thing doesn’t seem terribly dangerous. If you’re careful, this might be an opportunity to observe one of these things close up.
If you use scientific research as an excuse to fight off boredom by playing with your new zombie friend,
turn to page 143.
If you suspect that this whole idea might be signaling the early stages of dementia and think you’d better just put Zombie Postman out of his misery,
turn to page 210.
98
You feel terrible about it, but you’re seconds away from collapsing yourself, and you know in your heart that going back for the baby would be a fool’s errand. The woman collapses in grief in the back of the ice cream truck, and Daryl agrees to stay and watch over her while you join the others inside the stadium for some much needed rest.
Moments later you hear the truck start up—apparently she’s convinced Daryl to head back to the zoo after all. Well, perhaps that’s for the best. Assuming they both survive, the poor girl can at least get some closure.
Speaking of which, as the heavy arena gates close behind you, you realize that something inside is terribly wrong. The scene before you is complete chaos, with people screaming and running around, almost as if you’re in a country where people actually care about soccer and the wrong team is winning. It may sound crazy, but could this be one of those soccer riots you’ve always heard about?
Then you realize what’s happened. In your haste to rescue as many people as you could, you must have brought someone back who was already infected, and now the zombies are inside the stadium. In your deteriorated state, you’re in no shape to fight your way out.
You get eaten by a mob of zombie soccer hooligans.
THE END
99
You slowly regain consciousness, feeling something hard and flat pressing against your face. Yup, that’s the kitchen floor. Moaning, you unscrunch your eyes. You know that feeling when you’re unsure of your surroundings, and then slowly the previous night’s misadventures start creeping back to you? Well, it’s like a hundred million times worse when the previous night includes a zombie apocalypse.
Wait, can that be right? Whose kitchen is this, anyway? The swinging doors are barricaded with appliances. You sort of remember doing that. You get off the floor and crack open the door to the alley. A half dozen moaning, decomposing dead people are waiting there, staring you right in the face. You slam the door and lock it again. Yow! How are you going to get out of this one? And what’s that smell? Something in the kitchen reeks.
Brains
, you think. Sure enough, several portions of sweetbread have been sitting out all night, uncooked. You grab them (somehow choking down the considerable gag reflex), open the back door, huck them over the zombies’ heads, and break into a run.
Whoops—it looks like they’re ignoring your diversion completely. Quick! Do you keep running and hope to make it past them or try to dive back into the kitchen while you still have the chance?
If you give up on the whole escaping idea and retreat to the shelter of the restaurant,
turn to page 22.
Then again, if you quit now you might never escape. If you push on,
turn to page 189.
100
“Sure,” you say. It takes her what seems like hours to compose a letter, and since she’s out of stamps, she offers to pay you with pie instead, which works out better for both of you (mmm, pie). You put your junk mail delivery plan on hold and go fetch your zombie burying shovel, hoping it will be better suited for decapitating than that long-handled broom was.
When you find the first roving corpse about a mile toward the city, you’re ready for it. The zombie goes down with a single well-placed shovel to the neck. To be honest, it’s badass. Unfortunately, they keep multiplying as you get closer to town. Trying to fight them all would be a suicide mission, so you switch to a strategy that involves a lot of running, and try to make it to the campus without being overwhelmed. Once there, you discover that it’s overrun with undead college students. A zombie in a tweed jacket who looks like he was probably faculty lunges at you, and when you smack him with your shovel he grabs it by the end and won’t let go.
By the time you wrest your weapon from the thing’s grasp, you’re surrounded. You dispatch Professor Stinky, but two more file in right behind him. No! Don’t let it end like this!
Suddenly you hear a high-pitched scream behind you, followed by the sounds of blunt instruments meeting flesh. You turn to see several college students, very much alive, battering away at the undead and opening up a hole in the crowd. “Come on!” a young woman says urgently.
You’re not about to argue with that. They take you across campus to their ad hoc shelter, where it looks like a couple of dozen survivors are hunkered down. Then they stop you at the door, demanding to check every inch of you for zombie bites before letting you in.
“Look, I’m just trying to find a guy named Brad Silverman,” you say.
A skinny kid who looks like he hasn’t slept in a week sticks his head out from behind the door. “I’m Brad,” he says.
“Uh, I’ve got a letter from your Mom.”