Zombocalypse Now (12 page)
This prompts general laughter all around, and Brad takes the letter, opening it a bit sheepishly and unfolding the several pages he finds inside. “She sent me eighty bucks,” he says, fishing out a check.
The students don’t have much to eat, but they do have at least eight working coffee makers, so you make yourself a cup and prepare to head out. Before you can get out the door, however, Brad stops you. “Do you, like, work for the post office?” he asks.
“Listen kid,” you say. “I just brought the letter. I don’t do this for a living or anything.”
“Well, it really meant a lot. I wasn’t even sure my parents were alive, you know? So I was kind of wondering if you’d take me with you.” He looks at you all earnestly, and you remember how his mom talked you into this thing to begin with. “I could help with deliveries!”
He looks like he’d snap like a twig if a zombie leaned on him. If you tell him this was your last delivery,
turn to page 264.
Then again, you’ve gone this far already. If you decide to take Brad under your wing and found the Post-Apocalyptic Postal Service,
turn to page 129.
102
You follow the woman with the gun outside. If the dead are rising from their graves, you think, it might be wise to hang around those with access to firearms. “Hey, wait up,” you yell, trying to get her attention. “Thanks for, you know, shooting those zombies and stuff. What’s your name?”
“Mittens,” the woman says without a hint of a smile. “I’m a cop.”
Hmm. Mittens is the kind of name that’s fairly common in the stuffed animal community, but you don’t typically hear it associated with regular human beings. “Uh, do you have a first name?” you ask.
“Officer,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “Now why don’t you run along and . . . aw, crap.”
You look to see what Mittens—Mittens? Really?—is staring at and discover a whole mob of gore-covered zombies piling out of an art house movie theater down the street. Mittens looks at the undead crowd, then at her gun, and then back at the crowd. “Yeah, I might need some backup on this one,” she says finally. “Run, genius.”
She takes off down the street, and since you don’t have any other ideas, you follow. You round the corner just behind her and see her flagging down a pair of mounted patrolmen. It always seemed weird to you that cops sometimes ride horses right down the middle of the road, since the internal combustion engine was invented over a hundred years ago, but in this situation you’re not complaining. “Hey!” Mittens yells at them. “Uh, hello? Zombie invasion? Turn around, you morons!”
The officers seem completely uninterested, but the horses start to slowly, awkwardly turn on their own. One of them is a big, Clydesdale-looking thing, and the other is smaller, not much larger than a pony. It turns out that the smaller horse is in better shape, though—it only has a few patches of gouged flesh and one popped-out eye socket, whereas the big horse has whole chunks of head, neck, and torso missing. The officers are in even worse condition, but still moaning and somehow managing to stay mounted.
Mittens cusses up a storm and fires a whole clip full of ammunition at the larger horse, and although its rider slips off the saddle and hits the ground with a splat, the horse doesn’t even flinch. For some reason the fallen zombie officer starts trying to climb back up on his mount. “I’ve got bigger guns in my car!” Mittens says, bolting back the way you came.
Your first instinct is to follow as quickly as you can. You’re not at all sure you can outrun a zombie horse, though—that little one in particular still looks pretty fast. And if you’re going to be eaten anyway, perhaps this a good time for some ridiculous heroics?
If you try to create a distraction that allows Mittens to reach her car before the zombie equestrians run her down,
turn to page 194.
Screw that! If you’re not quite ready to die and run as fast as you can, hoping Mittens will save you,
turn to page 5.
104
The streets around the police station are barricaded and surprisingly calm. Officers standing guard in riot gear let you in to see the captain, and you’re surprised to discover that he’s a stuffed crab. Stuffed crab? Oh, no. It can’t be.
It is. “Clampy Pete,” you say with more than a hint of disdain. You haven’t seen him in years, but you and he go way back. “A police captain now? What the crap?”
“You,” he mutters. “Hell, I might have known you’d wind up running with this one.” He glares at Mittens, and you can’t tell which of you he loathes more. She explains the situation at the church, but Clampy Pete doesn’t even want to hear it. “You’ve got nothing,” he says. “The word of a fake mobster and the fact that they’re killing zombies. Who isn’t? We do things by the book around here—that’s how we cleaned up the mess on the streets outside, and that’s how we’re going to clean up the rest of this city.”
Mittens starts to protest, but the captain stops her. “I’m short on men, or I’d just kick your asses to the curb right now. Since I’m desperate, though, I’ll give you a chance. We got a tip about some gangsters using zombies as drug mules. You can be reinstated,” he glowers at you, “and deputized, and help us bust them. Or you can get the hell out. Your call.”
You already know the zombie drug mule thing is ridiculous, but there’s safety in numbers. If you take Clampy Pete up on his offer,
turn to page 62.
If you tell him to screw himself (it wouldn’t be the first time) and go back to investigate the church alone,
turn to page 246.
105
As safe as the inside of a police station might be, between you and that safety is a scene that will haunt you until your dying day. And since you’d like to put that day off as long as possible, you opt for the better part of valor and haul ass.
One of the zombies sees you running and drops the person it’s been chewing on to take up the chase. You’re not sure why you’re more appealing than the meal it already has—maybe you smell like Toyota Celica or something—but the movement attracts the rest of the mob’s attention and several of them begin following their compatriot’s lead.
You pick up the pace, only to discover another group of undead directly in front of you, on the far side of the intersection. There’s no time to plan your next action, but if you sprint, you might make it to the cross street before you’re boxed in.
If you head west at the intersection, toward your apartment near the center of town,
turn to page 17.
If you go east, figuring the zombie threat might lessen toward the city’s outskirts,
turn to page 136.
106
You feel guilty about leaving the screamer alone and helpless, but there are thousands of people out there, and you can’t save them all. Every single zombie you’ve stumbled across, run from, or carved to ribbons today was a helpless bystander who needed saving at some point. And the best way to help people is to start by not getting yourself killed, right?
Right?
You see a barn ahead that looks like it might be easy to fortify. Plus, there could be award-winning livestock or something in there, and that sounds like good eating to you. You peer inside, and it’s clear of wandering zombies. It seems you’ve found the petting zoo.
You’re always a little overwhelmed by the stench of these exhibits, and this one seems particularly bad. You look down at a group of baby piglets. Ew—aren’t these animals supposed to be chosen mostly on the basis of cuteness? These things are listless, splotchy, and reeking. One looks up at you with hollow, staring eyes, and you realize that all is not right here. Suddenly two feet of hay doesn’t seem like enough of a barrier between you and . . . .
Before you can finish that thought, something leaps out of its compartment behind you and knocks you to the ground.You feel the weight of hooves on your back, and teeth sinking into you.
You get eaten by a zombie llama.
THE END
107
As much as you always enjoyed camping, you can imagine what a nightmare it would be with this group. You start up the mountain road to the ranger station.
It’s a slow trek. Isabelle, in particular, is becoming quite sick from the small amount of stew she attempted to swallow. Luckily, you reach the cabin before dark. There’s no plumbing, but there is a large stash of bottled water and an outhouse (score!), and it turns out that the stream leading into the valley below starts not too far up the mountain from here. You have the group settle in as comfortably as they can while you scout the area for potential hazards. Maybe the ranger station will work out after all.
Alas, your optimism is short-lived. A huge group of zombies is making its way up the mountain beneath you. There must be hundreds of them! How did they find you way out here? You rush back toward the cabin to warn the others. What you find, however, is another shock.
Gore is splattered everywhere, and it looks as if the whole bunch has somehow been turned. Most of them are scattered throughout the cabin, lounging about as if drunk. A few are straggling about anxiously, though, and Zombie Daryl stands before you with an empty purple toothpaste tube in his hand.
He sees you and leaps before you have a chance to quite come to grips with what has happened. Fortunately, you’ll never have to. Daryl’s teeth sink in and everything fades to black.
THE END
108
“I still don’t see what the big deal is,” Ernie says as Khenan slams the door behind you. “It’s not like we have a bunch of other leads that . . . oh, no.” You look down the hall and spot a zombie lurching toward you. In the confined space, there’s no way past it. Ernie starts pounding on the door. “Khenan!” he shouts. “We’re sorry! Let us back in!”
“No,” he says petulantly from inside. “You have insulted me
and
my Jamaican ancestors.”
“Haitian!” you say. “And we said we’re sorry! We’ll pay the forty dollars! Please let us inside!”
“Slide the money under the door,” Khenan says, and you fumble through your wallet for the cash. The zombie is almost on you now! Ernie screams. “There are two more coming!” he shouts. “Just tell us how to kill these things!”
The door opens a crack, and Khenan drops a handful of items at your feet. “All of these things you will need,” he says, slamming the door once again. There’s a bag of salt, a needle and thread, and a bunch of candles. With no time to think, you throw the salt in the zombie’s face, to very little effect. Then you pick up a candle, but it seems useless as a weapon. Could you try poking it with the needle, maybe? It’s too late. You fall prey to your attacker’s surprisingly strong grasp and predictably wretched teeth. Ernie tries to run, but the two new zombies make short work of him.
That Khenan guy had better be for real now, you think. Because now he has five zombies at his doorstep, and at least one of them is
super pissed
.
THE END
109
There’s quite a bit of arguing about where to eat. Finally you decide that you’ll bust into the first place you find that hasn’t been overrun by zombies, but with the caveat that if there’s more than one choice, the pecking order is McDonald’s, then Taco Bell, then any sit-down restaurant, and then Arby’s. As you herd the group along, a scrawny, middle-aged guy pulls you aside. He was the leader of the Taco Bell faction. “Hey, why don’t you take a break for a little while,” he says, “and let someone else try out that chainsaw?”
Since you still don’t have much of a plan, giving up the saw would make your only leadership qualification a calm, soothing demeanor—and that didn’t even serve you particularly well during the whole where-should-we-eat boondoggle. “I think I’ll keep it,” you say with a hard stare.
“Yeah,” he sneers, “and who made you the boss of the world?” The boss of the world? You just saved all of their lives! Nevertheless, before you know it you’ve agreed that the leader should be chosen by physical confrontation, mostly because you’re reasonably confident that you can take this weenie. You consent to having your left hand tied to his, leaving your right hand for . . . you don’t know. Slapping, maybe? The two of you circle each other for a minute talking trash, but finally you commit, landing a punch square in your opponent’s jaw. He screams and immediately passes out. Well, that was easy.
Almost as easy as it is for the approaching band of zombies to harvest your brain, since the rest of the group has already split, leaving you with no chainsaw and with one hand tied to an unconscious weasel.
THE END
110
You explain to the group that you’re going to lure the zombies away, and you want them to pick the market clean of food and supplies. Most of them look at you with blank stares (one gentleman asks you what you mean by “zombies”) but you appoint Daryl and Isabelle to quarterback the operation and move on to the next stage of your plan.
The zombies are surprisingly easy to lure. With some shouting and frantic waving you get their attention, and then it’s just a matter of fleeing quickly enough to avoid capture but slowly enough to keep them on your tail. Getting surrounded is the real danger, but happily you don’t run into any other groups, and after a short while you ditch your stumbling pursuers and hurry back to the market.
When you return, you find that Daryl has been stocking up on organic fertilizer, apparently in hope of making explosives. Others are breaking down wooden stalls, for reasons that remain unclear. A few have been gathering foodstuffs as directed, so you consider your plan a qualified success. It’ll be dark soon, and you spot zombies on the horizon headed your way. In fact, it’s the same mob you ditched earlier—you recognize one in a bright pink sun hat that’s hard to miss.