Zombocalypse Now (16 page)
The zombies were shoulder-to-shoulder out there, wall-to-wall. Like shag carpeting.
So you let the group have its paradise. When the food is gone, the food is gone, and making it stretch a few extra days or weeks will only delay the inevitable. You kick back with a Mountain Dew and a frozen pizza and try to put the inevitable out of your mind.
Mmm, frozen pizza.
THE END
140
Hiding out and waiting for rescue just isn’t your style. You grab a tire iron from the automotive section to replace your well-used hammer and hit the streets looking for somewhere to gas up your new toy.
It looks like the zombie infestation has spread quickly. You remember a gas station that’s about half an hour away on foot, and make your way toward it, walking faster and faster in an attempt to keep ahead of the growing horde. By the time you see its sign, you’ve broken into an outright run.
You’re out of breath when you reach the pump and swipe your credit card. It blissfully authorizes your transaction and you grab the nozzle, pumping sweet petroleum into the chainsaw. Dozens of zombies lurch toward you from all sides as you pull the cord and hear the screeching grind of the motor starting. This time you’re ready for them.
All that’s left is to say something badass.
If you say “let’s carve this turkey,”
turn to page 87.
If you say “welcome to Chainsaw Island, where the chief export is PAIN,”
turn to page 131.
If you go with “say hello to my little gasoline-powered friend,”
turn to page 59.
If these choices all seem iffy and you think you can come up with something better,
turn to page 277.
141
“Sorry, guys,” Mittens tells the cops. “You’ll have to find yourselves another renegade captain. Me and the rabbit are out of here.”
Despite her questionable grammar (it’s “the rabbit and I”), you’re flattered that Mittens thinks so highly of your opinion. The two of you hop in her car and drive out to Cardinal D’Amato’s church, parking right in front. You sit for a moment in silence, wondering what you’ll find inside. It could hold the answers to the entire zombie situation. Or Fat Jimmy could have been lying all along, and there might be nothing in there but a Catholic congregation trying to survive the undead apocalypse. Somehow, though, it looks every bit as spooky in broad daylight.
Possibly even spookier.
“Well,” Mittens asks, taking a long drag from a cigarette, “are you ready?”
If you are,
turn to page 226.
If you aren’t, well . . . . You know, if you’re having second thoughts at this point, you might as well just go back and choose the police mutiny thing. Otherwise, it’s time to cowboy up and get this thing done.
Turn to page 226,
already.
142
You tell the Crogaste employees that the speaker phone commands them to go to the nearby convenience store and lock themselves inside until you come back for them. You apologize to Candice, but she gets over it surprisingly fast. The three of you get back into your barely-running Celica and head toward the factory site.
Once there, you find unconscious zombies piled up in mounds that you literally have to climb over to get inside—they apparently have been gorging on toothpaste to the point of catatonia. You help Ernie restart the manufacturing process, but as soon as you mix in the final ingredients, an aroma of toothpastey goodness fills the air and zombies start picking themselves off the ground, hungering for a taste.
You try spreading around globs of toothpaste to distract them, but there are only three of you, and the living dead are soon swarming from all sides. “You know what would have actually come in really handy right now?” Ernie asks as the horde surrounds you.
“A couple of dozen half-crazy helper monkeys.” Candice replies. Yeah. Hindsight is 20/20, you think, as you’re crushed beneath a mountain of zombies desperate for their cavity-fighting bliss.
THE END
143
The first thing you discover is that although zombies may be mindless, they certainly are determined. You lure it around the back of the house by walking slightly faster than it lurches, find some rope, and manage to tie it to the back porch. This should keep it from terrorizing the neighborhood until you can construct some kind of zombie habitat.
As far as feeding goes, you find that Smitty (you’ve decided to name it Smitty) will eat just about any type of uncooked meat in a pinch, but greatly prefers something living, and will drop any meal, no matter how long since its last feeding, if he smells brain. This means that the only research you can conduct when it knows you’re there is to study the way it attempts to eat you. After a few days, you conclude that to continue your studies you’re going to need a steady supply of live food to keep this thing occupied.
Stray animals seem like the obvious mealtime solution. You pause, wondering if you’re taking this too far. Abducting stray cats and feeding them to a captive zombie? That doesn’t sound like you. On the other hand, your research might lead to something that will help humanity fight off the zombie plague and save the world. You’re actually starting to grow fond of Smitty, but as things stand, he isn’t much more than a foul-smelling and particularly dangerous house pet.
If you kick it up a notch and put out some traps for strays,
turn to page 91.
Come to think of it, you could probably use a couple more test zombies as well . . .
If you draw the line at murdering kittens and decide that the research isn’t worth it,
turn to page 112.
144
“Never!” you howl, thinking that’s the sort of thing people howl when told to bow down before other people. You hurl yourself at the Zombie Lord, swinging your wrench wildly. Ernie, inspired by your bravado, throws himself into the fray with some kind of awkward tackle attempt.
Before you can connect, however, the Zombie Lord raises a hand and you’re stopped by an invisible barrier. Chuckling, he flicks his wrist, flinging you both about ten yards back, where you hit the ground hard.
“Defiance,” the villain says, amused. “After bringing forth your new lord and master, you have regrets? You wish to save your world from destruction? You cannot. Such fighting spirit, even in the face of certain death. It pleases me.”
Whoever this guy is, he seems to have gotten his concept of ultimate evil from Marvel Comics, or perhaps from watching way too many James Bond movies. You try to get up, but a blinding pain shoots through your leg. You think it’s broken. The Zombie Lord’s feet leave the ground as he slowly levitates toward the sky.
“So much life,” he says. “Repulsive. The trees, the birds. The human beings with their petty squabbles and their delusions of grandeur. I believe I shall start with the insects.” He looks down at you and Ernie as he floats away, beaming. “You two shall remain to witness the consequences of your actions as I bring an end to every living thing on your world, then rule over it with absolute sovereignty,” he says.
“You two I shall kill last.”
THE END
145
Forget the car, you think. You’re the character Al Pacino played in that one movie! You don’t actually know any other lines from that one, but dammit, you’re here to kill zombies and chew bubblegum. And you’re pretty sure that you’re all out of . . .
Wait a minute, that’s a good idea. You hop into the gas station convenience store and grab some bubblegum from the shelf. Mmm, bubblegum. Ooh, and Hostess fruit pies! This day is turning out okay after all, you think.
In any event, there are people out there who need hope, and you’re just the stuffed rabbit to bring it to them. You wander back into the thick of things, carving up any zombies foolish enough to get in your way. A few streets over, you run into a sea of them crowded around a ritzy, high-class hotel. It’s getting dark, and soon you’ll need someplace to spend the night. So you wade right into the crowd, and zombie after zombie falls to your mighty rotating blade. This is awesome! You wonder how long a chainsaw can operate on a single tank of gas.
Turns out: less than twenty minutes. Who knew? Your weapon sputters to a stop midway through a zombie’s head and gets stuck there. Uh-oh. The undead fill in behind you, and now you don’t feel like the
Scarface
guy at all. Now you feel more like Al Pacino’s character in
Scent of a Woman
. Was that the one where he played some blind dude?
You’re not sure. You never saw it.
THE END
146
You settle in. We won’t go into detail about how you adapt one of the sinks into a field latrine, but let’s just say it’s less than ideal, especially for the more solid waste products. Over the course of several days you resign yourself more and more to your situation, fashioning a lumpy bed out of some of the softer things you find among the dinner ingredients, and falling into a general malaise.
You’re not a pleasant sight to see, and your sanity is more than a little worse for wear, but you soldier on. At some point—you’ve long since stopped bothering to keep track of time—you hear loud noises coming from the restaurant proper. Are the zombies in there simply getting rowdy, or could this possibly be some kind of rescue? The noises escalate, and now someone or something is pushing at the swinging doors. You don’t know whether to be hopeful or terrified, so you huddle up in a corner as the pressure on the doors builds into a steady pounding. Your barricade starts to give way. Suddenly the dam bursts, and a group of hearty (and very much alive) men, mostly in police uniforms, comes pouring into the room. Hurray! You’re saved!
They catch a whiff of your hellish kitchen burrow , take one look at the way you’ve been living, and shoot you on sight.
THE END
147
Superfly or not, she’s a zombie now. You’ve seen these things in action, and once the flesh starts ripping and the blood starts spurting, it’s not a pretty sight. The best thing you can do for your neighbor is to put her out of her misery before she devours the next poor sap who comes along. You look around for something to use as a weapon—the zombie princess slowly lurching toward you the whole time—and the best you can come up with is a loose plank from a picket fence.
“Hello?” you say hesitantly. “Anybody home in there?” Your concern is met by a low groan, and she clumsily takes a swipe at you. You steel yourself, and swing your fence plank in a wide arc, connecting with her head.
“Hey!” you hear from behind you. “That stuffed bunny is attacking the hot girl from 4a!”
“What? No—” Before you can react, you’re wrestled to the ground by several of your other neighbors. You recognize the bartender guy from the third floor and old Mrs. Weatherby—you watched her cat while she was out of town!—but the beating you receive is fairly severe, and you don’t have much opportunity to explain yourself in the midst of it. Never underestimate the ferocity with which people will rescue a good-looking damsel in distress, you think. It’s your last thought before you succumb to the various head blows and pass out to the sounds of your neighbors trying to reassure the moaning, ravenous zombie that everything is going to be okay.
Judging by the screams that follow, they may not be entirely correct.
THE END
148
“They may be spawned by Satan,” you say, “but blowing off their heads has worked pretty good so far.” Mittens gives you her backup shotgun, a .44 Magnum for good measure, plenty of ammunition for both weapons, and two of her four hand grenades. Father Tim hands you a rosary for luck. What the hell (um, heck), you think, draping it around your neck. It can’t hurt.
There are dozens of half-mad worshippers strewn about outside the cathedral, but you and Mittens ignore them, and with a quick prayer from Tim, you open the doors. At least two hundred zombies are packed inside, and they look hungry. You each pitch a grenade, and the resulting explosions are not momentous, but encouraging. Two more grenades, and then you get to work with your shotguns.
These zombies seem identical to the ones you’ve been shooting up all week, and if one of them is some kind of undead messiah, you certainly can’t pick his Holiness out from the crowd. Working together, you keep the tide at bay, and although the novelty of blasting zombies straight to hell wears off surprisingly fast, you eventually thin them out. After you run out of shells, you move on to sidearms, and eventually use your shotguns as clubs to finish off the last few stragglers.