Zombocalypse Now (17 page)
Victorious, you emerge from the cathedral knee-deep in gore to find that the crowd outside has quadrupled in size. “You can have this back,” you say, tossing the rosary to Father Tim. “We killed the Zombie Jesus.”
An older man in robes and a funny, pointed hat in the style you always thought was reserved for popes cries out in anguish. This must be Cardinal D’Amato. “Demon spawn!” he howls. “You’ve taken Him from us! You’ve crucified our savior!”
“No,” Father Tim mutters, startled. “You don’t understand! They just saved our—” Before he can finish, though, the crowd is upon you. If they were crazy before, their grief has now pushed them completely over the edge, and they sweep over you in a blind fury.
You get torn limb from limb by a mob of raving Catholics.
THE END
150
You picked up these kids to save them from zombies, so wading into a sea of them just seems irresponsible. “Um, are we being abducted?” Prudence asks politely from the back seat.
“What? No! I’m just trying to get you somewhere safe,” you insist.
“Then can I shoot some zombies anyway?” Billy pipes up.
Prudence shushes him. “You’re not supposed to interact verbally with your abductor,” she whispers.
Well, she can thank you for saving her life later. You find a mountain road that winds toward the next town, and take a pit stop for bathroom activities after driving about an hour into the hills. You spot a nice bush to pee behind, and Billy wanders off into the underbrush. A moment later, however, he runs out screaming. “Run!” he yells. “Zombie hiker!”
“Billy, get back to the car!” you say. “Prudence, throw me the shotgun!” Prudence, however, has other ideas. You hear the car start up, and turn to see her driving away in it, leaving you and Billy behind.
“I didn’t even know she could drive,” Billy mutters.
Judging by the transmission screeches fading into the distance, this may be her first time. You pick up a rock and unceremoniously debrain the zombie hiker. Now what? “I guess we try to make it to the next town on foot,” you say.
“I guess,” Billy agrees, sounding as demoralized as you are. “Or we could just kind of live out here.”
Actually, camping might be the safer bet, Armageddonwise. If you decide to rough it,
turn to page 45.
If you’d rather take your chances on civilization and start the long hike toward town,
turn to page 252.
151
You look at Daryl closely, and even though he’s half mad with sleep deprivation, there’s something noble about his decision. He may be a bit of a screwup, but in the short time you’ve known him you’ve never seen him hesitate to risk his own life to help another. It dawns on you that staring mortality in the face reveals the true nature of a person, and even in the face of Armageddon, Daryl has chosen not to compromise.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” you say as you throw yourself from the moving vehicle. Fortunately, it isn’t moving terribly fast, what with the severe engine damage and sea of undead pedestrians. You hit the ground and roll, staggering to your feet as quickly as possible under the circumstances. Which, it turns out, is not nearly quick enough.
Let it be said that you did not go gentle into that nightmarish, rotting afterlife. You try to escape the undead tide, but their numbers are too great. And as agonizing as being eaten alive is, it’s even worse when the change occurs. The zombies chewing on you lose interest as your flesh starts to take on the same flavor as their own, at which point there’s just enough bunny left intact to rise up and join them in their desperate, eternal quest for the next meal.
You did good work out there last night, rescuing helpless survivors and putting an end to countless abominations. With any luck, some brave soul will saunter by and do the same for you.
THE END
152
You’re sick of running, so you grab the rifle and a box of bullets conveniently left on the shelf beneath it and march right back into town to kick some zombie ass.
Actually, you’ve already been marching all day, and it’ll be dark by the time you get back if you leave now. So you take a nice, hot bath, get some sleep on a surprisingly comfortable bed, wake up the next morning around eleven, cook up some sausages for breakfast, and
then
march right back into town to kick some zombie ass.
When you get there, you discover that the suburbs are completely overrun. That’s okay—this time you’re ready for them! You load your rifle, take careful aim at an approaching zombie, fire . . . and miss. Hmm. You try again, and miss again. You’ve never shot a rifle before. It’s hard! Now the thing is almost upon you, and you reload frantically, this time nailing it right in the chest. Direct hit!
It doesn’t even slow down. A zombie won’t fall unless you completely debrain it, and that would be tricky to do with a hunting rifle at any kind of distance even if you were a decent shot. You finally take the thing out by ramming your barrel into its mouth and firing right up into its skull, but now you’re surrounded and resort to using your gun as a makeshift club. You take down more zombies by pummeling them than you did by shooting them, but it’s a losing battle. There are too many to fight. Good effort, though.
THE END
153
The dead rising from their graves is spooky stuff. There’s got to be something more going on here than government conspiracies and fluoridation.
After a few hours of digging through files (internet service is down, but Ernie has the slightly terrifying habit of obsessively printing hard copies of everything), no freaky cults turn up with more zombie connections than garden variety Christianity, which worships a guy who came back from the dead after three days, and seems fairly confident that everyone else will rise from their graves at some point for the second coming. Catholics, in fact, have vampires as well as zombies, since they also teach that sacramental wine literally turns into Christ blood while you drink it.
Ernie does, however, come up with a couple of non-Jesus related leads that he thinks sound promising. One is a well-documented case a few years back of a little girl whose dead dog returned to life after being buried in a pet cemetery on ancient Indian holy land. Ernie’s definition of “well-documented” is less strict than yours, but the undead zombie dog could be patient zero in the current infestation. The other lead is a local Haitian voodoo expert who seems to spend a lot of time trying to pick up girls on alternative medicine message boards. His brochure has a mention of the voodoo zombie tradition—perhaps he’ll have insight into whatever’s going on.
If you try to track down the voodoo guy and hope he can shed some light on this zombie apocalypse,
turn to page 191.
If you decide to investigate the resurrected dog and pet cemetery,
turn to page 227.
154
You give the command. Most of the survivors come willingly, since at this point they’re frazzled and eager to have someone tell them what to do. There is some resistance, however. “You can’t do this!” one man screams, spitting at the soldiers who are trying to get him inside a transport. “I have rights! If you take away our humanity, the zombies have already won!”
What? “They’re not terrorists,” you say. “They’re not fighting us because they
hate freedom
. They’re fighting us because
our brains taste delicious
. If the zombies win,
there is no more humanity
. Now get in the damn truck!”
Over the coming days you round up everyone you can find and start to focus on the important task of actually fighting zombies. At first you let the civilians come and go as they please, but mostly they go, making things just as chaotic as before you started rounding them up. So you’re forced to lock them up for their own good. Soon managing the prison turns into a full-time job in itself, and you have to start splitting your manpower between zombie fighting and prison guarding. There are grumblings among your men about the way you’re handling things, and finally, with the help of some renegade soldiers (
et tu
, Velasquez?), the prisoners organize a breakout.
Unfortunately for you, their plan hinges upon killing you in your sleep. The civilians battle their way through the remainder of the platoon and secure their freedom.
Then zombies come and eat them. You really made a mess of that one.
THE END
155
“Leeeeeroy Jeeeenkins!” you yell, throwing yourself into the fray. You saw this on the internet once, and never thought you’d get the chance to do it in real life. Your tire iron connects with the first zombie’s head and the thing splits like a cantaloupe. Two more zombies are right behind it, but fall to your wild, flailing, automotive repair-style fury.
As a fourth abomination shambles up, you feel clammy hands grabbing you from behind. You quickly turn and shove the zombie away, but by then more have swarmed around you. They grab at both your arms, making it impossible to swing your weapon. More undead hands grasp at your legs, and suddenly you’re being lifted off the ground.
You get torn apart and devoured by zombies, somehow managing to stay alive through a considerable portion of it. The pain is excruciating.
What did you think was going to happen?
THE END
156
You scan the driveways and spot a brand new sports car halfway down the street. Aha! You walk up to the house’s front door and knock loudly. “Uh, zombie exterminator!” you holler. No response, and the door is locked. You pick up a big rock on the porch, thinking that it might be one of those fake things that hides a spare key. But it’s just a rock.
So you toss it through the bay window. What the hell—it’s the end of the world, right? As you carefully kick shards of glass out of the way and step inside, the stench hits you immediately. Whoops. Right in front of you, on the kitchen counter, you see a set of car keys. Unfortunately, while walking over to grab them, you get a full view of the kitchen.
Sitting on the floor is an 8-year-old girl, staring at you with blank white eyes and gnawing on what appears to be the remains of her family. You’re not proud of it, but your first reaction is to scream like a small child. Your second (and slightly more productive) reaction is to snatch the car keys and dash out the front door.
You jump in the car and drive like a meth-adddled long-haul trucker, making it to the freeway before your heart even stops pounding. Now you’ve got a straightforward decision to make: northbound or southbound?
You’re about an hour and a half from a major metropolitan area. If you head north toward the big city,
turn to page 83.
The city might have more resources to deal with a zombie outbreak, but then again, it might just have more zombies. If you head south toward the ocean instead,
turn to page 116.
157
You march your group away from the town center, hoping to find somewhere slightly less infested with undead to hole up for the night. Unfortunately, you run into a pack of zombies on the very next block. You backtrack to an intersection, but now the market zombies have caught up, and even more are approaching from the cross street. You’re completely surrounded!
Daryl shouts out a battle cry that you think is probably from the movie
300
, and the rest of the group manages a surprisingly valiant fight to the death, with some being infected and joining the horde’s numbers, and others just being consumed outright. As for you, a small nibble on your left ear is enough to do the trick, and you wind up zombified and wandering off after the commotion dies down on the search for brains, brains, brains.
In the coming years, zombies cover the entire planet. Scattered pockets of humanity survive the initial outbreak, but in time all of these are compromised by the undead, turn on themselves, or just plain descend into madness. Eventually, the plague runs its course. With tasty human brains gone, the zombies grow lethargic, and various infected animals never develop the same level of voraciousness as their human counterparts did. In time, the zombie masses just rot away.
The planet survives, although humankind has gone the way of the dinosaur. Millions of years later the dolphins give it a solid effort, but their apocalypse winds up being even
crazier
.
THE END
158
“You tell her,” Daryl says.
“I’m not going to tell her,” you mutter back. “You tell her.” Daryl just shakes his head. “Alright,” you sigh. “Let’s go back to the freaking zombie polar bears.”
You drop the young mother at the stadium gates and stumble back to your ice cream truck. Daryl is clearly as tired as you are, because as you get back into the thick of things, he’s running over more zombies than he’s avoiding. Still, with all the spikes and armor plating, the truck has been transformed into the ultimate zombie smashing monster jam, so perhaps this approach works just as well.
You bash your way through zombie after zombie, but before you get anywhere near the zoo, something unseen pummels your truck, breaking the windshield. White smoke comes billowing out from under the hood, and the engine starts making a high-pitched squeal. Now you can’t even see the road.
“We have to abandon ship!” you yell. “Maybe we can find shelter out there somewhere!”