Zombocalypse Now (27 page)
If you decide you’d rather rely on your own immune system, your wits, and anything else that will keep you from having to put that stuff in your mouth,
turn to page 64.
246
You tell Clampy Pete to take a flying freak at a rolling doughnut. “Sideways,” you add. You know, because he’s a crab.
Mittens drives you back to the church, and you find the skittish young priest waiting outside. “I saw you watching last night,” he stutters. “I’m Father Tim. Please tell me you’ve come to end this madness.”
Tim tells you that Cardinal D’Amato and most of the congregation have gone insane. When a church member first died and came back to life, they heralded him as the second coming of Christ and now believe they are living in the biblical end times. The grounds are filled with poor souls who, desperate to understand the horrifying events of the past week, have lost their grip on reality. Many, attempting to find salvation, enter the church cathedral to seek guidance from their “savior,” and now it’s packed with literally hundreds of ravenous zombies. Shipping a few in crates to D’Amato’s business associates was just part of a particularly ill-conceived outreach program.
“The Cardinal thinks that we’re being judged,” Tim says. “But I’ve devoted my whole life to the Lord’s work, and His hand is not in this. It’s the Devil. I know it is.”
Mittens opens her trunk and starts strapping on weapons. Tim, however, has other ideas. He insists that if you want protection from the supernatural, he can load you up with holy relics. “These abominations are truly Satan’s work,” he says. “Bullets and grenades will be of no use in there.”
If you raid Father Tim’s stash of relics to ward off zombie evil,
turn to page 261.
If you follow Mittens’s lead and stick with good old-fashioned firepower,
turn to page 148.
247
You decide to go ahead and hit the showers. They’re the living dead, right? They’re not going to be able to wrap their rotting minds around a complicated mechanism like a door knob. At any rate, whatever decision lets you wash all of this mutilated corpse out of your fur feels like the right one at the moment.
You start the water and lather yourself up with the special bunny shampoo you retrieved from your locker. Mmmm, lavender and jojoba. You close your eyes, and just for a moment you relax fully, all of your troubles melting away. Man, that feels good. You’re not sure how long you stand there with the warm water cascading over you, but at some point the spell is broken when you realize that there are at least a dozen zombies in the shower room with you.
Yeah. You’re going to have to learn to suffer through more than a thin coating of zombie gore if you want to survive this book, my friend.
THE END
248
You were never convinced that this zombie business was mob-related, anyway. “Maybe you’re right,” Mittens says. Then she turns back to Fat Jimmy. “Don’t leave town or anything,” she growls at him. “We might be back.”
Cardinal D’Amato makes his residence on the grounds of a massive Catholic church out in the suburbs, so you drive over and park yourselves discreetly around back for a stakeout. It appears to be serving as a safehouse for the congregation, with people trickling in throughout the day and nobody coming back out. Daylight starts to wane, and the boredom becomes palpable. “So, why do you go by your last name, anyway?” you ask Mittens after a long lull in an already lackluster conversation.
She pauses for a moment and sighs. “I was married once. To a stuffed animal. I don’t know what it was about, really. I guess I thought he wasn’t like all the other guys. I loved him, I think. In the end . . . it just wasn’t right.” Another pause. “We wanted different things.”
She pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the glove compartment and lights one, silently offering you another from the pack. You haven’t smoked for almost a week now, but what the hell. It’s the end of the world out there, more or less, and you have bigger things to worry about than emphysema.
“Hmm,” you say, taking a long drag. Damn, that’s good. “Thanks for sharing and all. I just meant, why don’t you tell people your first name, though. It can’t be goofier than ‘Mittens.’ What is it, ‘Kitten’ or something?”
“Go screw,” she grumbles.
“Oh my god! It is, isn’t it?”
“It’s Katherine.”
“Your name is Kitty Mittens!” You have to laugh. That’s the best thing you’ve heard since this whole zombie thing started.
“You see this gun?” she says, visibly angry. The shotgun hasn’t left her side since the incident with the horses. “I will take this gun and I will shove it so far—”
Before she can finish the sentiment, you hear the back door of the church slam shut and you and Mittens—Kitty Mittens!—both hunker down in your seats. Three men are hauling out big burlap sacks and piling them in an overflowing dumpster on the back corner of the lot. One of them is a jumpy kid in a priest’s collar who can’t be a day older than 22. He shivers, makes the sign of the cross, and heads back inside with the others.
Once it’s clear, you sneak over to the dumpster to investigate, but the smell tells you everything you need to know. It turns out the bags are filled with corpses. Headless, zombie corpses. At least ten or fifteen of them.
You and Mittens walk back to the car, stunned and more than a little sickened by the odor. “This is big, isn’t it?” you say. Mittens just nods. “I mean, too big for us. I know you’re on suspension, but don’t you think we should call this in, anyway? With everything that’s going on, they might bend the rules a little.”
“You don’t know my captain,” she says with a groan. “I think it’s a waste of time, but if you want, we can go down to the station and try to rustle up some help.”
She lowers her eyes and stares at the church door. “Or we could storm in there right now and find out what the hell is going on.”
If you suspect you’re going to need all the help you can get with this and decide to head to the police station,
turn to page 104.
If Mittens’s plan to storm the gates with guns blazing sounds more appealing,
turn to page 226.
251
No good can possibly come of this. Still, Daryl is as enthusiastic as ever, and Chuck and Marjorie seem willing to follow orders without question. The fourteen-year-old girl is a spitfire. The five of you plan a sneak attack and manage to liberate the supplies with a minimum of casualties, and wind up barricaded inside the concession stand.
“The fries are ours,” you say triumphantly. You look at Daryl, Chuck, and Marjorie. Two bags of french fries and a bucket of syrup. It’s not going to last long, and you can see in their eyes that they’re doing the math as well. Wait a minute. Where’s the girl?
“Caitlin, no!” someone yells, but as you turn around it’s already too late. You see a giant soccer trophy thing bearing down on you, and with a crack everything goes dark. You never find out what happens to the others, or the rest of humankind for that matter.
But it doesn’t look good.
THE END
252
Frankly, the kid’s a little weird, and you’re not sure how long you want to be stuck out in the wilderness with him. After walking for about an hour, you cross a bridge over a little stream and stray from the road for a drink. As you cup your hands and take a long, cool gulp, you spot a deer upstream on the water’s edge, here for the same reason you are.
Hey, what’s that sticking up out of the water next to it? A decomposing, severed human hand. You spit out your mouthful and then start uncontrollably puking up the liquid you’ve already swallowed. Drinking this stuff could get you zombied!
“Man, that can’t be good for the deer,” Billy adds. You stumble back to the road, forcing yourself to continue on. Night falls and you contemplate setting up camp, but then you see headlights and frantically wave your arms, trying to flag down the driver. “Hey, I know those guys!” Billy says.
“Billy!” the driver howls, jumping out of his truck and hugging the boy. “How come you’re not at the bunker?”
“I had to fetch my girlfriend,” he says. Billy’s friends stare at you. “Not the rabbit,” he mutters, turning red. “That Prudence girl. She kind of stole the car and left.”
“Well, that sucks,” the driver says, looking you over. “So, you got any cash on you, rabbit?”
They hold you up at gunpoint, and since you’re not carrying anything of value, steal your shoes and drive off.
After all you did for those kids? Son of a bitch.
You never do make it to town. And when you collapse, it’s not from anything in that stream. It wasn’t the zombie plague that did you in, but good old reliable humanity.
THE END
253
“I think we’d better . . . head for . . .” you start to mumble. Then you pass out, having lost much more blood than you even realized. When you regain consciousness you’re lying on a hard, scratchy surface, and Daryl is hovering over you with a wooden stake. “I had to be ready,” he says sheepishly when he sees that you’re awake. “In case you
turned
.”
Wooden stakes? You know what—never mind. “Where are we?” you ask.
“The soccer stadium!” Daryl proclaims, obviously proud of himself. You realize that the surface you’re lying on is fake grass, and you’re in the center of an indoor arena.
Suddenly you remember how you got here and suffer a twinge of guilt over all the others who certainly didn’t make it. You peel yourself off the astroturf. “Come on,” you say. “We’ve got work to do.” You head out in the truck to look for survivors, and it turns out that you and Daryl make a decent zombie fighting team. He’s got some strange ideas about the undead and about life in general, and has rigged it so he can blast ’80s metal through the truck’s loudspeakers, but his enthusiasm is definitely contagious. By nightfall you’ve brought more than a dozen people back to the stadium.
“It’s getting dark,” Daryl says, clearly exhausted. “Maybe we should call that good for the day.”
Anybody left alive out there might not make it until morning, you think. If you decide to push on through the night,
turn to page 128.
No, Daryl’s right. You’re still wounded, and won’t do anyone any good if you get yourself killed. If you rest up and go back out in the morning,
turn to page 66.
254
“Throw me the hammer!” you scream. “Throw me the hammer!”
The old lady pushes something huge and heavy out the window, and you immediately understand that this isn’t an ordinary hammer. It’s some kind of enormous construction tool. What is this woman doing with a sledgehammer in her apartment? How does she have the upper body strength to even move it? The first thing you realize is that this is a much better instrument for smashing zombie heads than a mop.
The second thing you realize is that it’s too late for you to get out of the way. As you stare up at it with your arms outstretched, the sledgehammer drops from the third story window and hits you right smack in the face.
Now the zombies don’t even need to kill you. Your corpse is still awfully fresh, though. So they eat you anyway.
THE END
255
You look at the Zombie Lord, who is now actually levitating a few feet above the ground. At this point, kneeling before your master just makes good sense. Ernie follows your lead and gets on his knees, taking it a step further and actually groveling a bit. “What can we do to serve you, my lord?” he says. You think it’s a little much, but, you know, whatever works for Ernie.
“Serve me?” the Zombie Lord mutters, chuckling. “Pathetic. What possible use could I have for worms such as these?” He taps your friend on the head, and Ernie screams. You see his flesh turn gray and begin to rot before your eyes. In seconds, his eyes go white and he turns toward you, moaning. “Braaaaiiinnnnnnnns,” your friend says.
“No, little one,” the Zombie Lord laughs. “This one is also mine.” You jump to your feet and attempt to run, but smack into some sort of invisible barrier. With a flick of his hand, the Zombie Lord lifts you off the ground and spins you to meet his gaze. He looks into your eyes, and you can feel the undead sickness start to take hold.
As your flesh rots on the bone and the life slowly seeps out of you, your last thoughts are of regret. The rest of the world will soon join you in your undying, eternal nightmare.
THE END