Zombocalypse Now (30 page)
Forty-five minutes later, you haven’t seen any islands and are starting to wonder what the best way of locating one might be. Your options suddenly dwindle, however, when the engine sputters to a stop. You’re out of gas. An inventory of the craft reveals nothing in the way of food or water, so after a good, long period of aimless drifting, boredom prompts you to unpack the fishing gear and throw in a line.
You sit there, fishing, for what could be minutes or hours. When you eventually get a nibble on your line, you’re just excited to have something to do. The fish you pull from the water is about a foot long, but strangely lethargic. Aren’t these things supposed to flop around and stuff? Right when you lean over to inspect it, the thing comes to life and twists in your hands, freeing itself from your grasp and biting into your throat.
You get eaten by a zombie mackerel.
THE END
276
“Okay, let’s do it,” you say. Your friend rushes up and gives you a big hug. “And you know,” you add with a grin, “the good guys actually won on Endor.”
“A bunch of Ewoks against the combined might of the Galactic Empire?” Ernie scoffs. “That’s what they want you to believe.” You go through the fence and start looking for an entrance into the building. Around the first corner, you stumble across a little balding guy with a big, bushy mustache. “Drop the clipboard!” Ernie yells. “Where’s the fluoride?!”
Stuttering, the man introduces himself as Clarence Mason, water purity expert. He tells you that they found a woman stumbling through the woods earlier in the day, brought her inside for first aid, and then were shocked when she started biting people, who quickly became ill as well. Phone service was out, so his co-worker went out to find help, but has yet to return.
“A likely story,” Ernie says, pulling some putty out of his bag and starting to affix it to a random bit of the architecture. “Come on! We’ve got to blow this place right now!”
“What?” Clarence gasps. “You can’t! My friends are still alive in there! Besides, you’ll disrupt water service for the entire metropolitan area!” He breaks into a run, screaming all the way out of the compound.
If you think Ernie’s right, and help him destroy what’s obviously a hotbed of zombie activity,
turn to page 170.
If you try to persuade him to let you go inside and get a read on the situation before he does anything rash,
turn to page 78.
277
You brandish your chainsaw and get ready to unleash the ultimate kickass zombie taunt. Okay, ready? Before you can start, though, a zombie comes out of nowhere and eats you, and now you’re dead. This may seem completely arbitrary, almost as if you’re being punished, but you know what? Life’s like that sometimes. Bad things can happen to good people completely out of the blue, and not because you made the wrong decision or anything like that.
Sucks for you, though.
And don’t return to the previous page and try picking one of the perfectly good regular zombie taunts, either, even though you probably still have your finger stuck in there. You’re dead. You can just go back to the beginning if all of a sudden you think this book is worth reading, and has interesting choices to make, and knows lots of cool, badass things to say to zombies.
That’s what you get, smartypants. Happy now?
THE END
278
Mittens may have said to hold your fire, but she also said to keep an eye on that son of a bitch, and you’ll be damned if he’s going to gun her down on your watch.
You fire your weapon and think you’ve scored a direct hit, but the moment your shot rings out, the entire street explodes in gunfire, so it’s impossible to tell. Bullets are flying everywhere, and cops and ex-cops alike fall like flies. After what seems like an eternity, the shooting finally ends, and you see Mittens curled up on the floor, clutching her chest. You rush to her side.
“Don’t let the zombies get me,” she gasps. “I don’t want to . . . come back as . . . one of . . .” She chokes on the words, falling silent. You look around and see that the whole posse is in similar shape. There’s no way to know if the cops on the other side of the street have fared as poorly. You look down, and realize with a shock that the blood all over your fur is your own.
You die, and whatever hope the city had of stopping the zombie invasion dies with you.
THE END
Acknowledgements
First, a hearty thanks to Krystal Abbott, Melodie Ladner, and Neal Starkman for their invaluable editorial services. And, of course, to Dawn Marie Pares, who certainly knows that all the really good stuff in this book was her idea. I’d also like to thank all those friends whose faces would light up when I told them I was working on this project. You kept me at it long after my initial three-week enthusiasm window had closed.
A special shout-out goes to Ryan North, since I was perusing quantz.com, read a comic about T-Rex crafting a choose-your-own-adventure story and immediately e-mailed my girlfriend to say “OMG WE HAVE TO WRITE ONE.” Granted, the joke was that it was the only format that would accommodate T-Rex’s extremely modest literary talents, but to me it just sounded great. Thanks, Ryan!
About the author
Matt Youngmark lives in Seattle. Zombocalypse Now is his first book.
If you got here after being officially deputized,
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If you got here after running into some morally questionable cops in a warehouse,
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If you got here after abandoning Daryl’s band of roving yokels,
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If you got here by deciding not to join a police mutiny,
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If you got here after leaving your car to the zombies and walking to the police station,
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If you got here after deciding the police were a safer bet than your friend Ernie,
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If you got here after leaving your group in the supermarket and deciding not to loot the comic book store,
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If you got here after being chased down the street by zombies and making a quick decision to head west,
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If you got here after leaving your group in the supermarket and deciding that looting the comic book store sounded pretty good,
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If you got here after backing slowly away from the Freedom America Citizens’ Militia,
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If you never even went to the military base,
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If you got here after passing on life in Prudence's compound,
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If you got here after fleeing the terrifying 8-year-old zombie girl who ate her family,
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If you got here after deciding you didn't want to live in Billy's underground bunker,
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If you never even met Billy,
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If you and Daryl fled the horrifying events of the sporting goods store,
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If this Daryl guy just rescued you after you drove your car into a telephone pole,
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If you fought the zombies at the pet cemetery,
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If you skipped the pet cemetery entirely,
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If you just found the church and went in with guns blazing,
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If you went for backup first, then turned down a starring role in a police mutiny,
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