Zombocalypse Now (4 page)
Dawn comes after many long, sleepless hours, and you begin to hope that perhaps you’ve made it through the worst of it. No such luck—as the sun rises, you see that the store is surrounded by hundreds of zombies. They spot your group through the glass and start pressing up against it in mindless hunger. You fear that with enough pressure they’ll shatter the storefront windows.
“My truck!” Daryl exclaims, although you’re not sure when he started claiming ownership of it. “I spent half the night Mad-Maxing that thing out! We have to get to it! Then maybe we can run them all over or something.”
Surviving the hundred feet or so to the truck doesn’t seem particularly likely. And even if the windows break, it would probably be easier to hold a defensive position here than to try to wade through zombie masses.
If you decide to hunker down inside the sporting goods store,
turn to page 178.
If you join Daryl and any other brave volunteers in an attempt to bash your way to the truck,
turn to page 167.
28
“Convictions, plural?” you ask. “All I did was hide!” There’s no way you’re taking the fall for this. You take off for the back door, hoping there is one, and Mittens falls in right behind you. As you fumble your way around in the dim light, you hear the door opening and low voices muttering back and forth. Mittens finally stumbles across an exit and the two of you haul ass down the back alley.
Before you get far, though, you hear a loud crack and your leg explodes in pain. You fall to the ground, and another crack sends Mittens tumbling right on top of you. You’re pinned there, and soon you make out a pair of police officers standing above you.
“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” one of them says. “Jesus, Vinny! It’s Mittens!”
“Noooooooo!” Vinny cries, falling to his knees. “What have we done?”
“Who’s the rabbit?” Carlito asks, as his partner begins to compose himself. You’re quick to explain that you aren’t anyone important, and you were just helping Mittens get to the bottom of the zombie mystery. But the dirty cops cut you off.
“Eyewitness,” Vinny says, giving Carlito a nod. You see the two officers draw their weapons and point them right at your head. It’s the last thing you ever see.
THE END
29
Whatever stealth advantages it may offer, dressing up in the dead soldier’s uniform feels wrong to you. Taking his sidearm, on the other hand, is a no-brainer. This place is crawling with zombies, and if video games have taught you anything, it’s that upgrading your weaponry just makes good sense.
Now to get to the bottom of all this. You sneak around the perimeter of the base, hugging the outer fence. Things seem fairly quiet out here, though you can hear the sounds of soldier-on-zombie violence echoing in the distance. After about twenty minutes you risk venturing deeper into the installation and run smack dab into a zombie.
This one is wearing a hospital gown rather than the torn uniforms you saw earlier. No matter—you’ve come prepared for this. You draw your weapon and fire at the groaning monstrosity. And miss.
It keeps approaching, so you fire again. This time you hit it square in the chest, but it doesn’t flinch. The head, dummy! You have to hit it in the head! You keep squeezing the trigger until your clip is empty, and although a couple of shots hit the thing right in the face, it keeps coming. In a moment it’s upon you, and you fall before your undead attacker. It turns out a handgun is an extremely inefficient way to take down zombies, especially if you’re not much of a shot.
Later, when you reawaken and start terrorizing the surviving soldiers, they get you with a rocket launcher.
THE END
30
You can barely handle a single zombie by yourself, let alone two. Add the three undead monstrosities chasing this new group of stampeding yokels and you feel positively outclassed. “Run for your lives!” you yell, following your own advice and beating feet.
The street in front of the restaurant where you left your date is now a chaotic mess of the living dead. Zombie shoppers attack random passers by, and many of their meals reawaken to join the growing horde. Two zombie policemen on zombie police horses chase a pissed-off-looking woman down the street. It’s madness.
No one can help you here. And if you’re going to save yourself or anyone else from this zombie apocalypse, you’re going to need a weapon. There’s a hardware store just around the corner. Surely you’ll find something in there with which to bash some undead skulls.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for a weapon, why mess around? You remember seeing a gun shop on your way to the restaurant, about six blocks away.
If you hurry into the hardware store to look for a passable weapon,
turn to page 92.
If you decide to risk the longer journey for the promise of serious firepower,
turn to page 209.
31
You try to get as much panic into your voice as possible. This is not terribly difficult. “They’re everywhere!” you wail. “I thought I’d be safe on the army base, but they’re in here, too! You’ve got to save me!”
“Do I, now?” the guard says evenly. He doesn’t appear to be buying it. “What happened to the soldier who wore that uniform?”
Oops. “He was already dead when I found him! His head was missing! I just took his uniform because . . .” actually, now you’re not really sure what you were thinking with that one. “I guess I panicked. I thought maybe I could blend in?”
“Get off the ground,” the guard says. You do as you’re told, and he gives you a long, hard stare. “So you have nothing to do with this zombie invasion?”
“Nothing!” you insist.
“And nobody came here with you? You’re all alone?”
“Yes, I’m alone! I swear!” Maybe you can turn this around after all. You’re doing your best to seem helpless, and it might be working. The guard is no longer treating you as a threat, at any rate.
“And nobody knows you’re here?” he asks. “No one will come looking for you?”
Ernie might, but you want to keep this simple. “Nobody!” you answer. Wait a minute. Come looking for you? That’s a weird question. Why would he ask you if . . . Oh, no.
“Good,” the guard says, raising his weapon and shooting you in the face. “No paperwork.”
You walked right into that one.
THE END
32
Since you don’t really have a plan in place for dealing with an unexpected zombie apocalypse, you figure the hardware store is as safe a place as any to ride this thing out until it blows over. You lock and barricade all the doors, and settle down for the night.
The following day you stick your head outside and discover zombies everywhere. With nothing else to occupy your time, you set about straightening up the mess left by rampaging customers and the undead. You barely make a dent by the end of the day, which is just as well, since the following morning things aren’t looking any better outside. Over the course of a week, the horrors you’ve witnessed (combined with your limited diet of chips, Lifesavers, and Diet Coke) take a toll on your sanity. You slowly start to block out the zombie plague entirely and come to believe that you’re working to prepare the store for its grand reopening.
You’re now completely naked except for three employee vests (according to the stitched-on nametags, you’re either Janice, Pete or Marigold). You’ve also had an utterly delusional telephone conversation with an advertising rep at the local newspaper about running a big eight-page pullout circular. On a more positive note, some of your innovations in aisle restructuring and inventory management are genuinely pretty good.
The big day comes, and you find that a crowd of hundreds has gathered outside in anticipation. They rush the doors, and for a moment you’re thrilled that your reopening event is shaping up to be a huge success.
Let’s just leave it at that.
THE END
33
You finish your gravedigging, have a shower, and settle in for a quiet, relaxing evening of reading other people’s mail. The majority of it seems to be bills, grocery store ads, and other assorted junk, but you discover a few scattered gems. Young Brad is writing home to tell his mom about his first semester in college (and to ask for money, of course). Aunt Patrice reports that the couple that lives upstairs from her have all manner of people coming and going at all hours of the night. What’s that about? It’s also report card season, and it seems to you that most of the grade school children in the neighborhood are not measuring up to their full potential.
At first the letters are entertaining, but in time they only seem to add to your feelings of loneliness. You keep reading straight through the night, and by morning you’re just a wreck. A form letter from an insurance company is enough to bring you to tears—what if something
does
happen to Grandpa? You’re not sure if you
do
have the resources to cover funeral expenses. The isolation becomes unbearable. You have to get out and find some living human beings to talk to.
You head back toward the city, but sleep deprivation and your emotional breakdown have left you in no shape to handle what you find there. Also, living human beings are in short supply. You’re eaten by a pack of ravenous zombies inside of forty minutes.
THE END
34
“First, we find Aunt Candice,” you tell Ernie. You know that she’s extremely particular about her coffee and only a few places in town meet her standards, so if she went looking for java, that should narrow the search.
The first two coffee shops you check are locked up tight, and the third is filled with zombies. No Candice in sight—in the face of Armageddon, could your aunt have lowered her beverage standards? Then you remember a little coffee hut in a strip mall parking lot that your aunt sometimes swings by when she’s running late for work.
You drive up to the shack and peek in the window. Sure enough, there’s your aunt, sitting on the floor with her eyes wide open. “Candice?” you say softly, tapping on the window.
“Oh my god!” Candice replies with a start. “You can’t park there! If they see the car, they’ll find us! Park on the other side of the lot and sneak over!”
Aunt Candice may have gone slightly around the bend. Still, you’re just happy she’s alive, so you follow her directions. “Um, that lady is your aunt?” Ernie asks hesitantly as the two of you tiptoe back toward the coffee hut using your best ninja stealth moves.
Candice is a normal human, of course, and not a stuffed bunny. You tend to forget how much that throws people. “I’m adopted,” you say. “I told you that.”
You hunker down on the floor with her, and after some cramped hugs and introductions, Candice fills you in. “It’s our new toothpaste,” she says. “Crogaste Total Complete Extreme Whitening Plus. It went through all the normal testing, but once people started actually brushing with it, they dropped dead. And then . . .” she pauses, choking up. “They came back from the dead. It’s horrible.”
“Fluoride,” Ernie seethes, his voice filled with loathing.
“Oh god, you’re one of those, aren’t you,” Candice says. “Fluoride is poison if you drink it straight, but when you rub a little on your teeth it prevents cavities. We’ve been using it for decades. Get over it. Anyway, I’m not sure what the formula is, but it’s not fluoride that’s the problem. This is something new.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Candice,” you say. “You’re in marketing. You didn’t engineer this tragedy.”
“No,” she replies somberly. “The simultaneous global rollout. That’s my contribution. I made sure that every dentist’s office we could find on the entire planet got free sample tubes. Even in the third world. On the very same day, for dramatic effect. A revolution in oral care, I called it. If I had staggered the shipments, even by continent, news could have spread before it reached everywhere. But now . . .”
The dentists got it first—you recall your internet date with the dental hygienist. “Do you have a sample of it?” Ernie asks. “Maybe we can analyze it. Come up with a cure or something.”
A sliver of hope lights Candice’s eyes. “Do you think so? I’m not sure what the schedule is for general manufacturing. There might be some at the plant. Or at the UPS hub if they’re already shipping.”
This toothpaste business is a lot to take in. You poke your head up to window height, peering across the parking lot to check on your car. To your surprise, you see a half a dozen zombies swarming around it. Some are even trying to climb on top. And more are slowly approaching from every direction. What’s the deal with zombies and your car? Then it hits you like a lightning bolt. “Candice! The promotional toothpaste you sent me! It’s in my glove compartment!”
Candice and Ernie gaze out into the lot. “Don’t even think about it,” Ernie says. “You’ll never get past those things. It’s suicide!”
“He’s right,” Candice agrees. “My car is behind the check-cashing place. We can take that instead and figure things out from there.”
If you agree with your companions and play it safe, heading for Candice’s car,
turn to page 208.
If you think this might be your only chance and decide to make a play for the toothpaste in your glove compartment,
turn to page 70.
37
Yeah, you bought that car off of your mom when you were in college and never liked it much anyway. Certainly not enough to warrant wrestling it away from the living dead. Besides, after seeing some zombie getting all up close and personal with your windshield, you don’t know if all the Turtle Wax in the
world
could get that thing clean enough.