INFECTED (Click Your Poison) (7 page)

Y
ou leap off the building, hoping the mosh-pit below won’t hold you up and stop your fall. Good news! You lawn-dart your way through the crowd, your head smashes on the pavement, and you snap your neck. The bad news? You’re paralyzed but not dead, so you get to hear and see the crowd tear you apart and devour your flesh. Soon everything goes black forever. The nightmare is over.

THE END

L
ucas pulls the jeep around in a U-turn and parks it opposite where you saw the zombie girl. You exit with Lucas and Rosie, but the engineer stays in the vehicle, exhausted from the tower climb. The young girl meanders by the woodline and shuffles toward you as you walk toward her. She’s in much better condition than most, but clearly no longer among the living.

“Is that her?” Rosie asks.

Lucas Tesshu nods his head, his eyes thick with tears. “
Imouto
,” he says, his voice cracking with emotion.

The girl responds with a raspy moan, her arms stretched out for an embrace. Lucas actually stretches his arms out to greet her, not seeing her for the fiend she is. You stop him with a hand to his chest, and he stays put, but his arms continue to reach forward. “Please,” he cries.

“You have to kill her,” Rosie says. “You owe it to her.”

“No, she’s okay. She won’t hurt me. Please.
Imouto…
”

•
 
“Rosie, help me get him back in the jeep. We can leave his sister be—what’s only one more zomb?”

•
 
“Rosie’s right, Lucas. This is the only way to move on. Your sister’s suffering, living like this.”

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

N
o hesitation—you lunge forward and pull her out. The zombie stays latched onto her hair, but somehow she doesn’t scream. The weight on that ponytail must be immense; the ghoul was probably 180 pounds in his pre-corpse days, and now he’s loaded down with swamp water as well.

She gasps for breath and holds onto your forearms helplessly. The expression on her face is that of someone who thinks they’re about to die, but can’t admit it. Lucas was moving before you, though you were closer, so he arrives just after you pull her out. He slices at the hand, severing it at the wrist, and with the same move, dispatches the zombie.

Rosie hacks out wet coughs full of swamp water. She finds her rifle and her composure. “That wasn’t smart, coming after me like that,” she says to you. “You could’ve been bit.”

“Are you all right?” he asks.

She nods, coughing still. “I swallowed some swampwater, but other than that…”

“No bites?”

Rosie moves her rifle defensively between her and the man. “No bites,” she says, all business.

“Then I’d say we’re even,” Lucas replies. “There’s supposed to be a sanctuary just outside these marshes—”

“So you’ve heard of it too!” She’s wide-eyed and excited.

“We’re supposed to reach it in only an hour or two!” You reply, sharing the return of her youthful vigor.

“Then let’s walk!” She sets off, not waiting for an answer.

Lucas hangs back for a moment, then whispers to you, “Bravery is acting when you should be afraid. I have been practicing Bushido the whole of my life, so doing right comes easy for me. What I am trying to say is…Well done. You make me proud to be your companion.”

He smiles, shakes your hand, then heads off to fall in line behind Rosie.

•
 
To the compound!

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Y
ou bash the zombie attacking Sims, splashing its brains all over his face. Sims fumbles to get his slingshot back out, but a man and a woman take his arms and do their best to pull him apart. You kill these two as well, but now the hall is nothing more than shoulder-to-shoulder undead.

Like a human ant colony, they swarm upon you and Sims in a coordinated effort of flesh-eating frenzy. Sims won’t go down alone, so at least you die with honor. And there won’t be enough left of you to rise again, as the hellions scramble to get a taste.

THE END

Y
ou shove the unisex bathroom door open, only to be greeted by an undead girl lunging at you. Like a rabid dog on a leash, chained to the toilet’s handicapped rail, she slams backward under her own momentum. She falls just short of your face with her bite.

Well, at least you don’t have to go to the bathroom anymore.

•
 
Close the door and explore the other hall.