Zombocalypse Now Read online

  Zombocalypse Now. Copyright © 2009 by Matt Youngmark. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First edition, August 2009

  Chooseomatic Books and the Chooseomatic Books and Atherton Haight logos are registered trademarks of Atherton Haight.

  www.chooseomaticbooks.com

  Interior illustrations by Matt Youngmark

  Cover illustration by Matt Youngmark with color by Thuy Tran

  LCCN: 2009908367

  Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9840678-0-0

  ISBN 10: 0-9840678-0-9

  Acknowledgements

  1

  You sit in a booth by the window, waiting for your date with a mix of anticipation and dread. Internet dating has not been kind to you in the past—that one night at the bowling alley will likely haunt your dreams forever—but hope springs eternal. Also, desperation. But you try not to think of it that way.

  This particular match seemed promising when the two of you were exchanging e-mails, but experience has taught you to keep expectations low. Photos tend to be a few years old (or self-portraits taken from just the right angle to mask an extra chin), and the wit and charm of a carefully crafted e-mail doesn’t necessarily translate to in-person social skills. Granted, it’s possible that you haven’t been one hundred percent forthcoming yourself. Throughout the week-long back and forth with your prospective date, you may not have gotten around to mentioning that you’re a stuffed bunny.

  The fact that you’re a stuffed bunny hasn’t actually come up.

  Of course, your last match was fine with the bunny thing, but couldn’t believe you didn’t mention that you smoke. That much you fixed; you’ve been a non-smoker for almost 72 hours now. And lord, you need a cigarette.

  You check the time (still two minutes before seven, though it feels like you’ve been sitting here for hours) and then start absentmindedly reviewing the appetizers listed on the plastic table display. Sweetbread? Ew—isn’t that cow brains or something? The restaurant is a spaghetti house, and you never knew that dish was Italian. But then, the “deep-fried ravioli blasters” don’t sound terribly authentic, either.

  Suddenly you feel a hard bump against the table, which knocks two glasses of water square into your lap. Yiiiee! You jump to your feet, grabbing your napkin in a vain attempt to mop up your clothes, and risk a glance at your assailant.

  Sure enough, your date has arrived.

  Some vague approximation of the person portrayed on PerfectForeverLoveMatch.com plops down across from you. Missing from the ad, though, were the vacant stare, the slack-jawed expression, and the exaggerated slouch. There’s no apology for the spill, or even an acknowledgment that water is still dripping from the table. Yeah. The bunny thing’s a deal breaker, you think. Your disappointment ends quickly, though, as you catch a whiff of something powerful and rancid. The singles profile had mentioned working as a dental hygienist, and yet hygiene is clearly not your date’s top priority.

  You introduce yourself with a slightly forced smile and get a low grunt in return. Classy. Okay, time to launch into the mind-numbing small talk. “So, you work in a dentist’s office, huh? My aunt actually works for a . . .”

  “Nnnnnnngggg,” your date cuts you off.

  “You’re right. Let’s not talk about work.” You were going to tell a story about a free promotional tube of toothpaste, and you realize with embarrassment that it was the most potentially interesting thing you had up your sleeve. “Uh, should we ask for some more water?” What you actually need is a towel, since you’re still sopping wet from the spilled drinks. “Do you want to get an appetizer or something?”

  “Brrraaaaaaains,” your date replies.

  Splendid. You were hoping to get food on the table as quickly as possible so you’d both have something to distract from the strained conversation, but if it comes to a choice between trying the sweetbread and actually talking to your dream date here, you’re not sure which appeals to you less. You glance at your watch—7:03—and can’t help contemplating escape routes.

  If you say you’re heading to the restroom to dry off your clothes and then break into a run as soon as you’ve cleared your date’s line of vision, turn to page 4.

  If you stick around just a little longer—it’s humiliating, but you have to admit that so far this is only your third or fourth worst blind date— turn to page 7.

  4

  “Hey, I’m going to dry off a bit,” you say, getting up from the table. “Be right back!” That last part came out a little abruptly, and as you casually stroll toward the restrooms, you feel a twinge of guilt for lying. Then you hear your date aggressively ordering the appetizer.

  “Braaaiinns! Brrraaaaaaaaaiiiiiiinns!” You skip out the front door and realize you’ll have to go around the whole block to avoid passing the window where your date is sitting. As you round the corner, however, a woman runs past you in the other direction, screaming. You catch a whiff of the same odor you smelled a moment ago at the table, and see one man kneeling over another on the street. He looks up at you, although his eyes don’t seem to be focused on anything. Both men are covered in gore, and you’re shocked to discover that the first one appears to be eating the second.

  “Brrrraaaaaiiiiinnnns,” the attacker moans, getting up from his victim and starting toward you in a slow lurch. It’s clear that he hasn’t satisfied that particular craving, considering he’s been gnawing on the other man’s leg. You may be slow on the uptake in awkward social situations, but you’ve seen enough horror movies to recognize this threat in its proper context.

  That, my friend, is a zombie.

  If you flee to alert the authorities before the zombie threat endangers the whole city, turn to page 9.

  If you try to fight the zombie, since there’s a slim chance the man on the ground can still be saved, turn to page 14.

  Back

  5

  Cowardice has gotten you this far. Why mess with a good thing? You run as fast as your plush bunny legs can carry you. The good news is that when you’re running for your life from zombie policemen mounted on nightmarish undead steeds, you don’t need to outrun them. You only need to outrun the person next to you.

  The bad news is that Mittens can outrun you. For the record, she does make it to her car, and blows away the zombie horses and their riders with a sawed-off shotgun she keeps in the trunk. She then goes on to lead a group of survivors into the mountains where she founds a new organic farming-based society that waits out the global plague and repopulates the planet after a few decades when the zombies die off.

  This isn’t much consolation for you personally, though, as you feel zombie hooves bear down on you. You’re already dead when you hit the ground, before the feast of your organs even begins.

  You get eaten by a zombie pony.

  THE END

  Back

  6

  “We’ve kept alive this long by sticking together,” you say. “And every one of you that gets bitten out there just makes one more animated corpse for me to deal with. So we stay together. And we head toward the valley.”

  You help Isabelle to her feet and start down the trail. To your mild surprise, your pep talk seems to work, and the whole group follows. It’s slow going, however. You can hear the zombies following not far behind, and from the sound of it, their numbers are growing. Eventually you come to a narrow path between two steep cliffs. The campsites lie just on the other side. “Hold up!” Daryl says, opening his duffel bag. “My explosives
! If I set them off here, this whole mountain will come down. We can crush those undead bastards under a landslide!”

  Again with the explosives. The zombies aren’t far behind you, and you have about as much faith in Daryl’s homemade dynamite as you did in Isabelle’s homemade soup. “No, I read all about this stuff online,” he insists. “Organic fertilizers have like eight times more ammonium nitrate than the regular stuff. I stayed up all night mixing it with all that kerosene. This will work!”

  What he’s saying, you realize, is that it’s almost dark and you have no kerosene. Things are getting desperate. Is it possible Daryl’s on to something?

  So far, all of Daryl’s ideas have been uniformly bad. If you decide to skip the explosives and keep marching your troops into the valley, turn to page 72.

  Then again, maybe he’s due. If, against your better judgment, you decide to trust Daryl and his fertilizer bombs, turn to page 206.

  Back

  7

  Although your instincts are screaming at you to leave, you can imagine how awful it would feel to have someone abandon you three minutes into a date. And even though this evening is shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster, no human being deserves that.

  You flag down the waiter (with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm) and ask for one order of sweetbread, an order of chicken wings, and a gin and tonic. You’re resigned to being pleasant, but you’ll be damned if you’re going to do it sober. The waiter gives you a curt little sneer as he leaves the table, and you can’t tell if he disapproves of interspecies dating or if he simply caught a whiff of your companion.

  It only takes eleven minutes for the appetizers to arrive (you know because in the interim you check your watch twenty-seven times), but by then the conversation has completely ground to a halt and the two of you are just staring into space. Suddenly, though, your date seems extremely excited at the prospect of the sweetbread and leaps from the table, knocking two more glasses of water all over you. The shock of ice water, though—again!—is the least of your worries. Your date has grabbed the waiter and seems to be trying to grind on him or something. Enough, you think! This has almost gotten as bad as that time at the bowling alley!

  If you think your date and the waiter make a lovely couple and use this distraction as an opportunity to sneak out, turn to page 16.

  If you try help the waiter, who doesn’t seem terribly interested in the affections of your reeking date, turn to page 24.

  Back

  8

  Since you have no reason to believe the toothpaste is even being manufactured for retail sales yet, chasing down phantom crates would just be delaying the inevitable. “I think we have to hit Crogaste HQ,” you say.

  Your poor Celica is banged up almost beyond recognition, and the engine is doing a sputtering thing that doesn’t bode well. You park on a hill overlooking the building, though, and realize that your car is the least of your worries. It looks like some kind of beehive, if bees were zombies and hives were 14-story office buildings spattered liberally with blood and gore. “I don’t know that we’re going to pull this off,” you say.

  “I’ll do it,” Candice insists. “They seem to be drawn to the toothpaste—I’ll smear it on the walls as I go. Maybe that will keep the zombies off me long enough to yank some hard drives from our research department or something. If there’s any chance we can stop this madness, I have to try.”

  “That tube won’t last long,” Ernie says. “What if we dilute it with something to make more paste? Then we can all take some and go together.”

  “Except we don’t know that a diluted toothpaste will attract zombies at all,” Candice replies. “We can’t risk it. I think I have to do this alone.”

  Candice’s plan might be the best idea, but there’s no way you’re going to send your only aunt into that building alone. If you volunteer for tube duty and go in yourself, turn to page 230.

  If you decide to dilute the toothpaste, hoping a little goes a long way, and go in with both your companions, turn to page 118.

  Back

  9

  You don’t know what’s going on here, but you sure as crap didn’t sign up for fighting any zombies today. You slowly back away from the creature approaching you, and when you realize that it isn’t moving particularly fast, break into an all-out run.

  You try dialing 9-1-1 on your cell phone, but of course you never get service in this part of town. Your best bet is probably to get back to your car and just drive to the police station (or at least up a hill or something until you get cell reception). As you round the corner, though, you stop in your tracks. Half a dozen zombies have piled out of the spaghetti place and are now milling about in front of your car. Zombie loiterers? One of them is even climbing on the hood and appears to be to licking the windshield.

  What the..? Do Toyota Celicas taste like brains or something?

  None of these zombies seem very focused—if you’re clever and quick enough, you may be able to get past them and into your car. On the other hand, you don’t want to find out what happens if you’re not quite as quick or clever as you think.

  If you try to get to your car (blech—you just had it washed, too!), turn to page 80.

  You just ran from one zombie—if you can’t imagine what would make you want to take on six, turn to page 37.

  Back

  10

  “Listen,” you say as the officer hauls you out of the chief’s office. “The law doesn’t have any provisions for situations like this. You can’t play a zombie apocalypse strictly by the book! The book is going to get us all killed!” A small crowd is forming around you. “You can sit in here with Clampy Pete and let this city be overrun by the living dead, or you can break the freaking rules and go take your city back! Who’s with me?”

  Surprisingly, almost all of them are. It seems they’ve been shell-shocked by the day’s events and just needed someone to light a fire under them. “Somebody get a gun for my friend here,” the officer who brought you in yells. “Let’s go kick some zombie ass!”

  An hour later, the two of you are pinned behind a burning car in the middle of what looks like a war zone. “The zombies are kicking our ass!” the officer says. Bullets fly everywhere, punctuated by the occasional grenade blast. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he admits. His name is Vinny. You’ve gotten quite close.

  “We’re not getting out of here alive, are we?” you say. Your ammo is running low, and the zombies keep coming in waves.

  “Nope,” Vinny agrees. “What you’ve got to ask yourself now is, do you want to end up like one of them?” He gestures toward a zombie before pumping it full of lead. “Or do you want to save the last bullet for yourself?”

  If you’re a “keep shooting until you run out of ammo and damn the consequences” type of zombie fighter, turn to page 127.

  If you save a round for yourself to make sure you don’t join the ranks of the living dead, turn to page 235.

  Back

  11

  See, that was a test to see if you’re taking this whole choose-for-yourself thing seriously. There are like fifty zombies between you and the police station. Probably more, since they’ve been killing people and turning them into additional zombies while you’re standing there.

  You really want to dive right into that? You’re sure?

  If you suspect that when the book itself starts questioning your judgment it might be a good time to reconsider the zombie disguise plan, turn to page 183.

  If you would like to know which part of “flip out and get medieval on their undead asses” the book didn’t understand, turn to page 155.

  Back

  12

  “We have to destroy it now while we have a chance!” you whisper to Ernie.

  “That’s just what I was thinking!” he whispers back. The two of you stand there for a moment, staring at Princess. “How do we do that?” he asks.

  You’re not far from an abandoned construction site, so you concoct an elaborate
plan that involves cunning, subterfuge, quite a bit of wet cement, and crushing the dog under several plates of heavy steel for good measure. Princess just limps around and kind of looks at you funny the whole time. You start to have second thoughts about the whole plan. Is it possible that you’ve misjudged the dog after all?

  You look at Princess. Princess looks at you. If only there was a way to know what’s going through that evil, canine head. Then, as you stare into the dog’s eyes, something in its gaze tells you that although you can’t read its thoughts, it knows exactly what you’re thinking.

  “Ernie! Get the steel plates!” you scream. Alas, it’s too late. Princess leaps up and tears your throat out in one swift motion.

  You knew you couldn’t trust that thing.

  THE END

  Back

  13

  “Let’s keep moving,” you say. The market provides no shelter, anyway, and you’d rather look for supplies somewhere that isn’t crawling with the undead. Plus, Isabelle’s organic zombie cure thing seems iffier the more you think about it. You need to find someplace to hunker down for the night, and hopefully rustle up some grub first. You’re starting to worry that you’ll wind up going hungry when you stumble upon a grocery store, shining in the middle of the city like a glittering oasis.

  It’s locked up tight, but a metal garbage can through the front window solves that problem. There’s enough food inside to feed your crew for weeks, or even months. Someone discovers a microwave oven in the employee break room and gets to work making Bagel Bites and Pizza Pockets.