Zombocalypse Now Read online

  “Yes, sir,” the officer says noncommittally. “Pretty sure that’s certain death, though.”

  This is insane! It would be just like Clampy Pete to run his police station strictly by the book, even in the event of biblical end times. The last thing you’re going to do is to beg him for help, though. Maybe you can convince some of the officers that if they hope to survive, they’re going to have to start breaking a few rules?

  Then again, you came here looking for a safe place to wait things out. Perhaps if you broke some rules yourself they’d lock you up, which might not be the most comfortable way to wait out the zombie plague, but would beat the alternative hands down.

  If you think you can talk some sense into the police force and convince them not to chuck you out into the zombie insanity, turn to page 10.

  If you’ll settle for a jail cell and come up with a plan to get yourself thrown in one, turn to page 134.

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  52

  “Count me in,” you say. “Now, what’s this about a shotgun?” Mittens leads you back to her car and opens the trunk to display a staggering array of weaponry. You’re not sure if hand grenades are standard issue police gear, but it’s good to know you have access. “Shouldn’t we call for backup or something?” you ask.

  “Yeah, about that. I’m kind of on suspension right now,” Mittens says. “For shooting some guys.” She gives you a hard look that adds “because they asked too many questions,” and you decide not to press the matter.

  The next few days are a weird combination of Dirty Harry and Night of the Living Dead, with Mittens intimidating bartenders and street hustlers, and occasionally gunning down the stray zombie. You stumble upon a gang of thugs who are mass-producing capsules filled with zombie pus to sell as anti-infection pills (zombie drug mules and the zombie protection racket had already proven ineffective). The goal, as far as you can tell, is to make a lot of money and kill a lot of dudes? It doesn’t seem well thought out, but their plan could spread the zombie plague awfully fast. “We need to stop this before those pills hit the street,” you tell Mittens.

  “There’s no time,” she says. “These are Fat Jimmy’s guys. I should have known he was behind this. If we hurry, we can stop it all at the source!”

  If you agree that the best idea is to climb the corporate ladder and take things up with the delightfully named Fat Jimmy, turn to page 257.

  If you think stopping the zombie drug trade is a more pressing matter, turn to page 176.

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  53

  You’re not sure what disturbs you more—the fact that PerfectForeverLoveMatch.com set you up with a zombie or the fact that it took half an hour for you to distinguish it from every other internet date you’ve ever had. The last thing you need right now is to go tagging along with Crazy McShooterson out there. If there are any more of those things running around, let her take care of them. You need to sit down with a stiff drink and think long and hard about how it all came to this.

  The bad news is that the waitstaff has completely abandoned the place along with all the customers. The good news is, so has the bartender. You grab a bottle of gin off the top shelf and play with the squirter gun thing until you figure out which button makes the tonic water come out. The first drink is exactly what the doctor ordered, although it doesn’t seem to provide much insight into your dating troubles. Surprisingly, the second and third don’t bring any startling revelations, either.

  Your slow, steady march toward oblivion is interrupted by a chorus of moans, and you look up from your glass to see several zombies marching toward you. But their vacant, drooling faces just remind you of all the self-absorbed losers you’ve ever been set up with. Busting a few zombie heads might prove cathartic right now.

  You know what your trouble is? Zombies. If it weren’t for those rotting bastards, your life would be great! If you wisely take out your frustrations on the undead, turn to page 67.

  Slow down there, champ. That’s just the booze talking. If you decide that violence is not the solution and try to escape through the kitchen, turn to page 180.

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  54

  You ask the girl (it turns out her name is Madison) to show you where she buried the devil dog four years ago, and she begrudgingly agrees to lead you there. Her thumbs continue twiddling on her cell phone as you follow her up a hill away from town. Neither you nor Ernie have phone reception, so you’re not sure who she thinks she’s texting.

  Darkness is falling as you crest the hill (odd, you think, since it’s 11 in the morning). Madison tells you that you’ve arrived, and a handwritten, misspelled sign nailed to a tree confirms it. The poor spelling, however, bothers you less than the preternatural darkness and the deep sense of foreboding that seeps out from every leaf, rock, and shrub.

  A decaying wooden cross carved with the word “Princess” has been stuck haphazardly into the earth. That would be the devil dog’s grave, you think, based on the marker, the way the ground underneath it is as black as coal, and the overwhelming feeling of evil you get when you look at it. You stand in silence for a moment. Not sure what to do next, Ernie picks up a stick and gingerly pokes at the grave.

  Princess, who has been following the three of you since you left the house—growling and shuddering the entire way—suddenly leaps at Ernie and bites hard into his shin. “Ernie!” you yell, running to your friend as he frantically kicks the small dog away. It hits the ground with a yelp and runs under a bush.

  “Cut it off!” Ernie howls. “Cut off my leg! Quick, before the zombie sickness spreads!”

  Madison looks at him with a mixture of pity and disdain. “Don’t be such a wenis,” she says. “He bites me like five times a week.”

  “It’s bitten you before?” Ernie asks, wild-eyed. She rolls up her sleeve to reveal a heavily bandaged forearm, and your friend starts to calm down. “You’ve never turned into a zombie, have you?”

  “Also, Princess is a boy?” you add.

  Madison just rolls her eyes. “Are you guys retarded or something? What’s a zombie?”

  As if on cue, a pair of decaying corpses wander out from the tree line, apparently drawn by the commotion. Your first instinct is to run, but with Ernie’s new leg wound, you’re not sure how quickly he’ll be able to get down the hill. In addition, Madison doesn’t seem big on following directions, and if you get her killed, trying to explain to her parents that zombies did it might come across as a little sketchy.

  On the plus side, maybe they’ll eat Princess.

  If you decide to run, getting Ernie and Madison away from the zombies as quickly as possible, turn to page 185.

  If you think the best way to protect them is to stay and fight, turn to page 240.

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  56

  You settle into forest life and the days take on a steady, reassuring pace. At times you even forget the hellish nightmare you left behind in the city. There’s plenty of wood for the fire, and you replenish your water supplies from the river; if you learn to hunt you could potentially stay out here for years.

  You’re not much of a shot (and though you’re not technically related, shooting at rabbits just feels wrong), so you concentrate on finding larger game. Weeks pass, but eventually your patience pays off. You’re lying on your belly in the underbrush when a deer silently appears nearby. Your heart pounds as you get the animal in your sight (and yes, you know this is how Bambi’s mom died, but you could eat for weeks on that thing!). You have only one shot at this. You aim, relax your grip, and squeeze the trigger.

  Miss! The animal raises its ears at the crack of the rifle but doesn’t bound off. You can’t believe you’ve got another chance! As you reload, it turns toward you, and you notice the wild, staring eyes. Matted gore covers its downy chest. Terrified, you pump a bullet into it, but the thing doesn’t even flinch. You leap to your feet and run for the safety of the cabin. But you know what? Undead wildlife? Way faster than undead people.

  Something hits you from beh
ind and you fall to the ground, feeling teeth sinking slowly into your neck.

  You get eaten by a zombie deer.

  THE END

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  57

  Forget the whitening action. You flee the approaching zombies and narrowly avoid getting boxed in by another bunch at the end of the aisle. Suddenly your head is spinning from the exertion, and you remember that you’re still losing blood. Do they sell first-aid kits in this store? Don’t they keep stuff like that in the employee bathroom?

  You make a beeline for the commode, and sure enough, you find some basic medical supplies there. You lock yourself in, bandage up as well as you can, and then promptly pass out.

  When you eventually awaken, you find that you’ve done a fair job patching yourself up based on the relatively small amount of dried blood on the bathroom floor. You quench your thirst from the tap, but your belly is groaning with hunger, so you unlock the door and look out.

  The place is packed thick with the undead. Seriously, it’s like a Pearl Jam concert out there. You grab a box of Cocoa Krispies from an aisle-cap display and scurry back to your bathroom burrow. Eventually you risk another excursion for milk, but the crowd is somehow even thicker. Hours pass. Days? You have no way of knowing. You worry that you’ve started to hallucinate when Pop starts dropping subtle hints that Snap and Crackle are plotting against you.

  If you decide that it’s madness to stay in here another minute and make a last-ditch, desperate sprint for the front door, turn to page 256.

  If you remain calm, try to get some rest, and figure out what to do in the morning (assuming that damn Crackle doesn’t sell you down the river while you sleep), turn to page 96.

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  58

  You turn around and start busting the heads of zombies between you and the store, hoping to clear away enough to get safely back inside. One of your crew sees you coming, however, and jumps the gun. “No!” you shout as the door swings open. “Keep it shut!” Too late—the horde overwhelms the poor sap at the gate and starts pushing into the shop.

  You yell at the group to arm themselves and fight back, but this doesn’t go terribly well, either. Whatever they’re doing in there, they do with a little too much enthusiasm, because soon the whole front window comes crashing down. This lets a much greater number of zombies gain entrance, and also showers you with a hail of broken glass. The legion of undead redoubles its efforts, and you start to falter. This is it, you think.

  Suddenly the ice cream truck—now covered in scrap metal and wooden spikes—appears out of nowhere and flattens a swath of living dead. Daryl pulls you on board. “Dude, I think it’s a lost cause in there,” he says, surveying the mad frenzy inside the store. “Should we go in anyway?”

  You’ve lost a lot of blood from the broken glass. And you know in your heart that no one is getting out of that retail outlet alive.

  If you figure that today is a reasonably good day to die and tell Daryl to drive his homemade tank right into the sporting goods store in one final blaze of glory, turn to page 190.

  If you’re sad to lose your group but would rather live to fight another day, turn to page 253.

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  59

  “Say hello to my little gasoline-powered friend,” you sneer. You’ve never actually seen the movie, but you’re pretty sure the line is from Scarface, and you feel like whatever Al Pacino’s character’s name is. You brandish your chainsaw like a coked-out mobster, and the legion of undead around you doesn’t stand a chance.

  Eventually you finish carving them up and find yourself lightheaded from the adrenaline. Now the whole “gasoline-powered” bit has you thinking—you’re going to need to refuel this thing if you want to keep up the slaughter. And the idea of heaving around a big slopping tank of gas doesn’t thrill you. What you need are some wheels.

  You glance around for something to heist. That’s right, you’re a badass gangster now, so why not? You spot an SUV parked on the corner, but the doors are locked. Also, the dashboard looks like it’s stuck on there pretty good, and to tell the truth, you wouldn’t have any idea how to hotwire an automobile even if it came with two wires sticking out from underneath the steering wheel and a vehicle-theft instruction manual.

  If you decide to head back toward the restaurant to pick up your own car and then load it up with gasoline, turn to page 188.

  If you’d rather travel light and see how far you can get on the chainsaw fuel you already have, turn to page 145.

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  60

  You pull off the headless corpse’s uniform. He doesn’t need it anymore, and if you’re going to get to the bottom of all this, you’ll be better off traveling incognito. Not to mention armed—you take the soldier’s weapon, too.

  After a little wandering you find a building that appears to serve as a command center. Soldiers are running in and out, and the two guards posted at the front door aren’t questioning any of them. Crossing your fingers, you fall in behind a panicked group of soldiers. They pass unmolested, but suddenly a heavy hand comes down on your shoulder.

  “Drop your weapon!” one guard shouts. “Now, or we shoot!” You do as you’re told, and then lay face down on the pavement when further instructed to do so. Uh-oh, you think. How did they find you out?

  “There are over 2,000 personnel stationed at this base, soldier,” the guard says. “And not one of them is a stuffed bunny. Dumbass.”

  Ah. Okay, now what? Maybe if you tell them you have information about the zombie invasion, they’ll take you to see someone important and you can find out what’s going on here. On the other hand, everyone seems a little twitchy about all the undead, and if they think you have something to do with it, they might just shoot you.

  If you try to convince the guards you have important information about the plague, turn to page 262.

  If you tell them you have no idea what’s going on and you’re just on base looking for someplace safe from zombies, turn to page 31.

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  61

  You’re down to the base instincts of the undead now, and those instincts tell you that if something is warm and moving you should try to eat it. So you force your way through the throng toward the thing that lives. It’s frantically swinging a stick around, which is convenient for you, because it clears a lot of the irrelevant pasty-gray things out of your way, making it easier for you to approach your meal.

  As you come within its grasp, suddenly the thing stops swinging. If you were still able to recognize facial expressions, you might see a look of shock and deep loss in its eyes. It stares at you and lifts its weapon above its head once again, but then drops the stick and falls to its knees, apparently unable to continue for reasons far beyond your understanding.

  Lucky break for you, though. You bite into an exposed portion of torso. Mmm, human flesh—that’s good eating. And somewhere in there is the mother lode. Instinct tells you that if you keep chewing, you’ll eventually strike brain.

  As you eat, however, something happens. The pink, warm flesh turns cold, and then starts to smell the same as all the others around you. Gross. You have no interest in eating that. What happened to your delicious meal? You get up and wander away from the crowd, hoping to stumble upon something tasty again. After a while you notice that something in an umpire’s outfit is following you. You have a vague memory involving umpires and deliciousness, but upon further inspection this is just another run-of-the-mill zombie.

  The two of you wander off together, looking for dinner, into the sunset.

  THE END

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  62

  “We’ll take the job,” you say before Mittens has a chance to weigh in. Despite all her bravado, you know she’s been itching to get her badge back. And anyway, the zombie church is super creepy, and you’re hardly eager to go back there alone.

  You’re sworn in and assigned to a group of veteran officers who seem to know your partner well. Mittens takes charge, and you quickly throw out t
he bogus drug mule lead and turn your attention to the zombie pill-manufacturing scheme that you turned up yesterday. It leads to a terribly exciting shoot-out with Fat Jimmy’s thugs, and after gunning them down, Mittens decides to destroy the pills rather than bringing them in for evidence.

  You’re afraid the other cops will object, but they’re getting tired of Clampy Pete’s by-the-book paper-pushing, too. In fact, after a few days of breaking the rules and getting results, they ask Mittens to join them in a mutiny against the police captain and replace him as chief.

  Mittens turns to you for guidance. “You and I both know that none of this means anything until we find out what’s going on inside that church,” she says. Also, a police revolt could get a lot of good people killed needlessly. On the other hand, with Mittens as captain, you’d be far better equipped to tackle the real zombie problem.

  If you think joining the police mutiny is the best course of action, turn to page 94.

  If you want no part of it and tell Mittens you’d rather leave the force and tackle the church yourself, turn to page 141.

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