The wide-open market is useless as shelter. You need to get the group somewhere safe.
The market is right in the middle of the city. If you try to get into a nearby building and lock yourselves in,
turn to page 244.
If you’d rather try to find a less densely populated area before dark,
turn to page 157.
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Ernie insists on returning to his house to pick up supplies first, and when you get there, you find that the suburban neighborhood is now festering with undead. You park the car on his lawn about four feet from the front door, and Ernie starts printing things from his computer and gathering supplies into a big black duffel bag. You’ve never seen him so intense. He pulls some bricks of what looks like gray modeling clay out of a cabinet in the garage. Hmm. That can’t be good.
“Um, Ernie?” you say gently. “Are you sure we need all this stuff to go scout out a water filtration plant?”
He laughs nervously. “Just in case. Hey, there’s a place in the mountains outside town. It’s a valley with a river and plenty of wildlife—I’ve always thought of it as the ideal place to hole up in the event of a global catastrophe. That’s our backup plan if things go south, okay?”
Of course Ernie would have a contingency plan for societal breakdown. “Yeah, my parents used to take us camping out there when I was a kid,” you say. “I think I know the place you’re talking about.”
Something in your friend’s eyes is different, you think. It worries you. “Okay, let me go grab my blasting caps,” he says, “and we’ll do this thing.”
Blasting caps? If you’re having second thoughts about the fluoride plan and try to talk Ernie down from the ledge a little,
turn to page 182.
Then again, Ernie seems to have been right about everything so far. If you trust him and continue to the filtration plant,
turn to page 18.
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The zombie science experiment thing was starting to turn kind of gruesome, anyway. You abandon your research plans but can’t bring yourself to put Smitty down. Not after spending all that time on his little zombie shelter and backyard pen. And he may smell like death warmed over (or, actually, just regular death, and getting more and more rancid every day), but at least he’s company.
You rig up a makeshift muzzle for him (and some nose plugs for yourself) and start bringing him along on your walks around the neighborhood. You discover that he can sort of do some tricks, if properly motivated by the flesh of the living. Soon you can’t bear to hear him moaning and scratching at the back door after dark, so you start letting him inside, only for short periods at first. Slowly but surely, Smitty manages to work his way into the house full-time.
Have you ever heard those stories about old ladies who pass away of natural causes alone in their homes, and when they’re eventually discovered, their abandoned, starving poodles have picked the flesh clean off of their bones? I think you can guess where this is going. Except for the natural causes part, and the part where your body is eventually discovered, this happens to you inside of about five days.
THE END
113
Billy turns out to be an excellent shot. He grumbles a little at first, but even hanging halfway out of a moving car, he keeps your path clear of zombies as you drive as fast as you can through the city streets. And Prudence has a keen eye. “Um, can I talk to you about something?” she asks. “Turn left ahead.”
You’d rather she didn’t. “I can’t help you with your boyfriend problems,” you say.
“Now make a right,” she continues. “And Billy’s not my boyfriend. He just kind of fixated on me and decided he wanted to bring me to his dad’s creepy bunker. I think he’s harmless, though. No, I wanted to talk to you about religion.”
Of course you do
. “So, I’m supposed to marry the Prophet, right? But he’s really old and I’m not sure about it.”
“Please, just watch the road,” you say.
There’s no diverting her. “He might die soon,” she says between driving instructions. “And lately he’s been having all these visions. It’s like, all the stuff I’m interested in is suddenly part of our religion. We’re all supposed to anoint each other with glitter. And there never used to be a sacred unicorn prayer.”
Class act, this prophet of hers. “Do you know what I’m getting at?” Prudence asks. She looks at you and pauses for a moment. “Do you think I might be the new prophet?”
With that, you break free of the zombie throng and the freeway onramp comes into view. You’re definitely going to have to drop these kids off separately. Which direction first?
If you head south first to drop Billy off at his bunker,
turn to page 42.
If you head north toward Prudence’s religious compound thing, or whatever it is,
turn to page 181.
114
You see a lone soldier hunkered down behind an overturned jeep, frantically shooting at a group of zombies that have him pinned down. The gunfire is slowing them a bit, but they’re still coming. “Aim for the heads!” you yell. Ernie seems pretty sure that you have to separate a zombie from its brains, either by beheading it or just smashing it up real bad, in order to put it out of commission.
The soldier stops firing for a moment, and you run behind the jeep with him. “Who the hell are you?” he asks.
“It doesn’t matter,” you say. “I’m backup.”
Your new friend offers you an automatic weapon, and you develop a strategy of running up to a zombie, shooting its face all to hell and then running back to cover to check if it has any measurable amount of head left.
“That’s nice thinkin’ there, Rabbit Ears,” the soldier says after you’ve cleared the immediate vicinity. “I’m Velasquez, but the guys call me ‘Frenchie.’ I know, I know. Once you get a nickname around here, it kind of sticks. We should try to find the rest of my unit—actually, why don’t you grab some cammo or something so you fit in a little better?”
You find a jacket and hat inside the jeep, and figure they’ll do the trick. Velasquez just chuckles when he sees you, and once you track down some of his compatriots you find out why. They kick up their heels and salute. “Sir!” one barks. “We’ve lost contact with central command. What are your orders, sir?”
“Yeah, sir,” Velasquez says. “What are your orders?” You decide that a little organization beats a lot of anarchy, so you run with it and, using a similar strategy as before, start attacking small groups of zombies and gathering stray soldiers where you can. It gets ugly, and you lose a lot of good men over the course of the day, but eventually the tide turns. You corral the bulk of the remaining zombies around a munitions tent, where Velasquez tosses in a grenade and blows them all to kingdom come.
Hmm. You could get the hang of this army commander stuff.
It’s dusk by the time you and your platoon (you have no idea if “platoon” is the right term, but whatever) finish clearing the perimeter. Upon returning to the command center, though, you’re in for a shock. The place is packed with zombies. It seems that every living thing inside is not so much alive.
That explains the communications blackout, you suppose. It also puts you in charge. The platoon, grimy and exhausted from fighting all day, looks at you expectantly.
If you tell them that they’re relieved of duty, and to get back home and check on their families,
turn to page 193.
If you decide that, exhausted or not, you’re going to march their sorry asses right into town and try to clean this zombie mess,
turn to page 242.
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You drive south on the strangely empty freeway until you get to the beach and the surrounding town of pricey restaurants and vacation homes. There are a number of private islands not far off the coast, and you figure that any of them might make a good spot to wait for the whole zombie situation to blow over.
A large crowd is lined up by the marina, and at first you fear that it’s a zombie outbreak. Closer inspection, however, reveals protest signs, folk singers, and plush-covered figures of all shapes and sizes. Oh, no—it’s one of those stuffed animal rights groups. Part of you would rather see the decomposing flesh of the undead.
It’s not that you aren’t bothered by the shortage of positive stuffed animal role models on television, or disagree that Roger Rabbit is an offensive racial stereotype. You just find most of the protester-types insufferable. After all, you can legally marry whomever you want. You don’t have a difficult time finding work. The popular image of stuffed animals as harmless and cuddly may be irritating, but that doesn’t mean that you would compare your “plight” to the civil rights movement or anything. You had hoped to commandeer a small boat and make your way out to sea, but it looks like you’ll have to get through the crowd first. At least you won’t stand out.
As you get out of the car, you see a college-aged stuffed giraffe frantically painting over his carefully-crafted protest banner. It piques your interest. “What’s going on?” you ask.
“Oh,” he replies. “Hey, I’m Josh. We were going to do our usual SA awareness schtick, but these guys were already out here rallying for the rights of Undead Americans. It seemed like a better protest, so we decided to join up with them.”
“Undead what, now?”
A small, middle-aged man with glasses and a jaunty cap approaches. “Undead Americans,” he says proudly. “We’re the regional chapter of the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. And reports of civil rights abuses against this new and little-understood community are nothing short of horrifying.”
His earnestness catches you off guard. “It’s not . . . they’re not . . .” you stutter. “
They eat your brain.
”
“And no one is disputing that brain eating is wrong. But we already have anti-brain-eating laws on the books. To engage in violence against an entire community because of the actions of a few isolated individuals goes against everything America stands for. It’s
genocide
.”
Now you’re just confused. “We got word of a sizable Undead American rights march coming this way,” he continues, “and we’re here to show solidarity.” Sure enough, just up the street a mass of zombies approaches, moaning with hunger.
Josh is eagerly unfurling his banner, which now reads, “Genocide = Bad News.” This is going to get ugly, you think.
If you want no part of this and make a run for one of the boats in the marina,
turn to page 275.
If you stick around in an effort to convince as many of these well-meaning but horribly deluded protesters as possible to abandon their plans and escape with you,
turn to page 120.
118
It seems to you that if the undead can smell the toothpaste in a sealed tube inside the glove compartment of your locked car, watering it down a little isn’t going to be an issue.
You contemplate waiting for morning (because, seriously, a wall-to-wall mass of undead is just that much scarier at night), but decide that the zombie plague is only getting worse, and time is of the essence. You drive to a mostly-gutted convenience store you passed on the way in that still has a selection of berry-mango flavored iced teas so foul-tasting that even the looters passed them up. You dump out the contents of one, fill the glass bottle up with water from the restroom, and squeeze in a tiny bit of toothpaste, shaking up the concoction.
“I’m still not sure about this,” Candice worries. “We should test it first.” Glancing outside, you spot a pair of zombies making a beeline for the mini-mart. You open the front door and toss your toothpaste bomb over their heads. “Braaaiiins!” one of them moans excitedly when it hits the pavement and shatters.
Both zombies turn immediately and hurry to the spot with the broken glass, falling to their knees and trying to lick the mixture up from the pavement. Then they start to roll around in it. After a minute, they both fall into some sort of lethargic, grinning trance.
This might work even better than you’d hoped.
You fill up a few dozen bottles and head back to Crogaste, where the undead horde reacts in much the same way. Once they get a whiff of toothpaste water, the entire zombie herd completely ignores the three of you. The most challenging part, in fact, is aiming your cocktails so that the swarming crowd doesn’t impede your progress toward the building. The throng out front finally gets so thick that you can’t even see the entrance, so you go around back and discover the rear hallways to be much more sparsely populated with the living dead.
The second most challenging part is dealing with the stench. Candice leads you through the corridors, which are dripping with blood and zombie goo. “Where to now?” she asks. “We could check out Research and Development or head straight to the top floor where the executive offices are.”
R&D sounds like the place where you could find out what the hell is in this stuff, which for zombies is apparently like crack cocaine. If you check there first,
turn to page 164.
On the other hand, we’re talking about something that kills people and then brings them back from the grave, so there might be something a little bigger going on here. If you think you’ll find more answers in the CEO’s office,
turn to page 198.
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