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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

You find shipping crates in the loading bay out back, and use one to board up the shattered window, making the store a serviceable shelter for the night. When morning comes, you instruct your crew to gather up as much food as they can carry. The group, though, has other ideas.

“We voted on it, and it was unanimous,” Isabelle says. “We want to make this our new home.” She smiles broadly. “If we leave, who’s going to eat all this ice cream?”

Maybe they’re right. If you decide to wait out the zombie apocalypse with them in this consumer paradise, turn to page 139.

On the other hand, your gut tells you that the whole zombie situation isn’t going to just blow over, and even this much food will eventually run out. If you decide to leave the group and strike out on your own, turn to page 47.

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14

“You picked the wrong day to die,” you say in your best action hero monotone. “And then, uh, come back to life again. Sort of.” You’re going to have to work on your one-liners. The zombie keeps stumbling toward you, and you back up slowly, not at all wanting to touch it. You glance around for something heavy to hit it with, but nothing presents itself. Could you take off your shoes and throw them? That just seems dumb.

The zombie lunges at you, and suddenly you’re out of choices. You tackle it at the waist, trying to avoid its whole face area, where the biting and chewing happens. It falls backward with you on top, hitting its head against the pavement with a loud smack. You untangle yourself quickly, but fortunately the thing seems to have stopped moving. Well, that wasn’t so hard. You hurry to the zombie’s victim, still lying in the middle of the street. “Are you okay?” you ask.

“Nnnnnnnnggg.” Hold on. Was that an “ow my leg hurts” groan, or an “I hunger for the flesh of the living” groan?

“Brrraaaaiiinnns,” he continues, trying to stand up even though his leg seems to be chewed down to the bone. Crap. You hear another moan, and glance behind you to see that the first zombie is revived and back on its feet. Double crap. To make things worse, a mob of screaming pedestrians rounds the corner with several new zombies close behind. “They ate Mr. Friskums!” one of them cries. “Save us!”

If you attempt to rescue the crowd from the ever-growing legion of undead, turn to page 21.

This is spiraling out of control. If you decide to run for help, turn to page 30.

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15

You rip the toothpaste out of its packaging and pop the top off, squirting a healthy glop right in a zombie’s face.

It falls away, clawing at itself and trying to slurp the paste into its mouth. Its two undead companions lose interest in you as well, mobbing the first zombie to get a piece of sweet toothpaste action. That worked surprisingly well! You squirt another glop at the zombies on the passenger side with similar results. They can’t get enough of this stuff!

During the fracas, however, the undead crowd around you has grown. You can’t even see your friends anymore. Zombies rush the car, and you squirt toothpaste at them until you’re out, throwing the empty tube as a last resort. Still they come. You look down and see a big smear of paste on your arm. You frantically wipe it on your pants, but realize that you’re only making things worse.

Clammy hands grab at you, and before you know it you feel teeth as well. Slowly, your consciousness drains away and is replaced by the hunger. The smell is overwhelming, and you join your zombie brethren in desperately trying to get a taste of the paste. You realize now that zombies don’t crave the stuff because it tastes like brains.

Zombies crave brains because they taste like this.

THE END

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16

You know what? That waiter can take care of himself. You ditch your weirdly aggressive and possibly drunk date, handing a twenty-dollar bill to the greeter on the way out to cover the appetizers.

As you walk toward your car, you smell something all too familiar. At first you think your date followed you out of the restaurant, but you look around and see a middle-aged woman stumbling toward you, grunting and staring blankly just like your date did. What is this, an epidemic? You walk faster, and get inside your car just as the woman reaches you. You feel a bump, and glance in your mirror to see some guy climbing on your trunk. A third person, with a gaping head wound that makes gender difficult to determine, presses two bloody hands against your car window.

“Braaaaaaiins,” it moans.

The realization hits you like a freight train. Zombie invasion! This, in turn, makes you feel a little better about abandoning your date and a lot worse about not helping the waiter. You lock the doors, turn the key in the ignition, and step on the gas, feeling ill-equipped to deal with a situation like this. Your friend Ernie might know what to do—he’s always going on about the paranormal and secret government plots and  so forth. On second thought, Ernie might not be the most stable person to turn to in a crisis.

If you decide to get Ernie’s advice on what is turning into a really weird day, turn to page 40.

If you decide you’re better off driving toward some actual authority, like the police, turn to page 86.

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17

West it is. The streets are swimming with undead, but you know your neighborhood well enough to avoid getting trapped, and arrive home safely. On your way to the stairs, you’re startled by a figure lurking near the mailboxes. Your first instinct is to hit it with something heavy and run, but it turns out to be the girl who lives in the apartment underneath yours.

You’ve never introduced yourself, but you have chatted with her once or twice in passing, and she seems to be at least medium-friendly. And also super, crazy good-looking. She’s like French and Japanese or something.

You do the neighborly thing and warn her that zombies have overrun the city, but it looks like you might be a tad late. “Nnnnngh,” she replies. “Braaaains.” She makes a move toward you, and you hate to admit it, but the whole unkempt, hollow-eyed, lurching thing is working for her. The zombies you’ve seen so far have been utterly repulsive, but this one is definitely rocking the reanimated corpse look.

Your fleeing skills are becoming quite honed, and you start to do just that, but hesitate. This isn’t some stranger. You know this girl, kind of. It might be more humane (not to mention safer for the rest of the building) to put her out of her misery. Then again, is there any chance she can still be saved?

If you decide to bring the zombie girl with you in the hopes of finding a cure, turn to page 229.

If that sounds like crazy talk and you just leave her there, turn to page 125.

If you think the responsible thing to do is to put her down, turn to page 147.

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18

The zombies outside seem to be congregating around your car, so you take Ernie’s El Camino instead, burning rubber out of the garage and plowing through a gaggle of undead hooligans in the driveway. You have to admit, a little automotive zombie slaughter actually feels kind of good.

Ernie drives out to the edge of town and turns onto a dirt road, unlatching the little rope barrier with a sign that reads “no unauthorized vehicles beyond this point,” even though you seriously doubt you’re an authorized vehicle. After a short drive, he pulls over and the two of you sneak the rest of the way to the plant, which is surrounded by a high chain link fence.

“That’s what the bolt cutters are for,” Ernie grins, digging through his duffel bag. He gets to work on the fence while you scout the premises for guards. At first, the place appears to be abandoned, but then you spot a guy in a hard hat with a clipboard wandering around on the far side of the facility, probably on a smoke break.

“I thought you said there would be armed guards here or something,” you say when you get back to the spot where Ernie is still cutting chain link. You distinctly remember your friend mentioning the need for overwhelming force.

“Guns, clipboards, whatever,” Ernie replies. Now he’s strapping on a big bandolier-style shoulder belt thing, with who knows what stuffed into the little pouches on it. “A clipboard can be used as a weapon. The point is, this ends now.”

Hmm. Your friend may have gone over the deep end. “Um, right,” you say carefully. “So what’s the plan?”

“The plan is, we set these charges and blow this place sky high.” Yeah. Ernie has left the building. “Don’t you see?” he continues. “The fluoro-industrial complex has been poisoning us for years, and now it’s gone too far. They’re behind all of this! Your aunt’s note proves it!”

He pauses. “Listen, if you don’t want to be part of it, you can leave. That’s why I told you about the valley—go there and hunker down, in case I can’t stop them. But I have to do this, and chances are, I’m not making it out alive. This is my Little Big Horn. My Waterloo. My Endor.”

You’re fairly certain that the rebel forces survived Endor, but now doesn’t seem like the time to bring it up. Also, you suspect that a better plan of action would be to just waltz in and ask the guy in the hard hat if he knows anything about zombies. This is crazy. But then again, who knows? Maybe Ernie’s right. If the plant really is pumping zombie juice into the water, you probably should stop it. Or at least come along to see that any innocent bystanders get out alive while Ernie does his thing.

“What’s it going to be?” your friend demands. “You can leave if you want, but don’t try to stop this. Are you with me or against me?”

If you’re with him, turn to page 276.

If you’re against him, or at least against the insane idea of storming the water facility and blowing it to smithereens, turn to page 88.

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20

Really? You’ve fled every remotely dangerous situation so far, but a swarm of forty or fifty zombies gorging themselves on the flesh of the living sounds like the kind of thing you’d like to take your chances on? I mean, good for you and all. It just seems a little out of character.

You take a closer look at the ghastly scene before you, trying to come up with a plan. It looks like the zombies only prey on regular human beings and never other zombies. How do they know the difference? By sight? Smell? If you disguise yourself as one of them by stinking yourself up with zombie filth, you might be able to get through the mob without drawing any attention. On the other hand, you don’t really know how the whole infestation thing spreads—do you really want to get that close to them?

You know what? You’ve had it with these motherflippin’ zombies on this motherflippin’, um, street. In front of this motherflippin’ police station. You see an abandoned car propped up on a jack in the alley behind you, with a tire iron lying on the curb next to it. You have half a mind to take it as a weapon, wade into the fray, and break some zombie heads.

If you disguise yourself as one of them and try to sneak past the zombie feeding frenzy, turn to page 183.

If you grab the tire iron, flip out and get medieval on their undead asses, turn to page 11.

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21

Fifteen or twenty grown human beings, you think, and they look to a lone, stuffed bunny to save them from zombies. Well, maybe one of them at least has a cigarette. “Listen!” you yell at the panicked crowd. “They don’t move that fast. Everyone follow me at a brisk walk and we’ll all get out of this alive.”

You herd the crowd back toward the restaurant and, sure enough, the zombies are easily outpaced. Once in front of the spaghetti house, though, you see a mess of undead wandering out the door. Looks like your dream date has been busy inside. You think you can make it to your car unmolested, but the crowd around you just stops and stares at this new threat.

“What do we do now?” asks a thin, shirtless gentleman with an AC/DC hat and what looks like a pair of homemade nunchucks. “My name’s Daryl,” he says, wide-eyed and breathless. “I’ve waited my whole life for this. I also have throwing stars.”

It is true that there’s strength in numbers, even if those numbers aren’t particularly bright. Then again, dragging around Daryl’s band of roving yokels might get you killed even quicker.

If you decide to team up with Daryl’s group, or at least try to save them from being eaten, turn to page 63.

If you’d rather take your chances going it alone, turn to page 97.

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22

Good work escaping there, Sparky. Although it’s a common misconception, sweetbreads aren’t brains. They’re thymus or pancreas glands, and although a zombie probably wouldn’t turn down such a meal, it isn’t nearly as mouthwatering as the creamy center of your crunchy noggin.

So you lock yourself back in the kitchen. It’s miserable. Now that you’re no longer passed out, there’s really no place comfortable to lie down, and despite access to plenty of food in the big industrial freezer, the last thing you want to do is eat anything. Also, the restaurant smells horrible. After sitting there for what seems like days (in reality it’s a bit shy of 45 minutes) you peer out into the alley again, only to discover that the size of the undead crowd waiting patiently outside has tripled. Great—now they think this is the place where the free rancid glands get thrown away. You’re like the mom who gives out the full-sized Snickers bars at zombie Halloween.

That leaves the barricaded doors into the restaurant, and anything could be in there. Your memory is hazy, but you can’t imagine that you erected that barrier to keep out puppies and kittens. Now you need to use the restroom, though, and there isn’t one attached to the kitchen. It looks like you’ll have to venture through those doors at some point.

If you take down the makeshift barricade as quietly as possible and risk a peek through the swinging doors, turn to page 39.

No. You live here now. In this kitchen. If you do what it takes—whatever it takes—to make this your permanent hideout until such time as help arrives, turn to page 146.

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23

Nothing against Ernie, but these guys have an underground freaking bunker. You know where you’re not likely to encounter any zombies? An underground freaking bunker. “Sign me up,” you say.

Billy’s dad is pleased that you’ve brought his youngest son home to him, but isn’t quite convinced that you’re bunker material. “You saved my idiot kid,” he says, “and seem to have driven off that squirrelly girl he’s obsessed with. But I can’t let you in unless you bring something to the table. You got any supplies with you? We’re particularly hurting for entertainment and toiletries.”

You rummage through your car and turn up a nearly-empty first aid kit, a promotional tube of toothpaste that your aunt sent you, and a tattered copy of a Danielle Steel novel that somebody apparently left under your seat. You bring it back to Billy’s dad, and he takes a hard look at your sad little offering.

“Alright, you’re in,” he says. “But only because I love me some Danielle Steel.” You climb down the ladder into the bunker, not sure what the future holds in store, but knowing you’d rather be in here than out there.

You hope to never see another zombie again.

THE END

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24

You grab your date’s arm, trying to free the surprised and apparently helpless waiter. He drops your appetizers—and, more tragically, your drink—and suddenly blood spurts everywhere as teeth sink into his skinny neck. Startled, you redouble your efforts, and slowly your date turns toward you. With the addition of a mouthful of gore, the hollow, staring eyes, intermittent moans, and shambling demeanor suddenly make a lot more sense.

It would appear that you’ve been on a blind date with the living dead.

At this point, the other restaurant patrons start stampeding for the door. You trip over something squishy—sweetbread, most likely—and your date falls on top of you. This is it, you think. This is the worst internet date ever. You try to free yourself, but your perfect forever love match is surprisingly strong for a corpse. Its teeth are inches away from your face.

Suddenly the room explodes with the sound of gunfire, and your undead lover falls away. A woman with an oversized handgun and a steely-eyed expression to match then fires seven more rounds into your date’s torso. The zombie seems unfazed, pulling itself to its feet and slouching toward this new threat.

“Behind you!” you yell. The waiter, covered in his own gore, now has the same vacant eyes and questionable posture as your date, and is reaching for the woman from behind. She casually finishes reloading and pumps most of her new clip directly into the first zombie’s face, blowing its brains out the back of its head. Then she turns and sticks her gun’s muzzle in the waiter’s gaping mouth. She squeezes the trigger, and with a disgusting splat both mostly-headless zombies fall to the floor.

That was totally badass.

“You’re welcome,” the woman says as she turns toward the door. Your first thought is that you could really use that gin and tonic about now. On the other hand, maybe you should tag along with your new friend for a while. After all, she has a gun and knows how to use it. And who knows if there are any more of these things wandering around?

Screw it. If you head to the bar to try and process whatever it was that just happened, turn to page 53.

If you follow the woman with the gun on the off chance that those weren’t the only two zombies in this whole book, turn to page 102.

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26

After fishing keys from the pulpy mess under the truck’s tires, you lead the group to the abandoned bus without incident. Despite Daryl’s pleadings, you can’t justify letting him pilot either vehicle—Isabelle’s calm demeanor seems more suited to the task, and when you find out she did a stint as a long-haul trucker in the early ’80s, it seals the deal.

As you strap yourself into the ice cream truck, the zombie presence seems noticeably thicker, and the bulk of the crowd is between you and where you need to go. That’s okay, you think. You’re driving three tons of refrigerated steel.

You step on the gas, and the first zombie hits your windshield and splatters like a bug. At first it sticks there, hampering your view, but a quick jerk of the wheel sends the gooey husk tumbling off to the curb. A glance in your rear view mirror confirms that Isabelle is following closely, so you speed up. Three more zombies meet their end on your grill, and you wing at least ten others. You wouldn’t want to do this every day, but eventually the undead crowd thins out, and before long you’re at your destination without a reanimated corpse in sight.

“Dude!” Daryl squeals as he and the others climb off the bus. “That was freakin’ AWESOME. Do you think you got the queen? If you get the queen, all the others will go back to normal!”

“You know, I think that’s vampires, not zombies,” you reply. Come to think of it, you’re not even sure vampires work that way. “Or you might be thinking of bees.” The walls of the sporting goods store are covered in things that could potentially send a zombie back to its freshly-dug grave. After amassing a stockpile of baseball bats and hockey sticks, your group hunkers down for the night. Despite the fact that you’re all indoors, several people begin setting up tents.

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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

The police station isn’t far from here on foot, and you decide that, since your fellow pedestrians are mostly concentrating on running in mad panic, you’d better head over there and tell the authorities what you know. Someone seems to have abandoned a city bus in the middle of the street, further complicating the flow of traffic, but by keeping a careful watch and altering your route as needed, you manage to get to the station without invoking the wrath of any walking corpses.

As you approach, however, a blood-curdling scream fills the air. You race ahead to see a  terrifying, gory mess—zombies are everywhere, gorging on helpless bystanders in an undead feeding frenzy. As far as alerting the cops to the zombie outbreak, you know what? You’re pretty sure they know.

If you hightail it out of there, turn to page 105.

If you think the police station would be an ideal place to wait this whole thing out and try to find a way past the zombie mosh pit to the relative safety inside, turn to page 20.

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38

What the hell. You use your wrench as a crude shovel, and discover that the ground under Princess’s grave is surprisingly soft and easy to dig into. It’s as if the grave wants this, you think. No, that’s crazy. Anyway, it’s just an experiment, you assure yourself. It’s not playing with dangerous, supernatural forces that you don’t understand. It’s science!

After digging a sizable (if somewhat shallow) grave, you and Ernie dump the almost-headless zombie into it and cover it with earth. “Hmm,” Ernie says when you finish. “How long do you think we have to wait?” For a minute, it looks like all your trepidation was for nothing. Suddenly, though, a hand bursts through the ground. The zombie claws its way out of the grave, looking much healthier than when you buried it moments ago. In fact, it seems several feet taller and extremely well-muscled. Also, for some reason, it’s now wearing a cape.

An evil laugh comes from the creature, and you begin to regret your decision. Ernie makes a little whimpering noise. “You have done well,” the zombie says in a booming voice that cuts to your bones. It reaches out and brushes its hand against an oak tree, which instantly rots through and starts moving unnaturally, dripping ooze as it sways. There is no breeze.

“Now bow down before the Zombie Lord.”

What evil have you wrought? If you charge at the Zombie Lord and desperately try to beat it back to death with your monkey wrench, turn to page 144.

Are you kidding? That thing made a zombie out of a friggin’ tree. If you obediently bow before your new master and hope he decides not to kill you, turn to page 255.

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39

You dismantle your makeshift barricade and crack the door open a hair for the tiniest peek outside. The room is dark, so you smell them before you can see them—the stench that was a dull reek in the kitchen stings your nostrils the moment you sniff the air coming from the other room. You open the doors just another smidge and gasp.

Zombies are packed in shoulder to shoulder like undead sardines. Your surprise alerts their dull, pickled brains to your presence, and soon they’re pushing through the swinging doors like Play-Doh being squeezed though a Fun Factory.

You’re not so much killed as utterly devoured. In minutes, there’s no trace of you to be found outside of some happy zombie bellies.

THE END

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40

As you drive away, the figure on your trunk falls and hits the curb with a crack. Yowtch. If you’re wrong about this whole zombie thing, you may have just killed a guy. You look back through your rear view mirror, however, and see him stand up on twisted legs and immediately attack the driver of a passing ice cream truck. That makes you feel . . . ew. Mixed. At best.

Ernie lives on the far side of town, but with some creative driving that involves more than a little reliance on sidewalks, you manage to clear the heart of the zombie infestation. When you finally get to his house, you’re startled by your friend’s appearance. He already looks like he hasn’t slept in days.

“Zombies,” Ernie says carefully after you explain what’s going on. “Okay. That makes sense.” He rushes to his window and peeks through the blinds. “Are they crawling out of graves or being helicoptered in? Did anybody see you come here?”

“I don’t think so,” you say, not sure which question to answer first. “It looked like they were making more zombies by biting regular people. I didn’t see any helicopters. Or a lot of soil or anything.”

“Okay. Okay.” Ernie is deep in thought. “I have some theories. They could be military. I know for a fact the army has been working on classified experiments on cadavers at an underground facility in the New Mexico desert. Who knows what could come from that?”

Government experiments. That sounds pretty bad. “What else have you got?” you ask.

“Well, how much do you know about para-religious suicide cults?” Not a whole lot, you confirm. “Basically, there are forces in the world that defy logical explanation,” Ernie continues. “I’m not prepared to rule out Satan worship or ancient pagan black magic or contact with extra-dimensional beings. If people have tapped into any of these forces, zombie infestations are the kind of thing you might expect.”

Extra-dimensional pagan devil worship. You feel a little pale. “Anything else?”

“There is one more theory,” Ernie says. “You’re not going to like it.”

“What is it?” you ask.

“You have to promise not to laugh.”

“Ernie, just tell me.”

“Fluoride.”

You laugh. “It’s not fluoride, Ernie.”

“No, I have a whole file!” your friend insists, grabbing a bunch of papers out of a desk drawer. “They used it to pacify the anti-war population in the sixties! What if it’s been building up or something? Can you get too pacified? Like, zombie pacified? I don’t know. What do you think we should do?”

If you decide to follow up on the military experiment angle, turn to page 90.

If you think it all sounds more like ancient dark prophecy stuff, turn to page 153.

If Ernie really won you over with his carefully-reasoned fluoride argument, turn to page 224.

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42

You head south to drop off Billy, and although Prudence tries to explain to him that she wants to return to her own family, it doesn’t seem to get through. Finally when you reach his property, he gets out of the car and you and Prudence simply drive away, leaving him there bewildered.

“Are you sure you want to leave it like that?” you ask.

“Oh, it’s okay,” she says. “He doesn’t know where I live.”

Prudence’s home is much farther, and way off the beaten path—it’s almost dark by the time you reach what turns out to be a small, dusty community of simple folk in well-worn clothing. One woman rushes up to you as soon as you pull up.

“Thank Heaven!” she says. “Prudence, I thought we’d lost you, too! The Prophet left with most of the menfolk to fight off those things. They never came back. Who will lead us now? What will we do without a Prophet?”

“You have a Prophet,” Prudence says, remaining completely calm and surprising you as much as anyone. “Look into your heart. You know this to be true.”

The woman doesn’t seem convinced, but is grateful to you for saving Prudence and offers you a place in the compound. She kind of gives you the willies, though, and you’re not sure how appealing you find the whole cult lifestyle. On the other hand, this might wind up being the safest place you’ll find to weather the zombie storm.

If you accept the offer, turn to page 271.

At this point you’re already halfway to the large, metropolitan city to the north, and it may have fared better than your town did. If you decide to head toward the big city instead, turn to page 83.

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43

Afraid to fall asleep, you curl up in the corner of Ernie’s kitchen with your back against the refrigerator and your eyes peeled wide. Needless to say, when your friend comes downstairs, you’re not looking your best. “Yow,” Ernie says. “Are you okay?” You assure him that you just had a hard time sleeping.

“Here, you should eat something,” he continues, opening up a cupboard and grabbing a donut. “Are you hungry?”

Yeah, hungry for brains.

“No! No, I ate already,” you say. Everything’s getting foggy, though. Where are you? What are you doing here? You can’t be certain if the confusion is due to the lack of sleep, or if the sickness is starting to take hold. Don’t think like that! Just calm down. Clear your mind. Go to your happy place, and think about the one thing in the world that can make you content.

Brains.

Oh, crap. “Ernie . . .” You’re losing it. “We . . . need to talk . . .”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “Listen, about yesterday. I’m sorry about all that fluoride stuff. You’re right, we should go find your aunt Candice and see what she can tell us. Or at least make sure she’s okay.”

“No,” you stutter. Brains. “Need to . . .” Brains. “You . . . go . . .” Brains brains brains. “BRAAAAAAAIIIIINNS,” you finally moan as your thoughts fade away into blackness.

By the time Ernie figures out what the hell you’re talking about, it’s too late for him, too.

THE END

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44

What’s the worst thing that could happen? To be honest, you’re proud of yourself. Instead of just fighting or fleeing various undead threats, you’re going to do some scientific research, hopefully saving the life of this poor animal, and maybe the rest of the world to boot. You make a comfy little bed for it, grab a few slices of cold pizza from the fridge (you never did eat anything at dinner) and set about learning all that you can from your new friend.

The first thing you discover is that the little guy is stronger than you thought—that overturned laundry basket sure didn’t hold him like you thought it would. The second thing is that he’s way, way faster than you. And the third thing is that when he gets hungry, that kitten doesn’t screw around.

Zombie victims only become zombies themselves if they escape their attackers with at least some of their brain intact. That’s not the case here. The cat leaps onto your face, chews through your skull and devours the gooey gray matter in about a minute and a half.

You get eaten by a zombie kitten.

THE END

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45

Actually, the spot where your family used to go camping isn’t too far from here. And better yet, you’re pretty sure there’s a ranger station somewhere in these mountains that you might be able to hole up in.

It takes you another day, but you find the cabin (right about the time you start worrying that you both might seriously die of thirst). It’s abandoned but well-stocked with food, water, and a rifle. Billy gives you hunting lessons, and you start to settle into a routine.

After a few weeks, though, Billy is starting to go stir crazy. He decides to head out alone to reunite with Prudence, his lost true love. You’re not terribly sad to see him go, since based on the enthusiasm he displays cleaning game, there’s something not quite right with that kid. His absence leaves you all the more isolated, but the gun training serves you well, particularly later that winter during a close call with a zombie deer.

You never find out how the rest of the world fares, but no one ever comes to check on the ranger station, so that can’t be a good sign. You live out the rest of your days in solitude. Bitter and alone, perhaps, but hey, you survive.

Consider it a win.

THE END

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46

Why not? You give it a shake to dislodge as much residual zombie as possible, throw the bag over your shoulder, and head out. It’s been a long time since you’ve tried to locate a specific address without Google Maps, but you decide to give it your best shot. The first house you find has a full mailbox already. If they haven’t even ventured to the curb since the outbreak, you figure it doesn’t bode well for the aliveness of any potential occupants, so you just cram the new mail in with the old and keep walking. At the next house, however, you’re accosted by a middle-aged man in a bathrobe. “Uh, U.S. Mail,” you say, handing him a stack of letters.

“You came all this way to bring return address labels from PETA? That’s not even how you spell my name,” he grumbles, looking at you like you’re stupid. He may have a point. “And my cable bill? The cable doesn’t even work anymore. I’m not paying this.”

“I’m not with the cable company, sir . . . ,” you start.

“Get the hell off of my lawn.”

You make your way back down the road, feeling a bit foolish. Before you get far, though, a little round woman comes running after you. “Wait!” she says, panting. “Are you really with the post office? Our son lives on campus in the city and we haven’t heard anything from him since all this started. Can you get him a letter?”

She’s staring at you with big, sad mom-eyes. If you agree to look for her son, turn to page 100.

If you try to nip this thing in the bud before it turns into some kind of unbearable Kevin Costner drama, turn to page 215.

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47

You wanted to get this group of yokels to safety, and you suppose you’ve taken care of that. Daryl seems particularly torn up about your departure, but neither he nor any of the others are interested in leaving their newfound paradise. They’re as happy as pigs in an air-conditioned supermarket stuffed with canned and packaged goods.

You hit the streets, but now that you’re on your own, you’re kind of at a loss. Zombies are everywhere, and although they don’t move terribly fast, if you’re not careful, they could box you into a corner, especially since you’re not familiar with this part of town. Maybe you should head west, you think, back toward your apartment. It might not be suited for a long-term stay, but at least you can regroup, get a change of clothes, and try to find something to use as a weapon.

Then your eye is drawn to colorful posters of men and women in skin-tight outfits beating each other up in a nearby store window. A comic book shop! It’s been a while since you’re gotten any new comics—if you can get in, why not stop by and pick some up?

If you think taking comics from the store basically boils down to looting and head straight home instead, turn to page 17.

If you’re okay with the looting, and figure that since the world’s going to end you might as well have plenty of reading material, turn to page 132.

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48

The truth is, with everything you’ve witnessed over the last 24 hours, you trust Ernie more than a bunch of toothpaste guys who couldn’t figure out that grinding up dead animal brains was a bad idea in the first place. “Stay away!” Gary shouts as Ernie approaches his desk. “You’ll never learn my secrets. My password is like a zen koan beneath a layer of unbreakable encryption!”

“It’s ‘passw0rd,’ with a zero instead of an O,” Ernie says, fiddling with the keyboard. “That’s like the most commonly used CEO password since the IT guys started making them use numbers and letters combined.” It doesn’t take your friend long to find what he’s looking for. “Look here,” he says, pointing at an undecipherable flow chart on the screen. “When they did the test samples they just added smartening crystals to the already-made toothpaste. But in the manufacturing process, it goes in earlier, before the fluoride,” he pauses, giving Candice a glare, “and before they activate the extreme whitening compound. That’s why they didn’t catch it earlier—the chemicals react differently when combined in a different order.”

“So how does this help us undo it?” Candice asks.

“It doesn’t,” Ernie replies. “It’s lethal poison. Those zombies are literally dead before they rise up again, and I don’t think we can do anything about it except kill them more.” Gears in your mind start to turn, however. The paste seems to pacify the undead completely, at least for a while. If you could mass produce it, re-killing them would certainly be a lot easier. Ernie checks inventory levels (the information is accessible, but the plant itself, unfortunately, is located off site), and finds that there should be an ample supply of raw materials there.

“Once we start production, we could ship it all over the world!” Candice exclaims. You know that guilt over her part in spreading the zombie plague has been eating your aunt alive, and you’re delighted to see a glimmer of hope return to her eyes. “Ernie, I take it all back,” she says. “You’re a genius!”

Candice insists on rounding up survivors on the way out, and although Gary refuses to budge from his office, you see the speaker phone on his desk that he’s been rambling on about and take it with you. It turns out that the remaining employees have completely lost touch with reality and are worshipping his disembodied voice as a god. They’re pretty far gone, sanitywise, and in retrospect you’re glad that you didn’t count on them for scientific support.

Using the last of your toothpaste water, you manage to get the crazies out of the building. The question is, what do you do with them now? They aren’t in any shape to take care of themselves, and turning them loose will almost certainly mean leaving them to become zombie food. On the other hand, the manufacturing plant is miles away, and you don’t like the idea of two dozen loose cannons mucking up your last ditch attempt to save humanity.

If you decide to take the Crogaste employees along, since you can’t bear to tell your aunt that you want to sacrifice what remains of her co-workers for the greater good, turn to page 202.

If you decide to leave them behind, since the fate of humanity is just too important for you to be messing around with this bunch of nutjobs, turn to page 142.

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50

Calm down. Relax. Everything’s going to be okay. Everything’s NOT going to be okay—you’ve got zombie guts in your eye! No, no, just stay cool. You manage to navigate the crowd without losing your head, then start pounding on the police station door.

“Let me in!” you scream. “I’m not a zombie, but I’m disguised as a zombie, and I got zombie in my eye, and I need a shower really, really bad!”

The door opens and an officer lets you in. You’re saved! Then he handcuffs you (what?), brings you downstairs to the police station basement, and turns a fire hose on you. The force is incredible, and you very nearly drown, but at least it gets you clean. After about five minutes he shuts it off. “You still not a zombie?” he grunts.

“Glurb,” you whimper.

“Guess I’ll take you to see the chief, then.” The officer uncuffs you, hauls you back up the stairs, and brings you into a cramped little office. “This one was pounding on the door outside,” he says. “Not sure what the protocol for that is anymore.”

The police captain, spinning around in his chair, turns out to be a stuffed crab. Wait a minute. You’d recognize those beady little eyes anywhere.

“Clampy Pete,” you say. “The last time I saw you, you were about to wash out of police academy.” The two of you go way back, and regardless of the way things may have started between you, they got fairly ugly before the end. How did this guy ever wind up running a precinct? You realize that you’re not going to get any help here. “How’s Sarah?” you sneer.

“None of your damn business,” Clampy Pete retorts. “And the last time I saw you, you were a deadbeat slacker with a smart mouth. I see not much has changed.” He turns to the officer who brought you in. “Protocol is what it’s always been. We take the civilians’ statements and send them on their merry way.”

“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 behind 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 the 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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63

“First things first,” you say to the crowd. “Let’s get a few blocks from here before somebody gets bitten.” You pause for a moment. “Actually, before that: Does anybody have a smoke?”

You had every intention of remaining a non-smoker when you got out of bed this morning, but with things being all apocalyptic and whatnot, the last thing you need is the jitters. A middle-aged housewife in a pink track suit has a pack of Pall Mall unfiltereds, which you commandeer for the greater good. Then you corral the group to a nearby parking lot that seems zombie-free. For now, at least.

“All we have to do is find the queen,” Daryl insists as you finish checking behind cars for hidden threats. “Then all the drone zombies will turn back to normal. I totally saw this in a movie once.”

Hmm. That doesn’t sound right. In any event, the sun will be setting soon and what you need is a good place to hole up for the night. It turns out Daryl works at a sporting goods store, which would offer security and plenty of makeshift weapons. A retired hippie named Isabelle, on the other hand, proposes the local farmer’s market. She seems to believe that, despite not having any background in herbal medicine or the vaguest grasp of zombie metabolism, she might be able to whip up an all-natural remedy for the “poor, stinky, moaning people.”

If you lead the group to the farmers’ market on the off chance that Isabelle isn’t completely insane, turn to page 163.

If you think holing up in Daryl’s sporting goods store sounds like a better plan, turn to page 68.

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64

All the organic supplements in the world aren’t going to save you from zombies if you’re collapsed on the floor puking your guts out. And another sniff of Isabelle’s concoction convinces you that attempting to eat it can’t possibly end any other way.

“Have you looked out there?” Daryl says, entering the room. He looks as if he’s been up all night but is strangely chipper.  “They’re everywhere.” You peer out the window, and, sure enough, the zombies are piled up outside. You recognize the pink sun hat from last night, which means that the original group has been waiting patiently for you since sundown. And apparently they’ve called all their friends. “This is it,” Daryl says. “Our final stand. Tonight we dine in hell!”

You take a glance back at Isabelle, who is trying to get a spoonful of stew near her mouth without gagging. Better than dining here, you think. Still, you have other plans. “Let’s get up to the roof,” you say. “We might be able get across to the next building.”

Daryl has been up all night trying to make explosives from organic fertilizer and begs you to reconsider his “blaze of glory” plan. “Seriously, dude,” he says. “We could blow them all to smithereens!” Once on the roof, however, you discover that the neighboring building is built adjacent to this one, and break the news to Daryl that he’ll live to explode things another day. You get the group across and then down the fire escape on the far side. Once on the street, you organize a forced march away from the town center. It takes you until mid afternoon, but you eventually herd the group to the edge of town, moving slowly and carefully to avoid any zombie deathtraps along the way.

You remember camping in the woods with your family when you were a child and figure that the farther away from civilization you can get at this point, the better. As a matter of fact, you recall a lush valley with a stream and plenty of wildlife. Your group could probably live off the land for quite a while if you absolutely had to.

The group, of course, is appalled at the idea of sleeping outside, even in nice weather. Thinking it over, you also remember a ranger station part way up the mountain that might be a little cramped for the whole group. It would certainly have more amenities, though.

If you lead the group up the mountain toward the ranger station, turn to page 107.

Then again, if there’s no running water at the station, you’re screwed. If you go with your original plan and head for the valley, turn to page 268.

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66

You crash for the night, figuring that tomorrow is another zombie-fighting, survivor-rescuing day. It turns out that the astroturf of the soccer stadium isn’t quite as comfortable when you’re not actually unconscious from loss of blood, and you sleep fitfully. Morning eventually comes, only to reveal a second flaw in Daryl’s disaster shelter plan.

There isn’t any food in this place.

A small subset of the people you rescued last night has recovered three bags of frozen french fries and some undiluted cola syrup from a concession stand, and is refusing to share their bounty with the rest of the group. Tempers are rising, and it looks like things are going to get ugly. Seriously, there are like fourteen people in the entire sports arena—if they’re turning on each other already, it doesn’t bode terribly well for humanity as a whole.

You look for Daryl, but find him conspiring with a retired couple and a fourteen-year-old girl to overpower the french-fry hoarders and claim the precious foodstuffs for themselves.

If you attempt to defuse things and convince the small crowd that pulling together is your only hope for collective survival, turn to page 74.

Screw that noise—it’s clearly every man for himself now. If you decide you’d better join Daryl’s crew and GET CONTROL OF THOSE FRIES, turn to page 251.

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67

Three drinks generally leave you seconds away from picking a fight with a nun, so attacking the undead monstrosities is almost obligatory. You’re on top of the first one in a heartbeat, pummeling it in the face until it hits the floor. Ow! You forgot how much face-punching hurts your hand. Fortunately, the spaghetti house has solid, heavy furniture. You grab a chair and use it to batter the second and third zombies. It shatters after a few hits, but the remaining lumber is that much easier to wield, and you keep whaling on them until all the zombies are lifeless, bloody heaps.

As the adrenaline leaves your bloodstream, you become slightly horrified by what you’ve done. What if those had been nuns? Also, your hand is hurting more and more. You glance down at it and realize with a shock that half of your right thumb is missing.

One of those zombie bastards bit it off.

Your first instinct involves blind hysteria and amputating the rest of your thumb before the infection can spread. Then you calm down a smidge, thinking that if you bandage it up as well as you can, you might be okay. The important thing is not to die. You can’t return to life as the undead if you don’t die, right?

If you decide to freak the hell out and sprint to the kitchen for a cleaver, turn to page 186.

If you suspect that self-surgery with kitchenware after three cocktails can only make this situation worse and just try to bandage up your thumb, turn to page 234.

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68

A nice aluminum baseball bat would come in handy about now, so the sporting goods store it is. The only trick is getting there.

It turns out that Isabelle and a few others wandered off a city bus when zombies blocked the street in front of it, and the driver came along with them. It should still be parked a few blocks away. Perfect! As you start explaining your plan to the group, however, you hear the plinking sounds of “Pop Goes the Weasel” played through a loudspeaker.

Is that the ice cream man?

Sure enough, several members of the genius patrol are crowding around a big white truck, shouldering past each other in an effort to procure frozen treats. They don’t seem to notice that the guy behind the wheel is glaring at them with the vacant, ravenous eyes of the damned, or that his face is covered in something that isn’t cherry syrup.

“Zombie!” you yell, charging the truck and starting to pull people away. Alas, you’re too late to save them all. One portly gentleman, unable to choose between Spongebob and Spider-man from the pictures on the side of the vehicle, is tackled by the driver and devoured with impressive speed. Operating a zombie ice cream truck apparently builds quite an appetite.

“Stab it in the heart!” Daryl screams, swinging his nunchucks wildly at the zombie (although, honestly, you can’t imagine a less effective weapon for fighting the undead. Throwing stars, maybe). Fortunately, in his haste to consume flesh, the zombie has thoughtlessly left his ice cream truck running. You jump behind the wheel and throw the gear shift into reverse. Daryl leaps out of the way as you back over the zombie attacker and his now-lifeless victim, grinding both into a pulpy mess.

“Who screams for ice cream now, bitch?” you say. Meh. Still not great. “Okay, let’s get to that bus. Which one of you is the driver?”

“Dude, you just ran him over!” Daryl enthuses. “That was awesome. We should so trick out this truck with armor and wooden spikes and stuff. And a machine gun turret!” You don’t think you have time for any of that, but Daryl does have a point—the truck will be more maneuverable than a city bus, especially without a trained bus driver. You could drive ahead of the bus and shepherd the group to the sporting goods store. Then again, leaving this bunch on their own could be a recipe for disaster, even if their only job is to follow behind you.

If you drive lead with the ice cream truck and let the others follow in the bus, turn to page 26.

If you think you’d better stay on the bus to make sure the group doesn’t wind up in a ditch somewhere, letting Daryl drive lead in the truck, turn to page 169.

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70

You look around the cramped coffee shack for something to use as a weapon. “For all we know, it’s the only tube we’ll ever find,” you say. “We need it. And I’m going to get it.”

Your mind’s made up, and  Ernie and Candice realize that they can’t talk you out of it. But they’re not about to let you go alone. “I’ve been drinking Americanos continuously for six straight hours,” your aunt says. “Let’s do this.”

You arm yourself with a mop handle, and Ernie finds a big frying pan. Candice takes a coffee pot in each hand—stick with what you know, I guess—and the three of you climb off the floor and begin striding purposely toward your car. “Now!” you yell as you smack the first zombie with your stick, knocking it to the side. You swat away two more and then toss the mop handle to Candice as you dive for the car door. You manage to get it open and climb inside, but zombie limbs prevent the door from closing again. You fumble through the glove compartment and locate the toothpaste, still in its box.

Two zombies block the door, with Candice beating on them to no avail. Three more are trying to force their way into the passenger side. You’re trapped!

If you open the toothpaste and squirt it at the zombies to distract them, turn to page 15.

If you jam your key in the ignition and step on the gas, turn to page 130.

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71

“Which of you is the better driver?” you ask.

“Um, I don’t actually have my license,” Prudence says.

You toss Billy the keys, climb in the back seat and hang the top half of your body out the window. You’ll say this for the kid: He turns out to be an aggressive driver. He doesn’t hesitate to run right over the stray zombie, and you do your best to keep the path clear by gunning down the larger groups. Billy’s gun is loaded with buckshot, and although it’s tricky to reload on the fly, it sure does make killing zombies a pleasure. Rather than having to aim with a single bullet, you just blast away huge chunks of whatever you point at.

It also means you can’t hear a word of what the two are saying inside the car, which is fine with you, since they appear to be arguing the entire time. You eventually make it past the sea of living dead and stop to trade places with Billy once you get near the highway. “Okay, which way now?” you ask.

“North,” Prudence says.

“No, south!” Billy insists. “Pru, I told you! My dad’s bunker is the only safe place!”

“Billy, I don’t like you that way.”

Suddenly Billy is brandishing the shotgun. Uh-oh. Maybe you should have held onto that. “Get out of the car!” he shrieks. “We’re settling this now!” She does, and he leaps out behind her. “You too, rabbit,” he seethes.

If you do as instructed and calmly try to defuse the situation before it gets out of hand, turn to page 77.

These kids are nuts. And, quite frankly, they’re not your problem. The motor is already running—if you step on the gas and bail on them, turn to page 201.

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72

You’re not sure what it takes to convert fertilizer into TNT, but the likelihood that Daryl did it last night in an abandoned apartment building with no running water seems slim. “Come on, let’s get into the valley, and then we’ll figure out what to do next,” you say.

Once through the pass, you’re surprised to see a large group already there. And, even more shocking, your friend Ernie is in the crowd. “I can’t believe you found the valley!” he says, thrilled to see you. “And just in time. We’ve finished sealing off every possible exit! Once we close the mountain pass, we’ll be safe from the zombies for good.”

The pass, though, is already wall-to-wall with staggering, groaning abominations. Although the valley is large, they just keep coming. Somehow you’ve managed to doom not only your own group, but your old friend Ernie and several dozen new people who are now desperately fleeing the zombie army that you lead into their valley paradise. Running is no use, however. There’s nowhere to hide, and the horde quickly devours humanity’s last, best hope for survival.

Nice work.

THE END

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73

You deliver a sudden kick to one of the guards, attempting to knock his weapon away. “Ow,” he says as his hand gets kind of pushed a little bit to the side. He doesn’t drop the gun, though. “Really?”

You punch the other guard and take off down the hall. “Really?” the first guard says again. Apparently they’re either considerably startled by your bravado or have deemed you not worth expending ammunition on, because the expected gunshots never come. You make it back out to the fence, only to discover a group of zombies surrounding your car.

They seem far more interested in it than you. In another piece of luck, soldiers run up with flamethrowers and torch the undead loiterers. This doesn’t seem to bother them much, but it does get their attention, and the flaming zombies chase the soldiers back toward the base and away from your vehicle. You jump in it and step on the gas.

Ernie is delighted to see you, and you debrief him on the military situation. Your friend is now convinced that the zombies are supernatural in origin. “I’ve been doing more research,” he says, “and I’m almost positive that it either traces back to this voodoo guy who hangs out at the psychic bookstore, or a little girl who buried her dead dog in an ancient Indian burial ground.”

“Fine,” you say. “But this time you’re coming with me.”

If you decide to look into the girl with the dog, turn to page 227.

If you think the voodoo thing will turn up more answers, turn to page 191.

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74

Can’t we all just get along? “Everyone calm down,” you say. “We need to formulate a plan so that we all make it through this.”

“Yeah? And who made you the boss?” someone shouts. “You just want all the french fries for yourself!”

This is pointless. “We don’t even have any cooking oil,” you say.

“The stuffed bunny is hoarding all the cooking oil!” someone yells from behind you. You try to make it clear that there is no cooking oil, but Daryl and his crew choose this moment to make their move and leap into action, tackling the group with the frozen french-fry bags. Violence erupts all around you, and you fall to the ground, getting more than a little trampled in the process.

Really, people? Really? You manage to free yourself from the crowd and head toward the nearest exit. This isn’t worth it, you think. Alas, someone has beaten you to it.

“If I can’t have the french fries, no one can!” a frenzied, middle-aged woman yells, opening the stadium gates and letting a mob of ravenous zombies push their way inside. The bad news is, you’ve now witnessed humanity at its worst. The good news is, you have very little time to ponder the ramifications before being overrun by zombanity at its best.

Humanity doesn’t stand a chance.

THE END

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75

As much as you want that shower, you’d rather live to bathe another day. As you leave the gym, however, you find that the rest of the city doesn’t seem to be faring much better. Zombies are milling about everywhere, stumbling after terrified pedestrians and devouring anyone they can get their clammy, disgusting hands on. You attempt to keep your distance from any large masses of undead but they seem to be zeroing in on you—soon a dedicated group is trailing, moaning to themselves about brains. You break into a sprint, but another crowd develops in front of you, cutting off your escape. Desperately searching for a way out, you spot an elderly woman sitting in a third story window, staring at you. “Help!” you yell. “Please! Throw down a rope or something!”

“Oh, I don’t think I have any ropes, dearie,” she says, not seeming to grasp the urgency of the situation. “I have some knitting yarn. Will that help?”

“Or a weapon to fight these things off with! Anything—just hurry!”

“Okay, let me see what I have here,” she says sweetly, wandering back into her apartment. After an impossibly long time, just as the zombies are almost on top of you and you’re convinced that she’s been distracted by Diagnosis: Murder or something, you hear her call out to you. “I have a mop,” she says. “And a hammer. It’s kind of heavy, though, sweetheart.”

The mop definitely has more reach. If you think it would make a better weapon, turn to page 175.

On the other hand, the hammer might actually do more damage. If you ask her to drop that, turn to page 254.

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76

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” you say, trying to sound more confident than you actually are. Anyway, it was self-defense, right? Before Mittens can protest, the door is thrown open and two officers enter the room. Her eyes light up. “Vinny! Carlito!” she says, jubilant. “You have no idea how good it is to see you guys!”

After brief introductions the cops get down to talking shop. “Clampy Pete is worse than ever,” Carlito says. “There’s rumor of a bunch of zombie activity at this big church outside town, but I think Cardinal D’Amato has something on him, because the chief won’t let us go near it.”

Wait a minute. “Clampy Pete?” you ask. “Stuffed crab? Gruff exterior?”

“That’s the captain, all right,” Vinny says. You and Clampy Pete have a long history, and not much of it is good. You’re surprised to hear that he’s running a municipal police department these days. From the sound of things, though, he might not be for very long. The officers tell Mittens that much of the force is ready to rebel against Pete’s by-the-book response to the zombie invasion, and if she’s willing to stand up and challenge his authority, they could put together a full-scale mutiny.

“Police Chief Mittens,” she says, tapping her chin with a finger. “I like the sound of that.” She offers you a spot on her new renegade police force if you want to come along for the ride.

If you join Mittens and the other cops in their attempted takeover of Clampy Pete’s precinct, turn to page 94.

If you want no part of a police mutiny and politely decline, turn to page 97.

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77

You turn the engine off and slowly step onto the road. As tempting as it may be, you can’t leave these two here to die. “Just calm down, Billy,” you say as gently as possible. “Why don’t you give me that shotgun?”

“You know what?” Billy says, somehow becoming even more agitated. “I think this is all your fault. With your big ears and your fancy Toyota Celica. I think you’re confusing her.”

Over his shoulder, you see a large group of zombies coming up the street. You need to end this quickly.

“Billy,” Prudence says softly.

“THIS is what I think of your Celica!” he shouts, blasting away at the front hood. Ouch. You wish he hadn’t done that.

Prudence tries again. “Billy, there’s zombies.”

“I know there’s zombies!” Billy screams. Clearly he doesn’t, because they’re approaching very quickly now. “You think those zombies can love you as much as I do?” He reloads and fires again, taking out two of the tires for good measure.

“Billy, they’re right behind you,” you say, grabbing him and turning his head forcibly as he fumbles for another round.

“Oh,” he says lamely. “Okay, now I’m out of buckshot.”

It’s too late to run as the zombies pin you down and immediately start chewing. They manage to devour you whole before the infection sets in, but both Billy and Prudence turn before the crowd can finish with them. The two stumble off together with their new peers, worry free, content to be two undead companions eternally in search of their next meal.

Ah, young love.

THE END

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78

“Just let me check things out,” you say. “If it’s really that bad in there, we’ll go with your plan. But don’t go blowing anything up until I get back!”

You find the door to the main building unlocked, and the place seems to be abandoned. Could Clarence have made up his whole story about the zombies? You look for a room labeled “fluoride conspiracy” or “zombification area” or something. Needless to say, you don’t find it, and within minutes you’re hopelessly lost.

Eventually, you stumble upon the main water processing machinery. It’s behind heavy, locked doors with little porthole windows, and from what you can tell there’s nobody in there, dead or alive. That’s a relief—at least there aren’t a bunch of zombies dripping goo into the water supply. That’s a lot of running water, though . . . now you have to pee. You wander back out into the hallways and are lucky enough to find a bathroom.

Upon opening the door, though, you immediately realize that your luck has run out. Half a dozen zombies are crowded inside, huddled around a picked-clean corpse. You turn to run, but slip on something sticky that you don’t even want to recognize. The things are all over you in a heartbeat, and all you can do is pick up a stray clipboard, proving once and for all that it can’t be used as a weapon.

You feel your humanity slip away from you as the zombie infection takes over. Fortunately, you don’t have to suffer the hellish torment of the living dead for long, because in about twenty minutes the whole building explodes.

THE END

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79

“Get the salt, Ernie!” you shout. “We’ve got a live one!” Technical accuracy of that statement aside, your challenge now is to perform the ritual without getting chewed on. “Khenan, get its arms!” you bark. He grabs the zombie from behind and manages to immobilize it. “Okay, I’m going to pry its jaw open—get ready with the salt and the needle!” The zombie’s mouth is slick with gore, making it difficult to get much purchase. Also, it’s squirming like mad. “Hold it tighter!”

“Oh my God, I remember why this seems familiar,” Ernie mutters, taking a step back.

What’s he talking about? There’s no time for that now! “I saw it on TV,” he continues. “When I was a kid. This is from Kolchak the Night Stalker.”

Your hand slips and jabs the zombie right in the teeth, breaking the skin. Crap! “I’m not really Haitian!” Khenan cries. “Or Jamaican! I’m from Ottawa, and my name is Steve! I don’t want to die!”

He lets go of the zombie’s arms, and suddenly the thing is grabbing your head and biting down hard. You manage to shove it away and free yourself, but already the room is fading to black. You pass out for a moment, and then awake with no emotion, no sense of self, and no desire except an all-consuming one for the delicious taste of human brains.

The first thing you see is Ernie and Khenan standing over you with a bag of salt and a bunch of candles. “Screw it,” Khenan says, dropping the salt and hitting you over the head with the aromatherapy book.

Everything fades back to black.

THE END

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80

You glance down the street and see a handful of zombies wandering directly toward your car (naturally—where else would they be heading?). If you’re going to do this thing, it has to be now. You screw up your courage and sprint toward the driver’s side door, push a zombie that’s blocking your way to the ground, jam your key in the lock, and leap inside. Smooth! You’ve got the car locked and the motor started by the time the creatures even know you’re there.

Once they catch sight of you, however, they swarm. Left with no alternative, you step on the gas, even though the zombies splayed across your windshield have reduced visibility to zero. You accelerate and swerve back and forth in an attempt to shake them off, but smack into some unseen obstacle, which sends you veering toward the sidewalk and into a telephone poll. Seatbelt safety was not priority one, and your head smacks against the windshield.

Even worse: your drivers’ side window has shattered in the wreck. The zombies that were thrown from your hood upon impact immediately peel themselves off the street and drag themselves toward you. Desperate, you rummage through the glove compartment for something to use as a weapon, but all you find are oil change receipts and the promotional tube of toothpaste that your aunt sent you. One zombie is at your window now, so you pop the top and squirt toothpaste right in its eyes. You’re not sure what you hope to accomplish by this, but you’re bleeding profusely from a gash in your forehead, so your thinking might not be one hundred percent clear.

The zombie grasps at its face and starts to shudder, then wipes the toothpaste messily with its hands and crams as much of it as it can manage into its maw. You squirt another stream out onto the pavement, and the zombie dives for it, frantically licking it off the street. So you throw the rest of the tube out the window, and the remaining zombies turn and hurry toward it, ignoring you and the car.

These things love them some toothpaste. Huh.

You climb out of the car and flee the zombie toothpaste orgy, but you’re  lightheaded from the blood loss and can’t move too quickly. Down the street you pass a flock of people running madly out of a corner grocery store.

And you can guess what they’re running from.

If you risk going into the market to stock up on more zombie-distracting toothpaste, turn to page 133.

If you’re concerned that you might pass out soon, and try to get help from some of the fleeing store patrons, turn to page 211.

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82

You can’t bring yourself to give the order. You’re not sure what an actual military commander would do in this situation, but if it’s round up all the survivors and throw them into a concentration camp, then you’re not fit for command.

“Not on my watch,” you tell Velasquez. “We can try to get them away from the thick of things, but other than that, we’re just going to have to do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

The best you can do with what you’ve got, it turns out, is not actually all that great. The screaming chaos, combined with the fact that a good deal of the equipment you need to deal with it was inside that command center you burned to the ground, make this a losing battle. The undead forces keep growing, and your platoon, or whatever it’s called, keeps shrinking. Eventually the zombies overwhelm you.

You go down leading your troops in one last desperate push. As far as military commanders go, you could have done worse.

THE END

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83

With the exception of a few abandoned cars, the freeway is empty. As you get closer to the city, the opposite side of the highway becomes more and more congested with empty vehicles until it appears as though an entire bumper-to-bumper rush hour crowd simply gave up and walked away. The lanes heading into town, however, are completely clear.

Convenient! You exit downtown and find the city streets as abandoned as the freeway. The whole place is probably on lockdown, you think. As you drive further in, though, the zombies slowly start coming out of the woodwork. At first they’re in groups of two or three, but soon they clog the streets. And they’re all headed right for you.

You turn the car around, but they’re filling in behind you as well. Suddenly something falls from the sky, hitting your hood like a load of bricks. Crap in a hat! Did that zombie just throw himself off a building at you? Sure enough, another one hits, shattering the windshield, followed by two more smacking the street right behind you.

It’s raining. Freaking. Zombies.

They keep pummeling your car until you’re completely buried under a dogpile of mostly-flattened undead. Your windshield disintegrates under the assault, but multiple lacerations are the least of your worries. The shattered bodies of fallen zombies shimmy and twist their way into biting position.

It’s all over before you know it.

THE END

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84

You slam on the brakes and throw open the passenger door, telling the kids to climb inside. The boy, who’s wearing a baseball cap and a t-shirt with a chewing tobacco logo on it, hops in the front seat and motions for the girl to join him. She climbs into the back instead.

“Okay, where are you kids headed?” you ask. “Is there someplace I can take you where you’ll be safe?”

“Head south on highway 16,” the boy says. “My dad has a totally awesome underground bunker—I was supposed to meet him back at the gun shop, but Prudence took forever, and they left already.”

The girl winces, catches your eye, and shakes her head when he mentions the bunker. “Um, I live up north on highway 16,” she says quietly. “Out by Zebediah Creek.”

Either way, to reach Highway 16 you’ll have to drive further into town, through a veritable morass of zombies. “There are too many of them in that direction,” you say. “I don’t think we can even get to the highway.”

“Oh, I think we can handle them,” Billy grins, pulling an enormous gun out of his duffel bag. “What?” he says defensively when he sees your stare. “It’s hunting season.”

If you think a teenage boy with a shotgun is exactly what you need to navigate the streets of zombie town and make it to the highway in one piece, turn to page 89.

If you suspect that plan will get you and both of your young wards killed, and instead seek safety by driving AWAY from the zombies, turn to page 150.

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85

Must . . . kill . . . queen, you think. Then you think a lot about brains. Mmm, brains sound really good right now. You should try to get some of those.

You squirm through the now uninterested zombie crowd looking for the queen, but it’s getting more difficult to tell them apart as the hunger makes it impossible to concentrate. As your humanity slips away completely, your last conscious thought is that in this condition you couldn’t possibly take any kind of orders from anyone. There’s no zombie queen. The reason zombies act together is simply because they all want the same thing.

Brrrraaaaaiinnns. You can smell them. There’s some guy lashing about frantically in an umpire’s uniform nearby. He might have some. On the other hand, something right here near your face smells delicious. Could a delightful lunch possibly be leaking out of your own head?

If you press forward and try to muscle in on some of the umpire action, turn to page 61.

If you back off and investigate the snack that smells like it’s right on top of you, turn to page 122.

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86

You know, Ernie’s a sweet guy, but the dead are rising from their graves and feeding on the flesh of the living. At this juncture it might be more appropriate to seek help from somebody with a badge.

You drive a few blocks to the police station, but find it completely overrun with zombies. It looks like a lot of people had the same inclination as you, and the ravenous dead are swarming on a crowd of screaming, panicking still-living. It’s utter chaos. Maybe you should turn the car around and just keep driving.

The more you consider the police station, though, the more you’d like to find a way inside, where they have trained officers, guns, Kevlar body armor and stuff. You’re pretty smart. Is it possible you could figure out a way to get in there? Besides, what’s your alternative plan? To burn rubber and keep driving as far away as you can until you run out of gas or something?

Uh, yeah. If you burn rubber, then keep driving as far away as you can until you run out of gas or something, turn to page 173.

If you think your best bet is to park the car and find a way inside that police station, turn to page 20.

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87

You step forward. “Let’s carve this turkey,” you say, disemboweling the first zombie with one deft motion. That was awesome! Granted, you have to go back and behead the thing as well, since zombies continue to function more or less at full capacity without their bowels, but now you’re all juiced up. The oncoming monstrosities don’t stand a chance.

Your new-found confidence comes with a realization: people are running around in a mad panic, and they need someone to lead them to safety. Someone with a plan and a calm, soothing demeanor. Someone armed with a chainsaw. You nominate yourself for the position, since you fit all of the above criteria (except for the part about having a plan, but you figure that part you can just wing), and start the process of saving some lives.

Over the course of an hour, you gather together a group of fifteen or twenty people. Now it’s getting dark, and many of your crew are worried about surviving the night. They’re also eying your chainsaw with more than a little envy—perhaps you should scrounge up some more weapons and spread them around. Others are starting to grumble about being hungry. Organizing dinner for twenty people seems like it would be a pain in the butt even under the least apocalyptic conditions.

Your crew is looking to you to lead the way. Where to, Cap’n?

If you think that the most urgent need is to find food, turn to page 109.

If you think that right now arming the group is more important, turn to page 184.

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88

“Ernie, there are people still alive in this city, and I’m fairly sure they need water. Let’s head for the mountains. Or we could still go look for my aunt. Maybe she can tell us more about the fluoride thing before we just rush in there half-cocked.” Or full-cocked. Any kind of cocked, really.

“That’s right,” Ernie says, narrowing his eyes. “Your aunt. It’s funny that I’ve known you all these years and you’ve never mentioned that your aunt works for them.”

“Ernie, look out!” you yell, and when he turns around, you hit him over the head with your shoe. It was all you could think of. Instead of passing out like they do in the movies, though, he lets out a yelp and grabs his head with his hands. So you hit him a couple more times until he goes limp.

Wow, that got weirdly violent.

You feel bad about whaling on your friend like that, but he was veering out of control. You take his ammo belt, duffel bag, and keys, figuring you’ll lock everything safely up in the car and then come back for him. When you get to the road, however, you see the hard hat guy standing by your car with four uniformed police men.

“Drop the bag!” they yell, pulling out their guns. “Put your hands in the air!”

Drop it? For all you know there’s twenty pounds of explosives in that thing! “Don’t shoot!” you yell back, carefully setting the bag down and raising your arms. As you do, though, something falls from Ernie’s belt and lands on the dirt with a thud. The police look down at it. You look down at it.

It’s a grenade. Really, Ernie? Obviously, the cops open fire.

THE END

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89

“Okay, let’s do this,” you say. “Billy, hang out the window and gun down anything and everything that gets in our way. Prudence, you sit next to me and keep your eyes peeled for the most zombie-free route.”

“Actually, why don’t I navigate,” Billy says. “Pru can handle the shotgun.”

“What?” Prudence says, startled. “Um, I guess I could. I’ve never shot one of those things before, though.”

“It’s easy,” Billy insists. “You’re the one who keeps saying that your compound has been stockpiling weapons for the end times. You’ll be a natural. And that way, me and the rabbit can talk.”

Stockpiling weapons? Who are these kids? In any event, you don’t have time for this. Someone needs to drive, someone needs to shoot, and someone needs to navigate.

If Billy doesn’t want to shoot, you’re not going to force him. If you give the shotgun to Prudence, turn to page 241.

On the other hand, this isn’t amateur hour. If you tell Billy to buck up and take the weapon, turn to page 113.

Perhaps shooting at zombies is too important to leave to either of these two. If you have one of them drive and take the gun yourself, turn to page 71.

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90

A secret government conspiracy sounds dangerous, but all that other stuff . . . man, that’s just crazy. “Let’s look into the military experiment thing,” you say.

Ernie agrees. The two of you get to work boarding up windows, since night has fallen and you’re not sure how widespread this zombie invasion is. Ernie then starts sifting through his paper backup copies of what looks like the entire internet, printed for just such an occasion. It’s slow work, and you find yourself nodding off on your friend’s surprisingly comfortable couch.

Before you know it, morning comes and Ernie wakes you, excited about his new plan. Does this guy ever sleep? Your excitement fails to match his, however, when you hear the details: Your job is to break into the army base fifteen miles outside town. His job, somehow, is to stay home and continue his research, which he insists is at a critical juncture.

After losing that argument, and dodging a crowd of zombies that have made it to Ernie’s neighborhood and chosen to congregate in his driveway, you’re in your car and driving toward the base, armed with a pair of bolt cutters and a giant monkey wrench. Your meticulous break-in plan, though, proves unnecessary. The base is overrun by zombies! Most of the undead are in army green and all torn up from multiple gun wounds, and a few pockets of disorganized soldiers seem to be scattered here and there, fighting them off.

If you try to help the soldiers fight off the zombie droves, turn to page 114.

If you use the ruckus as a convenient distraction to sneak in and find out what’s going on here, turn to page 171.

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91

Feral cats have been multiplying in the area like vermin, so there’s a ready supply. You also take a few short trips out to lure roaming zombies into your new, expanded testing facility. You learn quite a bit about the habits of the walking dead, but constant exposure is starting to take a toll on your sanity. Fortunately, a 16-year-old refugee named Phillip shows up at your doorstep one day, and you take him in. Having an actual human being to talk to is a refreshing change.

Phillip forms particularly close ties to Smitty and starts acting as your research assistant. There’s a whole long montage where the two of you bond over scientific experiments and lighthearted shenanigans, but we’ll spare you all of that since in the end, Phillip forgets to muzzle one of the new zombie recruits while cleaning out the pens and gets bitten on the ass.

You desperately try to save him, going so far as to perform a double cheekectomy, but it’s no use. Phillip turns. In your grief, you swear that you will never let this happen again—you’ll burn the facility to the ground! Or wait . . . if you only knew more about the zombification process, perhaps you could have saved him. Maybe you can still save him. And Smitty, and all the rest! That type of research is going to require new test subjects, though.

Living, human ones.

At this point you’re one hunchbacked minion away from the full-blown mad scientist thing, anyway. If you go ahead and commit to it, turn to page 274.

If you try to hang on to the tiniest shred of your sanity and destroy all of your research before things get way out of hand, turn to page 168.

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92

A gun would be nice, but the truth is, you don’t know how to shoot one, anyway. And the idea of traversing six zombie-infested city blocks with nothing but your wits isn’t terribly appealing. You hurry down the street to the hardware store and see a crowd of people storming out the front door. “We’re closed!” shouts the last one as he fiddles with his keys for a moment and then, thinking the better of it, jumps in a pickup truck and drives away with tires squealing.

That can’t be good. You gingerly open the door and steal a glance inside. All seems quiet. You look around for a makeshift weapon, but nothing immediately presents itself. A plunger? That’s no good. There’s a lot of duct tape; you could try to fashion something. No, that’s ridiculous. You grab an oversized hammer from a rack of tools, but you’re certain you can do better than that.

Then, right in the middle of aisle two, you see it. The undead corpse of a solidly-built woman in overalls is hunched over a more traditional still-dead corpse, stuffing organs into her mouth. The zombie spots you and stumbles to its feet, apparently hungering for a fresher kill.

You run, casting about frantically for something to defend yourself with. Bolt cutters! No, that’s not practical. A caulking gun? How does that even make sense? You could hit it over the head with that toilet seat! Now you’re just panicking, you think. Calm down. Hey, power tools. That sounds promising. What about that circular saw! No, you need something cordless. A power drill? Hmm, maybe in a specific situation, but it’s not very all-purpose. Then, displayed at the end of the aisle and gleaming like a gift from the heavens, you see the answer to your prayers.

A chainsaw. Now we’re talking.

You grab the saw from the display and turn to face the zombie following close behind you. “Sorry, sweetheart,” you say as you pull the starter cord. “You don’t make the cut.”

Nothing happens. Not a sputter. Of course they don’t keep display model chainsaws filled with gasoline! The zombie is almost upon you, so you fall back on plan B, snatch your hammer up from the floor where you dropped it, and smack the thing on the head. It stumbles, so you hit it again and knock it to the floor. You keep pounding it in the face until its brains are splattered across the linoleum. It completely ruins your one-liner with the cutting and everything, but at least it gets the job done.

You’re going to need to stop by a gas station if you want to make use of that chainsaw. On the other hand, surely the National Guard or somebody will be coming to clean up this mess. Maybe you should just barricade yourself in the hardware store and wait it out.

If you decide to lock yourself in the shop, leaving the whole zombie situation to somebody better prepared to handle it, turn to page 32.

If you take matters into your own hands, bring the chainsaw, and try to find a gas station, turn to page 140.

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94

The truth is, you feel a whole lot safer doing things Mittens’s way. “Let’s show Clampy Pete there’s a new sheriff in town,” you say.

Mittens’s first move is to set up shop in her favorite bar, which turns out to be the spaghetti place where you first met. Rather than challenge the captain directly, she decides to simply put an alternative operation in place and try to clean up the town herself. “We’re going to see if we can do this bloodlessly,” she says, although a couple of her new deputies look somewhat disappointed. Still, they spread the word, and within a few days about half of the city’s cops have abandoned the force and joined up with Mittens’s posse. In the week that follows, you’re pleased with the amount of progress you make toward eliminating the zombie menace. Not reading the undead their rights before shooting them, alone, saves quite a bit of time.

Alas, your luck doesn’t hold. As Mittens is giving assignments one evening, plotting the massive full frontal assault on Cardinal D’Amato’s church that you’ve been gearing up for, you hear the sound of a bullhorn coming from outside.

It’s Clampy Pete. “We have you surrounded!” he barks. “I won’t put up with this vigilante crap in my town!” You rush to the window, and sure enough, camped out in the Bed, Bath & Beyond across the street is a group of uniformed officers at least as big as your own. The ex-cops around you all draw their weapons, and you follow suit, busting through the glass with your gun’s muzzle to get a clear shot. “You’re all suspended!” Clampy Pete yells.

“Don’t fire until I give the order,” Mittens growls to a general muttering among her troops. “See that guy on the left?” she whispers to you. “That’s Broflosky. Keep an eye on him—if anybody here is going to shoot first in the name of proper police procedure, he will.”

“Dammit, Captain, listen to yourself!” she yells across the street. “And look at the streets around you! What we’re doing is working. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there’s nothing in the procedures manual that covers zombie invasion! Just this once, it has to be about doing what it takes, and not about doing things by the book.”

Silence falls, and the moment seems to stretch out forever. You squint and see Broflosky reach into his coat, never taking his eyes off Mittens. If he’s going to shoot her, you have a split second to fire first and save her life! But she said to wait for the order . . . if you fire your weapon, everyone else might shoot, too! What do you do?  There’s no time to decide!

If you open fire at the officer before he can shoot your friend, turn to page 278.

If you hesitate and wait for Mittens’s command before doing anything rash, turn to page 258.

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96

You suspect that you’re not thinking clearly, so elect not to make any rash decisions. You finish your cereal and craft a makeshift pillow from a couple of rolls of toilet paper. The day’s constant stress and occasional bouts of exercise have left you more tired than you knew, and soon you manage to nod off.

You’re awakened by scratching and moaning sounds, which in a zombie-infested supermarket is almost never a good sign. They must be right outside the door, and they’re trying to get in. Either they finally figured out there was food in there (and you’re not talking about Cocoa Krispies, either) or they just need to use the can, but the door is shaking and the hinges are creaking, and you realize that it can’t possibly hold much longer.

You switch the light on just as the door gives way, bursting from the weight of lord knows how many undead monstrosities. Your eyes fall upon the empty cereal box on the bathroom floor, and the look on those tiny elfin faces tells you everything you need to know.

Damn you, Crackle! Daaaaaamn yooooooou!

THE END

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97

No good can possibly come of this, so you strike out on your own. You’re a renegade, you decide. A lone wolf. That’s your new mantra: what would a lone wolf do? Not get itself killed by hanging around with that bunch, that’s for sure.

The streets, by now, are a huge, frothing zombie mess. But your keen lone wolf instincts lead you away from the crowds and to a secluded, abandoned manor on the outskirts of town. Whoever lived here must have left the instant trouble started, and you make the empty, well-stocked mansion your new home. After a few days of isolation, though, you’re bored out of your mind. There’s no phone, television, or internet, and lone wolf or not, you start to go stir crazy. You’re contemplating heading back into town to see how the whole zombie apocalypse is coming along when you hear a scratching noise coming from out front.

The undead remains of a zombie mailman are at your door, trying to get up the stairs and onto the porch. He’s missing a fair chunk out of his left leg, however, and can’t seem to climb more than about two steps without slipping and tumbling back down. From your safe spot on the porch, the thing doesn’t seem terribly dangerous. If you’re careful, this might be an opportunity to observe one of these things close up.

If you use scientific research as an excuse to fight off boredom by playing with your new zombie friend, turn to page 143.

If you suspect that this whole idea might be signaling the early stages of dementia and think you’d better just put Zombie Postman out of his misery, turn to page 210.

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98

You feel terrible about it, but you’re seconds away from collapsing yourself, and you know in your heart that going back for the baby would be a fool’s errand. The woman collapses in grief in the back of the ice cream truck, and Daryl agrees to stay and watch over her while you join the others inside the stadium for some much needed rest.

Moments later you hear the truck start up—apparently she’s convinced Daryl to head back to the zoo after all. Well, perhaps that’s for the best. Assuming they both survive, the poor girl can at least get some closure.

Speaking of which, as the heavy arena gates close behind you, you realize that something inside is terribly wrong. The scene before you is complete chaos, with people screaming and running around, almost as if you’re in a country where people actually care about soccer and the wrong team is winning. It may sound crazy, but could this be one of those soccer riots you’ve always heard about?

Then you realize what’s happened. In your haste to rescue as many people as you could, you must have brought someone back who was already infected, and now the zombies are inside the stadium. In your deteriorated state, you’re in no shape to fight your way out.

You get eaten by a mob of zombie soccer hooligans.

THE END

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99

You slowly regain consciousness, feeling something hard and flat pressing against your face. Yup, that’s the kitchen floor. Moaning, you unscrunch your eyes. You know that feeling when you’re unsure of your surroundings, and then slowly the previous night’s misadventures start creeping back to you? Well, it’s like a hundred million times worse when the previous night includes a zombie apocalypse.

Wait, can that be right? Whose kitchen is this, anyway? The swinging doors are barricaded with appliances. You sort of remember doing that. You get off the floor and crack open the door to the alley. A half dozen moaning, decomposing dead people are waiting there, staring you right in the face. You slam the door and lock it again. Yow! How are you going to get out of this one? And what’s that smell? Something in the kitchen reeks.

Brains, you think. Sure enough, several portions of sweetbread have been sitting out all night, uncooked. You grab them (somehow choking down the considerable gag reflex), open the back door, huck them over the zombies’ heads, and break into a run.

Whoops—it looks like they’re ignoring your diversion completely. Quick! Do you keep running and hope to make it past them or try to dive back into the kitchen while you still have the chance?

If you give up on the whole escaping idea and retreat to the shelter of the restaurant, turn to page 22.

Then again, if you quit now you might never escape. If you push on, turn to page 189.

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100

“Sure,” you say. It takes her what seems like hours to compose a letter, and since she’s out of stamps, she offers to pay you with pie instead, which works out better for both of you (mmm, pie). You put your junk mail delivery plan on hold and go fetch your zombie burying shovel, hoping it will be better suited for decapitating than that long-handled broom was.

When you find the first roving corpse about a mile toward the city, you’re ready for it. The zombie goes down with a single well-placed shovel to the neck. To be honest, it’s badass. Unfortunately, they keep multiplying as you get closer to town. Trying to fight them all would be a suicide mission, so you switch to a strategy that involves a lot of running, and try to make it to the campus without being overwhelmed. Once there, you discover that it’s overrun with undead college students. A zombie in a tweed jacket who looks like he was probably faculty lunges at you, and when you smack him with your shovel he grabs it by the end and won’t let go.

By the time you wrest your weapon from the thing’s grasp, you’re surrounded. You dispatch Professor Stinky, but two more file in right behind him. No! Don’t let it end like this!

Suddenly you hear a high-pitched scream behind you, followed by the sounds of blunt instruments meeting flesh. You turn to see several college students, very much alive, battering away at the undead and opening up a hole in the crowd. “Come on!” a young woman says urgently.

You’re not about to argue with that. They take you across campus to their ad hoc shelter, where it looks like a couple of dozen survivors are hunkered down. Then they stop you at the door, demanding to check every inch of you for zombie bites before letting you in.

“Look, I’m just trying to find a guy named Brad Silverman,” you say.

A skinny kid who looks like he hasn’t slept in a week sticks his head out from behind the door. “I’m Brad,” he says.

“Uh, I’ve got a letter from your Mom.”

This prompts general laughter all around, and Brad takes the letter, opening it a bit sheepishly and unfolding the several pages he finds inside. “She sent me eighty bucks,” he says, fishing out a check.

The students don’t have much to eat, but they do have at least eight working coffee makers, so you make yourself a cup and prepare to head out. Before you can get out the door, however, Brad stops you. “Do you, like, work for the post office?” he asks.

“Listen kid,” you say. “I just brought the letter. I don’t do this for a living or anything.”

“Well, it really meant a lot. I wasn’t even sure my parents were alive, you know? So I was kind of wondering if you’d take me with you.” He looks at you all earnestly, and you remember how his mom talked you into this thing to begin with. “I could help with deliveries!”

He looks like he’d snap like a twig if a zombie leaned on him. If you tell him this was your last delivery, turn to page 264.

Then again, you’ve gone this far already. If you decide to take Brad under your wing and found the Post-Apocalyptic Postal Service, turn to page 129.

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102

You follow the woman with the gun outside. If the dead are rising from their graves, you think, it might be wise to hang around those with access to firearms. “Hey, wait up,” you yell, trying to get her attention. “Thanks for, you know, shooting those zombies and stuff. What’s your name?”

“Mittens,” the woman says without a hint of a smile. “I’m a cop.”

Hmm. Mittens is the kind of name that’s fairly common in the stuffed animal community, but you don’t typically hear it associated with regular human beings. “Uh, do you have a first name?” you ask.

“Officer,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “Now why don’t you run along and . . . aw, crap.”

You look to see what Mittens—Mittens? Really?—is  staring at and discover a whole mob of gore-covered zombies piling out of an art house movie theater down the street. Mittens looks at the undead crowd, then at her gun, and then back at the crowd. “Yeah, I might need some backup on this one,” she says finally. “Run, genius.”

She takes off down the street, and since you don’t have any other ideas, you follow. You round the corner just behind her and see her flagging down a pair of mounted patrolmen. It always seemed weird to you that cops sometimes ride horses right down the middle of the road, since the internal combustion engine was invented over a hundred years ago, but in this situation you’re not complaining. “Hey!” Mittens yells at them. “Uh, hello? Zombie invasion? Turn around, you morons!”

The officers seem completely uninterested, but the horses start to slowly, awkwardly turn on their own. One of them is a big, Clydesdale-looking thing, and the other is smaller, not much larger than a pony. It turns out that the smaller horse is in better shape, though—it only has a few patches of gouged flesh and one popped-out eye socket, whereas the big horse has whole chunks of head, neck, and torso missing. The officers are in even worse condition, but still moaning and somehow managing to stay mounted.

Mittens cusses up a storm and fires a whole clip full of ammunition at the larger horse, and although its rider slips off the saddle and hits the ground with a splat, the horse doesn’t even flinch. For some reason the fallen zombie officer starts trying to climb back up on his mount. “I’ve got bigger guns in my car!” Mittens says, bolting back the way you came.

Your first instinct is to follow as quickly as you can. You’re not at all sure you can outrun a zombie horse, though—that little one in particular still looks pretty fast. And if you’re going to be eaten anyway, perhaps this a good time for some ridiculous heroics?

If you try to create a distraction that allows Mittens to reach her car before the zombie equestrians run her down, turn to page 194.

Screw that! If you’re not quite ready to die and run as fast as you can, hoping Mittens will save you, turn to page 5.

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104

The streets around the police station are barricaded and surprisingly calm. Officers standing guard in riot gear let you in to see the captain, and you’re surprised to discover that he’s a stuffed crab. Stuffed crab? Oh, no. It can’t be.

It is. “Clampy Pete,” you say with more than a hint of disdain. You haven’t seen him in years, but you and he go way back. “A police captain now? What the crap?”

“You,” he mutters. “Hell, I might have known you’d wind up running with this one.” He glares at Mittens, and you can’t tell which of you he loathes more. She explains the situation at the church, but Clampy Pete doesn’t even want to hear it. “You’ve got nothing,” he says. “The word of a fake mobster and the fact that they’re killing zombies. Who isn’t? We do things by the book around here—that’s how we cleaned up the mess on the streets outside, and that’s how we’re going to clean up the rest of this city.”

Mittens starts to protest, but the captain stops her. “I’m short on men, or I’d just kick your asses to the curb right now. Since I’m desperate, though, I’ll give you a chance. We got a tip about some gangsters using zombies as drug mules. You can be reinstated,” he glowers at you, “and deputized, and help us bust them. Or you can get the hell out. Your call.”

You already know the zombie drug mule thing is ridiculous, but there’s safety in numbers. If you take Clampy Pete up on his offer, turn to page 62.

If you tell him to screw himself (it wouldn’t be the first time) and go back to investigate the church alone, turn to page 246.

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105

As safe as the inside of a police station might be, between you and that safety is a scene that will haunt you until your dying day. And since you’d like to put that day off as long as possible, you opt for the better part of valor and haul ass.

One of the zombies sees you running and drops the person it’s been chewing on to take up the chase. You’re not sure why you’re more appealing than the meal it already has—maybe you smell like Toyota Celica or something—but the movement attracts the rest of the mob’s attention and several of them begin following their compatriot’s lead.

You pick up the pace, only to discover another group of undead directly in front of you, on the far side of the intersection. There’s no time to plan your next action, but if you sprint, you might make it to the cross street before you’re boxed in.

If you head west at the intersection, toward your apartment near the center of town, turn to page 17.

If you go east, figuring the zombie threat might lessen toward the city’s outskirts, turn to page 136.

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106

You feel guilty about leaving the screamer alone and helpless, but there are thousands of people out there, and you can’t save them all. Every single zombie you’ve stumbled across, run from, or carved to ribbons today was a helpless bystander who needed saving at some point. And the best way to help people is to start by not getting yourself killed, right?

Right?

You see a barn ahead that looks like it might be easy to fortify. Plus, there could be award-winning livestock or something in there, and that sounds like good eating to you. You peer inside, and it’s clear of wandering zombies. It seems you’ve found the petting zoo.

You’re always a little overwhelmed by the stench of these exhibits, and this one seems particularly bad. You look down at a group of baby piglets. Ew—aren’t these animals supposed to be chosen mostly on the basis of cuteness? These things are listless, splotchy, and reeking. One looks up at you with hollow, staring eyes, and you realize that all is not right here. Suddenly two feet of hay doesn’t seem like enough of a barrier between you and . . . .

Before you can finish that thought, something leaps out of its compartment behind you and knocks you to the ground.You feel the weight of hooves on your back, and teeth sinking into you.

You get eaten by a zombie llama.

THE END

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107

As much as you always enjoyed camping, you can imagine what a nightmare it would be with this group. You start up the mountain road to the ranger station.

It’s a slow trek. Isabelle, in particular, is becoming quite sick from the small amount of stew she attempted to swallow. Luckily, you reach the cabin before dark. There’s no plumbing, but there is a large stash of bottled water and an outhouse (score!), and it turns out that the stream leading into the valley below starts not too far up the mountain from here. You have the group settle in as comfortably as they can while you scout the area for potential hazards. Maybe the ranger station will work out after all.

Alas, your optimism is short-lived. A huge group of zombies is making its way up the mountain beneath you. There must be hundreds of them! How did they find you way out here? You rush back toward the cabin to warn the others. What you find, however, is another shock.

Gore is splattered everywhere, and it looks as if the whole bunch has somehow been turned. Most of them are scattered throughout the cabin, lounging about as if drunk. A few are straggling about anxiously, though, and Zombie Daryl stands before you with an empty purple toothpaste tube in his hand.

He sees you and leaps before you have a chance to quite come to grips with what has happened. Fortunately, you’ll never have to. Daryl’s teeth sink in and everything fades to black.

THE END

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108

“I still don’t see what the big deal is,” Ernie says as Khenan slams the door behind you. “It’s not like we have a bunch of other leads that . . . oh, no.” You look down the hall and spot a zombie lurching toward you. In the confined space, there’s no way past it. Ernie starts pounding on the door. “Khenan!” he shouts. “We’re sorry! Let us back in!”

“No,” he says petulantly from inside. “You have insulted me and my Jamaican ancestors.”

“Haitian!” you say. “And we said we’re sorry! We’ll pay the forty dollars! Please let us inside!”

“Slide the money under the door,” Khenan says, and you fumble through your wallet for the cash. The zombie is almost on you now! Ernie screams. “There are two more coming!” he shouts. “Just tell us how to kill these things!”

The door opens a crack, and Khenan drops a handful of items at your feet. “All of these things you will need,” he says, slamming the door once again. There’s a bag of salt, a needle and thread, and a bunch of candles. With no time to think, you throw the salt in the zombie’s face, to very little effect. Then you pick up a candle, but it seems useless as a weapon. Could you try poking it with the needle, maybe? It’s too late. You fall prey to your attacker’s surprisingly strong grasp and predictably wretched teeth. Ernie tries to run, but the two new zombies make short work of him.

That Khenan guy had better be for real now, you think. Because now he has five zombies at his doorstep, and at least one of them is super pissed.

THE END

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109

There’s quite a bit of arguing about where to eat. Finally you decide that you’ll bust into the first place you find that hasn’t been overrun by zombies, but with the caveat that if there’s more than one choice, the pecking order is McDonald’s, then Taco Bell, then any sit-down restaurant, and then Arby’s. As you herd the group along, a scrawny, middle-aged guy pulls you aside. He was the leader of the Taco Bell faction. “Hey, why don’t you take a break for a little while,” he says, “and let someone else try out that chainsaw?”

Since you still don’t have much of a plan, giving up the saw would make your only leadership qualification a calm, soothing demeanor—and that didn’t even serve you particularly well during the whole where-should-we-eat boondoggle. “I think I’ll keep it,” you say with a hard stare.

“Yeah,” he sneers, “and who made you the boss of the world?” The boss of the world? You just saved all of their lives! Nevertheless, before you know it you’ve agreed that the leader should be chosen by physical confrontation, mostly because you’re reasonably confident that you can take this weenie. You consent to having your left hand tied to his, leaving your right hand for . . . you don’t know. Slapping, maybe? The two of you circle each other for a minute talking trash, but finally you commit, landing a punch square in your opponent’s jaw. He screams and immediately passes out. Well, that was easy.

Almost as easy as it is for the approaching band of zombies to harvest your brain, since the rest of the group has already split, leaving you with no chainsaw and with one hand tied to an unconscious weasel.

THE END

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110

You explain to the group that you’re going to lure the zombies away, and you want them to pick the market clean of food and supplies. Most of them look at you with blank stares (one gentleman asks you what you mean by “zombies”) but you appoint Daryl and Isabelle to quarterback the operation and move on to the next stage of your plan.

The zombies are surprisingly easy to lure. With some shouting and frantic waving you get their attention, and then it’s just a matter of fleeing quickly enough to avoid capture but slowly enough to keep them on your tail. Getting surrounded is the real danger, but happily you don’t run into any other groups, and after a short while you ditch your stumbling pursuers and hurry back to the market.

When you return, you find that Daryl has been stocking up on organic fertilizer, apparently in hope of making explosives. Others are breaking down wooden stalls, for reasons that remain unclear. A few have been gathering foodstuffs as directed, so you consider your plan a qualified success. It’ll be dark soon, and you spot zombies on the horizon headed your way. In fact, it’s the same mob you ditched earlier—you recognize one in a bright pink sun hat that’s hard to miss.

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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111

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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112

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

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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.

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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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116

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.

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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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120

The protesters raise their signs and banners and start marching directly into the cadaverous embrace of the undead. You grab Josh by the arm and try to very quickly talk some sense into him. “Josh. Dude. This isn’t what you think it is. These zombies are going to kill you all. They’re going to chew on your flesh and either eat your brain or convert you into one of them!” He just looks at you like you’re the most racist, horrible person in the world. “No,” you say, “this isn’t one of those things where you substitute the word ‘Jew’ for the word ‘zombie’ and reveal your dark, subliminal prejudices. They’re a rainbow of different races, sexual orientations and nationalities, but they all died and came back to life with a mindless hunger for the flesh of the living.” You’re not getting through to him. You need to change tactics.

“Also,” you add, “they’re walking, decaying corpses. There are no cute girls there who want to hook up with you.”

“What?” he says, incredulous. “Dude, it’s not about that.” You’ve clearly hurt Josh’s feelings a little. He pauses for a moment. “Really? None?” Taking a closer look at the crowd in front of him, your message starts to sink in. “Oh, my God,” he says. “Those aren’t people, are they?”

Josh drops his banner and starts convincing his group that this march might not be their scene after all. The SA-Human Alliance (or SAHA), never super-committed to Undead American rights to begin with, is fairly easy to divert from the cause. Alas, the ACLU is not so easily swayed.

“It’s not just the rights of . . . ghah,” their leader says, choking a little at the stench of the oncoming crowd. “This is America, and . . .” You don’t have time to argue. The stuffed animals and their allies are fleeing to the marina, and you hurry to join them, risking a glance backward just in time to see the regional chapter of the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union devoured as one by the ravenous zombie tide.

A stuffed pelican in a sea captain’s outfit (really?) has a yacht moored there, so you pile on board and set sail. He knows these waters well and sails to a large private island that features several posh vacation homes. The sheer numbers crowded into the boat make it difficult to pilot, however, and you wind up crashing it on the shoreline. You’ve become castaways.

You make the best of it. The group is eager to work together for the common good, and the island has a fresh water well, and ample room for farming. Decades later, the community is thriving. And out of all the enclaves of humanity that survive the worldwide zombie outbreak, yours is the only one that endures. In a few centuries, every living person on the planet is a descendant of your island community.

Which is to say that they’re all stuffed animals (SAHA had a good number of human members as well, but the demographics of protest groups being what they are, they all turn out to be lesbians). It would be nice to think that an all stuffed animal world would be a more tolerant, more peaceful one, but after generations of re-populating the globe, mankind is still warring, amassing wealth, and doing battle with the darker aspects of its own nature. The planet is more or less the same as the one we know today.

It’s freaking adorable, though.

THE END

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122

You dip a finger into a hole that has been conveniently gouged in the top of your head and have a taste—sure enough, delicious, mouthwatering brains! What luck! You shamble off to a quiet area away from the crowd and settle down in a nice shady spot under a tree.

There’s still quite a bit of bone up there, but with some effort you manage to break it to pieces and clear most of it away. As you gorge yourself on the delicacy, all the problems of the world seem to melt away. It’s as if with every bite you have less worry, less anger, less despair. You’ve never been so happy and content in your entire life (at least as far as you can remember, which, granted, is less and less). Before long you’re down to one last delectable scoop, and one final snippet of thought before the blissful embrace of blackness finds you once again.

Brrrrrraaaaaaaaiiiinnnn . . . nnnn . . . nn . . . n . . . s . . . .

THE END

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123

The zombies out on the street were crazy about this stuff. You scan the shelves and find a blue, sparkly box labeled “Crogaste Total Complete Extreme Whitening.” That sounds right, you think. And it had better be, because now another bunch of them are approaching from the far end of the aisle.

You squirt a glob of paste at your new attackers, but it doesn’t faze them. Crogaste’s competitor also sells a sparkly-blue branded toothpaste, but the zombies don’t seem to care for that one, either. You start opening any tube you can get your hands on, and in a moment of desperation even try that all-natural stuff from Maine. But none of the zombies show the slightest interest in any of it.

Which is terrible news for you. Maybe you can climb over the shelving and escape to another aisle? Not a bad plan, but your immediate surroundings are now completely covered in fluoridated goo, and you slip and fall while attempting to gain purchase.

Then the zombies are all over you the moment you hit the floor. You never do find out what the deal was with the toothpaste.

THE END

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124

“We have to bring it home with us!” you say to Ernie.

“That’s just what I was . . . wait, what?” he replies. “Are you sure? It still seems kind of evil to me.”

“It saved our lives, Ernie,” you insist. “At the very least, we owe it the benefit of the doubt.” When you get back to Ernie’s place, you’re pleased to see that the dog has shaken off its limp. You prepare a soft bed of pillows in Ernie’s basement and thaw out a ham from his freezer to offer the dog for supper. It may take some time, but you’re sure you can eventually earn the dog’s trust.

You and Ernie are both exhausted from the day’s activity, and he’s more than a little wary of the dog, so you compromise, locking the basement up tight for safety. Then you fall asleep thinking about how much easier it’s going to be fighting off zombies with your trusty new companion by your side.

Of course, for a dog that chewed through a steel cage and jumped right through a car windshield, a little basement lock isn’t likely to present much of a problem.

Princess, needless to say, devours you both in the middle of the night.

THE END

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125

Whatever else she may be, this girl’s a zombie, and if the afternoon’s adventure has taught you anything, it’s that people like her eat people like you. And anyway, it doesn’t feel right to go around basing life and death decisions solely on cuteness. Running for your life has worked okay so far, so you stick to the game plan.

You manage to lure your undead neighbor away from the stairwell and climb up to your second-floor apartment, relieved to find the walkway empty. You’re surprised to find something small and fuzzy on your welcome mat, scratching at your apartment door. Good lord, is that a cat?

Sure enough, a tiny, fluffy white kitten, barely bigger than a good-sized cheeseburger, is camped out on your doorstep. “Aw, what are you doing here, little guy?” you coo. It sees you, does a funny little hop, then flops over, rolls over on its back and . . . moans?

Apparently, the answer to your question is “hungering for the flesh of the living.” Seriously, though, this is the most adorable zombie kitty ever. If you were going to seek out a cure for zombism, here’s your test subject right here. I mean, how dangerous could it be? It’s frolicking.

If you carefully bring the kitten inside your apartment, figuring maybe you can nurse it back to health and then apply what you’ve learned about curing cat zombies to the general population, turn to page 44.

Wait a minute, didn’t you already decide something about basing life and death decisions solely on cuteness? If you want nothing to do with the scruffy little thing, turn to page 172.

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126

Look at you, being all noble and sacrificing your own safety for the chance to help others. Daryl drives his giant spiky ice cream truck of doom around for another couple of hours, picking up several would-be zombie victims along the way. At some point they ask him why there’s a dead stuffed bunny in the back of the truck, at which point Daryl realizes you didn’t make it, and tells them about your selfless deeds.

The passengers erect a monument to your heroism that night. It’s not a terribly impressive monument, since they don’t really have proper tools or monument-building materials on hand. Then zombies come and eat the monument. Such is life in the post-zombie apocalypse. There are like four people alive who wouldn’t be if it weren’t for you, though.

You should totally feel good about that.

THE END

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127

“No one lives forever!” you yell, firing wildly into the zombie crowd. It’s actually quite difficult to down these things with a bullet, you’ve discovered. Anything but a direct head shot and they just shrug it off and keep coming at you, dragging themselves along on their bellies if you manage to take out a leg or two. Which you’ve done quite a bit so far, since you’re a terrible shot. Legless zombies are crawling all over the place.

“Not interested in the coward’s way out, huh?” Vinny says. “Fair enough. If you stick it out, I’ll stick it out.” The two of you keep blasting away in a blaze of glory, and it would be nice to report that things work out in the end, but you already know it’s not going down that way. Just as you see a potential path open up back to the police station, you realize that you’ve fired your last shot.

You turn to your foxhole buddy. “What do we do now, Vinny?”

It appears, though, that Vinny ran out of ammo some time before you did. He’s lying there silently with a pair of zombie torsos on top of him, chewing away. “Braaains,” he moans softly.

You’ll be joining him shortly.

THE END

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128

“No rest for the wicked,” you say, and Daryl’s face lights up. It turns out “No Rest for the Wicked” is his favorite Ozzy Osbourne record, and now you’re stuck listening to it for the rest of the night. At least it keeps you awake, though.

You continue your mission, dropping off small groups of terrified civilians at the arena and then turning right around to look for more. You’re increasingly exhausted as the night wears on, but determined to save as many folks as possible from the zombie menace. As dawn breaks, you find yourself outside the city zoo, with a nightmarish scene playing out in front of you. Zombie people are interspersed with zombie creatures great and small. There are zombie monkeys, a zombie koala, and at least three zombie polar bears. You rescue a hysterical young woman who collapses as soon as she climbs aboard the van and decide that you’ve finally done everything you can do for tonight.

When you get back to the stadium, however, the girl awakens. “My baby!” she screams. “My baby is back at the zoo! You have to save her!”

You glance at Daryl, and he winces. There’s no way a helpless child could still be alive back there. For the love of god—zombie polar bears.

If you apologize to the poor woman and then go collapse in the soccer arena, turn to page 98.

If you can’t bear to deliver this news and would rather go back out than have to tell her you’re giving up on her baby, turn to page 158.

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129

You come to terms with the fact that your fate was sealed when you took that zombie’s mailbag in the first place. Unwatchable 1997 Kevin Costner vanity project or no, you’re officially the postal department now.

Brad’s enthusiasm for the project is infectious, and most of his college compatriots decide to join the cause as well. You have to admit that the look on people’s faces when they receive news of their loved ones is kind of life-affirming and whatnot, and although at first you limit your activities to the greater metro area, before long Post-Apocalyptic Post Offices are springing up in nearby towns, and eventually all over the world.

Granted, there’s only so much basic communications can do in the midst of a complete societal breakdown—it’s mail, you know?—and delivering letters and packages through the undead wastelands is grueling, dangerous work. But you manage to create a basic foundation upon which humanity limps along for decades, maybe even centuries, to come. Plus, it keeps the pie coming. All told, not a bad way to eke out a living in the never ending hell of the zombie wastelands.

THE END

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130

The Toyota Celica hasn’t let you down yet. You kick a zombie interloper away from the driver’s seat, force your key into the ignition, and step on it. A clump of bodies in front of you grinds you to a halt, so you throw the car in reverse and peel out backwards.

You pull back about fifty feet and stop. The windshield is completely covered in gore, so after getting both doors properly shut you roll down your window and stick your head out. Ernie and Candice have (thank god!) survived your blind driving crapshoot and are still pummeling away with their makeshift zombie-bludgeoning tools.

“Run!” you yell, throwing the car into drive. You jut your head out the window for visibility, and your friends hurl themselves in opposite directions as you ram the mass of zombies at full speed, plowing right through and sending pieces of reanimated corpse flying. You pull back around, flattening a couple of stragglers, and Ernie and Candice hop in the car, wild-eyed and out of breath. “Okay! What now?” you ask.

“We’ll need a lot more data to get to the bottom of this,” Ernie says. “Maybe the Crogaste corporate office?”

“I barely got out of there alive!” Candice insists. “The shipping center isn’t far from here. I think we should check there first and see if they have any of this stuff sitting on a loading dock.”

If you agree with Ernie and go looking for answers at corporate headquarters, turn to page 8.

If you think Candice’s suggestion sounds like a better plan and head for the UPS hub, turn to page 236.

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131

“Welcome to Chainsaw Island,” you say. Here comes the good part. “Where the chief export is PAIN!”

You know, you thought it was clever when you first came up with it, but hearing it actually come out of your mouth, it’s kind of goofy. First off, you totally stole it from one of those Chuck Norris jokes, and while the idea of Chuck Norris having a chief export is funny, what the hell is Chainsaw Island supposed to be? Is it a sovereign nation? Can the undead even feel pain? Now your badass zombie taunt is falling apart.

Although you’re probably being a little hard on yourself, needless to say your full attention is not on the task at hand. And it’s really a good idea to completely focus on the zombie slaughtering in a situation like this. You cut through a torso horizontally and then move on to the next in line, but by the time you realize that the top half of a zombie still poses a significant threat, it’s already pulled its stubby body toward you and bitten you on the ankle.

That’s it for you. Soon you’re an overly self-critical zombie badass with a chainsaw.

You drop the power tool and wander off looking for brains.

THE END

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132

Nerd. You enter the shop and quickly lock the door behind you. The place is small and packed to the gills with comics, tabletop games, little statues of superheroes, and collectibles of every kind. Behind the counter, mounted above the cash register, you see . . .

No. Fricking. Way.

You see a replica of some kind of giant, bladed weapon that you think is from Star Trek. It’s crescent-shaped with the handle in the middle and various spikes radiating out. You take it from the wall and find that it’s nice and heavy. Ouch—it’s sharp, too! The thing is perfectly balanced and just lovingly crafted. And you can’t think of a more perfect implement for chopping off zombie heads. Screw the comic book store. Armed with this thing, you’re off for greener pastures. Outside, a zombie immediately spots you and starts lurching your way, but this time you’re ready. Your geekweapon separates its head from its body like it’s slicing through a honey-baked ham.

That was surprisingly fun.

You need to find a long-term base of operations. There’s a gated community on the north end of town, and if you can get to it, you might be able to organize the residents to keep the infestation at bay. Gated. Hmmm . . . what about the city zoo? It’s closer, there should be plenty of bars to sleep behind and, though this might just be the Klingon talking, an ample supply of meat if things take a turn for the worse.

If you head north toward the gated community, turn to page 159.

If you decide the zoo is your best bet for long-term shelter, turn to page 237.

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133

Toothpaste is the key, you think, and besides, the people plowing out of the store barely seem able to help themselves. You knock a couple of them aside and enter the front door, casting about for the oral care aisle.

The scene that confronts you is madness. A zombie is savaging a shopper just to your left, and the shopper’s eyes are quickly glazing over as he joins the ranks of the living dead. Others are running around in hysterics, and a few appear to be looting. You keep your wits about you and head toward the pharmacy. Just when you find the right aisle, two zombies spot you and lurch in your direction. So you tear open a toothpaste box, twist off the cap and squirt goop liberally over both of your attackers.

They completely ignore it and keep moving toward you. “Braaains,” one of them moans. That didn’t work at all. Perhaps they’re less interested in dental hygiene than the ones you ran over with your car? Or did you simply select the wrong brand? The tube in your car was purple and had sparkles on it. Total Extreme with Extra Whitening, you think? Something like that? For all you know, it’s the whitening action that makes zombies go nuts.

If you keep searching the toothpaste aisle and try to find the winning flavor, turn to page 123.

If you abandon the toothpaste plan and just try to get out of the store while you still can, turn to page 57.

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134

You leap across the desk and punch Clampy Pete right in his smug little stuffed crab face. The officer tackles you, and you struggle with him as much as possible, hoping to add some time for resisting arrest. You think about trying to grab his gun, too, but figure that the protocol for that most likely involves shooting you to death.

“You have the right to remain silent,” the chief sputters, blood now gushing from his nose. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

After hearing the entire Miranda Act, you get dragged out for booking, but nobody seems to be in a terrible hurry. The fingerprinting process alone takes about forty-five minutes. They leave you at a telephone for some time to make your one phone call, even though the station apparently hasn’t had working phone service for hours. It seems that most of the officers here are a little tired of living with Clampy Pete’s rules and are secretly delighted that somebody finally gave him a piece of their mind. It doesn’t last, though, and eventually you’re taken to your cell. “Sorry about this,” the officer says. “Really. But we’ve made an awful lot of arrests today.”

“People would rather be in here than out there, huh?”

“Naw, it’s not like that. It’s just . . . we’re cops, you know? We can’t shoot them. All we can do is throw them in jail.”

The cell opens up in front of you, and you realize that something is terribly wrong. It’s already quite crowded in there, and your cellmates all moan and reach out as they see you coming. “Braaaaaains,” one of them groans.

The cell door slams shut behind you.

THE END

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135

You throw yourself over the side. Goodbye, cruel world! It’s over in seconds—the fall snaps your spine and crumples your limbs, and you black out instantly.

If you properly understood zombie physiology, though, you would have made sure that you landed on your head. With your brain still intact, you awaken to the very undead nightmare you were trying to avoid. Only in this version you’re unable to walk or stand, and can barely drag your shattered body to the side of the road. There are no cars on the freeway, which is kind of a shame, because if there were, one of them might run you over and put you out of your misery. As it is, it takes you the better part of an hour to cross three empty lanes.

You drag yourself along for weeks. You’re a threat to no one, so no one ever bothers with you. At some point you stumble upon a sleeping kitten, but the moment you take a nibble, it awakens, clawing the hell out of you and bolting, eventually becoming a horrifying (but adorable) zombie hell kitty, but not providing you with any sustenance.

There are a lot of ways to die in this book, but overall, the ones where you’re killed outright are more pleasant than the ones where you end up a zombie. And of those, you’ve managed to find what’s probably the most wretched, pitiful one.

Which is an accomplishment in itself, I guess.

THE END

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136

You run as fast as your plush bunny feet can carry you toward the edge of town. Darkness falls as you hit the suburbs, and the streets seem abandoned, by both regular townsfolk and the living dead. One family seems to have fled in particular haste, leaving their garage door open. You’re getting desperate, so you try the door leading from the garage to the house—sure enough, it’s unlocked. The place is empty, and you decide to settle in for the night. If the residents do show up, their surprise should be easier to deal with than the zombies are.

After a sleepless night of unspoken dread and cellphone Tetris (still no service, so it’s useless for anything else), morning comes. You check outside, and all looks calm. Then you see them down the block: a pair of roving zombies trampling through the shrubbery. They’ve made it to the suburbs after all.

A few houses on the block still have cars in their driveways—if they’re as abandoned as this one you might find car keys inside. Then again, what if the cars are still there because their owners have been zombified, and are home waiting patiently for breakfast?

This neighborhood borders the woods where you went camping with your family as a kid. You could just head into the wilderness on foot and hope the zombies keep to the populated areas.

If you break into a house in search of car keys, turn to page 156.

If you decide to head into the woods on foot, turn to page 213.

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137

You can barely contemplate the horror of government-controlled zombie super-soldiers. There’s no way that winds up okay. “I’ll never help you,” you insist defiantly. You consider spitting for dramatic effect but figure that might be a tad much.

“Whatever, dude,” the officer says as the guards come to take you away. Whatever, dude? You start to wonder if desperate times have called for some fairly drastic field promotions, or if perhaps he just got his rank by putting on someone else’s clothes like you did.

As the guards open the door to your holding room, you realize that this might be your only chance to get out of here. You’re not sure what sort of last-minute heroics you could attempt, however. They do have guns.

If you try to pull off some crazy acrobatic ninja escape moves, turn to page 73.

If that doesn’t really sound like you and you get in your cell, hoping for the best, turn to page 214.

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138

You decide to leave the Freedom America Citizens’ Militia alone. They seem way twitchier than anyone packing that much firepower should probably be, and from what you can tell they don’t even know about the zombie outbreak yet. The problem, though, is that this leaves you alone on the undead-filled streets, and you still have nothing to defend yourself with.

Since you haven’t got any better ideas, you start back toward the hardware store, but soon spot a wall of zombies headed right at you. Is it possible that they’re getting organized? Suddenly you’re struck with a flash of brilliance. You pick up a rock and slowly make your way down the street, with the zombies in lurching, gradual pursuit. You pass the gun shop, and as soon as the undead are right in front of it, you chuck the rock at the shop’s front door.

The result is a hail of gunfire like you’ve never even imagined, tearing up the zombies something fierce. Granted, a large number of them are still dragging themselves after you—persistent!—but at least it slowed them down. Your luck can’t last forever, though, and since you don’t have a weapon, you figure you’d better get indoors as soon as possible. The shops on this street all seem empty, and a quick check reveals two that the proprietors seem to have abandoned without bothering to lock up: a comic shop and a liquor store.

So, if you were holed up somewhere waiting out the zombie apocalypse, would you rather have stuff to read or stuff to get hammered on?

If you hide out in the comic book store, turn to page 132.

If it’s the liquor store for you, turn to page 267.

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139

You do like ice cream. So you have some breakfast and then get to work boarding up the rest of the windows so the zombies can’t see in. And so you can’t see out, you think. This whole business has a head-in-the-sand ostrich quality about it that doesn’t sit well with you, but you hope it’s all for the best.

Days go by, and life in Grocery Store Utopia starts to get a little weird. You hold free elections for store mayor, and since you refuse to be nominated yourself, the group elects the track-suited housewife who lent you cigarettes on the first day. She ran on a platform of zero rationing, insisting that there was enough food in the store for everybody to eat as much as they want, whenever they want. Normally, you would favor a more sensible approach, but you had already ventured a glance outside earlier that morning.

The zombies were shoulder-to-shoulder out there, wall-to-wall. Like shag carpeting.

So you let the group have its paradise. When the food is gone, the food is gone, and making it stretch a few extra days or weeks will only delay the inevitable. You kick back with a Mountain Dew and a frozen pizza and try to put the inevitable out of your mind.

Mmm, frozen pizza.

THE END

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140

Hiding out and waiting for rescue just isn’t your style. You grab a tire iron from the automotive section to replace your well-used hammer and hit the streets looking for somewhere to gas up your new toy.

It looks like the zombie infestation has spread quickly. You remember a gas station that’s about half an hour away on foot, and make your way toward it, walking faster and faster in an attempt to keep ahead of the growing horde. By the time you see its sign, you’ve broken into an outright run.

You’re out of breath when you reach the pump and swipe your credit card. It blissfully authorizes your transaction and you grab the nozzle, pumping sweet petroleum into the chainsaw. Dozens of zombies lurch toward you from all sides as you pull the cord and hear the screeching grind of the motor starting. This time you’re ready for them.

All that’s left is to say something badass.

If you say “let’s carve this turkey,” turn to page 87.

If you say “welcome to Chainsaw Island, where the chief export is PAIN,” turn to page 131.

If you go with “say hello to my little gasoline-powered friend,” turn to page 59.

If these choices all seem iffy and you think you can come up with something better, turn to page 277.

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141

“Sorry, guys,” Mittens tells the cops. “You’ll have to find yourselves another renegade captain. Me and the rabbit are out of here.”

Despite her questionable grammar (it’s “the rabbit and I”), you’re flattered that Mittens thinks so highly of your opinion. The two of you hop in her car and drive out to Cardinal D’Amato’s church, parking right in front. You sit for a moment in silence, wondering what you’ll find inside. It could hold the answers to the entire zombie situation. Or Fat Jimmy could have been lying all along, and there might be nothing in there but a Catholic congregation trying to survive the undead apocalypse. Somehow, though, it looks every bit as spooky in broad daylight.

Possibly even spookier.

“Well,” Mittens asks, taking a long drag from a cigarette, “are you ready?”

If you are, turn to page 226.

If you aren’t, well . . . .  You know, if you’re having second thoughts at this point, you might as well just go back and choose the police mutiny thing. Otherwise, it’s time to cowboy up and get this thing done. Turn to page 226, already.

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142

You tell the Crogaste employees that the speaker phone commands them to go to the nearby convenience store and lock themselves inside until you come back for them. You apologize to Candice, but she gets over it surprisingly fast. The three of you get back into your barely-running Celica and head toward the factory site.

Once there, you find unconscious zombies piled up in mounds that you literally have to climb over to get inside—they apparently have been gorging on toothpaste to the point of catatonia. You help Ernie restart the manufacturing process, but as soon as you mix in the final ingredients, an aroma of toothpastey goodness fills the air and zombies start picking themselves off the ground, hungering for a taste.

You try spreading around globs of toothpaste to distract them, but there are only three of you, and the living dead are soon swarming from all sides. “You know what would have actually come in really handy right now?” Ernie asks as the horde surrounds you.

“A couple of dozen half-crazy helper monkeys.” Candice replies. Yeah. Hindsight is 20/20, you think, as you’re crushed beneath a mountain of zombies desperate for their cavity-fighting bliss.

THE END

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143

The first thing you discover is that although zombies may be mindless, they certainly are determined. You lure it around the back of the house by walking slightly faster than it lurches, find some rope, and manage to tie it to the back porch. This should keep it from terrorizing the neighborhood until you can construct some kind of zombie habitat.

As far as feeding goes, you find that Smitty (you’ve decided to name it Smitty) will eat just about any type of uncooked meat in a pinch, but greatly prefers something living, and will drop any meal, no matter how long since its last feeding, if he smells brain. This means that the only research you can conduct when it knows you’re there is to study the way it attempts to eat you. After a few days, you conclude that to continue your studies you’re going to need a steady supply of live food to keep this thing occupied.

Stray animals seem like the obvious mealtime solution. You pause, wondering if you’re taking this too far. Abducting stray cats and feeding them to a captive zombie? That doesn’t sound like you. On the other hand, your research might lead to something that will help humanity fight off the zombie plague and save the world. You’re actually starting to grow fond of Smitty, but as things stand, he isn’t much more than a foul-smelling and particularly dangerous house pet.

If you kick it up a notch and put out some traps for strays, turn to page 91. Come to think of it, you could probably use a couple more test zombies as well . . .

If you draw the line at murdering kittens and decide that the research isn’t worth it, turn to page 112.

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144

“Never!” you howl, thinking that’s the sort of thing people howl when told to bow down before other people. You hurl yourself at the Zombie Lord, swinging your wrench wildly. Ernie, inspired by your bravado, throws himself into the fray with some kind of awkward tackle attempt.

Before you can connect, however, the Zombie Lord raises a hand and you’re stopped by an invisible barrier. Chuckling, he flicks his wrist, flinging you both about ten yards back, where you hit the ground hard.

“Defiance,” the villain says, amused. “After bringing forth your new lord and master, you have regrets? You wish to save your world from destruction? You cannot. Such fighting spirit, even in the face of certain death. It pleases me.”

Whoever this guy is, he seems to have gotten his concept of ultimate evil from Marvel Comics, or perhaps from watching way too many James Bond movies. You try to get up, but a blinding pain shoots through your leg. You think it’s broken. The Zombie Lord’s feet leave the ground as he slowly levitates toward the sky.

“So much life,” he says. “Repulsive. The trees, the birds. The human beings with their petty squabbles and their delusions of grandeur. I believe I shall start with the insects.” He looks down at you and Ernie as he floats away, beaming. “You two shall remain to witness the consequences of your actions as I bring an end to every living thing on your world, then rule over it with absolute sovereignty,” he says.

“You two I shall kill last.”

THE END

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145

Forget the car, you think. You’re the character Al Pacino played in that one movie! You don’t actually know any other lines from that one, but dammit, you’re here to kill zombies and chew bubblegum. And you’re pretty sure that you’re all out of . . .

Wait a minute, that’s a good idea. You hop into the gas station convenience store and grab some bubblegum from the shelf. Mmm, bubblegum. Ooh, and Hostess fruit pies! This day is turning out okay after all, you think.

In any event, there are people out there who need hope, and you’re just the stuffed rabbit to bring it to them. You wander back into the thick of things, carving up any zombies foolish enough to get in your way. A few streets over, you run into a sea of them crowded around a ritzy, high-class hotel. It’s getting dark, and soon you’ll need someplace to spend the night. So you wade right into the crowd, and zombie after zombie falls to your mighty rotating blade. This is awesome! You wonder how long a chainsaw can operate on a single tank of gas.

Turns out: less than twenty minutes. Who knew? Your weapon sputters to a stop midway through a zombie’s head and gets stuck there. Uh-oh. The undead fill in behind you, and now you don’t feel like the Scarface guy at all. Now you feel more like Al Pacino’s character in Scent of a Woman. Was that the one where he played some blind dude?

You’re not sure. You never saw it.

THE END

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146

You settle in. We won’t go into detail about how you adapt one of the sinks into a field latrine, but let’s just say it’s less than ideal, especially for the more solid waste products. Over the course of several days you resign yourself more and more to your situation, fashioning a lumpy bed out of some of the softer things you find among the dinner ingredients, and falling into a general malaise.

You’re not a pleasant sight to see, and your sanity is more than a little worse for wear, but you soldier on. At some point—you’ve long since stopped bothering to keep track of time—you hear loud noises coming from the restaurant proper. Are the zombies in there simply getting rowdy, or could this possibly be some kind of rescue? The noises escalate, and now someone or something is pushing at the swinging doors. You don’t know whether to be hopeful or terrified, so you huddle up in a corner as the pressure on the doors builds into a steady pounding. Your barricade starts to give way. Suddenly the dam bursts, and a group of hearty (and very much alive) men, mostly in police uniforms, comes pouring into the room. Hurray! You’re saved!

They catch a whiff of your hellish kitchen burrow , take one look at the way you’ve been living, and shoot you on sight.

THE END

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147

Superfly or not, she’s a zombie now. You’ve seen these things in action, and once the flesh starts ripping and the blood starts spurting, it’s not a pretty sight. The best thing you can do for your neighbor is to put her out of her misery before she devours the next poor sap who comes along. You look around for something to use as a weapon—the zombie princess slowly lurching toward you the whole time—and the best you can come up with is a loose plank from a picket fence.

“Hello?” you say hesitantly. “Anybody home in there?” Your concern is met by a low groan, and she clumsily takes a swipe at you. You steel yourself, and swing your fence plank in a wide arc, connecting with her head.

“Hey!” you hear from behind you. “That stuffed bunny is attacking the hot girl from 4a!”

“What? No—” Before you can react, you’re wrestled to the ground by several of your other neighbors. You recognize the bartender guy from the third floor and old Mrs. Weatherby—you watched her cat while she was out of town!—but the beating you receive is fairly severe, and you don’t have much opportunity to explain yourself in the midst of it. Never underestimate the ferocity with which people will rescue a good-looking damsel in distress, you think. It’s your last thought before you succumb to the various head blows and pass out to the sounds of your neighbors trying to reassure the moaning, ravenous zombie that everything is going to be okay.

Judging by the screams that follow, they may not be entirely correct.

THE END

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148

“They may be spawned by Satan,” you say, “but blowing off their heads has worked pretty good so far.” Mittens gives you her backup shotgun, a .44 Magnum for good measure, plenty of ammunition for both weapons, and two of her four hand grenades. Father Tim hands you a rosary for luck. What the hell (um, heck), you think, draping it around your neck. It can’t hurt.

There are dozens of half-mad worshippers strewn about outside the cathedral, but you and Mittens ignore them, and with a quick prayer from Tim, you open the doors. At least two hundred zombies are packed inside, and they look hungry. You each pitch a grenade, and the resulting explosions are not momentous, but encouraging. Two more grenades, and then you get to work with your shotguns.

These zombies seem identical to the ones you’ve been shooting up all week, and if one of them is some kind of undead messiah, you certainly can’t pick his Holiness out from the crowd. Working together, you keep the tide at bay, and although the novelty of blasting zombies straight to hell wears off surprisingly fast, you eventually thin them out. After you run out of shells, you move on to sidearms, and eventually use your shotguns as clubs to finish off the last few stragglers.

Victorious, you emerge from the cathedral knee-deep in gore to find that the crowd outside has quadrupled in size. “You can have this back,” you say, tossing the rosary to Father Tim. “We killed the Zombie Jesus.”

An older man in robes and a funny, pointed hat in the style you always thought was reserved for popes cries out in anguish. This must be Cardinal D’Amato. “Demon spawn!” he howls. “You’ve taken Him from us! You’ve crucified our savior!”
“No,” Father Tim mutters, startled. “You don’t understand! They just saved our—” Before he can finish, though, the crowd is upon you. If they were crazy before, their grief has now pushed them completely over the edge, and they sweep over you in a blind fury.

You get torn limb from limb by a mob of raving Catholics.

THE END

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150

You picked up these kids to save them from zombies, so wading into a sea of them just seems irresponsible. “Um, are we being abducted?” Prudence asks politely from the back seat.

“What? No! I’m just trying to get you somewhere safe,” you insist.

“Then can I shoot some zombies anyway?” Billy pipes up.

Prudence shushes him. “You’re not supposed to interact verbally with your abductor,” she whispers.

Well, she can thank you for saving her life later. You find a mountain road that winds toward the next town, and take a pit stop for bathroom activities after driving about an hour into the hills. You spot a nice bush to pee behind, and Billy wanders off into the underbrush. A moment later, however, he runs out screaming. “Run!” he yells. “Zombie hiker!”

“Billy, get back to the car!” you say. “Prudence, throw me the shotgun!” Prudence, however, has other ideas. You hear the car start up, and turn to see her driving away in it, leaving you and Billy behind.

“I didn’t even know she could drive,” Billy mutters.

Judging by the transmission screeches fading into the distance, this may be her first time. You pick up a rock and unceremoniously debrain the zombie hiker. Now what? “I guess we try to make it to the next town on foot,” you say.

“I guess,” Billy agrees, sounding as demoralized as you are. “Or we could just kind of live out here.”

Actually, camping might be the safer bet, Armageddonwise. If you decide to rough it, turn to page 45.

If you’d rather take your chances on civilization and start the long hike toward town, turn to page 252.

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151

You look at Daryl closely, and even though he’s half mad with sleep deprivation, there’s something noble about his decision. He may be a bit of a screwup, but in the short time you’ve known him you’ve never seen him hesitate to risk his own life to help another. It dawns on you that staring mortality in the face reveals the true nature of a person, and even in the face of Armageddon, Daryl has chosen not to compromise.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” you say as you throw yourself from the moving vehicle. Fortunately, it isn’t moving terribly fast, what with the severe engine damage and sea of undead pedestrians. You hit the ground and roll, staggering to your feet as quickly as possible under the circumstances. Which, it turns out, is not nearly quick enough.

Let it be said that you did not go gentle into that nightmarish, rotting afterlife. You try to escape the undead tide, but their numbers are too great. And as agonizing as being eaten alive is, it’s even worse when the change occurs. The zombies chewing on you lose interest as your flesh starts to take on the same flavor as their own, at which point there’s just enough bunny left intact to rise up and join them in their desperate, eternal quest for the next meal.

You did good work out there last night, rescuing helpless survivors and putting an end to countless abominations. With any luck, some brave soul will saunter by and do the same for you.

THE END

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152

You’re sick of running, so you grab the rifle and a box of bullets conveniently left on the shelf beneath it and march right back into town to kick some zombie ass.

Actually, you’ve already been marching all day, and it’ll be dark by the time you get back if you leave now. So you take a nice, hot bath, get some sleep on a surprisingly comfortable bed, wake up the next morning around eleven, cook up some sausages for breakfast, and then march right back into town to kick some zombie ass.

When you get there, you discover that the suburbs are completely overrun. That’s okay—this time you’re ready for them! You load your rifle, take careful aim at an approaching zombie, fire . . . and miss. Hmm. You try again, and miss again. You’ve never shot a rifle before. It’s hard! Now the thing is almost upon you, and you reload frantically, this time nailing it right in the chest. Direct hit!

It doesn’t even slow down. A zombie won’t fall unless you completely debrain it, and that would be tricky to do with a hunting rifle at any kind of distance even if you were a decent shot. You finally take the thing out by ramming your barrel into its mouth and firing right up into its skull, but now you’re surrounded and resort to using your gun as a makeshift club. You take down more zombies by pummeling them than you did by shooting them, but it’s a losing battle. There are too many to fight. Good effort, though.

THE END

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153

The dead rising from their graves is spooky stuff. There’s got to be something more going on here than government conspiracies and fluoridation.

After a few hours of digging through files (internet service is down, but Ernie has the slightly terrifying habit of obsessively printing hard copies of everything), no freaky cults turn up with more zombie connections than garden variety Christianity, which worships a guy who came back from the dead after three days, and seems fairly confident that everyone else will rise from their graves at some point for the second coming. Catholics, in fact, have vampires as well as zombies, since they also teach that sacramental wine literally turns into Christ blood while you drink it.

Ernie does, however, come up with a couple of non-Jesus related leads that he thinks sound promising. One is a well-documented case a few years back of a little girl whose dead dog returned to life after being buried in a pet cemetery on ancient Indian holy land. Ernie’s definition of “well-documented” is less strict than yours, but the undead zombie dog could be patient zero in the current infestation. The other lead is a local Haitian voodoo expert who seems to spend a lot of time trying to pick up girls on alternative medicine message boards. His brochure has a mention of the voodoo zombie tradition—perhaps he’ll have insight into whatever’s going on.

If you try to track down the voodoo guy and hope he can shed some light on this zombie apocalypse, turn to page 191.

If you decide to investigate the resurrected dog and pet cemetery, turn to page 227.

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154

You give the command. Most of the survivors come willingly, since at this point they’re frazzled and eager to have someone tell them what to do. There is some resistance, however. “You can’t do this!” one man screams, spitting at the soldiers who are trying to get him inside a transport. “I have rights! If you take away our humanity, the zombies have already won!”

What? “They’re not terrorists,” you say. “They’re not fighting us because they hate freedom. They’re fighting us because our brains taste delicious. If the zombies win, there is no more humanity. Now get in the damn truck!”

Over the coming days you round up everyone you can find and start to focus on the important task of actually fighting zombies. At first you let the civilians come and go as they please, but mostly they go, making things just as chaotic as before you started rounding them up. So you’re forced to lock them up for their own good. Soon managing the prison turns into a full-time job in itself, and you have to start splitting your manpower between zombie fighting and prison guarding. There are grumblings among your men about the way you’re handling things, and finally, with the help of some renegade soldiers (et tu, Velasquez?), the prisoners organize a breakout.

Unfortunately for you, their plan hinges upon killing you in your sleep. The civilians battle their way through the remainder of the platoon and secure their freedom.

Then zombies come and eat them. You really made a mess of that one.

THE END

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155

“Leeeeeroy Jeeeenkins!” you yell, throwing yourself into the fray. You saw this on the internet once, and never thought you’d get the chance to do it in real life. Your tire iron connects with the first zombie’s head and the thing splits like a cantaloupe. Two more zombies are right behind it, but fall to your wild, flailing, automotive repair-style fury.

As a fourth abomination shambles up, you feel clammy hands grabbing you from behind. You quickly turn and shove the zombie away, but by then more have swarmed around you. They grab at both your arms, making it impossible to swing your weapon. More undead hands grasp at your legs, and suddenly you’re being lifted off the ground.

You get torn apart and devoured by zombies, somehow managing to stay alive through a considerable portion of it. The pain is excruciating.

What did you think was going to happen?

THE END

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156

You scan the driveways and spot a brand new sports car halfway down the street. Aha! You walk up to the house’s front door and knock loudly. “Uh, zombie exterminator!” you holler. No response, and the door is locked. You pick up a big rock on the porch, thinking that it might be one of those fake things that hides a spare key. But it’s just a rock.

So you toss it through the bay window. What the hell—it’s the end of the world, right? As you carefully kick shards of glass out of the way and step inside, the stench hits you immediately. Whoops. Right in front of you, on the kitchen counter, you see a set of car keys. Unfortunately, while walking over to grab them, you get a full view of the kitchen.

Sitting on the floor is an 8-year-old girl, staring at you with blank white eyes and gnawing on what appears to be the remains of her family. You’re not proud of it, but your first reaction is to scream like a small child. Your second (and slightly more productive) reaction is to snatch the car keys and dash out the front door.

You jump in the car and drive like a meth-adddled long-haul trucker, making it to the freeway before your heart even stops pounding. Now you’ve got a straightforward decision to make: northbound or southbound?

You’re about an hour and a half from a major metropolitan area. If you head north toward the big city, turn to page 83.

The city might have more resources to deal with a zombie outbreak, but then again, it might just have more zombies. If you head south toward the ocean instead, turn to page 116.

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157

You march your group away from the town center, hoping to find somewhere slightly less infested with undead to hole up for the night. Unfortunately, you run into a pack of zombies on the very next block. You backtrack to an intersection, but now the market zombies have caught up, and even more are approaching from the cross street. You’re completely surrounded!

Daryl shouts out a battle cry that you think is probably from the movie 300, and the rest of the group manages a surprisingly valiant fight to the death, with some being infected and joining the horde’s numbers, and others just being consumed outright. As for you, a small nibble on your left ear is enough to do the trick, and you wind up zombified and wandering off after the commotion dies down on the search for brains, brains, brains.

In the coming years, zombies cover the entire planet. Scattered pockets of humanity survive the initial outbreak, but in time all of these are compromised by the undead, turn on themselves, or just plain descend into madness. Eventually, the plague runs its course. With tasty human brains gone, the zombies grow lethargic, and various infected animals never develop the same level of voraciousness as their human counterparts did. In time, the zombie masses just rot away.

The planet survives, although humankind has gone the way of the dinosaur. Millions of years later the dolphins give it a solid effort, but their apocalypse winds up being even crazier.

THE END

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158

“You tell her,” Daryl says.

“I’m not going to tell her,” you mutter back. “You tell her.” Daryl just shakes his head. “Alright,” you sigh. “Let’s go back to the freaking zombie polar bears.”

You drop the young mother at the stadium gates and stumble back to your ice cream truck. Daryl is clearly as tired as you are, because as you get back into the thick of things, he’s running over more zombies than he’s avoiding. Still, with all the spikes and armor plating, the truck has been transformed into the ultimate zombie smashing monster jam, so perhaps this approach works just as well.

You bash your way through zombie after zombie, but before you get anywhere near the zoo, something unseen pummels your truck, breaking the windshield. White smoke comes billowing out from under the hood, and the engine starts making a high-pitched squeal. Now you can’t even see the road.

“We have to abandon ship!” you yell. “Maybe we can find shelter out there somewhere!”

“No,” Daryl says, strangely calm. “We were never getting back from this one alive, anyway.” His eyes are peeled open wide, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Now it’s about taking as many of those sons of bitches with us as we possibly can.”

He’s right. If you’re going to die, you’re going to die fighting. If you buckle in for one last suicide run, turn to page 216.

He’s wrong! If you’re going to die, you’re going to die hiding! If you bail out now and pray that you find somewhere safe to hunker down, turn to page 151.

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159

Your journey to the gated community is fraught with peril, but with every fallen enemy your confidence swells. You are a warrior. And the geekweapon hungers for the fetid flesh of the zombie masses. This is fortunate, because the zombie masses seem to be growing exponentially. By the time you reach the main entrance, there’s an army of undead behind you, and some guy armed with a taser stands at the gate. Though you doubt the zombies would even notice 25,000 volts coursing through their already-dead carcasses.

“St . . . Stay back!” he stutters. “There’s a lot of unsavory characters hanging around, and we don’t want any part of that business in Pleasantvalley Hills!”

“They’re not ‘unsavory characters,’ ” you insist. “They’re the living dead. And that taser is useless against them. If you let me in, I can help you fight them off!”

“I’m the captain of the neighborhood watch!” he squeals, apparently unconvinced. “You and your friends just go back where you came from!”

“The situation is dire,” you say, raising the geekweapon above your head. Time for an inspirational monologue. “This is the moment of truth! Together, we can fight the invasion and keep Pleasantvalley Hills safe. Together we can—”

Aaaaaand he tases you. You had several strategies worked out for fending off the approaching zombie horde, but flopping around on the ground unable to control your extremities was not one of them. They make short work of you.

Needless to say, after that the captain of the Pleasantvalley Hills neighborhood watch is on his own.

THE END

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160

You’ve got a chainsaw and what’s left of a Toyota Celica—not the ideal makings of a big damn zombie apocalypse action hero, but nevertheless you figure you’ll stick around and do what you can to rid your city of the slouching dead. It may be a fool’s errand, but you feel that you need to do what you can.

And you know what else you need? A freakin’ cigarette. You swipe a pack from the gas station convenience store—although you’ve held off on smoking since this whole undead business started, at this point, why not? After everything you’ve seen today, lung cancer is actually one of the more pleasant ways you can think of to die.

Alas, one of the least pleasant is still going up in an enormous ball of flame, and a lit match plus all the gasoline you’ve been slopping around for the last half hour equals bad news all around. Seriously, the resulting mushroom cloud consumes you, your car and most of the gas station before you even get your cigarette lit.

Mom always said those things would kill you.

THE END

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161

You thank Billy for his offer, but decide that holing up for who knows how long with a group of survivalists doesn’t sound like your cup of tea. His dad is kind enough to let you lock yourself in his garage for the night, however, and gas up from his fuel stockpile. By the time morning rolls around, he and Billy have disappeared, hidden away somewhere underground.

You take the scenic route on the way to Ernie’s place, doubling back again and again as you run into groups of undead. It’s late in the day when you finally arrive, but the suburbs around his house seem zombie-free. Maybe the outbreak isn’t so bad after all.

Ernie is thrilled to see you and clearly hasn’t slept in a week (which is curious, since the business with the zombies didn’t start until yesterday). “I have some theories,” he says. “All day yesterday, I was sure it was fluoride. That’s crazy, though, right? Fluoride is terrifying stuff, but after going over and over it in my head, I don’t think it could turn people into zombies.”

Oh, Ernie. “I agree,” you say. “The culprit is probably not fluoride.”

“That leaves the military/industrial complex and magical forces beyond our understanding,” he continues. “I think they’re both worth looking into. What do you think we should focus on first?”

Magical forces. Why not? If you tell Ernie you think it’s probably evil witchcraft, turn to page 153.

Then again, maybe with Ernie’s help you can find some real answers, and Big Brother sounds like a good place to start. If you tell Ernie you want to look into the government conspiracy angle, turn to page 90.

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162

“I think he’s full of crap, too,” you say. “Catholic church or not, something here doesn’t add up.” Mittens agrees and starts poking around Fat Jimmy’s office. As she fiddles with a curtain that obscures a large portion of the back wall, Jimmy starts becoming noticeably upset.

“What’s this?” she asks, pulling the curtain down to reveal a locked door. “You got a key to this thing, Jimmy?”

“That’s got nothing to do with you!” the mobster stutters. “You just stay out of there.”

“Bingo,” Mittens smiles. Inside is a large room with wood paneling and a group of mannequins in cheesy ’70s attire. Wait a minute . . . four blond female figures and four dark-haired males of various ages. Suddenly you recognize the room, and the family that goes with it. Is this the freaking Brady Bunch? The only thing missing is a ninth mannequin dressed up as . . .

Sure enough, a large, powder blue maid’s outfit is hung up on the wall. “What the hell, Jimmy?” Mittens says, astounded. “You dress yourself up like Alice?” His face turns crimson with rage, but Mittens just laughs. “We don’t care about any of this,” she says. “Jesus, we thought you had zombies in here or something.”

“I told you to leave it alone!” Jimmy yells, producing a handgun from somewhere and firing before Mittens knows what hits her. He keeps pulling the trigger until his clip is empty, and you and Mittens both fall to the ground with a thud.

“It’s okay Jan, Marcia, Bobby,” you hear Fat Jimmy weeping softly to himself as you lose consciousness. “Alice will take care of you.”

THE END

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163

The downtown farmer’s market is only twenty minutes away on foot, so getting the crowd there will be a lot easier than trying to find a way to haul them across town to the sporting goods store. Nevertheless, the group starts to complain about the walk almost immediately. In addition, a spirited discussion breaks out about the zombies being a plot by Republicans and Democrats to wipe out librarians (you assume they mean Libertarians, although this still makes almost no sense). The conspiracy gibberish actually reminds you of your friend Ernie, who has always suspected that a global meltdown or paranormal apocalypse was only moments away.

Come to think of it, Ernie might be a good person to consult with in a situation like this. You check your cell phone, but service has been down since you left the restaurant.

After the second longest twenty minutes of your life (still not as awful as that blind date at the bowling alley), you reach the market. Alas, the zombies beat you to it, and a dozen of them are roaming the otherwise abandoned stalls. It seems a shame to pass on all the fresh food and various sundries—perhaps you can create a distraction to draw them away while your wards raid the market for supplies.

On the other hand, that plan might be dangerous. And, you think as you look back at your wide-eyed followers, possibly way too complicated.

Supplies from the market could prove invaluable. If you try to acquire them, turn to page 110.

Then again, the gang has proven worse than useless so far. If trusting them to carry out part of any plan sounds like a bad idea, turn to page 13.

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164

Since the elevators are out of service, Candice leads you up six flights of stairs to the floor where the research department works. Out of breath, you push open the door from the stairwell and are surprised to see a woman in a lab coat sitting on the floor disassembling an office chair. Not nearly as surprised as she is to see you, however. She looks up, leaps to her feet, and runs screaming down the hall.

“Wait!” you yell after her. “We’re not zombies!” You see a speaker phone propped up on a filing cabinet with office supplies arranged around it in what appears to be some sort of shrine. A moment later the woman returns with several other technicians, one of whom is a man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a clipboard. You start to explain that you know about the toothpaste, but they are unwilling or unable to listen to you.

“There is no toothpaste!” the clipboard guy shouts, as much to the heavens as to you. “The Voice is mighty and commands all! Lionel! Prepare the sandwiches!”

“Don’t touch me!” Lionel yells back from the other room. “I can’t feel my skin!”

Things seem to have deteriorated rapidly on the sixth floor. The clipboard guy spouts some more gibberish of a vaguely threatening nature, but you’ve been fighting zombies all day, so a handful of geeks in lab coats doesn’t seem terribly intimidating at this point. You search for a computer that might contain some relevant information, but the offices nearby are in shambles. All the computers seem to be unplugged and stacked up in the main hallway, built into a rudimentary fort.

Candice walks toward the speaker phone shrine. “Maybe the office intercom system is still working,” she says, reaching for the handset.

“No!” Clipboard Guy screams. “Do not disturb the Voice! Its wrath is infinite! It will kill us all! Stop them!”

A few more lab-coated crazies rush into the room. What are they going to do, science you to death? They’re followed by several more, then about a dozen, and then a whole slew. You notice that a couple of them are carrying long pikes with the impaled heads of their enemies, and realize with a shock that you’ve made a horrible mistake. The scientists wash over you, beating you to death with keyboards, flat screen monitors, the aforementioned head-pikes, and their bare hands.

You did not see that coming.

THE END

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166

It’s possible that this horrific nightmare is not bringing out the best in you. You feel guilty, but step on the accelerator and keep driving. If these are the end times, then it’s every man, woman, and stuffed bunny for him- or herself. Directly in front of you is more zombie insanity, so you hang a right, hoping to find an easier route. Just as you peel around the corner, a woman steps in front of your car, holding out one hand like a traffic cop. You screech to a halt, and before you know it, she’s opening the driver’s side door.

“I’m a police officer,” she says, “and I’m commandeering this vehicle.” You start to protest, but she grabs you by the collar and pulls you unceremoniously out of your seat, dumping you on the pavement, where you smack your left knee hard on the curb. You roll over and open your eyes, watching the woman drive off in your car.

What the hell just happened?

You stumble to your feet, but your knee goes out and you collapse in pain. Yowtch! You think it’s broken. To make matters worse, up walks the young couple from the previous block whom you abandoned to meet whatever fate awaited them.

That fate, apparently, was to be bitten, die, and rise from the dead as flesh-hungry zombies in the two minutes it took you to lose your car and bust your leg. You desperately try to crawl away, but it’s too late.

Karma’s a bitch.

THE END

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167

Well, fortune favors the bold, they say. Hopefully also the stupid. You grab a baseball bat, a rollerblading helmet, and a full set of football pads and get ready to make the plunge. Daryl is decked out in an umpire’s uniform and is wielding what appears to be a kayak paddle with a hunting knife duct-taped to it. There are no other volunteers.

You light one last Pall Mall and toss the rest of the pack to the woman in the pink track suit. You have a hunch she’ll be needing them more than you will.

“Lock up behind us!” you bark as you throw open the door, immediately bashing in the head of the zombie that was pressed up against it. Daryl follows right behind, screaming like a banshee. The first few zombies fall to your well-placed blows, but now you have the crowd’s full attention. They swarm around you, making it difficult to swing your bat properly, and you feel clammy hands grabbing at you all over. This isn’t working! “Retreat!” you yell. “Back to the store!”

“No!” Daryl shouts back. “The queen! That’s her! Look!”

You can’t see where Daryl’s pointing, but you glance over your shoulder and the wall of zombies behind you now seems as impenetrable as the one in front. Should you turn around? Or could there be something to Daryl’s harebrained theory after all?

If you attempt to retreat to the relative safety of the store, turn to page 58.

If you follow Daryl’s lead and press on to the theoretical zombie queen, turn to page 177.

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168

If you’ve learned one thing over the past months, it’s that the soulless, drooling creature in front of you is not Phillip. You won’t let your grief twist you into a mockery of the stuffed rabbit you once were. First you decapitate your former assistant and give his remains a proper burial. After that, you set about leveling the place you’ve come to call home.

You don’t want any of your subjects to escape, so you board up all the windows, and after spreading kerosene liberally throughout the house and environs, you carefully lead the zombies inside and up to the second floor. When the house burns, they’ll burn with it. Smitty is the last of them—you stare into his big, empty eyes, and somehow you can hardly bring yourself to say goodbye. You’re overcome with emotion and rush to give him a big, parting hug.

Smitty, it goes without saying, bites you on the head.

You feel the life draining out of you. No! You’ve got to finish here before it’s too late! You stumble back down the stairs, where you’ve left some kerosene soaked rags. You manage to get one lit and throw it onto the wall, which goes up in flames. Your vision is fading, and there’s no time to finish the arson properly, but with time it should spread throughout the mansion on its own.

Alas, you hear moans coming from the stairs. You didn’t get the door shut before Smitty bit you—the zombies are escaping! With your dying breath, you throw yourself at them, hoping this last meal will keep them busy long enough for the flames to do their work.

It works like a charm.

THE END

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169

“Okay, Daryl,” you say. “Take the ice cream truck. We’ll get to the bus and follow you. Try to find a route that’s as clear as possible, and drive slowly so we don’t fall behind, okay?”

That shouldn’t be too complicated, right? You herd your crew to the vehicle, pile on board, and start the thing up. It takes you a few moments to master driving the enormous thing, and while you’re doing this, Daryl zooms off in the ice cream truck at full speed. He takes a left at the signal ahead and disappears.

You never see him again.

The bus handles like a pregnant whale, and it doesn’t help that you have jittery, confused passengers shouting at you while you try to steer. It takes all of your concentration to maneuver around the undead that are now filling the streets. One of the passengers asks you for a transfer, and suddenly you plow right into a zombie pedestrian, smooshing it like a cockroach. At first you think head-on collision might be a reasonable way to kill the things, but it gets caught up in your wheel well, and the bus screeches to a halt, careening onto the sidewalk and tipping over on its side.

Your passengers are in various states of disarray, and in moments the zombies start forcing their way through the shattered windshield. You don’t actually witness this, since you hit your head hard when the bus toppled over, which killed you on the spot.

You’re one of the lucky ones.

THE END

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170

You know what? To hell with this place. From Clarence’s story it sounds like everybody in there is a zombie by now, anyway, and who knows what’s getting into the water supply? Better that the city has no running water than running water fortified with the living dead. You help Ernie wire up the plant, and for the record, your friend has all kinds of crazy stuff in that bag of his. Plastic explosives? Dynamite? A hand grenade? Where does he even get this stuff?

You’re just finishing up the job when you hear shouting behind you. You turn to see Clarence, his co-worker, and four police officers with their guns drawn. “Step away from the detonators and lie face down on the ground,” one of them yells in a voice halfway between an authoritative bark and a panicked squeal. “Don’t make us shoot you!”

You do as you’re told. “Believe it or not, there’s a reasonable explanation for all this,” you say as they handcuff you.

“The fluoride is turning everyone into zombies!” Ernie hollers. “We have to blow it all up before it’s too late!”

Sigh. “Just get in the car, Ernie,” you say. When he says it like that, it does sound pretty crazy. You resign yourself to a long stay in a nice, secure jail cell, which actually might not be the worst place to wait out the zombie apocalypse.

Unfortunately, you never make it that far. The cop car runs into a mob of undead on the way back to the station and winds up flipped over on its top, leaving you handcuffed, upside down, and helpless when the zombies start crawling through the shattered windows and into the back seat.

Rough day.

THE END

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171

Your monkey wrench should be reasonably effective for cracking zombie heads, but those soldiers have guns. You’re not sure what you’re going to be able to do for them that they can’t do for themselves.

You drive to the spot where Ernie’s notes tell you to cut through the fence and put your bolt cutters to use. This area seems a lot calmer, at least. On foot now, you come across a small mound of gore on the pavement, which upon further inspection turns out to be the decapitated head of a soldier with its brains unceremoniously scooped out. You immediately regret inspecting the small mound of gore.

Not far from that spot you find the rest of the soldier’s body. This supports Ernie’s theory that a zombie victim only becomes a zombie himself if he retains his head and/or brains (it’s nice to have confirmation, since you suspect that most of Ernie’s theories are based on pure speculation).

You also notice that the soldier’s clothes are surprisingly blood-free, which gives you an idea.

If you put on the dead soldier’s uniform to blend in better while searching the base, turn to page 60.

If that sounds morbid and creepy, so you just take his gun, turn to page 29.

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172

You scootch the thing out of your way, hurry inside, and lock the door tight behind you. Ah, home sweet home. After some leftover pizza, a nice cold beer, and about three showers, though, you get to thinking. Even if you bust open the canned goods way in the back of the cupboard and the legacy ramen, you don’t have enough food here to last more than a few days. And you can drink tap water, but with zombies filling up the city, how safe will that remain? One of them could have fallen in the reservoir already, for all you know. Now it’s getting dark, and you’re getting paranoid. Can you afford to just wait here and hope the zombie situation blows over? And is that undead kitten still sitting on your doormat? Waiting for you? You crack open the front door and poke your head outside.

That’s when you see your neighbors, all 30 or 40 of them, drooling away and stumbling toward you.

Of course! You left the two most irresistible zombie traps conceivable roaming free out there—whatever hapless victims the super hot zombie siren didn’t lure in, the adorable zombie kitten must have picked up on the rebound. Now the building is lousy with undead. And they know where you live.

Terrified, you slam the door, turn out the lights and hide in your bedroom closet, but you can still hear them trying to force their way inside. It won’t be long before they manage to break through the glass window. You try in vain to prepare for the inevitable, but the only thing you come up with to use as a weapon is a plastic video game guitar peripheral.

Needless to say, it’s not enough.

THE END

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173

You come to your senses and can’t believe you were considering even getting out of your car. What are you, nuts? Is the madness around you driving you out of your freaking mind? Those things are the living dead. You don’t dick around with stuff like that.

You turn the car around and start looking for the best route out of town. On the very next block, though, you spot a young, unkempt-looking couple trying to make their way through the zombie pandemonium. The boy sees you and sticks out his thumb in a kind of desperate little hitchhiking gesture.

Maybe you should stop and pick them up.

A zombie apocalypse means we all have to pull together and watch each other’s backs. If you stop your car and tell the kids to jump in, turn to page 84.

Are you kidding? You’re not slowing down for anything! What if a zombie climbs into your car? What if these kids are already infected? You’re freaking the crap out, and this is no time for compassion. If you ignore them and just keep on driving, turn to page 166.

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174

Khenan takes your money and slips it into his pocket. “The first zombies were created in Zimbabwe, many hundreds of years ago,” he starts. “These zimbabwies were gentle creatures who spent their days . . . baking. And weaving. They were phenomenal weavers.” You don’t know how much of this you can sit through.

“Um, what if we just look through your library?” Ernie asks, picking up a dusty leather tome that winds up being titled How to Pick Up Hippie Chicks by Pretending You Like Aromatherapy. “Or can you skip to the part about how to kill them?”

Khenan explains that to undo the spell animating a zombie corpse, you pour salt in its mouth, sew the mouth shut with a needle and thread, and light white candles in a circle around it. “That’s if it’s inactive,” he adds. “If it’s already active, you also have to strangle it.”

“You know,” Ernie says, “that actually sounds right to me. I think maybe I read it in a book somewhere.”

The ingredients aren’t included in the forty-dollar consultation fee, and zombie apocalypse or not, there’s no way on earth you’re giving this guy your credit card number. After eventually settling on a price, you open the door to discover a zombie waiting patiently in Khenan’s front hallway. The perfect chance to try your new ultimate zombie fighting technique?

My new ultimate zombie fighting technique is unstoppable! If you attempt the whole business with the sewing and the candles, turn to page 79.

If you just hit it over the head with something heavy instead (the aromatherapy book presents itself as a viable option), turn to page 187.

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175

“Throw me the mop!” you yell. The old lady tosses something long and green out the window and it clatters to the ground at your feet. It turns out that by “mop,” she actually means “Swiffer Sweeper.” The thing weighs all of a pound and a half. It’s too late to do anything about it now, though, since the zombies are right on top of you. You pick it up and use it to smack an undead construction worker who’s just about to grab you by the head.

The sweeper snaps in two. You desperately try to poke your attacker with the sharp point of the broken rod, but it doesn’t deter him in the slightest. More hands are grabbing you from behind now. Then come the teeth.

“Oh, dear,” you hear, just as everything fades to black.

“Do you want me to throw you the hammer?”

THE END

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176

First things first. “They could zombify thousands of people in days,” you say. “Fat Jimmy can wait. We need to take care of these morons now.”

The morons in question don’t take criticism particularly well, and draw their guns. Mittens dives behind a steel drum (which may or may not be filled with zombie pus) and when they open fire, she fires back. You duck behind a pile of junk, but by the time you get your bearings, the shooting has stopped and hoodlum insides are splattered all over the place.

“Now for the asking questions part,” Mittens says, seeing your slightly terrified expression. “That was a joke. Hopefully, they haven’t put their idiotic scheme into action yet, and the pills haven’t hit the streets. You want to help me set fire to this stuff?” Before you have a chance to start, however, you hear sirens on the street. “Crap!” she swears.

“They’re just cops, right?” you say. “We’re not in any trouble, are we?”

“Depends on who it is,” Mittens replies. “If it’s Vinny or Carlito, they’ll be happy that we helped them clean up this mess. But if it’s Broflosky or one of his ilk, we’re screwed. That guy plays by the rules so hard, one time he tased his own grandmother over an unpaid parking ticket. If he busts us, we’re probably looking at convictions. For murder.

“Think we should take our chances?”

If you don’t, and hightail it out of there before the police find you, turn to page 28.

If running from the law only seems likely to make things worse, and you stick around hoping you can talk your way out of this, turn to page 76.

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177

You swing for the rafters, and in a flurry of aluminum violence manage to clear yourself of clinging undead. Turning back now would only delay the inevitable. The ice cream truck still seems out of reach, but just ahead you spot a small, elderly zombie woman dressed in her Sunday best and an elaborate, feathered hat. Could this be the zombie queen?

As you bat your way toward her, your ankle turns on the shattered skull of a defeated opponent and you lose your footing. You hit the ground hard and feel the crowd of undead pile on top of you. You struggle, but there are too many of them! Teeth sink into your arm, your leg, your torso. Suddenly your helmet is off and you feel a sharp blow as the zombies try to access the delicious inside of your thick skull.

Adrenaline takes over and you lash out, throwing off the zombie dogpile. You use your bat as a bludgeon and free yourself from the throng, but the pain is excruciating. No, you think. Don’t let it end like this! Your injuries are too severe, though. Everything goes black.

And then fades back into a haze of gray. Nnnnnngg, you think. Brrraaaaiiinnns. You feel your sense of self slowly drain away as all your thoughts and memories are replaced by the hunger. What was it you were trying to do?

If you join the crowd of your peers heading toward some big building that just might contain a tasty lunch, turn to page 231.

If you continue the way you were headed toward . . . what was it? An old lady or something? Man, you’re hungry. Turn to page 85.

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178

Trying to wade through the mess outside would be suicide. Staying put, on the other hand, is . . . marginally slower suicide? Perhaps the zombies will eventually get bored and go away.

Banking on the fact that the undead aren’t super bright, you direct everyone to stay hidden. Hours pass, and then a full day. The glass seems to be holding the zombie horde at bay, but their faces are still smooshed up against it, and they aren’t going anywhere. The sporting goods store isn’t well stocked with foodstuffs, either—you’re almost out of beef jerky, packaged camping supplies, and cash register impulse-buy candy bars.

The following morning, things look even worse. Or at least as bad. In any event, this isn’t working. You could never fight them all at once, but what if you prop open the doors, let one or two in at a time, and just keep slaughtering them individually until you run out of zombies?

It’s worth a shot. You and Daryl arm yourselves with football pads and baseball bats, send the rest of the group to hide in the far corner, and open up the flood gates. The plan works like a charm. No matter how many zombies wander in and get their heads bashed in, the next one in line follows right along. Soon the doorway is clogged with re-dead corpses, giving you a chance to rest. You recruit volunteers from the peanut gallery to haul them away (they start a pile over by the workout equipment, which kind of stinks up the joint, but it’s the best you can do for now). In time you develop a rhythm: Bash zombies for fifteen minutes, take a ten-minute breather, haul away corpses, repeat. It’s actually pretty good cardio.

After the fourth or fifth batch, you start to believe that you might just get through this. The  crowd outside seems slightly thinner, anyway. The doorway is filling up again, so you call out to your hauling crew for corpse-dragging detail, but get no response.

“Come on, guys,” you say. “Break time’s over.” As you turn around, a soft moaning comes from the back of the store. Oh, no. Sure enough, one of the guys who was hauling corpses is shuffling toward you with a blank expression on his face. How do you get infected by something that doesn’t move? Did you not kill one of them enough? Did he bite the friggin’ zombie?

You rush to the back of the store, but it’s too late. The rest of the group has been turned as well. It’s possible that they were napping, but somehow they were zombified without making enough noise for you to hear it over the sound of your headcracking. You hurry back to Daryl to warn him, but now the undead are coming from both sides.

Somehow you always knew these folks would be the death of you.

THE END

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180

When you stand up, all the adrenaline immediately drains from your system. What were you thinking? Those things are friggin’ zombies! They’ll eat you to death! You snatch your bottle from the bar and make a run for the kitchen. You’re in no shape to drive, and you’re not sure if taxi service operates during a zombie apocalypse, but you’ll figure something out.

You scoot through to the rear exit, only to discover that the back alley is swarming with undead. You’re trapped! Also, this doesn’t bode well for getting a cab. You close and lock the door, then hastily barricade the swinging doors from the kitchen to the restaurant proper.

Now it’s just you and your old friend Bombay Sapphire. There are plenty of abandoned dishes in various states of completion, which is good, because you’re ready for a snack by the time the bottle is about half empty. Eventually you drain it, which makes you sad. You vaguely remember, however, that there’s a whole wall full of bottles on the other side of a huge pile of kitchen appliances someone has inconveniently stacked in front of the door. Except that all the awful internet dates you’ve ever had are waiting out there, moaning, or something? You’re having a hard time standing up.

The important thing is that you have another drink! If you muster up the balance to move the barricade and commandeer a refill, turn to page 217.

If you suspect you might be way too drunk already and decide to try passing out on the floor and sleeping it off, turn to page 99.

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181

Over Billy’s objections, you drive north toward Prudence’s home. It’s a long trip, and you spend the journey slowly helping Billy come to accept his romantic situation. You couch it in a lot of language about family and responsibility, and by the time you’ve arrived, he’s more or less convinced that the pair of them are star-crossed lovers torn apart by the zombie outbreak and destined to find each other again at some (very, very distant) point in the future.

“I will always love you,” Billy starts as Prudence gets out of the car. “Even in my darkest hour—”

“Okay, thanks!” she says, cutting him off abruptly. “Bye, now!” Fair enough. You drive away.

It’s a heck of a drive to spend in awkward silence, peppered only by Billy’s intermittent sobbing. You pass some zombies by the roadside, though, and he uses them for target practice, which cheers him up. By the time you reach his parents’ property, he’s downright chatty. It turns out Billy has some strange ideas about women, the government, and just life in general.

“Hey,” he says. “Now we have an extra spot open in the bunker! If you want, I can ask my dad if he’ll let you in.”

It’s not a horrible idea. Underground bunkers are the textbook definition of “safe.” On the other hand, Billy’s weird conspiracy talk reminds you of your friend Ernie, and knowing him, he probably has a contingency plan for the end of the world, too. Maybe you should try to find him.

If you tell Billy to try and get you into the bunker, turn to page 23.

If you pass on life underground and track down Ernie instead, turn to page 161.

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182

You persuade Ernie to put off his plan until the next morning—it’s been a hard day, and you could both use some sleep. With any luck, he’ll wake up refreshed and with a better grip on reality. You settle on the couch, but can’t sleep, so after a few hours of worrying about the world in general and specifically about your friend’s unexplained access to explosives, you get up and putter around the house a bit. You wander into the garage and find it surprisingly cold. Did someone leave a window open?

Ouch—something just bit you on the leg! You jump about three feet, then turn around to discover that a raccoon has sneaked in to the garage through some hole in the architecture. You freak out and smack it with a pair of garden shears, but it keeps attacking you until you finally manage to sever its head. Sure enough, the damn thing’s a zombie.

“Hey, is everything okay down there?” Ernie calls out from inside the house.

“Everything’s fine!” you yell back. “Go back to bed!” Now you’re panicking, but you slowly calm yourself down. After all, it was only a little zombie. And as long as the wound doesn’t kill you, you can’t become one of the undead, right? Telling Ernie will only worry him. Or worse, with the way he’s been acting he could freak out, put you on his “fluoride” list, and try to blow you up or something.

If you think the only rational thing to do is to come clean and tell Ernie the truth about the raccoon, turn to page 232.

If you decide to keep quiet and hide the wound from your friend, at least for now, turn to page 43.

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183

You carefully lure what appears to be a zombie bike messenger into the alley and use the tire iron to brain him. Now for the utterly disgusting part. You rub his rotting flesh all over yourself, trying to approximate both the visual and olfactory presence of the living dead. You get a little queasy partway through and vomit up some bile (the good news is, you haven’t eaten since breakfast, so yay), and this only adds to the illusion. In a few minutes, you’re ready to go.

You stumble into the street, trying to act all zombie casual. So far, so good—your plan is working! You rub shoulders with a few of them, but overall the zombies accept you as one of their own. About twenty feet in front of the police station you absentmindedly scratch your eye with one hand.

The sudden sting blinds you. Crappity crap! You have zombie in your eye! YOU HAVE ZOMBIE IN YOUR FREAKING EYE. Never touch your eye with the same hand you’ve used to rub zombie guts all over yourself! Now you’re just wigging out. Can you get infected from rubbing zombie guts in your eye?

If you try to get hold of yourself, screw your eye shut, and continue as calmly as possible to the police station, turn to page 50.

If you think the more prudent thing to do is freak the hell out and bolt for the alley, trying to find somewhere to wash your eye before it goes all undead on you, turn to page 220.

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184

“To the hardware store! Chainsaws for everyone,” you roar. There is much rejoicing. You hit the gas station first, and fill up a bucket of petroleum to take with you. It turns out the store stocks a wide variety of chainsaws, and although there aren’t enough gas-powered ones to go around, the smaller, corded models will do for practice. Once everyone has a saw, you line them all up.

“Okay, basic chainsaw training,” you start. “No, you’re going to want to stand a little farther apart than that. Good. Okay, now everybody hold your saw out in front of you. Careful with that end, sweetie. Okay, on my count, start your motors. One . . . two . . . three!”

Throughout the whole group of twenty, about four chainsaws actually start up. This is going to take some work. “Here, let me see that,” you say to the woman closest to you. “Hold it like this and OH MY GOD MY LEG!”

Sure enough, now she’s got it going. Another team member, who did manage to start his saw on the first attempt, leans in to offer help and YEAH, THERE GOES YOUR ARM, TOO. There’s general panic, and in the resulting melee you incur at least five more potentially fatal wounds. If you had it to do over, you’d definitely schedule basic chainsaw training after basic first aid, you think.

The group calms down, looks at each other silently for a moment, then as one drop their chainsaws and run for the door.

You bleed out pretty quickly.

THE END

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185

“That’s a zombie,” you say. Madison’s jaw drops, and for once she doesn’t have a snide remark. Instead she just stands there, staring. “Run!” you add helpfully.

She does, and you and Ernie follow—your friend is struggling with a pronounced limp, so you throw his arm over your shoulder and do your best to help him down the hill. Fortunately the zombies aren’t in such great shape themselves. They pursue, but even hobbling along wounded, you manage to outpace them.

Right up until Ernie steps wrong on a loose stone and falls to the ground, bringing you down on top of him and sending you both rolling several feet down the path. You’re bruised up a little, but Ernie yelps in pain. You look down and discover that the foot attached to his hurt leg is now bent in entirely the wrong direction.

“Go on without me,” he howls. “Save yourself!”

You protest—there’s no way you’re leaving him here to die! Your friend, however, is adamant. “If you stay, we’re both goners. You have to save the girl! Make sure she gets home alive!”

Madison is already halfway down the hill, glancing back to see that you’ve fallen, but not pausing for a moment.

It breaks your heart to even consider it, but Ernie’s right. If you leave him there in order to protect Madison, turn to page 266.

Never! The girl is apparently a better runner than either of you, anyway. If you stay, attempting to fend off the zombies and save Ernie, turn to page 243.

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186

A zombie just bit you. If there was ever a situation in which chopping off your thumb in a blind panic was a good idea, this would be it. You snatch a bottle of something clear from the bar (ooh, Finlandia) and hightail it for the kitchen.

You find a really impressive cleaver and slosh vodka over your thumb, then immediately regret the decision, since it stings like a mother. Taking a long swig from the bottle—you’re woozy now from the booze and the blood you’ve already lost—you hold the cleaver as steady as you can in your left hand. Unfortunately you’re right-handed, and you make an absolute mess of things in the five or six strokes it takes to sever the rest of your thumb.

Stumbling, you dump more vodka on your mangled hand—ow, ow, ow!—and find some linen napkins to  bandage yourself up with. But now you’re all slick with your own blood, and you didn’t consider how hard this part would be with only one hand. Slowly, though, the pain subsides. Your mind starts to wander. It dawns on you that you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. Hey, you know what you could really go for right now?

Brains.

Alas, the infection, once in your bloodstream, isn’t hampered by various heroics with meat cleavers and Finnish vodka. Thanks to the severe blood loss, the life leaves your body, to be replaced by a mindless hunger for one thing and one thing only. You shuffle to your feet, wander out the back door, and, as a one-handed zombie, are almost immediately beaten back to death by a shirtless guy with a pair of homemade nunchucks.

THE END

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187

You’re not sure you’ve worked out how to sew a zombie’s mouth shut while it’s actively trying to bite you, so you go with plan B, picking up something wrought-iron and pointy off the coffee table and whacking the thing with it. The zombie falls back, moans indifferently, and then lunges at you. You try to dodge, but there’s very little room to maneuver in the cramped space, and you lose your balance. You, Ernie, Khenan, and the zombie all go toppling to the floor in a pile.

This isn’t over yet! You wiggle free, pull the zombie off your companions, and keep beating it with your makeshift weapon until its head is a pulpy mess. There! That wasn’t so hard.

“Is it dead?” Ernie asks, pulling himself off the floor. “Should we try the salt thing now? It doesn’t actually have a mouth anymore—what do you think, Khenan?”

The Haitian and/or Jamaican voodoo expert stumbles to his feet behind Ernie. “Braaaains,” he mutters, sinking his teeth into your friend’s shoulder.

No! Ernie falls to the ground and you rush to him, taking your weapon and striking Zombie Khenan with all your might. You knock him halfway across the room and take Ernie in your arms, only to see that your friend’s eyes have gone white. He starts to moan in an all too familiar manner.

You panic, bolting for the door, and discover two more zombies coming down the hallway. Now you’re trapped between the two in front and the two—oh, Ernie—coming at you from behind.

In moments you’re a group of five.

THE END

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It takes a while to walk back to the restaurant, but your chainsaw makes killing zombies such a pleasure that you don’t mind. When you finally find the Toyota, however, it’s in rough shape. It’s dented up, the windows are broken, and your personal items are strewn about all over the street. They even seem to have rooted through the glove compartment. And the zombies responsible are just sort of listlessly lying around—several of them, in fact, appear to be passed out on your hood.

You’ve only been battling zombies for a couple of hours, but you’ve certainly never seen anything like this before. What have those monsters done to your poor car? You feel so violated. You flip out more than a little and just let loose with the chainsaw—by the time you’re done, you’ve made something like a zombie salad, and the Toyota now sports a patchwork of saw marks to go along with the rest of the body damage. It still starts like a dream, though. And the missing windows may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, since your car is definitely going to need to air out a little.

You drive back to the gas station and fill every suitable container you can find with petroleum. Now you’re ready to roll. Part of you wants to keep driving around the city carving up as many zombies as you can, but something tells you that maybe you should take this opportunity to just split town.

If you think you can do the most good by staying in the city and using your chainsaw to thin the zombie herd, turn to page 160.

If you decide to hit the open road instead, turn to page 228.

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You take off down the alley and—miraculously—make it past the undead loiterers unmolested. Alas, the burst of activity doesn’t do much for your delicate constitution. They say that fortune favors the bold, but nobody favors the violently hung over, and right now you just want to curl up and die. Except not literally. Which, unfortunately, is kind of the default option. Then you spot a rusty fire escape ladder that leads up about four stories. Zombies can’t climb, can they? Maybe if you get up to the rooftops, you’ll be safe, at least until you feel well enough to travel. You grab the first rung of the ladder and slowly start to pull yourself up, rung by rung. You’re dizzy but hanging on for dear life.

You make it about thirty feet. Then you lose your footing, slip off the ladder, and plummet to the ground below. Your legs and back explode in pain as you hit the asphalt. You’re going to die here, you think. At least the zombies seem to have wandered off.

Unable to move, you look up and see a formation of birds soaring above you in the clear blue sky. They’re majestic, beautiful things, and they give you hope. Not for yourself, but for the world at large. If those birds have escaped the zombie plague, surely there are people out there who did as well. They’ll come and clean all this up before the infestation can spread too far. You might not make it out alive, but humanity will endure. Hey, are those birds getting closer?

You’re overwhelmed by the stench as the first one lands right on your belly.

You get eaten by a flock of zombie seagulls.

THE END

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190

“Leave no soldier behind!” you shout at Daryl. “Ramming speed!”

You’re pretty sure you’ve mixed army and navy references there, but Daryl seems okay with this and puts pedal to metal, crashing through the non-shattered side of the storefront for maximum effect. If this were a movie, the action would freeze right at this moment, and you’d be left with the bittersweet reality that your heroes probably never made it out alive, but the tiniest glimmer of hope in your heart. Fade to black. Roll credits.

Unfortunately, it’s just a crappy choose-your-own-whatever book. Daryl plows through a whole mess of zombies and crashes into the back wall, throwing your unseatbelted ass right into the truck’s front windshield. The velocity isn’t enough to kill you, but compounded with your earlier injuries, you’re in no shape to battle the undead horde. You make a few sort of pathetic swings with your bat, but if there are any still-living survivors here, you can’t even pick them out, let alone save them. Soon the zombies overwhelm you and have easy access to your brain through your already softened noggin.

In your head, you pictured that going differently.

THE END

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191

The Haitian Voodoo guy’s business office is in the suburbs on the other end of town, at the end of a long hallway in the back of a liquor store. You knock on the door, and a good-looking man with dreadlocks and a silk shirt unbuttoned to the waist answers.

He introduces himself as Khenan, taking care to indicate that it’s spelled with an “h” in there somewhere. When you ask him if he knows anything about zombies taking over the city, your host’s eyes grow wide. “Ah, the dead, they rise up from their graves,” he says. “My Jamaican ancestors have many tales of these happenings.”

Ernie lifts an eyebrow. “Your brochure said you were from Haiti,” he says.

“Right, my Haitian ancestors,” Khenan continues. “What did I say?” His accent still sounds Jamaican to you. “I can tell you everything I know . . . for a small consultation fee,” he continues, lowering his voice to sound all mysterious and spooky. “The price for piercing the veil that separates the living from the dead is . . . forty dollars.”

Now you’re certain this guy is a charlatan. “Just pay him,” Ernie says. “It’s the zombie apocalypse out there. What else are you going to spend the forty bucks on, anyway?”

It’s not the money. It’s the principle. If you refuse to give Khenan a dime, turn to page 108.

Actually, Ernie might be right. Most of the stores must be looted or filled with zombies by now, and you realize that even if you skip rent entirely at this point, the world probably won’t end any more than it already has. If you fork over the cash, turn to page 174.

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192

“Sign me up,” you say. You figure that abuse of government power at this stage will have to take a back seat to fighting the infernal zombie outbreak.

“Excellent,” the officer says. “Our problem is that nothing we do even gets their attention—their brains no longer seem to be controlling their actions in any meaningful way. We just keep shocking them, and eventually the brains just sort of fry out and they drop dead.”

“Hmm,” you say. “So what can I do to help?”

“Well,” he continues, “we’re wondering if we might have more luck with the unique physiology of a stuffed animal.”

You realize you’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake as the guards come and strap you down to an operating table. The last thing you remember is a technician coming at you with a syringe full of something that looks like it was drained from one of the test subjects in the other room.

You spend your short zombie existence being shocked, prodded, and, occasionally, beaten with sticks.

THE END

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“Go home to your wives,” you say. “Or your husbands. Or your life partners, or whatever. I don’t think I’m supposed to ask about that. But things are going to hell out there, and your families need you.” They seem reluctant to abandon their post. “Go, all of you—that’s an order!”

Your platoon disperses, and Velasquez stops to speak with you on his way out. “Thanks for that,” he says. “You turned out to make an okay lieutenant colonel after all.” Is that what you were? He gives a crisp salute, climbs into a jeep, and leaves with the others.

Now you’re alone, and you realize that the soldiers have taken all the vehicles with them. “Uh, guys?” you say loudly. Your voice echoes through the base. They’ve taken all of the weaponry as well, from what you can see. Well, your car should still be out there where you parked it. Then you notice a stream of zombies pouring out of the command center, and it dawns on you that you didn’t remember to clean up that particular detail. “Guys!” you repeat, this time shouting as loud as you can. “Wait for me!”

It’s too late. You’re overwhelmed. The guy who eats you, in a funny twist of fate, was actually a real lieutenant colonel.

THE END

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194

Mittens is sprinting for her car, but before the zombie horses can start after her, you pick up a stray traffic cone and throw it at them. To hell with it, you think. No one lives forever. And if you’re going to die, you’d just as soon die in a blaze of cone-throwing, cop-rescuing glory.

There are three more cones surrounding an open manhole cover, and by the time you’ve thrown them all at the zombie horse brigade, you seem to have gotten their attention. Manhole cover? Maybe you’ll be safe if you climb down inside! Before you have a chance, though, the bigger horse bounds after you and plants its front hooves right in the hole, falling spectacularly and throwing its rider forward. It hits you full force, and you tumble to the ground with the zombie cop in a heap on top of you.

You struggle to keep his gaping maw away from your face—his breath is even worse than your date’s was!—but soon the smaller horse and its rider have joined in, and all looks lost. You’re kind of disappointed with the relative lameness of your final blaze of glory.

With a sudden, thunderous bang, the zombie cop is blasted away from you. Three more shots follow, and bits of zombie man and animal are splattered everywhere. Granted, now you’re completely covered in undead goo, but you’re still glad to see Mittens standing over you with a sawed-off shotgun. “I have to admit, that was ballsy,” she says, throwing you her coat. You attempt in vain to wipe off some of the gore with it. Ew, it’s in your fur.

“Maybe I misjudged you,” she says. “What do you say we go lean on the criminal element until we find out what’s going on here?” Lean on the what? Is she living in a 1970s Clint Eastwood movie?

“Uh, I’m not sure if this really seems like an organized crime thing to me,” you say diplomatically.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Mittens says with a wink. “I’ve got another shotgun. Plus, even if they don’t have anything to do with this mess, if you smack ’em hard enough, they always confess to something.” You’re not sure how you feel about the look in her eyes when she says that—it’s something bordering on glee. On the other hand, its not like you’re bursting with ideas yourself, and she is offering firepower.

If you suspect that Mittens is a little off her rocker and let her go break criminal kneecaps on her own, turn to page 265.

If you decide that running with an insane police officer is a fair trade for getting your hands on a sawed-off shotgun, turn to page 52.

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If the people on those reality shows can eat live dung beetles and flatworms, then you can do this, since it might just save your life. It’s rough, but you do it. Isabelle follows suit, along with a few of the others, although most of them don’t even want to get near the concoction.

“Look out the windows!” Daryl says, entering the room. “Dude, I am not eating that. Seriously, though, hella zombies.” You peer outside and sure enough, the street is packed with them. Your decision to collapse the stairs appears to have been a good one. You wish you could say the same thing about your breakfast choice. Suddenly, you feel a sharp pain in your belly, and double over in pain.

“I told you.” Daryl says. “That organic stuff is nasty. Check it out, though. I made explosives from all that fertilizer! And I think it’s time we take care of those zombies once and for all.”

You try to get up, but immediately collapse again from the pain. “No,” you grunt as comprehensibly as possible. “Escape . . . roof . . .” It’s no use. Daryl has assumed command. You notice that Isabelle and the other stew-eaters are faring as badly as you are, and catch snippets of Daryl rallying his troops as you fade in and out of consciousness. At one point you hear him explaining that zombies can be killed efficiently with silver bullets or garlic. Then he’s giving demonstrations on how to light a Molotov cocktail.

The next time you come around, needless to say, the room is filled with black smoke and you see flames enveloping the hallway. You’re not even sure if they’ve started fighting any zombies yet, but Daryl’s minions all seem to be running around screaming. You try to pull yourself to your feet, but it’s no use. You were planning to get to the roof and try to cross over to the next building, and you hope maybe some of the group has enough sense to think of this on their own. If the fire hasn’t spread too far yet . . . wait a minute. Fire? Didn’t Daryl say something about explosives?

Sure enough, the blast kills you instantaneously, along with the rest of the folks you’ve worked so hard to keep alive. At least you managed to avoid the eternal damnation of wandering the earth as a half-dead animated corpse by exploding.

The rest of the world, however, is doomed.

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You almost change your mind once you discover the elevators are out and the executive offices are way up on floor fourteen. In fact, Candice and Ernie make a compelling case for stopping at the R&D department as you pass it on floor six. But your gut tells you that whatever’s going on here goes straight to the top. Eight floors later, you emerge from the stairwell into complete darkness, panting. The light switch does nothing, but eventually your eyes adjust to the dim glow coming from a computer screensaver in the large, open reception area. You jiggle the mouse, and a bright white spreadsheet comes up, providing a little more illumination.

Suddenly a shrill voice cuts through the darkness. “Who’s there?” it barks from an adjoining office. “The stairs are forbidden! The fourteenth floor is forbidden! The speaker phone commands and you obey!”

“Gary?” Candice ventures, peeking into the open office door. “I think that’s Gary, our CEO,” she says quietly. The voice continues ranting, reciting a list of more things that are forbidden, including asking the speaker phone questions and making personal calls on company time. “He’s not usually frothing at the mouth like that,” Candice adds.

Frothing or not, it’s time to get some answers. You storm into Gary’s office with Candice and Ernie right behind. The switch here functions properly, flooding the office with harsh fluorescent light and sending a small, haggard-looking man scurrying under the desk with a shriek. “Relax, pal,” you say, more exasperated than reassuring. “We’re not going to eat you.”

“Gary, what happened here?” Candice starts, not waiting for her boss to emerge from his hiding place. “It’s the new paste, isn’t it? It’s the Total Complete Extreme Whitening Plus.”

Gary’s voice comes from beneath the desk in a whisper. “We did too much. The smartening crystals passed ADA testing by themselves, but when we added them to Total Complete Extreme Whitening, something went wrong.” He pauses, whimpering. “Tartar control. Baking soda. Whitening. Minterfresh gel. A single toothpaste was never meant to do so much. We touched the sun, Candice. We played God.”

“What’s in the smartening crystals?” Ernie asks, his voice steely. You realize that to your friend this isn’t some random, bizarre turn of events. The world ending due to reckless actions of an evil toothpaste conglomerate is exactly the sort of thing he’s always assumed would happen.

“What? Oh, mostly ground-up animal brains. A lot of dog and cat, I think. We get them in bulk from rendering plants.” He quickly returns to his ranting. “It’s the tower of Babel! We built it too high! The speaker phone commands and you obey!”

Candice turns white, no doubt thinking of potentially brushing her teeth with ground up animal brains. “Gary is still alive,” she says, “so there might be some research people holed up somewhere, too. If we rescue them, maybe they can help us figure out how to reverse this.”

“I don’t know,” Ernie says. “If they’re as far gone as he is, I can’t imagine they’ll be too much help. I’d like to get on Gary’s computer and see what I can find out for myself.”

“Uh, no offense,” Candice says, “but it’s not like you have a chemical engineering degree. And while we sit here waiting for you to come up with another one of your intricate theories, zombies could be eating all the people who do.”

“I’ve spent my life studying the poisonous effects of your products!” Ernie counters, his voice rising. “You’re part of the problem! Your part of the machine! You people did this!”

“All right, calm down,” you interject. “Fighting isn’t going to get us anywhere.” You’d better step in and decide what to do next before one of these two throws a punch.

Time may be of the essence. If you follow Candice’s advice and seek help from qualified professionals, turn to page 222.

On the other hand, your friend hasn’t let you down yet. If you decide to let Ernie have a crack at it, turn to page 48.

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Wow, you’re quite the hero, aren’t you? You peel out and leave the two of them to their fate, be it peaceful reconciliation, zombie infection, or murder-suicide. Actually, you immediately start to feel guilty about those last two possibilities.

That guilt quickly turns to panic when you rear windshield shatters and you realize that Billy is shooting at you. His next shot takes out a tire, and your car swerves off the road, overturning itself into a ditch.

Then it explodes.

As for Prudence, she makes the carefully-considered decision that life in an underground bunker with Billy is probably better than no life at all, and over the next couple of days they manage to get to Billy’s place on foot. His folks turn out to be decent folks and take her in, keeping her safe from the undead and from Billy’s unwelcome advances as well. The whole clan survives for decades in the post-zombocalyptic wasteland to come.

You, on the other hand, die in about seven seconds in the burning wreckage of your own shame.

THE END

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202

“I know these people are friends of yours,” you tell Candice. “We’ll get them through this, somehow.”

“Meh,” she replies. “I don’t really hang around with the lab folks. Still, we should try to keep them alive, I guess.” With that ringing endorsement of your humanitarian efforts, you set off toward the toothpaste factory. There are far too many in your group to squeeze into your poor, battered Toyota, so you’re forced to hoof it. The long march does give Ernie ample time to pore over printouts he made of the toothpaste manufacturing process.

You discover that even though the Crogaste Crazies are pretty removed from reality—you have to wave the speakerphone around in the air in order to get them to do anything—they can be directed to carry out small tasks with a fair amount of efficiency. Sending a whole group of them to overwhelm a single, roaming zombie, for example, proves surprisingly effective. You’re starting to think that they might prove useful after all.

By the time you reach the plant, daylight has broken, and you’re shocked to see what looks like dead bodies strewn all over the landscape. Upon closer inspection, they turn out to be zombies, and they aren’t actually dead—well, no deader than usual, anyway—but just sort of . . . resting. They’ve apparently gorged themselves on available stores of toothpaste and are now sleeping it off.

The piles of hungover zombies only get thicker as you approach, until you literally have to climb over them to get into the plant. You hold your breath as you step gingerly on the first one, and it moans softly but otherwise ignores you. You haul yourself up a little higher on the undead mound, doing your best to avoid mouths and any gaping wounds. The pile remains inert, so you wave to the others to follow.

Once on the factory floor, Ernie gets to work while you organize your crew to remove the catatonic undead from the immediate vicinity. By the time you have them all pushed out into the hallways, Ernie is using equipment on hand to very carefully add ingredients to an enormous vat, big enough to provide paste for literally thousands of tubes. As he adds the final component, however, you hear moaning coming from outside. The zombies that you very carefully hauled away are beginning to stir.

“Barricade the doors!” you yell at your crew, waving the speaker phone above your head. “Your god commands you!” There are five separate entrances to the factory floor, and the Crogaste employees just barely get to them as zombies start trying to force their way in. They throw themselves against the doors, keeping them shut, but as the minty fresh aroma of toothpaste gets stronger, the undead outside get more aggressive. You fear that your human barricades won’t hold much longer.

“They want the paste,” Candice says. “So let’s give it to them!” She scoops some glop into a bucket and runs toward one of the doorways, yelling at the barricaders to get out of the way and tossing the bucket into the undead crowd as the door opens. The zombies in front get covered in goo and drop to their knees, trying to cram as much of it into their mouths as possible. Then the ones behind them dogpile on top like a school of hungry piranha. You and Ernie scoop up buckets of your own and follow Candice’s lead, throwing toothpaste out all five doors until the zombie masses are sated.

You rustle up a group of phone worshipers and start beheading spaced-out zombies one by one—something which, come to think of it, you probably should have done before you started mixing toothpaste to begin with. Over the next few days, armed with this all-purpose zombie pacifier, your group spreads out over the city, killing whole crowds of the ravenous dead and recruiting survivors to help with the effort.

It’s a long and often ugly process, but slowly you organize groups of volunteers to bring shipments of toothpaste to other cities, first in trucks and then in planes. Casualties are massive, but as your efforts expand, survivors all over the world pull together, not just to stamp out the zombie infestation but also to repair catastrophic damages to infrastructure and to bring aid to pockets of refugees everywhere. Although populations are devastated, people everywhere show the bravery and generosity that humanity is truly capable of, and ultimately the plague is stamped out.

The world is saved. And, as a hero of the zombie-fighting revolution, your dating prospects improve immensely.

THE END

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In order to acquire guns, you have to deal with people who already HAVE guns. It’s kind of a catch-22. This is a very delicate situation, but you’ve always considered yourself to be extremely charismatic and clever. “Listen,” you say in a calm, reassuring tone, your hands still up in the air. “I don’t even know what the BATF is, but I can prove to you that I’m not . . .”

Before you get the chance to finish, the Freedom America Citizens’ Militia opens fire and mows you down like cheap crabgrass. That’s an awful analogy, but you’re currently being filled with hot lead, so your literary skills are a bit compromised. The amount of gunfire is truly remarkable—several of them may in fact be using fully automatic weapons.

One voice quietly asks if stuffed animals are good eatin’, but to their credit, his companions seem horrified by this idea and start lecturing him on what sorts of game are and aren’t okay to bring home for supper. None of this matters to you, however.

You’re really, really dead.

THE END

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206

What the hell. You direct Daryl to set up his explosive fertilizer as quickly as possible and keep herding the rest of the group through the pass. Daryl joins you on the other side as he finishes, just as the zombie legion comes into sight. There are hundreds of them now, at least. “Okay, how do we set them off?” you ask. It doesn’t seem likely that Daryl has any detonator caps with him, considering that he doesn’t even have a shirt.

“I’ll take care of that,” Daryl says. “Just get them all as far away as possible. This mountain is coming down!” He runs back toward the explosives and the approaching undead army. Suddenly you understand that he intends to set the charges off by hand.

“Daryl!” you yell after him.

“Let me do this!” he hollers back. Beside you, Isabelle is struggling to get down the hill—if you don’t help, she could be buried in the landslide as well. You pick her up and carry her over your shoulders like that Hobbit at the end of the Lord of the Rings movies. Just as you clear what you guess is the blast zone, you hear the first of three explosions, and the mountain pass collapses in a thunderous fury.

“I’ll be damned,” you mutter to yourself, wiping a tear from your eye. Daryl has saved you all.

You hear voices and turn to see a crowd of people rushing toward you, surprised to discover that it’s not only your crew, but several dozen more as well. In fact, you recognize one face at the front of the crowd. “Ernie?” you say, surprised to see your conspiracy theorist friend.

“You found the valley!” he says, as shocked to see you as you are to see him. “This place is my contingency plan. I always thought it would be an alien invasion or biological warfare, but this valley can support at least a hundred people indefinitely if the resources are properly managed.”

He explains that they’ve just finished sealing off the valley at the other end, and now that you’ve taken care of the mountain pass, nothing can get in or out without climbing gear. Ernie and his crew are mostly engineers, scientists, and survival experts. They’ve been actively recruiting the best and the brightest in case the zombie infestation doesn’t abate and they’re forced to remain in the valley indefinitely.

“I brought, um . . . people, too.” you say kind of lamely.

“We can use the numbers,” a woman chimes in. Ernie introduces her as Mittens. “We met yesterday,” he says. “She’s a cop. And she’s right—we lost some of our best people back there.”

“So did we,” you say softly, looking back at the collapsed mountainside. “Now, you mentioned something about mountain climbing gear?” You have an aunt still out there in the city somewhere, and you’d like to try to rescue her, along with as many additional survivors as the valley can sustain. For tonight, though, you’re satisfied to simply collapse and get some rest.

Whatever happens to the rest of the world, this pocket of humanity will survive.

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Candice and Ernie are right—the biblical end times are no place for foolish heroics. You sneak over to Candice’s car while the zombies ignore you completely. They really, really want that toothpaste.

You decide that the safest plan is to check out the UPS hub first—if Crogaste is ground zero for the plague, the undead concentration there could be overwhelming. Candice gives a wide berth to various roaming zombies, going so far as to take an alternative route if she sees one anywhere on the road ahead. Your aunt is a youthful fifty-something, but the truth is she drives like an old lady, even under the best of road conditions.

“Uh, are you sure this is the way to the highway?” you ask gently. Her constant direction changes are bringing you deeper into the city, which is only making zombie issues worse. Soon they’re everywhere. “Just drive through them!” you say, with more panic in your voice than you should probably let creep in. “No, don’t turn here! It’s a—”

Dead end. Candice jerks the wheel at the last minute but only succeeds in sideswiping a dumpster. At this point she confuses the gas pedal for the brakes, loses control of the vehicle, and careens down the alley, slamming the car directly into a telephone pole. Thanks to your seat belts, you all survive the impact—safety first!—but the car is wrecked, and the undead are now pouring into the alley behind you.

You’ve driven with your aunt before. You should have known better than to let her drive in a zombie apocalypse.

THE END

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209

You see a zombie crack open its victim’s skull and scoop out the insides. Somehow, the idea of defending yourself from these things with a screwdriver or a monkey wrench seems ludicrous. Fortunately, although terrifying, they don’t seem particularly focused. There are five or six of the things surrounding your car, which rules out driving, but by keeping calm and sticking to wide-open areas you manage to avoid being cornered and navigate your way to the gun shop on foot. Once there, however, you find that it’s been hastily boarded up. As you approach for a closer look, you hear what sounds like twenty or thirty guns being cocked at the same time.

“Stop right there!” a wild, panicked voice shouts from inside the shop. “Back away nice and slow, or we open fire!”

You stop in your tracks, raise your hands and take a cautious step backward. “I’m not a zombie,” you say as calmly as possible. “I’m just looking for a way to defend myself.”

“You’re trespassing on property of the Freedom America Citizens’ Militia!” the man shouts back.

“Like in Red Dawn,” someone else yells helpfully.

“We know you’re with the BATF! Now walk away and tell your bosses that we’re not leaving!” Whoever these folks are, they sound like they’ve been awake for about three days. “I mean it! “ the voice continues. “One more step and we shoot!”

Surely you can reason with these people. If you try to prove that you’re not a federal agent and just want to help fight off the zombie invasion, turn to page 205.

If you suspect that getting into an argument with a crowd of jittery, unseen gun enthusiasts might be a bad move and simply walk away, turn to page 138.

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Monumentally bored as you may be, the best possible outcome of scientific experiments would entail spending a lot of time with a reeking, reanimated corpse and the worst would entail becoming one, so you decide to do the humane thing and just put the poor guy down. He’s still there, hopelessly stumbling on the steps when you get back from the kitchen with a long-handled broom, so you unceremoniously smack him with it.

You pummel him for a good minute or two, but even with its head dangling from its shoulders, the thing keeps trying to get at you. Is he really that hungry, or could some remnant of humanity inside the soulless creature still be trying to deliver the mail? You pause, actually starting to feel sorry for the guy. Then he slips on the stairs one more time, and the resulting impact finishes the job of separating zombie head from zombie body.

Zombie Postman is finally at rest.

You bury the remains, because somehow this seems fitting (and because, honestly, who wants decaying corpse on the veranda?). As you’re digging, you notice that Zombie Postman had been carrying a full mail bag.

If you decide that neither rain nor snow nor zombie apocalypse shall stay this courier from its appointed rounds, and attempt to restore a smidgen of humanity to whoever might still be alive out there (and, dammit, to yourself) by delivering the mail, turn to page 46.

If that doesn’t really sound like you, and you settle for opening the mail and reading it, turn to page 33.

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211

Forget the toothpaste. Your chief concern right now is trying not to collapse. People are running around like headless chickens, and you limp up to a man fumbling with the keys to his minivan, but he just stares at you and drives off. You can’t truly blame him—to the layman, a zombie and a profusely bleeding stuffed rabbit probably look more or less the same. Although your vision is blurring, you see a steady stream of zombies trickling out of the grocery store, and even more approaching from the street.

Suddenly what looks like an ice cream truck covered in scrap metal and wooden spikes comes careening down the road and flattens the zombies in front of you. A wiry guy with no shirt and an AC/DC cap reaches out his hand from the driver’s seat.

“Come with me if you want to live,” he says.

On a normal day, no force on Earth could get you inside that thing. But you have to admit, you do want to live. “I’m Daryl,” he says. “I also have throwing stars.”

“Damn, you look horrible,” he adds as you climb aboard. “I was going to drive around trying to save more people, but if you want, we can just get the hell out of here.” It would be nice to find somewhere safe to not die, you think, and maybe head back out to look for more survivors tomorrow morning.

If you tell Daryl to step on it and get as far away from this madness as possible, turn to page 253.

If you think you’ll be okay, and tell him to keep searching for others who need help, turn to page 126.

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Half an hour later you’re on the way home, and Ernie is still sulking. “In the name of science,” he says, “don’t you think we should have at least . . .”

“No.” That place was evil with a capital E, you think. You glance into the back seat, where the devil dog is locked inside a pet carrier emblazoned with a picture of a cartoon puppy and caked in several years worth of dried blood. You feel canine eyes burning into the back of your head and can barely concentrate on the road. A few minutes later, the car sputters and rolls to a stop. Creepy cemetery, dog from hell, and now a possessed car? You’re pretty sure someone is about to drop a bucket of pig’s blood on your head, because this is like every Stephen King movie ever.

“We forgot to get gas!” Ernie moans. Fortunately it’s mostly downhill to a station that you passed on the way out, and you coast the car there with minimal effort. The place is abandoned, and after dispatching a zombie in the outside restroom (you’re not sure how it even got in there, since the key is still attached to a two-by-four behind the register), you fill up on gas, grab some beef sticks and Twinkies, and hit the road.

As you peer over your shoulder to back out, you see Princess sitting free on the rear seat, gnawing on the mangled remains of the pet carrier’s metal door.

The dog just looks at you and growls.

If you calmly continue driving, pretend nothing is wrong, and hope to make it back to Ernie’s house alive, turn to page 259.

Screw that noise. If you stop the car, lock the dog in, and run like hell, turn to page 238.

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After raiding the kitchen pantry for supplies, you forge out into the wilderness. Several hours later, you start to notice familiar landmarks from your childhood. Wasn’t there a ranger station or something out here?

Sure enough, by mid-afternoon you find it—a cabin about a six hour hike from the city. At this point, breaking and entering seems like the least of your worries, so you toss a can of soup through a window and crawl inside. The phone is dead, but to your delight the cabin is well-stocked with a hunting rifle, and enough food and bottled water to last one person at least through the winter.

This would be an ideal place to hole up and wait out this zombie apocalypse, or whatever it is. You take another look at the rifle, though, and wonder if maybe you should hike back to town and put that thing to better use.

If you decide to make the cabin your new home and settle in for the winter, turn to page 56.

If you grab the hunting rifle and head straight back to town to play action hero, turn to page 152.

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The good news is, a locked room inside an army installation is probably the safest place in the world right now. The bad news is that the army seems to have forgotten you. After more than two days, you’re starving and desperate for water. None of your attempts to break through the door are of any use.

You hear moaning coming from the hallway and realize that zombies must have completely overrun the complex. When they discover that someone is left alive, they start piling up outside the door to your cell but they never do figure out how to work the lock.

You celebrate your moral victory over the United States government by thinking you’re going to starve, but technically you die painfully of dehydration first.

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“Uh, I’m not really that kind of postal worker,” you say. Those mom-eyes are killing you. “Here, have some Victoria’s Secret catalogs,” you finish lamely, scurrying away. At this point you just want to finish your self-inflicted rounds and get back to the manor. You avoid contact with anything more demanding than a mailbox, and as darkness approaches you’re just about finished. At one of the final houses, though, a little bespectacled guy peeks his head out his window. “Thank god you’re here!” he beams.

“Just delivering the mail,” you say, turning away before he can ask you to return his Netflix videos or something.

“Oh. Are you sure you don’t want to come in for a minute?” he says, clearly disappointed. “I’ve got beef jerky.”

You are hungry. And this guy seems harmless enough, so you take him up on his offer. His place is tidy but packed to the gills—newspaper stacks that reach the ceiling give the impression that your host didn’t entertain much even before the outbreak. The jerky, however, is fantastic.

“Homemade,” he says with pride. He offers you a beer, which you accept heartily. This, though, is your big mistake. At the first sip your stomach turns, and the room starts to spin. You look up to see the small man sharpening an enormous meat cleaver. “Wait!” you cry, slumping from your chair and hitting the ground hard. “Don’t do this! You can’t abandon all human decency just because of the zombie apocalypse!”

“The zombie what, now?” he asks, looking at you like you’re crazy.

Crazy delicious.

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“Full speed ahead!” Daryl steps on it, blindly plowing through another mass of undead. You stick your head out the window and spot a big cloverleaf freeway onramp just ahead. Could you possibly make it out of this alive after all? It’s worth a shot! “Turn right, onto the overpass!” you yell.

Daryl pulls on the highway, only to discover that it’s every bit as overrun with zombies as the city streets. You drive right into them, but the engine is clearly about to give out, and within moments a tire blows, almost toppling the truck over on its side. Daryl somehow manages to pull out of it, and you break through the crowd. It looks like smooth sailing ahead!

But looks can be deceiving. As the truck slowly lurches forward, barely outpacing the mob following close behind, you realize that the overpass ahead has collapsed. How on earth do a bunch of zombies break a freeway? Regardless, the only way forward is now a sheer drop 50 feet to the city streets below.

Daryl looks over his shoulder at the approaching horde. “I’m not becoming one of those monsters,” he says, looking you in the eye. “Let’s keep going.”

You think about the broken overpass ahead, and the fate that’s quickly approaching from behind.  “Are you sure?” you ask. Daryl just nods. He steps on the gas, and, hand in hand, the two of you go careening over the edge.

Your whole Thelma and Louise thing is a little ruined by the fact the your truck is only good for about seven miles an hour at this point, but it’s the thought that counts. You sputter over the edge and unceremoniously smash into the asphalt below.

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Nothing could stop you from having another drink right now. And, just as a reader, you may want to take this opportunity to take a good, hard look at your life.

You disassemble the barricade and stumble out into the restaurant. It turns out the party is actually kind of hopping. People are milling about everywhere, although—and you have a pretty good sense of these things after you’ve had a few yourself—they look like they might all be drunk.

As you hop behind the bar, a crowd of thirsty patrons approaches. You’re the bartender now! Woohoo! You grab two random bottles and pour them simultaneously into the same glass, and then flip one behind your back in a half-assed Tom Cruise Cocktail move. It falls to the floor and shatters, but the crowd doesn’t seem to mind. They’re still pushing toward you. You realize that these are your people. They get you. You suspect that the sort of marginally hot one in the back is, in fact, totally into you.

There’s no way on earth this is going to end well.

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“Ranger station!” the first guy yells, followed by a smattering of cheers from people who were never crazy about the idea of sleeping outside in the first place. “Gorilla warfare!” Daryl chimes in to a surprising amount of support. “Back to town!” somebody else yells. “We tried following the rabbit and it just got the toothpaste lady killed!”

“Yeah, that rabbit sucks!” somebody else yells. You know what? Fine. If they want to get themselves eaten, that’s alright with you. You head into the woods by yourself. Without their dead weight you shouldn’t have any trouble reaching the campsite by nightfall.

About halfway there, you start to have second thoughts. They may be morons, but you don’t feel good about leaving them out there to die. Maybe you can trail some of them in the woods, stay out of sight and keep an eye on them. They’re all split up, though—which group should you follow? Daryl’s guerrilla warriors will probably survive the longest if they’re careful, you think. And the group heading for the cabin might be okay, if they can find it. The ones heading back to the city, though, are definitely in for a world of hurt. You decide to see if you can catch up with them and do your best to keep them alive.

As you backtrack, you stumble across hundreds of undead making their way along the riverbank toward the valley. You dive into the underbrush, out of their way, and they keep shambling right by you. Why would they be heading that way when there isn’t even anyone to follow? Then you remember the toothpaste that Daryl threw into the river. Denture Lady went nuts for that stuff when she zombified. Could they be following its scent down the river? Could the toothpaste be the key to this entire zombie nightmare?

“Die, zombie!” you hear, and turn your head just in time to be smacked in the face with something heavy. You hit the ground, and open your eyes to see the housewife in the pink tracksuit smack you again. “Aaaaagh!” she yells. “Cigarettes! Daryl, come quick! I think this zombie has cigarettes!”

It’s taken her a remarkably short time to go native, you think. But not for long, since she keeps hitting you until you’re not thinking anything at all. You get killed by a rabid, zombie-hunting housewife in the throes of a violent nicotine fit.

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Freaking the hell out it is. You scream at the top of your lungs and make a mad dash for the alley. You didn’t really consider the fact that a running, hollering zombie might stand out a bit from the crowd, though. A number of real zombies start lurching in your direction, since to them, screaming and running usually means something’s good to eat.

You make it to the alley, but your cover is blown. Now a small group of undead (not many, so apparently this is the intellectual cream of the zombie crop) are on your tail. There’s no time to stop and look for an eye-washing station. You keep up your pace, and after a couple of blocks manage to lose them. The good news is, the sting in your eye is wearing off. Maybe you did overreact, you think. You slow down and then almost bowl over a teenage couple coming around a corner.

“Zombie!” the boy screams.

Oh, that. “Calm down,” you say. “I’m not a zombie.”

“Talking zombie!” He pulls a shotgun out of his duffel bag. Uh-oh.

“Listen, I’m not a zombie!” you insist. “I just disguised myself so I could get past them!”

“You lie, talking zombie!” he shouts. He’s fumbling with his gun now. “Prudence, pass me the ammunition!”

You take the opportunity to snatch the weapon out of the boy’s hand before he can get it loaded. “Now I’m a talking zombie with a shotgun,” you say. “Wrap your mind around that.”

The kids scream and run for their lives. Unfortunately, they take their duffel bag, so you have a shotgun but no shells to go with it. Hmm. You can use it as a club for now, you suppose. Who knows, maybe you’ll run across shotgun ammunition at some point down the road. It’s a long shot, but . . . .

Before you can finish the thought, something hard hits you in the back of the head, knocking you to the ground. “Die, talking shotgun zombie!” someone yells. Others apparently join in, because before you can get up you’re being pummeled by multiple blunt instruments. You never do get a good look at your attackers, but whoever they are, they’re going to have to get much more efficient at killing stuff if they hope to survive the zombie apocalypse.

As it is, they take like eight or ten minutes to slowly bludgeon you to death.

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“Sorry, Ernie, but I think Candice is right,” you say. “Let’s try the R&D department, and if we don’t find help there, we can always come back.”

You head down to floor six—eight flights that are much easier going down than they were coming up—but discover that the door from the stairwell has been locked. As you try the knob, a voice shouts at you from inside.

“Stay away! The speaker phone warned us that you would come and spread lies and despair! The speaker phone commands and we obey!”

You remember now that the CEO was ranting about his speaker phone, and it appears that the research folks on the sixth floor are taking this nonsense seriously. “The speaker phone is not your god!” you yell back through the door, hoping to argue some sense into them.

“It’s just Gary!” Candice yells helpfully. You try to convince the people inside that they don’t have to live in fear of office equipment, but at first all you hear is the same voice uttering non sequiturs about the speaker phone and how you’re an emissary of evil. But soon a woman’s voice challenges the first voice’s authority and there appears to be some dissent in the ranks. Then, after a lot of yelling and banging around, someone unlocks the door and you open it to reveal an all-out holy war.

You’re not sure which side you’re supposed to be helping, so you just stand by and watch as unassuming-looking people in lab coats viciously pound on each other. After a minute, a guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a clipboard leads a small group to the elevator, swipes a key card in it, and disappears inside.

“Man!” Ernie sighs, exasperated. “The elevator works?”

A woman approaches and tells you that the sixth floor inhabitants will no longer live under the speaker phone’s iron-fisted rule. You try to discuss toothpaste ingredients with her, but if these were once people of science, the horrors they’ve witnessed have driven them far past the point of reason. Suddenly the elevator dings and out pops the clipboard guy again, Only now he’s glassy-eyed, drooling, and packed in with about a dozen other ravenous zombies.

“I don’t think there’s anything here for us after all,” Candice mutters, and you and Ernie both agree. You hurry out into the stairwell and start back toward the fourteenth floor. Half a flight up, though, you run right into a wall of undead. Could they have stopped off at the seventh floor first and actually cut you off? Before you have the chance to react, you feel rotting teeth sinking into your flesh.

You have just a few moments to live with the fact that you’ve been outsmarted by zombies.

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You’re pretty sure it’s not fluoride, but the idea of breaking into secret government installations or messing around with the paranormal is freaking you out a little. “I’m pretty sure it’s fluoride,” you say.

“That’s what I think, too!” Ernie exclaims. “I have schematics for the facility where they fluoridate the water supply on my computer. With the elements of surprise and overwhelming force, we should be able to break in there and see what they’re really up to.”

Yikes. “Actually, I had something else in mind,” you respond. “My aunt does marketing for Crogaste, so she might know something.” It would be nice to check in on Aunt Candice and make sure she’s okay, you think. Also, she always has excellent coffee.

“Marketing. Hmm. Doesn’t sound promising in terms of intel,” Ernie muses. “And if she does know something, that makes her part of the conspiracy. I don’t think we can trust her.”

“Let’s just try it,” you insist, grabbing your car keys. “If it’s a dead end, we can always fall back on your plan.” Modified, of course, so that the use of force is a little more underwhelming. You open the door and discover that scattered bunches of zombies are now shuffling around Ernie’s neighborhood. It seems they’ve made it to the suburbs.

And they’re all headed directly for your car.

“Run, Ernie!” you yell, as you break into a sprint to get there before the zombies do. Your friend buckles into the passenger seat and you get the engine started just as the first one reaches you. You drive right into it, and a quick jerk of the wheel sends it over your hood and onto the sidewalk with a crunch. You’re getting good at this offensive driving thing.

The undead thin out almost immediately as you leave Ernie’s block, which gives you a bad feeling. They couldn’t have followed you there, could they?

You take the long way to Candice’s house to avoid driving through the city. It’s completely dark by the time you get there, and it looks like your aunt isn’t home. The door is unlocked, though, and the place is a terrible mess. Furniture is overturned, kitchenware is broken, and papers and other debris are scattered everywhere. Taped to the coffeepot, you find a frantically written note.

“IF ANYBODY FINDS THIS, YOU MUST KNOW THE TRUTH. IT’S EVERYWHERE. IT’S GLOBAL. IT STARTED WITH US, AND NOW THE WHOLE WORLD WILL SUFFER. OH, CRAP.” There’s a bunch of swearing, and then the note continues. “I’M OUT OF COFFEE. I HAVE TO GO. WHAT HAVE I DONE? IT’S MY FAULT. IT’S ALL MY FAULT.”

“I knew it!” Ernie says. “Fluoride! We have to get to the water filtration plant!”

It sounds crazy, and you can’t believe you’re even entertaining the thought, but maybe it is fluoride. If you decide to head out to Ernie’s filtration plant, turn to page 111.

Hold on a minute. Something more must be going on here, and you’re worried about your aunt. If you try to track her down, turn to page 34.

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“To hell with it,” you say. “You keep promising me that I’ll get to use that other shotgun.” Mittens fetches the gun from her trunk, loads it for you, and the two of you walk toward the church side by side. “Front door?” you ask. You can’t help but imagine how badass this would all look in slow motion.

“Why not?” Mittens replies. The door might very well be unlocked, but she kicks it open regardless. Inside, worshipers line the walls, some muttering to themselves, some praying frantically, and others simply passed out. Down the hall is an enormous set of double doors, and a man wearing robes and a pointy hat rushes toward you. This must be Cardinal D’Amato. And he must think a lot of himself, since his getup makes him look like the pope. “Stay back!” he screeches. “You have no business in there! You are not fit to behold our Lord!”

Mittens returns your glance with a nod—whatever is happening here is happening behind those doors. Another man runs toward you, and you recognize him as the young priest who was tossing zombie corpses in the dumpster. Mittens shoves D’Amato to the side and pushes open the cathedral doors before Dumpster Boy can reach you.

You’re not sure what you were expecting, but the cathedral is packed wall to wall with hundreds of zombies. Before your brain can process this horrific sight, however, something smacks you hard in the back of the head. You catch a glimpse of D’Amato standing over you with an oversized, bloody candlestick as you hit the floor and your vision fades to black.

You totally got killed by a pope.

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The girl and her resurrected cocker spaniel live in a small town not too far away. Although the freeways are a mess of accidents and abandoned cars, the following morning you and Ernie take rural side roads and arrive in one piece. It dawns on you that you’ll need to get gas on the way back, though. Who knows how that might go.

“Oh my GOD,” the girl says when you knock on her door and ask about the dog. She’s about 13, and her thumbs fly madly across her cellphone keypad while she talks to you. She barely looks up, and if she’s noticed that the world is crawling with undead, she doesn’t let on. “I hate that thing. Take it if you want it.”

The spaniel in question peers around the corner from inside the house, shaking, staring at you with unblinking eyes, and growling softly. It’s fur is slick, and matted with something that might be blood. “Uh, is your dog okay?” you ask.

“Princess is ALWAYS like that. I was nine when we buried that stupid thing, and it hasn’t stopped growling in four years. SO gross. Seriously, take it.”

You look at Ernie. “I had planned on checking out the cemetery, too,” your friend says. You look at the dog and shudder. You have what you came for—it might be safer to take it and get as far away from this place as possible.

If you think Ernie’s right and check out the pet cemetery while you’re here, turn to page 54.

Seriously, though, that dog creeps you out. You’re trying to figure out how you can get it into a crate for transport without touching it. If you just take the little monster and go, turn to page 212.

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You add the gas station’s soda and junk food supplies to your provisions and get the hell out of Dodge, sticking to back roads and seeking out the least populated regions on the map. You’re hoping to just sort of wait the zombie apocalypse out, and your decision to hoard gasoline turns out to be a good one. What little is left of society degenerates into roving bands of desperate outlaws with mohawk haircuts and bits of scrap metal welded to their dune buggies inside of about three weeks.

You travel the countryside for a couple of months and have any number of crazy adventures along the way—that Thunderdome place, in particular, is wack—but your supplies only last so long, and replacements get harder and harder to come by. Eventually you’re left wandering alone in the desert, hoping beyond hope to encounter a generous stranger with a bite to eat and a jug of water.

Alas, that generous stranger turns out to be long since dead, and the bite to eat turns out to be you.

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You decide that if you were standing out by the mailboxes, hungering for human brains, you’d want your fellow tenants to give you the benefit of the doubt before smacking you in the face with a blunt object. But then you start to wonder. You haven’t made an attempt to save any of the other zombies you’ve run into so far. Why the sudden compassion? Is it possible that your willingness to abandon or even kill these things isn’t because they’re dangerous, but because they’re unattractive? You look back at your neighbor, thinking about the way beauty is just an arbitrary construct. Also, you think, as a corpse she can only continue to decay to the point where eventually she won’t even be cute anymore.

You may be the worst person in the entire world.

This sends you into something of an existential crisis, pondering the shallowness of your true nature, and on a further tangent regarding the manner in which body image issues have affected your life to this point. Fortunately, you don’t have to fret about it for long. Lost in thought, you don’t notice your neighbor plodding up behind you, and when she drags you to the pavement in a full-body tackle, it’s too late. You do catch a whiff of her reeking zombie breath as her teeth sink into the back of your head, though.

Not hot.

You get devoured by the sexiest zombie ever.

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“The zombies seem more interested in human brains than stuffed animal ones,” you lie. “Give me the tube and tell me where I’m going and what I’m looking for.”

Candice and Ernie protest, but you won’t budge. You start making the case that you need the two of them alive in case they have to repopulate the planet after the zombie plague, but realize how ridiculous that sounds. After all, their chances of survival aren’t any higher than the rest of the yet-to-be-zombified population, which you certainly hope includes more likely hook-ups than these two.

You smear some toothpaste on a stick and head down the hill toward the building. Zombies spot you and start staggering your way, so you throw the stick off to the side, and sure enough, they follow it like sheep dogs. You grab a handful of rocks from the ground and dab them with paste, and repeat this tactic until you’re inside.

Once there, however, dozens more zombies rush you. You’re out of pebbles, so you frantically empty your tube, squirting paste all over them. They turn on themselves, but the crowd outside smells this, too, and crashes in like a wave from behind. The good news is, you don’t ever reawaken to the tortured half-life of the undead, because the zombies don’t even bite you. They just trample you to death.

The bad news is, Candice and Ernie also fall to the zombie menace before their unlikely romance has a chance to blossom. Humanity is lost.

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You can’t remember any reason to continue swimming against the tide, so you follow the other zombies toward the building. As you approach, you see people huddling in terror, and something inside you stirs. Who are they? You feel vaguely protective toward them for some reason.

Then it slips away, and now they just look like lunch. Your last conscious thought is that if you hit the glass doors with enough force, you should be able to shatter them, so you pick up a big rock and start pounding away. Several other zombies follow suit, and although soon you can’t remember why you’re even doing it, you’ve managed to teach them a new trick. Without your help they might never have gotten in!  When the glass finally shatters, you all pile through and begin feasting. There’s plenty to go around.

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“Wait!” you yell. “Ernie, I need help!”

Your friend finds you sitting on the cold garage floor, clutching your leg next to the remains of an extremely dead raccoon. You explain what happened, and Ernie seems perhaps a little too interested in trying amputation as a first resort. After discussing it, though, you both agree that whatever is going to enter the bloodstream already has by now, and there’s nothing to do but wait it out.

Ernie brings you inside and tries to make you as comfortable as possible, but it’s a losing battle. Although the area around the bite has gone completely numb, you’re queasy, shaking, and cold all over, even with the heat cranked up. After a couple of hours, you’re sure of it. “I think I’m fading,” you mutter to your friend. “You have to get out of here. Go find that valley with the river. You’ll be safe there.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he insists. “Like I know you wouldn’t leave me. Now try to get some rest.”

Sleep is the last thing on your mind. In fact, Ernie’s presence is starting to prompt some terrifying feelings. You look at him, and part of you knows that he’s your friend and that he’d do anything for you. But a growing part of you just sees a meal. It’s in there, you think. It’s delicious. And I want it.

“Ernie, don’t let this happen to me,” you say. “You have to stop it.” Your friend is horrified. He knows what you’re asking of him but tells you that he can’t bring himself to do it. He doesn’t have the strength.

“Please,” you say, desperate now. The darkness is coming. “I don’t want this . . .”

Ernie disappears for a moment and returns with something small and heavy. He presses it tightly into your hands and gently pulls out the pin. One of your last conscious thoughts is where did Ernie get a live hand grenade? “Hold on to this as tight as you can,” he says between tears. “For as long as you can. When you let go, it’ll all be over.”

Ernie is long gone by the time you slip away. The grenade falls from your lap, and the unthinking monster you’re about to become is splattered all over his living room.

You may be gone, but you’re not forgotten. Inspired by your courage, Ernie starts by tracking down your Aunt Candice—she’s been hunkered down in a drive-thru espresso hut—and together they seek out other survivors of the zombie apocalypse. Their group grows to include a renegade police woman, a shirtless and enthusiastic AC/DC fan, several spunky college students, and a Haitian voodoo expert who turns out to be Canadian, among others. Ernie leads them to his spot in the mountains, and they seal themselves in, blocking out the zombie menace and starting the long, hard work of making a home there.

Tomorrow is another day.

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Relax, you think. You don’t know exactly how the zombie thing spreads. Maybe you’ll be okay? You find some clean rags and bandage yourself up as well as you can with just your left hand. You’re tempted to grab another bottle from the bar, but things just got real serious, and you suspect that you may need your wits about you if you’re going to get through this alive. The restaurant is clearly not safe, so you leave out the back door and through the alley.

The streets outside are madness. Zombies are everywhere, and the still-living seem to have degenerated into screaming, panicked lemmings. You carefully navigate the city, trying to avoid the worst of it. Things are getting hazy, though, and soon your hands and feet have gone numb.

Then you feel the hunger come on. By the time you’ve made it to the freeway overpass, you’re sure of it: you’re becoming a zombie. You can feel your humanity slipping away, and your thoughts are getting more and more muddled, replaced by an all-consuming desire for human brains.

Anything but this, you think! You’re right in the middle of the freeway bridge now, and you look down at the eight lanes of abandoned cars below. The fall from this height would most likely kill you.

If you leap over the side of the bridge, preferring oblivion to the wretched, eternal damnation of the living dead, turn to page 135.

Then again, maybe wretched, eternal damnation is overselling it. Who knows what zombiehood might bring? If you accept your fate and wait for the change to come over you, turn to page 260.

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You’re not sure if you could shoot yourself, but you certainly don’t want to wind up like those things. “I’ll save one for you if you save one for me,” you say.

“There you go,” Vinny agrees. He gives you a weary smile and goes back to blasting zombies away. You do, too, albeit with a little less efficiency, because the truth is that you’re not a very good shot. Things start getting desperate, but after a few minutes you see a gap open up in the wall of undead. It looks like with some fancy gunplay and a little luck, you might actually be able to get back to the station in one piece.

“You ready?” Vinny asks, interrupting your train of thought. “I’m on my last round!”

“Hold on,” you say. “I think maybe we can make it back.”

“I’m not making it anywhere,” Vinny insists, wild-eyed. “Not without ammunition. You said I could shoot you!”

“Don’t shoot me!” You’re hysterical now. “That plan didn’t even make sense! At least one of us can make it out of here—shoot yourself if you have to!”

“A deal’s a deal,” Vinny says, pointing his shotgun between your eyes. “Sorry, but you can’t play an apocalypse by the book, right?” He fires, and your brains fly right out the back of your head.

The silver lining is, there’s no chance you’ll be getting undead from that.

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It sounds like Crogaste corporate headquarters is zombie central, so if there’s a chance that some of this stuff has already shipped, you’d just as soon check that out first. You drive to the shipping center, which is a large fenced group of buildings surrounded by a fleet of big brown trucks (which you’re thinking about trying to commandeer on the way out). The place is locked up tight, so you give Ernie a boost over the fence and then climb up yourself. Once at the top, you take Candice’s hand to help pull her over as well.

Suddenly, though, Ernie starts screaming, and you see a pair of dobermans running toward him. “Zombie dogs!”

The dogs start to bark and growl as they approach, and look pretty healthy as they come into the light. Whew—just regular dogs. Then they both attack your friend, and you realize that regular dogs might be trouble, too. You jump off the fence and try to give Ernie some help, but now the dogs attack you. These things are vicious! One of them sinks its teeth into the flesh of your leg and won’t let go. You scream bloody murder and see two figures approaching. Zombie security guards?

“There’s two more over there!” one of them yells. “Quick, shoot ’em before they infect the dogs!”

Nope, regular security guards. You get shot trying to break into the UPS center.

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Forget the gated community, you think. The more you consider it, the more you realize that throwing your lot in with a bunch of pampered suburbanites probably isn’t the surest path to survival. You fight your way to the city zoo, and your replica Star Trek whatever-it-is handles like a dream. Once there, however, you’re disheartened to find that scattered zombies already roam the premises. Well, it’s nothing you and your whirling blade of doom can’t handle. You figure you’ll scout the premises, find a safe spot to use as home base and then formulate a plan to clean up the zoo environs and make it your permanent home.

Before you get far, though, you hear a high-pitched scream that comes from way on the other side of the zoo. Perhaps you should head over there to see if you can help. Of course, by the time you find whoever it is, the chances that they’ll still be human are slim. And you don’t know how bad things are out there—if you don’t come up with some kind of safety to retreat to, you could find yourself trapped and overwhelmed at the zombie zoo.

If you rush to the aid of whoever is screaming their fool head off, turn to page 272.

If you stick to the plan and find safe haven before waltzing off to clean up the zombie infestation, turn to page 106.

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You slam on the brakes, screaming at Ernie to get out of the car and run for his life. Ernie, now spotting the dog on the back seat, doesn’t need any more encouragement and is free of the vehicle before you are.

“Lock the door, lock the door!” Ernie yells.

You’ve already broken into a run. “I don’t think it can work the door handles, Ernie,” you pant between gulps of air. You don’t stop running until you’re both ready to collapse from exhaustion. You’re now several hours from town on foot but still fairly confident that you made the right decision. Fleeing in blind terror just felt right, even if you did pass up an opportunity to learn more about the zombie plague.

“You know, I’m less and less convinced that the dog has anything to do with the zombies,” Ernie says as you walk. “It doesn’t behave like they do. And you’d think that if there was a zombie dog out here for the past four years, the full-scale outbreak would have started before yesterday.”

You continue marching, and as night falls you’re almost back to Ernie’s neighborhood. Before you get to safety, though, a familiar growl comes from behind you. You stop in your tracks and turn to see the hell spaniel, bits of broken windshield now matted into its fur, glaring at you like it’s ready to go for the throat. It dawns on you that you’re weaponless, having left your giant wrench in the car before fleeing the scene. To make things worse, you spot a pair of zombies approaching from up the street.

You resume walking, much more briskly now, even though your legs are like putty from the day’s travel. Princess paces you. Now you spot several more zombies plodding toward you as well—if you don’t find shelter soon, you’re in danger of being surrounded.

Ernie panics, breaking into a run. Before you can join him, though, Princess flies by you at alarming speed. “Ernie!’ you yell. “Watch out!” The dog, however, continues past him and leaps up on an approaching zombie, knocking it to the ground. In a few grisly moments the thing’s neck has been chewed straight through. The dog then lifts its leg to pee on the severed zombie head, proving once and for all that Princess is definitely not a girl dog. Then it throws itself at the next zombie in line.

Soon all the undead are re-dead, although Princess is looking a little worse for wear. His already horrifying coat is now also covered in zombie gore, and by the way he limps toward you, one of his legs may be broken. Nevertheless, the cocker spaniel of the Baskervilles has saved your lives.

“You’re not such a bad little guy, are you,” you murmur, carefully reaching out your hand, and then pulling it back with a start as the dog tries to bite you. Hmm. Maybe it’s just jealous of the evil competition.

No way! Princess is like a terrifying, zombie-devouring Lassie! If you take the dog with you in hopes that he can somehow be domesticated, turn to page 124.

Then again, all the rescuing in the world can’t erase the pure waves of evil emanating from that thing. If you decide that attacking now, while it’s weak, might be your only chance to get rid of the demon dog, turn to page 12.

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Fortunately, you took a big, heavy monkey wrench along when you left Ernie’s house. “Back away slowly,” you say to Madison and Ernie. “But don’t go far! Who knows what else is out there.”

Screaming, Madison scampers down the hill. Well, you did your best. She knows the way home, and hopefully she’ll make it there safely. The zombies lunge at you, but you leap away—whatever these two have been through, they’re not in top undead shape. Your wrench connects with the first zombie’s head and knocks it almost completely off. The second one is all chewed up on its left side and thus suffers from balance problems. It’s every bit as easy to dispatch.

The first zombie is still moaning a bit, so you take a step toward it to finish the job. “Hold on—I just had an interesting idea,” Ernie says. “This pet cemetery seems unrelated to the whole zombie situation. What would happen if we buried this thing in the dog’s grave? Would it come back alive? Regenerate? Maybe it would turn human again! Maybe nothing would happen, but I think we need to find out.”

You think about the zombie, then look at Princess the Demon Hound from hell, and shudder. Something tells you this is a bad idea. If there’s a chance it could reverse zombification, though, could it be worth a shot?

Maybe Ernie’s right. If you try burying the zombie in Princess’s grave, turn to page 38. What’s the worst that could happen?

No, no, a thousand times no. No good can possibly come of this. For the love of God, don’t do it! If you don’t do it, turn to page 212.

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“Okay, Billy, you’re my navigator,” you say. “Prudence, you take the gun.” She  immediately sticks her upper body out the window and starts firing. The girl might not have any skill, but she’s certainly not hurting for enthusiasm.

“Hey, you’re a stuffed bunny, right?” Billy says as you start the car. You swerve to avoid a zombie in front of you, since Prudence misses it by a city block. “So you know about love and stuff. How do I make a girl fall in love with me?”

Is this why he wanted to ride up front? Love advice? You’re not sure what makes Billy think that stuffed bunnies know about anything. “Watch the road,” you say.

“Uh, turn up there at the donut place,” he mumbles. “I mean, I know that she loves me. But how do I get her to know that she knows?” You try to block him out and concentrate on your driving.

“She acts like she doesn’t know how I really feel about her,” he continues. “Even though I tell her all the time.”

A zombie torso smashes into your windshield, largely obscuring your view. Damn! “Which way at the light, Billy?” you ask frantically.

“Sometimes it’s like she doesn’t even listen to me at all.”

“BILLY, WHICH WAY AT THE LIGHT?”

“Left!” he yells, and you yank the wheel in that direction. Tires screeching, you run the car right into an overturned cement truck. Your head hits the windshield and everything goes black.

You never find out if Billy and Prudence survived the crash, because by the time you wake up, you’re already dead.

THE END

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“The first thing we do is march into town and take back the city,” you say with all the authority you can muster.

“Uh, sir?” Velasquez asks, gesturing at a handful of zombies filtering out of the command center.

Right. Those guys. “The first thing we do is burn down the command center. The second thing we do is to march into town and take back the city!”

After making sure all of the undead former officers are no longer roaming (they take a considerable time to burn, but that’s okay—burning things is fun!), you organize a convoy and take your soldiers to war. The city is completely overrun, and the horrors on the streets make this morning’s scene at the army base look positively serene by comparison. As tough as it is to put down the zombie hordes, one of your biggest problems turns out to be crowd control. You can’t have frothing citizens running all over the place like headless chickens. You need to get these people somewhere safe! But where?

“It might not be an ideal solution, but we could cart them off to the military prison,” Velasquez says. “You know, until things blow over.”

Good enough! Desperate times call for desperate measures, and you can sort out the moral implications after you rid the city of undead. If you round up the survivors and bring them in, turn to page 154.

Wait, what? Did you just declare martial law? If you think Velasquez’ plan goes just a little too far, turn to page 82.

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You hope Madison finds her way to safety, but the truth is, you never liked that girl much, anyway, and you’re not about to leave Ernie to his fate. “No chance, buddy,” you say. “If you die here today, so do I.”

Big talk, and you wish you had a little more to back them up with. You brought a big, heavy monkey wrench with you from Ernie’s house for just such an occasion as this, and as the first zombie rears his ugly head, you let him have it right in the kisser. The downhill path is not an ideal spot to fight off the undead, but you lash out wildly, and manage to beat the thing down. Take that! Unfortunately, the second zombie is following closely behind the first.

Its clammy hand grips your shoulder, but suddenly Ernie makes a diving tackle, landing on top of it in a heap. You’re not sure how he even managed to get himself off the ground with that busted foot, but he saved your life, and you return the favor by smashing the zombie’s skull in and pulling your friend away from its battered remains.

The two of you lie on the ground for a moment, panting. “We did it!” Ernie exclaims. “I knew you wouldn’t abandon me!” Your moment of victory quickly turns to dread, however, as you hear a low growl coming from the bushes nearby.

“Princess?” Sure enough, the dog emerges, and it looks pissed. You’re not sure if it’s upset that you destroyed its fellow denizens of evil, or if all the commotion has simply riled it up. But it dives right at you, and in your weakened state you don’t stand a chance.

THE END

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Zombie outbreaks are scary enough in broad daylight, so you’d rather avoid the risk of getting caught in one after nightfall. The first building you check looks abandoned. “Condemned” might even be a better description, you think as the stairwell creaks beneath your weight, threatening to collapse beneath you.

Collapsed stairs? That might be a brilliant idea. You don’t trust the rickety front doors to keep out the undead, so you herd the group to the second floor and start tumbling various pieces of furniture down the stairwell in an attempt to create a zombie-proof barricade. Your plan works like a dream; a particularly solid entertainment center takes out several of the wooden stairs, and by the time you’ve emptied the floor of cabinetry there’s little chance of anything that shambles surprising you during the night.

“Uh, so how do we get back down tomorrow morning?” Isabelle asks.

You hadn’t thought of that. “Don’t worry,” you say. “I’ve thought of that. Just focus on mixing up that zombie cure you were talking about.” Can’t hurt to try, you think. You settle in for the night, and are pleased to discover that the power in the building is still on, and the lights are working. The plumbing, alas, isn’t.

Two dozen people and no working toilets. This is going to get ugly.

You eventually settle down in one of the apartments to rest after directing people to use the bathrooms as far upstairs as possible to avoid stinking up the floor, and repeatedly assuring one elderly lady (who, if you’re not mistaken, is wearing dentures, anyway) that you’ll find her somewhere to brush her “teeth” tomorrow. Although the restless night seems to drag on forever, you finally awake to sunlight pouring in through the open window shade. You bolt upright, your nostrils assaulted by the overwhelming stench of death.

A look into the hallway reveals no zombie activity, and you start to wonder if the smell is from people ignoring the no-pooping-on-this-floor rule. However, further investigation reveals the true culprit: Isabelle’s cooking.

“It’s ready!” she says with an ear-to-ear grin. “I don’t know how much it will help the folks who are already sick”—even Isabelle, it seems, has begun to doubt the powers of organic cooking to repair rotted flesh and severed limbs—“but it might prevent any of us from catching it. It has echinacea!”

You take another whiff and immediately regret your decision. There’s no way something that smells that bad can be good for you. Still, if there’s any chance at all that it will keep you unzombified, it might be worth a shot.

If you plug your nose and try to get down some of what Isabelle charitably calls “stew,” turn to page 196.

If you decide you’d rather rely on your own immune system, your wits, and anything else that will keep you from having to put that stuff in your mouth, turn to page 64.

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246

You tell Clampy Pete to take a flying freak at a rolling doughnut. “Sideways,” you add. You know, because he’s a crab.

Mittens drives you back to the church, and you find the skittish young priest waiting outside. “I saw you watching last night,” he stutters. “I’m Father Tim. Please tell me you’ve come to end this madness.”

Tim tells you that Cardinal D’Amato and most of the congregation have gone insane. When a church member first died and came back to life, they heralded him as the second coming of Christ and now believe they are living in the biblical end times. The grounds are filled with poor souls who, desperate to understand the horrifying events of the past week, have lost their grip on reality. Many, attempting to find salvation, enter the church cathedral to seek guidance from their “savior,” and now it’s packed with literally hundreds of ravenous zombies. Shipping a few in crates to D’Amato’s business associates was just part of a particularly ill-conceived outreach program.

“The Cardinal thinks that we’re being judged,” Tim says. “But I’ve devoted my whole life to the Lord’s work, and His hand is not in this. It’s the Devil. I know it is.”

Mittens opens her trunk and starts strapping on weapons. Tim, however, has other ideas. He insists that if you want protection from the supernatural, he can load you up with holy relics. “These abominations are truly Satan’s work,” he says. “Bullets and grenades will be of no use in there.”

If you raid Father Tim’s stash of relics to ward off zombie evil, turn to page 261.

If you follow Mittens’s lead and stick with good old-fashioned firepower, turn to page 148.

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You decide to go ahead and hit the showers. They’re the living dead, right? They’re not going to be able to wrap their rotting minds around a complicated mechanism like a door knob. At any rate, whatever decision lets you wash all of this mutilated corpse out of your fur feels like the right one at the moment.

You start the water and lather yourself up with the special bunny shampoo you retrieved from your locker. Mmmm, lavender and jojoba. You close your eyes, and just for a moment you relax fully, all of your troubles melting away. Man, that feels good. You’re not sure how long you stand there with the warm water cascading over you, but at some point the spell is broken when you realize that there are at least a dozen zombies in the shower room with you.

Yeah. You’re going to have to learn to suffer through more than a thin coating of zombie gore if you want to survive this book, my friend.

THE END

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You were never convinced that this zombie business was mob-related, anyway. “Maybe you’re right,” Mittens says. Then she turns back to Fat Jimmy. “Don’t leave town or anything,” she growls at him. “We might be back.”

Cardinal D’Amato makes his residence on the grounds of a massive Catholic church out in the suburbs, so you drive over and park yourselves discreetly around back for a stakeout. It appears to be serving as a safehouse for the congregation, with people trickling in throughout the day and nobody coming back out. Daylight starts to wane, and the boredom becomes palpable. “So, why do you go by your last name, anyway?” you ask Mittens after a long lull in an already lackluster conversation.

She pauses for a moment and sighs. “I was married once. To a stuffed animal. I don’t know what it was about, really. I guess I thought he wasn’t like all the other guys. I loved him, I think. In the end . . . it just wasn’t right.” Another pause. “We wanted different things.”

She pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the glove compartment and lights one, silently offering you another from the pack. You haven’t smoked for almost a week now, but what the hell. It’s the end of the world out there, more or less, and you have bigger things to worry about than emphysema.

“Hmm,” you say, taking a long drag. Damn, that’s good. “Thanks for sharing and all. I just meant, why don’t you tell people your first name, though. It can’t be goofier than ‘Mittens.’ What is it, ‘Kitten’ or something?”

“Go screw,” she grumbles.

“Oh my god! It is, isn’t it?”

“It’s Katherine.”

“Your name is Kitty Mittens!” You have to laugh. That’s the best thing you’ve heard since this whole zombie thing started.

“You see this gun?” she says, visibly angry. The shotgun hasn’t left her side since the incident with the horses. “I will take this gun and I will shove it so far—”

Before she can finish the sentiment, you hear the back door of the church slam shut and you and Mittens—Kitty Mittens!—both hunker down in your seats. Three men are hauling out big burlap sacks and piling them in an overflowing dumpster on the back corner of the lot. One of them is a jumpy kid in a priest’s collar who can’t be a day older than 22. He shivers, makes the sign of the cross, and heads back inside with the others.

Once it’s clear, you sneak over to the dumpster to investigate, but the smell tells you everything you need to know. It turns out the bags are filled with corpses. Headless, zombie corpses. At least ten or fifteen of them.

You and Mittens walk back to the car, stunned and more than a little sickened by the odor. “This is big, isn’t it?” you say. Mittens just nods. “I mean, too big for us. I know you’re on suspension, but don’t you think we should call this in, anyway? With everything that’s going on, they might bend the rules a little.”

“You don’t know my captain,” she says with a groan. “I think it’s a waste of time, but if you want, we can go down to the station and try to rustle up some help.”

She lowers her eyes and stares at the church door. “Or we could storm in there right now and find out what the hell is going on.”

If you suspect you’re going to need all the help you can get with this and decide to head to the police station, turn to page 104.

If Mittens’s plan to storm the gates with guns blazing sounds more appealing, turn to page 226.

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251

No good can possibly come of this. Still, Daryl is as enthusiastic as ever, and Chuck and Marjorie seem willing to follow orders without question. The fourteen-year-old girl is a spitfire. The five of you plan a sneak attack and manage to liberate the supplies with a minimum of casualties, and wind up barricaded inside the concession stand.

“The fries are ours,” you say triumphantly. You look at Daryl, Chuck, and Marjorie. Two bags of french fries and a bucket of syrup. It’s not going to last long, and you can see in their eyes that they’re doing the math as well. Wait a minute. Where’s the girl?

“Caitlin, no!” someone yells, but as you turn around it’s already too late. You see a giant soccer trophy thing bearing down on you, and with a crack everything goes dark. You never find out what happens to the others, or the rest of humankind for that matter.

But it doesn’t look good.

THE END

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Frankly, the kid’s a little weird, and you’re not sure how long you want to be stuck out in the wilderness with him. After walking for about an hour, you cross a bridge over a little stream and stray from the road for a drink. As you cup your hands and take a long, cool gulp, you spot a deer upstream on the water’s edge, here for the same reason you are.

Hey, what’s that sticking up out of the water next to it? A decomposing, severed human hand. You spit out your mouthful and then start uncontrollably puking up the liquid you’ve already swallowed. Drinking this stuff could get you zombied!

“Man, that can’t be good for the deer,” Billy adds. You stumble back to the road, forcing yourself to continue on. Night falls and you contemplate setting up camp, but then you see headlights and frantically wave your arms, trying to flag down the driver. “Hey, I know those guys!” Billy says.

“Billy!” the driver howls, jumping out of his truck and hugging the boy. “How come you’re not at the bunker?”

“I had to fetch my girlfriend,” he says. Billy’s friends stare at you. “Not the rabbit,” he mutters, turning red. “That Prudence girl. She kind of stole the car and left.”

“Well, that sucks,” the driver says, looking you over. “So, you got any cash on you, rabbit?”

They hold you up at gunpoint, and since you’re not carrying anything of value, steal your shoes and drive off.

After all you did for those kids? Son of a bitch.

You never do make it to town. And when you collapse, it’s not from anything in that stream. It wasn’t the zombie plague that did you in, but good old reliable humanity.

THE END

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“I think we’d better . . . head for . . .” you start to mumble. Then you pass out, having lost much more blood than you even realized. When you regain consciousness you’re lying on a hard, scratchy surface, and Daryl is hovering over you with a wooden stake. “I had to be ready,” he says sheepishly when he sees that you’re awake. “In case you turned.”

Wooden stakes? You know what—never mind. “Where are we?” you ask.

“The soccer stadium!” Daryl proclaims, obviously proud of himself. You realize that the surface you’re lying on is fake grass, and you’re in the center of an indoor arena.

Suddenly you remember how you got here and suffer a twinge of guilt over all the others who certainly didn’t make it. You peel yourself off the astroturf. “Come on,” you say. “We’ve got work to do.” You head out in the truck to look for survivors, and it turns out that you and Daryl make a decent zombie fighting team. He’s got some strange ideas about the undead and about life in general, and has rigged it so he can blast ’80s metal through the truck’s loudspeakers, but his enthusiasm is definitely contagious. By nightfall you’ve brought more than a dozen people back to the stadium.

“It’s getting dark,” Daryl says, clearly exhausted. “Maybe we should call that good for the day.”

Anybody left alive out there might not make it until morning, you think. If you decide to push on through the night, turn to page 128.

No, Daryl’s right. You’re still wounded, and won’t do anyone any good if you get yourself killed. If you rest up and go back out in the morning, turn to page 66.

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“Throw me the hammer!” you scream. “Throw me the hammer!”

The old lady pushes something huge and heavy out the window, and you immediately understand that this isn’t an ordinary  hammer. It’s some kind of enormous construction tool. What is this woman doing with a sledgehammer in her apartment? How does she have the upper body strength to even move it? The first thing you realize is that this is a much better instrument for smashing zombie heads than a mop.

The second thing you realize is that it’s too late for you to get out of the way. As you stare up at it with your arms outstretched, the sledgehammer drops from the third story window and hits you right smack in the face.

Now the zombies don’t even need to kill you. Your corpse is still awfully fresh, though. So they eat you anyway.

THE END

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You look at the Zombie Lord, who is now actually levitating a few feet above the ground. At this point, kneeling before your master just makes good sense. Ernie follows your lead and gets on his knees, taking it a step further and actually groveling a bit. “What can we do to serve you, my lord?” he says. You think it’s a little much, but, you know, whatever works for Ernie.

“Serve me?” the Zombie Lord mutters, chuckling. “Pathetic. What possible use could I have for worms such as these?” He taps your friend on the head, and Ernie screams. You see his flesh turn gray and begin to rot before your eyes. In seconds, his eyes go white and he turns toward you, moaning. “Braaaaiiinnnnnnnns,” your friend says.

“No, little one,” the Zombie Lord laughs. “This one is also mine.” You jump to your feet and attempt to run, but smack into some sort of invisible barrier. With a flick of his hand, the Zombie Lord lifts you off the ground and spins you to meet his gaze. He looks into your eyes, and you can feel the undead sickness start to take hold.

As your flesh rots on the bone and the life slowly seeps out of you, your last thoughts are of regret. The rest of the world will soon join you in your undying, eternal nightmare.

THE END

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The mystery of the ever-increasing zombie population outside the bathroom door can primarily be explained by two factors: limited zombie mental capacity and basic human greed. First off, all of the store’s windows and doors are covered in posters and other advertisements, so no one can see the zombies inside. And since the zombies can’t see out, there’s nothing to draw them away from the place. They don’t even realize there’s a door there. So the whole thing functions as a zombie roach motel.

Meanwhile, the store remains a shining beacon of consumerism, and the living just keep coming. Whether they’re hoping to stock up on emergency supplies, engage in some good old-fashioned looting, or are simply popping down to the corner for a pack of smokes, the more zombies there are milling about inside, the less likely that a terrified shopper will escape once he discovers what’s behind door number one. The throng of undead, therefore, keeps on growing.

Why are we telling you all of this? Honestly, to fill up space. They don’t call it a “last-ditch, desperate sprint” because your chances of survival are terribly good. You get roughly eight feet before the groaning mob closes in on you.

It was a noble effort, though.

THE END

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257

Fat Jimmy turns out to be the least Italian-looking guy ever (in fact, you guess he’s probably Swedish), but he’s pretty fat alright, and talks with a stereotypical movie-mobster Gambino accent. It seems zombie scare has put a sizable dent in mafia thug availability, because you and Mittens get into his office with minimal trouble. She kicks in the door, and you follow behind her, trying your best to look tough. “We found your boys manufacturing zombie pus pills,” Mittens says, waving her shotgun around for emphasis. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on here, Jimmy.”

“Whaddaya, stoopid?” Jimmy responds. He seems unintimidated by Mittens, and waves his chicken leg right back at her. “We didn’t create dose things. We’re just tryin’ to make a buck off ’em, capisce?” Mittens points her weapon right between the Scandinavian gangster’s eyes. He drops the bravado and the phony accent. “Listen, you don’t want to go where this thing leads,” he says.

“Try me.”

“You know what? Fine. It’s the church. The first one we saw came in a crate from Cardinal D’Amato. He thought we might find it useful. You want to go lean on him? Be my guest.”

“Do you know what?” Mittens asks. “I think you’re full of crap.” She gives you a look. He might simply be lying to get you out of his office. Or there might be something to this zombie/church connection.

Fat Jimmy seemed genuinely scared there for a minute. If you tell Mittens you believe him, turn to page 248.

If you think it would be better to keep pushing and see if there’s something more he’s hiding, turn to page 162.

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258

You trust that Mittens wouldn’t have given the order to hold fire unless she meant it. “Look out—Broflosky!” you mutter, hoping this will be warning enough.

The cop pulls something out of his coat, but it isn’t a gun, and when he tosses it on the pavement you get a better look. It’s his badge. Several other officers follow suit, and finally Clampy Pete speaks up.

“You muttonheads want to play cowboy? Fine. You go shoot as many zombies as you like. I want no part of it.” He throws his badge down with the rest, turning to march silently off into the sunset. About a dozen others follow him, with the remainder deciding to surrender and join Mittens’s renegade crew.

When you storm Cardinal D’Amato’s church the following day, all you find inside are zombies, packed in like sardines. You kill them, but never find out what secrets the church may have held. In time, Mittens’s brand of frontier justice wipes the streets clean, although you do have to construct a wall around the city to keep out the growing hordes of undead from the outside world. She makes you her second-in-command and as a team you manage to keep the peace in your little island of surviving humanity for decades to come.

THE END

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You pull onto the road and continue driving toward town. “Ernie,” you whisper. He seems preoccupied with gas station junk food, so you repeat yourself in the loudest whisper you can manage. “Ernie! Don’t make any sudden moves. I think everything will be okay if we just stay calm, but the dog is loose.”

Ernie cranes his neck, looks in the back seat, and immediately screams bloody murder. You try to calm him down, but he responds by screaming louder, right in your face. His freakout, in turn, freaks Princess out, and the dog leaps into the front seat. Ernie, naturally, takes this opportunity to open the passenger door and leap from the moving car, and in the tumult you veer off the road and into a ditch. The car loses purchase and flips onto its side at about 30 miles per hour.

Your seatbelt keeps you in the driver’s seat but pins you there, and you hear a growl that sounds like it’s coming straight from the pits of hell. The dog peels itself off the dashboard, and now it’s pissed. We’ll save you the play-by-play, but what happens next is not at all pretty.

Next time, Ernie, throw the possessed evil dog from the moving vehicle.

THE END

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Viewed from the inside, it turns out that being a zombie isn’t so bad. You don’t have the power of conscious thought, so you can’t sit around moping and pondering how your life turned out this way. In that regard, you’re actually better off than you were at that restaurant waiting for your blind date to show up before this whole business began. And the only blunt emotions that break through the haze are “Man, I’m hungry” and “Yay, dinner!” In that respect, it’s not all that different from being a labrador retriever, except that nobody ever rubs your belly or scratches you behind your ears.

You stumble off looking for food, preferably in the form of human brains, which you instinctively understand are attached to human beings, somewhere inside like the filling in a Twinkie. Sometimes you get the good stuff and sometimes you don’t, but when you fail you just get right back on that horse and try again. Tomorrow is always another day for the living dead.

Zombies are inspirational like that.

THE END

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261

Father Tim takes you to a small, cluttered room next to the cathedral and loads you up with rosaries, a 10-pound crucifix, something that he claims is the finger bone of Saint Aquinas, and one of those big, swinging balls with smoke coming out of it. Mittens has her trusty shotgun, plus a collection of smaller weapons and four hand grenades.

The cathedral is surrounded by weeping masses, and as you approach it, you see an older man in robes running toward you with a wild look in his eyes. “Bar the doors!” Mittens shouts to Father Tim. “Don’t let anyone follow us in there!”

The scene inside is straight out of a nightmare, with the undead packed together like Christmas at Wal-Mart. Mittens lobs grenades toward the far corners of the room and a few zombies are blown to bits, but there are too many left, and those only partially exploded are still crawling toward you. You swing your big smoke ball, but the zombies ignore it. You hit one with your crucifix, but this only makes it angry. You hold out the finger bone of St. Aquinas. A zombie bites it out of your hand and swallows it.

Holy relics may have been a bad idea. You yell at Mittens to toss you a sidearm, but see her being overwhelmed herself. You’re helpless as the undead tide washes over you.

You get torn limb from limb by a mob of mindless zombies.

THE END

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262

“I’m here about the zombies—they’ve taken over the whole town!” you say, although it’s hard to tell how much of this is getting through to the guards, since your face is still smashed up against the pavement. “I’ve been researching them. I think I know where they come from!”

That last bit is pure bluff, but if the government is worried that you might be on to them, perhaps they’ll at least hear what you have to say. Frankly, anything that keeps you from getting a bullet between the ears at this point would be an improvement. After radioing something in on their walkie-talkies, the guards haul you off the ground, drag you inside and stuff you into a small, windowless holding room. They take your shoes, everything in your pockets, and, for some reason, your belt.

After what feels like an eternity, a middle-aged man with a serious look on his face shows up at the door. You don’t know the exact meaning of all his stripes or bars or medals or whatever, but there are a lot of them, so you figure he’s some kind of general. “So you think you know where these things come from, do you?” he says.

“Um,” you retort cleverly. Despite sitting here in the dark for a couple of hours, you haven’t really thought this far ahead. “You guys, I figured?”

“Strike one,” the officer says with what might be humor or might just be impatience. “Come with me. I want to show you something.” He brings you to a room where zombies are hooked up to electrodes on the other side of a plexiglass wall. Two technicians on your side of the glass are fiddling with dials and marking things in notebooks. One zombie is trying desperately to get at the techs through the glass, completely ignoring the occasional sparks coming from the electrodes on its temples. You notice that the electrodes on another zombie aren’t on his forehead but . . . significantly lower.

“We didn’t make them,” the officer says. “Honestly. We just found them this way. But if we can learn to somehow control them . . . well, we could clean up this whole mess right quick, for starters.”

The officer has an odd gleam in his eye that seems to communicate something like “and then, the world!” It turns out what he wants from you, however, is your cooperation. He offers you a chance to help the military with their undead rehabilitation program.

If you are horrified by the moral and political ramifications of the United States military creating an army of undead soldiers and refuse to help, turn to page 137.

If you aren’t really that shocked by it (honestly, if you were them, it’s pretty much what you would do), turn to page 192.

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264

Since you only survived your last postal delivery attempt with the help of Brad’s well-seasoned group of zombie avengers, you figure that pulling him away from his crew will only increase his chances of being eaten. Seeing his reaction to news from home does inspire you to check in on your own loved ones, though. You have an aunt who doesn’t live too far from the college, so you pay her a visit.

There’s no answer at her house, which doesn’t bode well. Perhaps she’s hunkered down at work, you think. It’s already mid-afternoon, but you decide that there’s time to get to the Crogaste Toothpaste office where she works before nightfall.

Unfortunately, you misjudge the time it will take to cross town on foot. The sky is pitch black by the time you approach the office park, but if the stench is any indication, the area hasn’t fared well. You need to find shelter, and soon. Crogaste appears to be inhabited—light is coming from just about every window in the building. Your delight quickly turns to dread, however, when you see what’s illuminated in that light.

The parking lot is absolutely lousy with the undead, and literally thousands of the creatures are shambling about, emitting soft moans. You turn to run, but these things picked the area clean of the living days ago and seem quite motivated to get something fresh to eat. You trip in the darkness and skid across the asphalt, and the zombie feeding frenzy washes over you like a school of piranha.

They skeletonize your body in about thirty seconds.

THE END

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265

The two of you did make a decent team, but whatever brand of crazy this broad is selling, you don’t need any. What you do need is a shower and a change of clothes (also, possibly a cigarette). Your apartment is way on the other side of town, but you have a membership at a gym nearby. Did you leave a set of workout clothes in your locker there? It’s been like four months since you’ve visited, so it’s difficult to remember.

You navigate the zombie-filled streets and find that the gym is open and looks empty. Perfect. Inside your locker you find a track suit that’s crusty with months-old sweat—that might be worse than what you’re wearing already! You look down at your gore-soaked duds, sigh, and take the workout clothes.

On the way to the shower, you notice some activity coming from inside the yoga studio. You sneak a peek through the glass door and are confronted with a scene straight out of a horror flick. The walls are covered in blood, and zombies in unitards are milling about, chewing on bones and intestines and stuff. Zombie yoga class! Your first instinct is to make a break for the streets outside. You look back over your shoulder, though, and realize that they’re not actually leaving the studio, just moaning at you and pressing against the door. They don’t know how to work the knob, you realize. It seems like they’ll probably figure it out eventually, though.

On the other hand, you really need a shower.

If you play it safe and head for the front door, turn to page 75.

Then again, who knows when you’ll get another chance? If you risk a shower (just a quick one), turn to page 247.

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266

“God speed, my old friend.” You turn away to hide the tears welling up in your eyes, and start to follow Madison down the hill.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Ernie screams.

“What?” This stops you in your tracks. “I’m protecting the . . . you said to go on without you!”

“You HAVE to say ‘go on without me!’ I didn’t MEAN it!” He’s completely livid. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re leaving me here to die.”

Your shambling pursuers are almost upon you now. Also, you feel like a complete jerk. “I thought I was supposed to protect the kid—I’m sorry!” You keep apologizing as you try to find a way to carry your friend. Ernie is not a little guy.

“You know what,” he says petulantly, “never mind. Now I don’t even want you to try to save me from the zombies.”

“I said I was sorry!” You pull him over your shoulders, hoping to kind of piggyback him down the hill. Unfortunately, gravity is not your friend, and you’re unable to find your balance with the extra load. You go toppling right over, and Ernie cries out in pain.

His broken foot, however, is the least of your worries. The stench of rotting flesh overwhelms you, and soon you’re crying out in pain yourself as you feel zombie teeth bearing down.

THE END

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267

Lush. The liquor store has ceiling-to-floor windows and an automatic door, so you start clearing off shelves to use as a barricade. Then you see it: a big, mountainous undead guy in a housecoat, standing there as if mesmerized by the vodka. He must be six and a half feet tall, and weighs at least as much as three of you. Not ready to give up on your boozy paradise quite yet, you grab a bottle of something and crack it over the giant zombie’s head. This just makes him angry, but it does cover him in alcohol, which gives you an idea.

Molotov cocktails, baby.

You tear some liquor store employee vests to shreds, stuff them into the tops of bottles (starting with the gross, weird liqueurs), light one with the butane lighter you still carry even though you’ve supposedly been a non-smoker for three days, and chuck it. A direct hit! The enormous zombie bursts into flames. You turn to see several more coming through the automatic door, so they get a face full of flaming booze as well.

You’re quite pleased with yourself until you realize that all of the zombies are still coming at you, and now instead of defending yourself against regular zombies, you have to defend yourself against zombies on fire. They don’t feel pain, and it takes forever to char them to the point where they’re immobile. In fact, the only thing you’ve managed to do is inconvenience them, and only because they prefer their meals uncooked.

One of them knocks over a shelf, and the whole building goes up in flames. Smoke gets in your lungs, and you discover that being eaten by zombies while simultaneously burning to death is perhaps the worst imaginable way to go.

THE END

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268

Although the ranger station has a roof and possibly even a refrigerator, if you’re going to create a long-term base for a large group of people, the campsites are still your best bet. You hike into the woods, following the stream that runs to the valley. Traveling with the group is much slower than it would be alone, and Isabelle in particular becomes increasingly queasy throughout the day. She didn’t wind up eating much of her stew, but even the small taste she managed to get down doesn’t seem to agree with her. Late in the afternoon you decide to stop and break camp. Since the weather is nice, you might as well encourage the group to get used to sleeping under the stars. You’ll start worrying about permanent shelter tomorrow when you arrive at your destination.

The little old lady with dentures looks at you with big, puppy dog eyes, and you tell her to go ahead and brush her teeth in the stream. After organizing a light meal from the market supplies, you sit down for a well-earned rest. Almost immediately, though, you hear a commotion coming from the river. Daryl is there with a few of his compatriots, and the denture lady appears to be pitching a fit.

“Dude, all I did was try to borrow her toothpaste, and she freaked out,” Daryl says, holding up a sparkly purple tube that you recognize, oddly enough, as the same brand that your aunt sent you in the mail. “Then she started, like, swallowing the stuff, so I took it away from her.”

Denture Lady looks pale, and you wonder if she might also have sampled this morning’s stew. “Toothpaste!” she yells at the top of her lungs. “Toothpaste! Toooothpaaaaste!” Her eyes go white, and her voice deadens to the low moan you’ve heard many times in the past two days.

“Braaaaaaaaaaains!”

Daryl screams, pushing her into the river. Then he looks down at the toothpaste in his hand, screams again and throws that downstream as well. “What the hell!” he shrieks. “Now toothpaste turns people into zombies?”

Before you can respond, you see Zombie Denture Lady pulling herself out of the river behind Daryl, about to lunge at him. It’s one of the least pleasant things you ever have to do, but you grab a big stick from the ground and put the poor old woman out of her misery. Suddenly, you hear a scream from the far end of camp.

“Zombies!” a man is yelling. “They found us!”

Sure enough, several moaning corpses are making their way out of the woods up the trail. And, even more shockingly, one of them is wearing a pink sun hat. Could these things have followed you all the way from the apartment building this morning?

“Screw this!” somebody says. “We need to get to that ranger station thing!”

“No,” someone else insists. “If they’re out here, we should go back to town! It’ll be safe now!”

Several voices pipe up in agreement, but Daryl has his own plan. “Guys! All we have to do is hide in the woods and pick them off one by one. Gorilla warfare!” You can hear him misspelling “guerrilla” just by his vocal inflection. The housewife in the tracksuit who lent you her cigarettes yesterday seems to think this is an excellent idea.

“I don’t care what you guys do,” the first man says. “I’m heading to the ranger place. Who’s with me?” The station, though, is back the other way, past the zombies coming toward you. And who knows how many could be following? You’re certain that, left to their own devices, nobody here will survive until morning.

If you try to persuade the group to stay together and continue on to the valley, turn to page 6.

You only joined up with the group in the first place because they asked you to. If they don’t want your help any longer, why should you force it on them? If you let the group do what it wants and wash your hands of the whole lot of them, turn to page 218.

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Come to think of it, the more densely populated areas seem to be the most infested with zombies. If the plague has hit the big city, they’re probably falling from the skies. You take Prudence’s group up on their offer (“The Congregation,” they call themselves) and settle down for the night.

Over the coming weeks you get to know the community, getting over your initial skittishness. Prudence takes to her new role as Prophet with surprising grace and soon the whole compound has accepted her as its leader. You’re not sure what life was like when men ruled the roost, but only a few old-timers are left now, and the women Prudence gathers around her to help organize things seem level-headed and peaceful.

If any of them find Prudence’s new religious “visions” odd, they’re happy enough with the way things are being run to keep quiet about it. Weeks turn into months and then into years. What starts as an entirely unicorn-based theology slowly changes to focus largely on sparkly vampires, then shooting really arty photographs, and eventually hardcore environmentalism (for a few months in college, the religion also experiments with its sexuality, but this is more of a phase).

Prudence puts you in charge of defending the settlement against zombies. Small groups of them never stop wandering out to the compound, so the rest of the world doesn’t seem to be faring particularly well. But you build the fences into walls, and your new community keeps itself safe.

It’s not an easy life, but all things considered, it’s a good one.

THE END

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272

Fate didn’t plop you down in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and then hand you the ultimate, epic weapon of undead destruction because it wanted you to sit on your ass. If there are people here who need rescuing, you’re damn well going to rescue them. These scattered, stumbling former zoogoers probably weren’t particularly impressive in life, and in death they’re easy enough to dispatch. Just get their attention, sever their rotting corpse heads from their rotting corpse shoulders, and down they go. You’re in balls-out Klingon warrior mode now. The zombie crowd thins out as you approach the source of the screams, and by the time you find it, there isn’t a walking dead person to be seen.

What you do see is a young woman standing by the polar bear habitat. “My baby!” she yells. “My baby’s trapped inside the bear pit!”

Really, you think. Really? You look down, and, sure enough, some kid is dangling from a stunted tree while three polar bears of various sizes loom underneath it. “Calm down,” you say. “They’re as scared of us as we are of them.”

“I don’t know,” she says, still panicking. “They’re walking all funny, and I think the big one is moaning.” ZOMBIE FRICKIN’ POLAR BEARS? Aw, hell no.

Today is a good day to die.

You leap into the pit, swinging your weapon at the largest of the bears. It connects, but these things have necks like SUV tires—you barely seem to scratch it. You do get its attention, though, and lure the three drooling, moaning monstrosities away from the tree just as the toddler loses her grip and tumbles to the ground.

You have only one chance at this. Breaking into a sprint, you scoop the kid into your arms and keep running to the spot where her mom waits above you. “Catch the baby!” you yell, and chuck her as hard as you can up over the wall. I know—throwing babies is almost never a good idea. In this case, though, it was all you could think of, and she lands in her mother’s arms, knocking both mother and child backwards.

You never find out what happens to them after that, because although Goldilocks may have made it to safety, the three bears are upon you. You get a few good swings in, but this was never going to end with you climbing out of the zombie bear pit alive. You don’t. They eat you. But as they do, you’re somehow heartened by the feeling that you died honorably, battling to save the life of a helpless child.

Stupid balls-out Klingon warrior mode.

THE END

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274

It’s all downhill from here. There’s an elaborate scheme to draw human survivors into your lair, and an ever-growing battalion of zombie test subjects. The experiments themselves get more and more bizarre—what is grafting a zombie arm onto a human host supposed to prove? But it doesn’t even matter at this point. Reality blurs and you start to feel at home with your undead compatriots, forgetting that Phillip, Smitty, and the others weren’t always reeking corpses.

You wanted to see what balls-out, zombie-experimenting insanity looks like, and this is it.

It can’t last forever, of course, and ends in true mad scientist fashion, with an angry mob of townspeople armed with honest-to-god torches storming the manor. You set the zombies loose on them, but they slowly hammer their way through the legions of undead and you’re forced to barricade yourself in a third-floor bedroom. You smell smoke and know it’s only a matter of time before the whole house goes up. You did know that this was going to end in flames one way or the other, didn’t you? But you won’t let it come to that. You pull a syringe from your lab coat, knowing that you’d rather join your noble undead brethren that give these yokels the satisfaction of killing you. After injecting the zombie pus into your neck, you fling yourself out the window to your death.

Moments later, you rise again. You never do find out how the rest of the battle goes, since the towering inferno behind you doesn’t hold your attention, and you stumble off aimlessly across the land. You blend in with the faceless zombie masses, looking for fresh meat and delicious, delicious brains.

THE END

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275

Turning on your heel and sprinting from the undead procession and hapless protesters, you hit the docks and find a small fishing boat that has an ignition key in it. You’ve never actually driven a boat before, but after starting the motor, testing the throttle, smacking the boat all up against the dock, then untying it and trying again, you slowly master the controls. Your first instinct is to pilot away from shore as quickly as possible.

Forty-five minutes later, you haven’t seen any islands and are starting to wonder what the best way of locating one might be. Your options suddenly dwindle, however, when the engine sputters to a stop. You’re out of gas. An inventory of the craft reveals nothing in the way of food or water, so after a good, long period of aimless drifting, boredom prompts you to unpack the fishing gear and throw in a line.

You sit there, fishing, for what could be minutes or hours. When you eventually get a nibble on your line, you’re just excited to have something to do. The fish you pull from the water is about a foot long, but strangely lethargic. Aren’t these things supposed to flop around and stuff? Right when you lean over to inspect it, the thing comes to life and twists in your hands, freeing itself from your grasp and biting into your throat.

You get eaten by a zombie mackerel.

THE END

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276

“Okay, let’s do it,” you say.  Your friend rushes up and gives you a big hug. “And you know,” you add with a grin, “the good guys actually won on Endor.”

“A bunch of Ewoks against the combined might of the Galactic Empire?” Ernie scoffs. “That’s what they want you to believe.” You go through the fence and start looking for an entrance into the building. Around the first corner, you stumble across a little balding guy with a big, bushy mustache. “Drop the clipboard!” Ernie yells. “Where’s the fluoride?!”

Stuttering, the man introduces himself as Clarence Mason, water purity expert. He tells you that they found a woman stumbling through the woods earlier in the day, brought her inside for first aid, and then were shocked when she started biting people, who quickly became ill as well. Phone service was out, so his co-worker went out to find help, but has yet to return.

“A likely story,” Ernie says, pulling some putty out of his bag and starting to affix it to a random bit of the architecture. “Come on! We’ve got to blow this place right now!”

“What?” Clarence gasps. “You can’t! My friends are still alive in there! Besides, you’ll disrupt water service for the entire metropolitan area!” He breaks into a run, screaming all the way out of the compound.

If you think Ernie’s right, and help him destroy what’s obviously a hotbed of zombie activity, turn to page 170.

If you try to persuade him to let you go inside and get a read on the situation before he does anything rash, turn to page 78.

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277

You brandish your chainsaw and get ready to unleash the ultimate kickass zombie taunt. Okay, ready? Before you can start, though, a zombie comes out of nowhere and eats you, and now you’re dead. This may seem completely arbitrary, almost as if you’re being punished, but you know what? Life’s like that sometimes. Bad things can happen to good people completely out of the blue, and not because you made the wrong decision or anything like that.

Sucks for you, though.

And don’t return to the previous page and try picking one of the perfectly good regular zombie taunts, either, even though you probably still have your finger stuck in there. You’re dead. You can just go back to the beginning if all of a sudden you think this book is worth reading, and has interesting choices to make, and knows lots of cool, badass things to say to zombies.

That’s what you get, smartypants. Happy now?

THE END

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278

Mittens may have said to hold your fire, but she also said to keep an eye on that son of a bitch, and you’ll be damned if he’s going to gun her down on your watch.

You fire your weapon and think you’ve scored a direct hit, but the moment your shot rings out, the entire street explodes in gunfire, so it’s impossible to tell. Bullets are flying everywhere, and cops and ex-cops alike fall like flies. After what seems like an eternity, the shooting finally ends, and you see Mittens curled up on the floor, clutching her chest. You rush to her side.

“Don’t let the zombies get me,” she gasps. “I don’t want to . . . come back as . . . one of . . .” She chokes on the words, falling silent. You look around and see that the whole posse is in similar shape. There’s no way to know if the cops on the other side of the street have fared as poorly. You look down, and realize with a shock that the blood all over your fur is your own.

You die, and whatever hope the city had of stopping the zombie invasion dies with you.

THE END

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Acknowledgements

First, a hearty thanks to Krystal Abbott, Melodie Ladner, and Neal Starkman for their invaluable editorial services. And, of course, to Dawn Marie Pares, who certainly knows that all the really good stuff in this book was her idea. I’d also like to thank all those friends whose faces would light up when I told them I was working on this project. You kept me at it long after my initial three-week enthusiasm window had closed.

A special shout-out goes to Ryan North, since I was perusing quantz.com, read a comic about T-Rex crafting a choose-your-own-adventure story and immediately e-mailed my girlfriend to say “OMG WE HAVE TO WRITE ONE.” Granted, the joke was that it was the only format that would accommodate T-Rex’s extremely modest literary talents, but to me it just sounded great. Thanks, Ryan!

About the author

Matt Youngmark lives in Seattle. Zombocalypse Now is his first book.

Copyright page

If you got here after being officially deputized, click here to go back.

If you got here after running into some morally questionable cops in a warehouse, click here to go back.

If you got here after abandoning Daryl’s band of roving yokels, click here to go back.

If you got here by deciding not to join a police mutiny, click here to go back.

If you got here after leaving your car to the zombies and walking to the police station, click here to go back.

If you got here after deciding the police were a safer bet than your friend Ernie, click here to go back.

If you got here after leaving your group in the supermarket and deciding not to loot the comic book store, click here to go back.

If you got here after being chased down the street by zombies and making a quick decision to head west, click here to go back.

If you got here after leaving your group in the supermarket and deciding that looting the comic book store sounded pretty good, click here to go back.

If you got here after backing slowly away from the Freedom America Citizens’ Militia, click here to go back.

If you got here after escaping from the military police, click here to go back.

If you never even went to the military base, click here to go back.

If you got here after passing on life in Prudence's compound, click here to go back.

If you got here after fleeing the terrifying 8-year-old zombie girl who ate her family, click here to go back.

If you got here after deciding you didn't want to live in Billy's underground bunker, click here to go back.

If you never even met Billy, click here to go back.

If you and Daryl fled the horrifying events of the sporting goods store, click here to go back.

If this Daryl guy just rescued you after you drove your car into a telephone pole, click here to go back.

If you fought the zombies at the pet cemetery, click here to go back.

If you skipped the pet cemetery entirely, click here to go back.

If you just found the church and went in with guns blazing, click here to go back.

If you went for backup first, then turned down a starring role in a police mutiny, click here to go back.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

turn to page 4.

turn to page 7.

turn to page 9.

turn to page 14.

Back

turn to page 72.

turn to page 206.

turn to page 16.

turn to page 24.

turn to page 230.

turn to page 118.

turn to page 80.

turn to page 37.

turn to page 127.

turn to page 235.

turn to page 183.

turn to page 155.

turn to page 139.

turn to page 47.

turn to page 21.

turn to page 30.

turn to page 40.

turn to page 86.

turn to page 229.

turn to page 125.

turn to page 147.

turn to page 276.

turn to page 88.

turn to page 11.

turn to page 63.

turn to page 97.

turn to page 39.

turn to page 146.

turn to page 53.

turn to page 102.

turn to page 178.

turn to page 167.

turn to page 92.

turn to page 209.

turn to page 208.

turn to page 70.

turn to page 105.

turn to page 20.

turn to page 144.

turn to page 255.

turn to page 90.

turn to page 153.

turn to page 224.

turn to page 271.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

turn to page 4.

turn to page 7.

turn to page 9.

turn to page 14.

Back

turn to page 72.

turn to page 206.

turn to page 16.

turn to page 24.

turn to page 230.

turn to page 118.

turn to page 80.

turn to page 37.

turn to page 127.

turn to page 235.

turn to page 183.

turn to page 155.

turn to page 139.

turn to page 47.

turn to page 21.

turn to page 30.

turn to page 40.

turn to page 86.

turn to page 229.

turn to page 125.

turn to page 147.

turn to page 276.

turn to page 88.

turn to page 11.

turn to page 63.

turn to page 97.

turn to page 39.

turn to page 146.

turn to page 53.

turn to page 102.

turn to page 178.

turn to page 167.

turn to page 92.

turn to page 209.

turn to page 208.

turn to page 70.

turn to page 105.

turn to page 20.

turn to page 144.

turn to page 255.

turn to page 90.

turn to page 153.

turn to page 224.

turn to page 271.