Zombie Mall Read online

  YOU DIED

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 178

  Stay put and wait

  You need to sit and wait for three days before someone arrives. Boredom hits you hard. On the second day, you take your chances exploring the mall. It has many wings, corridors and passages. In one info desk you pick up a pamphlet with directions. There are five food courts and you forget with one you set your base in… so you take more chances.

  Now running through the corridors looking for a familiar place, you worry when the sun comes down. You can’t find it, so you decide to find a safe place to spend the night. Zombies don’t sleep, but you half to.

  You head for a mattress store, when in an intersection you see a giant eye watching you. The giant ball is just there, staring.

  If you… Go to…

  Ignore the eye, keep walking Section 202

  Kick the eye as hard as you can Section 203

  Section 179

  Check the movie theater

  Any shopping mall that respects itself will have a movie theater close to the food court. This was no exception. Venturing into the corridors of the “employees only” sections, you look for a way to watch a movie if at all possible. Sure enough, you find an power backup generation. Of course, you fire it up. Now you can watch a movie!!

  To your surprise and amazement, the machines are automated. Movies begin to project in every hall at their regular schedule. You grab a pair of 3D glasses as you rush into the main theater room. The movie in question is a new superhero movie. It premiered the week when the apocalypse broke off. You couldn’t watch it before.. you know, because of the zombies and all. Now is your chance.

  Thus, you spent your next days watching movies, eating popcorn, and having a good life. It has been a good apocalypse for you after all… all things considered. When the rescue party finally arrives, they watch a movie with you as well.

  YOU SURVIVED

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 180

  Explore the room further in

  You are about to take the journal, but hesitate. The plants reaction makes you feel as if you should leave it alone for now. These plants are keeping you safe from the zombies. Better to show them some respect and privacy. The spores in the air confirm it. There is great love and appreciation for this place. It is the same sensation you had once before, when visiting a sacred place with your father, before the fall.

  “Rest in peace, you sleeping beauty”, you whisper as you move on.

  By your right, vines slither out revealing a large door. It is clear that they want you to see what’s inside. You open the door. And then, you gasp.

  Row after row, growing from tables of dirt, you see these overgrown purple plants. Dozens of them, shaped like an exclamation mark. Hanging from each tip, a large yellow and orange balloon holds inside a human fetus. The umbilical cord connects each infant to the plant. All of them are in different stages of gestation.

  Scared and amazed, you approach them. You stare inside the translucent membrane with deep curiosity. You are not expert, but some of these will soon reach the end of their gestation. What then?

  A green vine raises close to you, and brings another message. You understand. It is a request… no, it’s more like a plea.

  If you… Go to…

  Find something else to do Section 204

  Stay and take care of the offspring Section 205

  Section 181

  Read the journal

  Carefully, you slide out the journal and pull a chair. You don’t know what to call the embodiment in front of you, but it inspires you respect. You feel safe and amazed.

  You turn the pages of the journal, reading them like a treasure of old. The hand writing is clear and easy to read. It talks about the final days, the fall of civilization. It talks about how they tried to make things better. She mentions people by name, but that doesn’t tell you much. You still don’t know who are *“they”*. The journal talks about the establishment of a safe zone in the mall, to gather survivors from all around. It talks about a vaccine, and a secret defense against the growing horde. You pause for a second and think about the trees outside.

  “If the defense was the trees, they got it right”, you say out loud.

  Further reading reveals details of chemical formulas, tests and attempts to make it right. You skip ahead, not really understanding much of it. Then you stop at the last page. You read the last entry once, then twice, and take a deep breath. She was asking for forgiveness. She was afraid to have made it all worse, so she wrote down this journal, hoping that someone would undo what they did.

  You place the journal back in her hands and walk outside the room. You take a deep breath and stare at the grove. You sit by the sun, and close your eyes.

  “This is a good place to be”, you speak out loud.

  You observe for hours the tall trees, and the human shaped plants around. You smile, as your skin turns green and you root in that perfect spot becoming one of them.

  YOU SURVIVED

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 182

  Fight your way out

  Without a clear exit at sight, you take your stand where you are. You swing your chair hard against the first guard to walk in. The strength of the blow sends him backwards against the second guard. You push them out of your way and make a run out of the store. Outside, common people scream at you. You run. They shoot at you. A bullet grazes your arm. The pain and the shock takes you out of balance for a second, but you keep running.

  You reach the end of the corridor. It ends in a plaza. More guards show up from every direction. You climb up a spiraling stair that offers you some cover. Near the end of the stair, a guard jumps at you. Acting by instinct, you move aside and push him out of the stair. He falls down. You hear him turning into a walking dead. You keep running.

  Your persecutors focus now on the new zombie. Fire shots on the distance tell you that the crisis has grown big enough for them to forget about you.

  You come to a halt. The end of the corridor is blocked, barricaded and secured from zombies on the other side. You need to find a way out, or you are as dead as them once they get you. You break into a closed shop. Half the place was under remodeling. A trash tube is still attached to the window, so jump in. You end up in a dumpster below.

  Coughing your way out and covered in dust, you look around. No zombies at sight, only an empty parking lot. Beyond that, the tall fortified fence that surrounds the mall. You make a run for the fence. A few minutes more, and you are again in the open road. Up the hill, you reach the highway.

  You head north. The wind in your face brings moisture, announcing the rain. You take a deep breath and walk on.

  YOU SURVIVED

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 183

  Escape through the exit door

  You jump over the desk and kick the large man right in the teeth. He falls back, chair and all, spitting blood and teeth all over the floor. The two guys curse at you and reach for their guns. You hide behind the desk as a rain of bullets fly above your head. One of those bullets hits the obese man by mistake, right in the neck. He stumbles back, holding his neck and spilling blood all over you. The gunmen stop firing and run to help the fallen comrade.

  This is your chance, and you take it. You run for the exit door. Just as you reach the knob, you get slammed against the wall. One of the men flips you around and clubs you right in the face. He’s about to hit you a second time when the fat guy jumps at him from behind and takes a whole chunk out of his neck. The other gunman joins the feast, both fully turned. The guard screams in excruciating pain. He’s being torn apart alive.

  You exit the room into the emergency staircase. You force the door close behind. The trio of zombies behind it
slams the door trying to get to you.

  If you… Go to…

  Run up the stairs Section 206

  Run down the stairs Section 207

  Section 184

  Access the computer

  You explore the file system. The directory structure tells you is some kind of Unix based operative system, but you can’t find any application to run. Still, the machine works at its top capacity. You open the system monitor, and notice that a running process is consuming 90% of all the resources. It is a countdown clock.

  “Oh crap!”

  Countdown clocks are never good, and this one reads: “organic nullification”. You watch as the counter reaches zero and then… nothing happens for a few moments. You breath deep and exhale. At least nothing explodes. Outside of the lab, all the lights turn off. The door locks. You are trapped.

  You run to each door. The computer turns off. Some “sprinkler like spikes” come down from the ceiling and release a gas into the room. You feel the poison burning your lungs as you cough. Your legs fail. The rest of the lights go off. All organic material melts away in the fog.

  YOU DIED

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 185

  Inspect the black pod

  At first glance, the pod looks like a piece of shiny modern art. No buttons, levers or any type of connection or panel. You rest your hand on the clean reflective surface, and the whole thing lights up. Touch activated. Lines of light run on the sides, and a screen lights up from behind the glass.

  A strange text appears, but you can’t understand what it reads. You don’t recognize the characters. A button draws on the display. Since you can’t resist pressing a button, that’s exactly what you do.

  The lid of the pod slides open and falls next to you. A thick fog escapes the pod and crawls through the floor. Something comes out of the pod. You step back. By the table, a label reads in plain English:

  Patient Zero

  As you raise your eyes, a creature you have never seen leaves the pod and watches you in silence.

  If you… Go to…

  Attempt to communicate Section 208

  Attack first, ask questions later Section 209

  Section 186

  Stay and talk with the zombies

  You decide to hear them out. All these zombies are the last attempt from human scientists to contain the decease. Unable to revert the situation, or stop the virus, some genius came with the idea of creating “the collars”. They don’t prevent the transformation, but help preserve the human mind for an indeterminate period of time after the zombie state has taken over.

  These, in particular, gather resources and then deliver them to a city named “Eden”, the last surviving camp somewhere up in the north. They will take you there with the next delivery, in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, you work alongside with them to prepare trucks, gather supplies, and patch them up when they tear. You even make some friends among them: “Larry” and “Brooke”. From all the conversion stories, theirs is quite funny. Once you pass the smell or rotting flesh, life with these privileged class of zombies is not that bad… and soon, you’ll be among your own, starting a new life.

  YOU SURVIVED

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 187

  Go out to the world

  You open the door and walk away among lines of zombies carrying boxes. You head for a truck on a side, and turn it on. The truck is half full with supplies. Nobody attempts to stop you. Whatever is going on in this place, you want to be as far from it as possible.

  The military truck moves heavily through the parking lot and out of the gate, pushing smaller cars aside. Up the speedway ramp, you head away from the city and the shopping mall.

  YOU SURVIVED (for a while)

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 188

  Venture into the dark room

  You step into the darkness and the door closes behind you. The room lights on. The place is empty, save for a desk with a computer in the middle of the room. The terminal screen turns on when you move the mouse.

  After a few seconds, the system prompts you with a question. Odd, you think, that they ask a question instead of a password. The screen reads:

  Enter the answer to the ultimate question about the universe, life and everything.

  You look around for a clue but find nothing.

  If you… Go to…

  Answer: “I don’t know” Section 210

  Answer: “To be happy” Section 211

  Answer: “42” Section 212

  Section 189

  Close the door and head for the elevator

  The chill down your spine makes you shiver. You tell yourself: Better be safe than sorry, and close the door making as careful as possible. When you walk towards the elevator, the door opens behind you. Lights flicker in the corridor. Distant voices whisper, calling for you.

  The hair in the back of your neck stands up. Adrenaline rushes through your veins. You feel the presence of many behind you, calling you. You spin around. Dark spreads from the room like ink on the walls. Lights die at it’s pace.

  “He has freed us”, the voices say.

  Ghostly fingers reach out and drag into the dark room. Darkness draws back, and the corridor resets to what it was before. The door closes behind you, and then… silence.

  YOU DIED

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 190

  Force the doors open

  Ignoring every safety precaution ever learned about elevators, you push and pull the doors to force them open. You are indeed between two floors.

  Taking a deep breath, you pull yourself out of the elevator on the top floor. You pull your feet a second before the holding cable snaps and the elevator falls. Laying in the smelly carpet, you stare at the empty void of the shaft.

  That was close.

  The floor you are on reminds you of an old office building from the 70’s. Wood paneling, clocks with long sharp triangle rays, diamond shape decorations, and some bright red leather couches in waiting areas. Most of the offices have sheets or plastic covering the furniture. Still, you are thankful that the lights work.

  Walking around, you find an old cafeteria. Suddenly, a rotary phone rings. You pick it up, and a voice on the other side says:

  “Please, help us”

  If you… Go to…

  Help them Section 213

  Walk away Section 214

  Section 191

  Climb up the elevator’s shaft

  Standing on the handlebars, you punch the ceiling in the elevator until you loose the emergency hatch. With a quick jump, you grab the edge and pull yourself up. You are now standing on top of the elevator and looking up. Far up, you see an intermittent white light. You wonder what it is, but only for a moment. A zombie body splats by your side… and then another, and another. These first ones fall head first, but is just matter of time for one to land on it’s feet.

  You try climb through the shaft ladder when you luck runs out. A falling zombie hits you straight on and drags you all the way down. The fall brakes your spine. Unable to move, you feel the heavy weight of zombies piling up on you. You can’t breathe… but worst of all, you feel their teeth.

  YOU DIED

  If you… Go to…

  Start from the beginning Section 1

  Section 192

  Go left, to the digging site

  You follow the tunnel into a great opening. It is a natural cavern, filled with stalagmites and stalactites. The crude rock glitters with a thousand colors under the artificial light. What you see here amazes you. Down below and further ahead, powerful neon lights reveal the old ruins of a long forgotten civilization. You can see in this buried city old buildings in different states of decay, streets and monuments.

 
Fascinated by all of it, you descend from the platform with the full intent of exploring the place. You then walk straight into the city, when somebody calls you out.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, a man behind you says.

  You turn around and see a large group of scientists and other personnel, as surprised to see you as you to see them.

  If you… Go to…

  Talk to the scientists, offer to help Section 215

  Ignore the scientists and run away Section 216

  Section 193

  Go right, to the camp

  You go right, all the way down the corridor. Soon, you arrive to an opening, leading to a platform. A group of people in lab coats sit at many workstations. The air smells like vanilla and chocolate. It makes you hungry. It’s been months since you smelled anything like that, before the apocalypse began.

  A tall, skinny woman approaches you from the side and startles you. She seems friendly enough.

  “It was not my intention, but I’m glad you made it. We put that note in your cell… we thought you had potential”

  That surprises you, but solves the mystery of the crowbar and the note.

  “The soldier that attacked you was infected. We needed to be sure that you were not.”

  You walk towards the edge of the platform while your host talks. You barely listen to her. Down below, the sight of a shining citadel perplexes you.