walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. For Deleon is with you, his legacy will be the immortality of Gilgazyme®.
You push out the broken barrier, the one Sims was supposed to cover, the one the zombies breached and made it through. It’s hard, shoving your way through the walking corpses, but you make it out just as a woman’s scream pierces the night air.
Turning back, you look up toward the roof. Zombie Deleon is up there, and he’s covered in blood. You raise a hand toward him, waving goodbye one last time. Maybe you’ll see him again, when the cure is widespread, but maybe not. His arm moves up, almost a wave back.
“Thank you, Lewis Deleon,” you say. “The man who saved the world.”
You smile, turn around, and walk away, running your fingers over the raised bump where your bite wound is healing.
• Click to Continue.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
The Final Countdown
T he master-of-arms soldier leans out the trailer window and looks at you with a grin. “How’d that combat shotgun treat you?”
“Good,” you reply.
“But not great, eh? Well, time to pull out all the stops.” He steps back into the recesses of the trailer and appears with a much larger grin and an equally proportioned weapon. It looks like the prehistoric ancestor of your shotgun; all muscle and built to terrify. Just looking at it, you feel like an ’80s action star.
“AA-12 combat shotgun,” the soldier says, handing the olive drab behemoth off to you. He holds up what looks like an old film reel, but what you realize is the ammo clip. “Twenty rounds in each of these, and I’m giving you ten drums. But be careful: it’s full auto, and those drums will empty out in four seconds if you hold down the trigger.”
Then he holds up a white ammo drum, pops open the side and removes a bullet that looks like it was torn from the pages of a sci-fi pulp comic. It’s all silvery-chrome and has fins at the base, like some kind of mini-missile. “Frags,” he explains. “High-explosive anti-personnel round with a nine-foot blast radius. Accurate at well over five football fields. Remember the white drum—this one takes you up to eleven.”
Trying not to cream your pants, you step into the sunlight and inspect this pinnacle of shotguns. Rosie steps up to the counter and asks for more ammunition. “Oh no, ma’am, I have something special for you,” the soldier replies.
“I told you, I already got my rifle.”
“Of course, but what about a secondary weapon? How about a pistol that uses the same .22 long-rifle ammunition? And what if that pistol had a one-hundred-round capacity?”
“Shut up. Tell me you don’t have a Calico M-110.”
He produces a black pistol, long and sleek like a blaster from Star Wars. Rosie fawns over the thing like a kid at Christmas.
“Where does the magazine go?” you ask, seeing only the short pistol grip and the oversized top.
“It is the magazine!” she exclaims, popping off what would be the slide on a normal pistol. It’s a hefty black cylinder, like a cucumber on growth hormones, and she shows you where the tiny bullets feed out.
“I’m afraid Mr. Wizard cannot give me anything new,” Lucas Tesshu says with a kind smile. “I think the sword and grenade combo is just fine.”
The soldier produces a belt of grenades that are more like energy drink cans with pull-pins at the top. “We’re gonna switch you over to concussion grenades; frags might get you in trouble in close quarters. Take these MK3s instead.”
“I don’t have much else to offer, it’s true. What do you buy the man who doesn’t want anything? I thought you might not mind these.” The soldier slides several shuriken-throwing stars across the counter.
“Why would you have these?” Lucas says in disbelief.
The soldier grins. “Clearly, you don’t know any American soldiers.”
“Why don’t you come with us?” you ask. “We could really use your
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