You use the fire axe to pry off the boards across the door and set them aside. The squeaking of the nails as you pull them out seems loud in the quiet night. You try the door and the knob turns. A quick look with the flashlight shows you that the lock on the inside had been torn out. The boards were the only thing keeping the door closed.
You wait for your eyes to acclimate to the gloom inside the sorting center. There are filthy glass windows all around the walls going to the ceiling. The light pollution of the city trickles in enough to make pools of shadow from the rotting machines and conveyor belts inside. Your boots leave tracks in the dust on the floor. The building looks unused since it was closed in 2001. You resist the urge to look up the shelf life of homebrew anthrax on your phone.
You check the sorting floor and the open-plan offices. No one has been here for a very long time. The cobwebs across the doors are unbroken, the layer of dust on everything is undisturbed. But there is an undercurrent of putrescence, an animal rot. You follow your nose.
You find them all in the breakroom for some unknown reason, postal workers sitting at tables, rotting away. They glisten in flickering light coming from a coffee vending machine. The smell, the smell, it is thick, a taste in the air. Someone had left them here in a grotesque parody of life. You back away, trying not to vomit, when you hear the first one.
“Maaail,” it groans. It should be dead, dry as grave dust, nothing but a rattle of bones, but, “Maaail.” You can hear desiccated muscles and bone creak as it turns to look at you with empty sockets.
“Maaail,” another moans, and another, “Maaail.” Some of them stand and turn toward you.
ANTHRAX ZOMBIES! your brain screams.
You raise your rifle and fire, fire, fire. One throat tears away, one arm drops to the floor, the only headshot sprays a black ichor all over the coffee vending machine. Somehow the smell gets worse. Black liquid anthrax zombie brains. You want to vomit, but keep backing away, your eyes up. Twenty nightmares are shambling toward you. You fire more, bright spots of muzzle flash stacking in your eyes. Another one goes down with a headshot. It is close enough for you to see the round go in right under the nose, zombie teeth scattering on the floor, zombie brains spraying the ones behind it.
“Maaail,” they are all saying now, over-lapping, a chorus of the damned. You finally get enough separation to turn and begin weaving through the machines on the sorting floor, using the flashlight to trace your own footprints, your night-vision thoroughly fucked.
“Maaail, maaail, maaail,” running together like the bleating of sheep.
“I don’t have any mail!” you shout and begin laughing. The acid edging up your throat makes your voice hoarse. Anthrax zombies, fucking anthrax zombies. Your laugh becomes tinged with madness. Tap, tap and then tap, tap, change the magazine, tap, tap, the shots booming through the dead factory, the rounds shredding dead flesh.
Behind you, the door is standing open. You are almost there. Tap, tap. Through, out, the night air sweet and cool. You slam the door shut and start using the wood you took off to brace it close. You can hear them pawing at the other side, pushing, piling against the door. One piece of wood jams under the doorknob perfectly. You jump off the loading dock and run across the parking lot, making it out past the fence before you pause. Leaning over, catching your breath, you see a blackened ear on your boot. It takes a few shakes to get it off without touching it. It is time to vomit now.
Wiping your mouth on your sleeve, you pull out the satphone. It dials as soon as you turn it on.
“Airstrike requested?”
“There’s something in there. Some people sort of,” you say.
“Airstrike requested?”
“Zombies. They’re anthrax zombies!”
“Airstrike requested?”
You look around. There is nothing near the sorting center but more warehouses, dark and quiet.
“Airstrike requested,” you say into the phone.
“Minimum safe distance is 100 meters. You have ten minutes.”
“I don’t know if the ballots are in there.”
“Minimum safe distance is 100 meters. You have ten minutes.”
The phone goes dead in your hand.
DO YOU escape the city on foot, just happy to be alive? TURN TO PAGE 30
DO YOU proceed to the DNC headquarters to search there? TURN TO PAGE 35
DO YOU return to President Trump to begin searching The White House? TURN TO PAGE 70
