I’m from a town in rural Texas, one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone else’s business. One of those small towns that big corporations and the government love to do experiments on. Minimal damage, you know? It doesn’t really matter too much if the chemical plant burns down here because there aren’t a lot of people here, and frankly, the people who live here don’t matter much to the rest of the world anyway.
I was at the grocery store on a Saturday, grabbing food for the week, when I saw a man who looked quite emaciated, jaundiced, and with limbs with joints that poked out sharply. He was standing at a sample table, with a bottle of soda and a sign that read “Take The Pepsi Challenge” with the Pepsi logo in the background. Great, a big corporation trying to experiment with some new formula on us that they can hoist on to the public if a minimal number of us get cancer. To my surprise, there was a line of people waiting to try this new product, each of them given two cups, one with Pepsi, and one with “the leading brand” then asked to say which one they preferred. Surprise surprise, they also chose Pepsi. At least as far as I could see. More to my surprise, however, people were walking around with two, three, and more bottles of the stuff in their carts.
A man ran up to me, his eyes looked bloodshot, and his skin pale, like he was sick and had been up for a couple of days.
“Hey man, have you taken the Pepsi challenge, you’ve got to drink some Pepsi” his breath smelled like onions and decay. Each word was a toxic sludge of waste fumes that brought puke to the back of my throat.
“No, I don’t drink soda” I wasn’t lying, I really don’t drink soda. Never have, never will. I certainly didn’t plan on drinking soda for the sake of this dude who looked like he needed a doctor or at least a barber.
I got my things from the grocery store, people kept shambling around with their bottles of Pepsi, they were all moving so slowly, their faces gaunt as if something inside of them had been taken away, hollowed out. I wanted to get out of the store as quickly as possible. Finally, I was at the check-out putting my things on the conveyer belt while the cashier just stared at me intently with a beaming smile, waiting for me to look up at her. I gave her a friendly smile, and that was my first mistake.
“Sir, have you taken the Pepsi Challenge?”
“No, I haven’t taken the Pepsi Challenge”
“Sir, you have to take the Pepsi challenge” she beamed.
“I don’t drink soda, I’m sorry”
“Sir, you HAVE to take the Pepsi Challenge” there was some hostility in her voice, and her eyes were bright red with constricted pupils. I noticed there was a collection of hair at her workstation, and a patch of bald starting to set in on her head.
“I’m not going to take the Pepsi challenge”
“You need to take the pepsi challenge!” she screamed at me, a pathetic raspy scream, and with that, she fell over. spit, and blood that looked like coffee grounds, she seized violently for a few moments before she stopped moving completely. I threw my items into my cart and ran out of the store. The parking lot was a nightmare, with people falling over bottles of Pepsi in hand, and sticky syrup leaking all over the asphalt.
“Please, please, will you take the Pepsi challenge?” a voice called, that I had to push aside. When I did a large piece of flesh clung to me, and the man toppled over like a paper bag. They were coming after me, and they wanted me to take the Pepsi Challenge, come hell or high water, and mostly hell. I ran to my car and locked the doors, and of course, they surrounded the vehicle. Shaking it, with their feeble arms.
“Take the Pepsi challenge”
“take the Pepsi challenge”
“sir, the Pepsi challenge”
“Please, take the Pepsi challenge”
I started the engine but didn’t know what to do. I sat there in the horrible choir of these poor broken people begging me to drink whatever horrible liquid they passed off as the new Pepsi formula. I gripped my steering wheel, and ground my teeth thinking of some way I could get out of this without seriously injuring these poor people. But then I thought of their flesh being torn, and that cashier who had died so horribly. Maybe, at this point, getting run over by a car wasn’t the worst way to go, so I backed out, and I heard croaks of pain that I swear to God sounded like final advertisements for the Pepsi Challenge. I can still hear the crunching and those horrible road bumps. In a city like this, you get to know people, and running over the head of John who walked my dog last week wasn’t a good experience no matter how poorly he was doing. And I swear I saw that cashier walking around the parking lot with a bottle of Pepsi, exposed muscle and bone, tiny strands of hair, barely dragging herself around to try and get some new poor soul to drink some Pepsi.
As I drove home, I noticed cars stacked on one another, fires, busted hydrants, and brown liquid that flooded the cityscape. Poor, citizens, weakly hobbling around trying to find someone else to take the Pepsi challenge before they inevitably collapsed into a seizure themselves, and I presume somehow getting up again to tell people about Pepsi some more.
I managed to get into my house, and sure enough, they started gathering around the yard. Some creatures can smell blood, these creatures could smell any soul that hadn’t taken the Pepsi Challenge. And they groaned, and dragged themselves about, moaning about their new favorite beverage. One of them threw a brick through my window and went to unlock the door, barely. It was pathetic, but like any zombies, Pepsi zombies are scarier in numbers than they are alone.
I ran and barricaded myself in the nearest closet. They were banging on the door, groaning about Pepsi, blood, and flesh collecting with more syrup on the carpet in front of me. I thought for these poor people, looped into something that they would only infect a small town like ours with. The poor children who might have grown up to have families, kids, some of whom might enjoy things a little finer than shitty sugar water poured down our throats by some far-off corporation that didn’t give a shit about us.
I thought about my life, how I wanted a kid one day, and how I had no idea if I was going to be able to have one. Would these creatures tear me apart, or force me to drink Pepsi? I had no idea and didn’t have much room to find out.
Their hands pounding on the door, begging me, pleading. The door seemed to breathe in its frame, it must have been the entire town trying to force me to drink Pepsi. I didn’t want to die, not like this. Please God, not like this. And I didn’t.
In a fit of desperation, I started to open the closet door, they all flung back, as I thought they would, they needed to get me out so I could take that Pepsi challenge. And I forced my way through them with my mouth closed and my nose pinched, I didn’t need any Pepsi finding its way into my body. And they tried, they really did. Shoving bottles and cups at my face, screaming, moaning, I had to close my eyes to avoid getting Pepsi spit in my eyes, but I made it through, and I made it into my car, and I was able to leave. I was even able to grab my dog from the yard and throw him into the passenger seat as I went.
A week later the town was quarantined and burned to the ground. Nobody will ever tell you that’s what happened, or even that any of this happened at all, but I can promise you it did. I moved to a new small town. Friendly folk, not the same folk, but friendly enough.
I saw something terrible today though, as I was reading the local newspaper. A little ad in the back next to the local dentist, and the mechanic: “HAVE YOU TRIED THE PEPSI CHALLENGE? IT’S COMING TO YOUR TOWN SOON”
Please, if you value your life, and the lives of your loved ones, please do not take The Pepsi Challenge.