The Zombie Chro [99] - Undead Advantage, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

by Mark Clodi

  Hank and Jaun nodded 'yes'.

  “It seemed like she was like trying to tell me something, her in her baby pink t-shirt coated with dried blood. Short-shorts too, did I mention she was hot? The effect was ruined by the fact she only had on one shoe though, well that and the blood. Eventually I had to just club her.

  I looked around the store, pulled open the cash drawer, grabbed the twenties, just in case. Hey I knew then money was worthless, but maybe I would run into someone who wouldn’t know that. Then I grabbed a bunch of candy and chips and headed back to the back room. Then I came to my senses and dropped the trash I was carrying and came out looking for something with real value, you know, beef jerky, nuts, dried fruits, anything that was not shit. Eating with Alvin may have been a little boring when we were stuck in the basement, but it was real food, man, not sugar and fat. I took the food and went into the back room, out of sight of the zoms. It took about two minutes before I heard the glass break. I didn’t even go look, just grabbed my Mountain Dew, stuffed the granola bars and jerky in my pants pockets and lit out the back door of the place. Funny thing too, the place was pretty well built, the back door was metal and all, with all these latches and stuff, seemed like it took me ten minutes to get it unlocked, while I heard them in the front of the store.

  “Once out the back, well there was no stopping, after I left I kept looking for a quick car to grab, or even another bike. I found a kids bike, like one of those bmx bikes, way too small for me, but I took it and was riding it when I came to Speer, I followed Speer kinda south east, but when it got up to this park area, it was like a zombie fest, a bunch of messed up cars and stuff ahead so I turned down Washington or some other street there, Emerson? I don’t really know, but I had some luck then, I came on these zoms finishing this guy off, three of them, pretty speedy ones too, but they had pulled this dude out of a car and the car was still running! I rode right up to them and swung the metal bar at the lead one, a guy dressed in a grey suit with a red shirt underneath, he had a nice tie too, like a bird or something, silk. Well when I swung he raised his hand up and I snapped his arm, just like a twig, went through his arm and smacked him in the head, I swear I heard him holler “SHIT!” as he went over. I lost the bar, it fell out of my hands when it hit him. I stopped the bike a little after I got past that guy and after hopping off of it I picked it up and threw it at em. The car was behind me and I backed up until my calves were right on the door, then quickly turned and got in. It was an automatic, my lucky day! I pulled it into forward and hit the gas. The seat was wet, had splotches of blood on it. Disgusting. I checked the rear view, they were not coming after me, barely looked up as I left them in the dust.

  I got up to a good through street, Alameda and headed east again, followed that until it turned into Cherry Creek and then just kept on heading south. When I reached Colorado Boulevard I had to stay on Cherry Creek, Colorado was packed. I was lucky again, someone had cleared Alameda through the intersection, looked like they had driven a truck through the entire street, pushing all the cars sideways making a path that I easily drove through.

  Cherry creek was pretty clear after that, until I hit...Holly street? I think it was Holly. The road kind of turned left real hard and right into a pile up, I was going a little too fast, ha! By a little too fast I mean maybe thirty miles per hour, positively speeding man. I slowed down, but skidded on, skidded on, well some bodies, all pieces and stuff in the road, it made it so slick! I ran right into the bumper of this old white Volvo, well almost into the bumper, I actually hit a couple of slow zombies, kind of cushioned the impact, but I still smacked my head hard on the steering wheel, put a fucking dent in it, the wheel, maybe my head. This old car didn’t have any air bags or nothing, just steering wheel. I think I must have blacked out for a little bit, when I came to it was to see a zombie pulling itself up the hood, only it was trapped between the bumper of my car and the trunk on the Volvo. As I was sitting there all groggy, it started pulling harder, and harder and was separating itself from its own hips, it was not quite able to do it and I started to laugh a bit, then heard a voice next to my ear, just out the window.

  “Yeah pretty funny these dumb stupid ones, huh friend?”

  I kinda jumped at that, then turned to look and found myself staring at a guy in a mechanic shirt, he was a large man, maybe pushing two hundred and fifty pounds, he had on black steel toed boots, oil stained jeans and on the left breast of his shirt was a name “Dave” printed off in red letters. I smiled back and said, “Yeah thank God for the dumb ones.”

  ‘Dave’ let out a hearty laugh at that and said, “Yeah, friend, thank God for the dumb ones!”

  He helped me get out of the car, the door was wedged shut, and I could not push it open, but Dave grabbed and pulled while I was shoving the door and between us we got the door open. As he gave me a hand out, he pointed back into the car, “Don’t forget your bat.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but when I looked back in I saw a bloody bat on the seat, it must have belonged to the guy who had the car before me. I reached in for it and pulled it out with me. Turning in time to catch a fist to the face, it about knocked me out, only the fact that I was kind of moving up saved me from taking the blow full force on. Still it knocked me back into the car and then on my ass. ‘Dave’ reached down, grabbed my right ankle and started pulling me across the street. I was groggy, a bit, but I heard him say, “Yeah, buddy, thank God for the dumb ones.”

  Only I didn’t let go of the bat, that mother fucker, dragging me across the street, he thought he had knocked me out, ya know, and he mostly had, only I was not going down without a fight. He pulled me up over the curb and across the parking lot of the local Safeway. I kept thinking, “No way, this is not happening.” As we got closer to the front door I could see a mob of zombies and the door, it had a chain around the handles, so they could not get out, I was just thinking, I knew! That this bastard was going to feed me to this mob. Why? Why!?

  I gripped the bat and when the guy paused for a rest, I swung it up and around, hitting him in the knee, he went down pretty quick and rolled away, now any other guy you hit em in the knee like that, even half as hard as I did and they would be grabbing at it, cussing me out. Ole Dave, he just rolled away and onto his hands and knees and he sat there like that for a second, looking over at me, then he smiled, something in his eyes man, his eyes were like red, and I saw then, he was one of them. He started getting up, I scrambled to my feet, still a little woozy and we ended up on our feet about the same time, I shouted at him, “WHY? Why you dumb mother fucker? What are you doing?”

  He kinda looked at me again and said, “Man, the kids. It’s the kids. They are hungry and the more I feed them the better they behave.”

  Then he moved, he moved so fast! He came at me from the right, then he was there on the left, hitting me in the ribs and pushing me backwards. I almost fell, if I had, I wouldn’t be here right now, he would have got me. When I flailed around I managed to hit him with the bat pretty hard, glanced off his shoulder and into his head, not a killing blow, but it spun him around, he kept right on going and backhanded me. I turned it into a running start and took off, no way I could go hand to hand with him, he was tough, but maybe with him a bit lamed up, I could out run him. I looked back after running about half a block, and he was pacing me, sure enough limping a little, not much for a guy with a broken leg though.

  I turned and started running again, south, south, south as far and as fast as I could go, I would run a ways, then try and rest, then run more. I kept an eye out for cars or bikes, and of course for any zombies, I had to make a few detours too, then those faster zoms got on my tail, they dogged me for a long way, until I ran into you guys, in fact. You pulled me up and I was so tired, so tired. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t say, ‘Thanks’.”

  “Aw now…”, started Hank.

  “No really, thank you! I mean you guys saved my life and I owe you, I will help you out from here on out, forever really, if you don’t mi
nd me coming along?” here Kevin looked up anxiously.

  Hank looked at him real hard and after Kevin swallowed he said, “No doubt about that Kevin, you can stick with us as long as you want to or forever for that matter. Safety in numbers.”

  Chapter 5

  Juan looked out at the streets, it was about ten am now, they had talked away most of the morning already. He said, “Si” softly though and that brought Hank out of his brief wool gathering, he too looked around at the mostly deserted streets, “Well I think your talking drove the zombies away Kevin, right there that makes you a valuable asset. We didn’t know they were so impatient, now we do. I think we should head back to the Mike’s club and maybe I will finish up Juan and my part in this, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, how far is it to the Mike’s anyway?”

  Juan rolled his eyes a bit and Hank said, “Now Juan there you go, being all negative Nancy on us! Not far Kevin, maybe two miles? It is over on Dartmouth and Parker. Maybe more than two miles from here, piece of cake after what you went through, plus we got the piece of shit of the clerk’s to drive, right? We could be there in ten minutes. First part of a journey starts with one step, or something like that.”

  Hank gestured Juan to take up a position at the front of the store on the roof, while he hopped down onto the top of the dumpster, “Kevin, you just watch the back and alleys, I am gonna go in and get the keys to that Fiesta and see if I can get it started. Cover me, okay?”

  Kevin nodded and Hank jumped off the dumpster and headed around to the front of the store, the zombies were distant and not too interested in him, yet, something was wrong, Hank could not quite put his finger on it. He looked around carefully again, seeing nothing he decided to pay closer attention to his surroundings, these days it didn’t pay to ignore your gut instincts. He pulled open the door to the store and looked around for any hidden zombies which may have entered during the night. Nothing. With some hesitation Hank approached the guy with the clerk’s uniform on. The corpse was face down, grimacing Hank realized he would have to turn it over to get to the front pockets, he only hesitated a second before grabbing the body by one arm and heaving it over, some flies flew up, they appeared angry at being disturbed from their work. Hank tried to keep his eyes focused on the body’s belt line and mostly succeeded. He pulled a set of keys out of the left pocket of the guys blue jeans, looking at them one had a thick black lump of plastic embossed with the word “Ford” on it, thinking about it Hank removed the key from the key ring. He thought there was little sense in keeping the guys house keys. As he went by the counter he did grab a new key chain off of a rack, one with a long black strip of leather attached to it. It was not for use as a weapon, it would just make the key easier to find, if he should drop it.

  Hank pushed out the front door and again was struck by the feeling that something unseen was watching him. He nodded up to Juan and headed around the side of the building to where the car was. All in all it was no worse than any car last sold ‘new’ in the United States in nineteen eighty could be. Hank paused a moment, yeah, this was an old first model, part of him was reluctant to even take the car, anything this old would have to have been driven three hundred thousand miles by this time, unless it was an old lady car recently rediscovered and sold from her estate. Another part of Hank was oddly attracted to this marvel of engineering, just how many miles did this baby have on it? It should make two more miles easily enough. Hank approached the door and opened the latch. Or rather tried to, the owner had it locked. Letting out a little laugh Hank used the key to open it up, why would he bother locking this piece of crap? As Hank hopped in and adjusted the seat he checked the mileage, it said eighty nine thousand and two miles. The Fiesta’s mile gauge only went to ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine and nine tenths, which Hank should have remembered. ‘Oh well’, he lamented, ‘what difference does it make? It’ll make another two miles.’

  He turned the key and was rewarded with a sputtering cough of the engine turning over and a red light on the dash, indicating low fuel. “More like ‘no fuel’.”, Hank muttered to himself. How could this kid work at a gas station and leave his ride running on fumes? Shaking his head Hank put the car into reverse and then pulled around to the front of the gas station. A ringing sound caught his ear and after a moments fumbling he remembered the cell phone and grabbed it out of his breast pocket.

  “Hello?” he answered.

  “Man where are you going? Me and Juan want to come too!” said Kevin.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry Kevin, I shoulda maybe yelled out, this thing needs gas, only has fumes. Hey at least the cell phones work!”

  “Oh okay, you fill it up and we will cover you. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Hank pulled up alongside the second set of pumps and tried to fuel up the car. Nothing. Yeah that’s right he had to go inside the store again to authorize the sale and turn the pumps on. At least there was still power. He headed back into the store with his shotgun and looked around behind the counter for a button to press so he could fill up. It was not hard, there was a beeping noise to go along with the flashing light and after the simple press of a button Hank had the pump working. He also spotted a bright red two and a half gallon plastic ‘station gas can’ for loaning out to people who had run out of fuel, it looked like it had only been used a couple of times, Hank grabbed it and a yellow coke out of the cooler before he headed back to the car. He sat his soda pop down on the hood while he bent over the gas can, taking off the lid he filled it up before jamming the nozzle into the car’s gas tank. As he grabbed his pop and went to take a drink he became aware of a man leaning up against the outside of the Gas ‘n Go building. Hank would swear the guy was not there a second before, now he was. The stranger was wearing a gray shirt, dirty jeans and black work boots. Hank knew it was the same ‘Dave’ Kevin had run into even before he read the lettering stitched into the shirts breast.

  Everything seemed to slow way down for Hank then, he saw ‘Dave’ start to say something, then something about his demeanor changed as he saw Hank’s reaction to him and he started forward faster than Hank would have thought possible. Hank had originally thought he would play it cool by sitting his drink back on the car, then reach down and pull up his shotgun to get a shot off while the son of a bitch was still smirking up against the wall of the store. However by the time he had his hands on the barrel of the shotgun to pull it up for use Dave had slammed into him, he heard a shot ring out from the top of the building, but all it did was puff up some dust and concrete from behind his legs. Then Hank was pushed back into the car with enough force to break the side window and maybe a couple of his ribs.

  Twisting sideways Hank used Dave’s momentum to propel the zombie over the roof of the car. As Dave was sliding over the roof his hand smashed out and made a grab for Hank. Somehow Hank got his face out of the way of that grasping claw and Dave hit the pavement on the other side yelling. Hank’s shotgun had fallen to the ground, requiring him to bend over to pick it up, as he did so a sharp pain spiked through his back from the damage he had taken from being shoved into the car. He ended up on his knees with one arm holding him off the ground and the other grabbing at his back. Hank knew he had to ignore the pain or he would die, looking under the car he could see Dave’s booted feet heading around the back end. Hank reached out and grabbed the shotgun but Dave had gotten a grip on the other end. Fortunately Hank had the trigger end and as Dave hauled the gun, and Hank, upwards he pulled the trigger, releasing a round of buckshot at point blank range into Dave’s abdomen. The son of a bitch jerked back, but did not let go of the gun, which was ripped out of Hank’s weakened grip, half falling Dave caught himself on one hand while Hank stood there gaping at him.

  Hank had no illusions that a gut shot would kill Dave, he was hoping to sever the zombie's spine, which he thought might turn the him into a crawler. Instead he watched in fascination while Dave’s torn apart stomach pulled in on itself and mended over the wound Hank had infli
cted. Dave stood up slowly grinning like the Cheshire cat.

  “You ain’t seen one like me have you? There are more of us too, super humans, or super zombies, the things we can do are just amazing.” Dave said, when he finished he flipped the gun around and started to point it at Hank. That is when Juan’s shotgun shell hit him in the hands and gun. Dave’s hand simply disappeared in an explosion of congealed black blood, white bones and fingernails. The gun fared little better taking a hit to the stock which blew it in half and triggered it off at the same time, the second blast caught the fiesta full in side, shattering the rear passenger’s window and carrying through to star up the front windshield from the inside.

  Juan’s second shot hit Dave in the shoulder, blowing chunks of his shoulder blade across the top of the fiesta, Dave had rebounded into the car with the first hit and was hit while falling down by the second blast, knocking his upper torso into the back of the car. Juan pumped a third and fourth round into the body hitting the zombie's legs and buttocks with rounds that were tearing it apart. Then he ran out of ammo, Hank backed up steadily towards the front of the store, while Kevin ran up from the side alley. The randomly wandering undead were now headed their way in a slow shambling rush.

  “Hank! You okay Hank?”, asked a worried Juan.

  Hank nodded towards Dave who was not moving, not really, but his body was pulling itself together in some sort of parody of healing.

  “It ain’t dead Juan, try not to hit the tire. Aw shit Juan, don’t shoot, we gotta get outta here.”, Hank pointed at the gas hose on the ground pumping fuel all over the ground in a growing puddle.

  “Mierdas. Esta pendejo, esta malcreado, man he is bad Hank, I gotta get close for a head shot, will the gun set off a spark? Blow the place up?”

  “Kevin, don’t shoot! There are gas fumes everywhere, we gotta back off or take the car and get outta here.” yelled Hank. As he said this he limped around to the front of the car and hopped in. He had left the key in the ignition, but the car was not running, he started it, hoping that the mere act of starting the car would not set off an explosion. A second later he was still there with no big boom. As he started the car forward he heard something behind him, turning he saw Dave trying to crawl into the car, but unable to get his arms in through the window.