Mark Clodi - Undead Advantage, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

"Hell yes! Thanks!"

Alvin opened the fridge and it was stocked full of beer, all 'Natural Light' pretty much from top to bottom. "I hope you don't mind drinking my brand." He said as he came over with a couple of beers.

"No, this will be fine. Thanks Alvin. Thanks for letting me in here too."

The rest of the day we watched the news and ate popcorn, cookies and soup. And drank beer, probably we killed a case between us. As we got our buzz on and watched the news I knew we were dead, there would not be a way out of this one, Armageddon, like my momma always told me it would, had come.

The worst part of it was I had no way to atone for my sins, you know? I had just fucked my life into a corner and now there was no time left to make up for my mistakes. Once it was dark Alvin said, "You mind taking the floor too much? My old bones won't do well on the cement, I have couple of blankets and there is an old kids sleeping bag in the furnace room, you could put that down for added padding."

"No problem.", after using the pisser I made myself pretty comfortable on the floor with the old sleeping bag and fell asleep. We left the tv on and I drifted off watching the news. I woke up in the middle of the night and the tv was off, I heard the door to the basement rattling, kinda thumping and moving a bit.

"Alvin!" I whispered as loud as I dared, "Alvin!"

"Wha-what? Who's there!?"

"Its me, Kevin! Alvin, I think your old lady is at the door near the top of the stairs!"

We listened and heard the door rattle a couple more times, before we heard footsteps moving away from it into the living room.

"See? We're okay, she never comes down here.", Alvin said.

I didn't sleep well the rest of the night. In the morning we made breakfast of some ramen noodles, with instant coffee to drink. By mid-morning we were into the beer again. The power was not off, Alvin had just shut the tv down at some point last night, so we watched as the news went from slightly graphic, to very disturbing as the day progressed. The guys at fox had charts of the whole US, predicting where the plague was spreading, the graphics were downright scary, it looked like most of the coastal cities had been hit pretty hard, plus Toledo, Dallas, Denver and Salt Lake City. Iowa looked mostly intact, at least according to the guys on Fox news. As we watched Alvin shook his head and said, "You know I always pictured in my head that they had a room somewhere with all these charts and stuff in them, ready to pull out for any occasion. I thought to myself, 'someday Alvin, you will see something come up that they do not have a graph for' and I was looking forward to that day, just to see how they handled it. I don't guess I will ever see that happen now. They must just have people waiting around to make this stuff up as it happens. That'd be a nice job wouldn't it?"

We whiled away the whole of Tuesday and most of Wednesday that way, eating drinking beer and hoping the power wouldn't go out and that someone would save us. We got half our wish anyway, the power didn't go out. Every once in awhile the basement door would rattle. Once Alvin tried to reason with his Shandra through the door, he got nothing but moaning and some door pounding for his efforts. I didn't tell him to shoot her, he didn't ask me about it, just looked at me with those brown eyes of his, all sad and mopey. What did he think? That she was going to recover and they could get on with living their lives?

Wednesday afternoon we were watching CNN, Fox had gone off the air, and the power went out. It got dark. Did I mention there were NO windows in the basement. None at all.

"Alvin?"

"What?"

"You got a flashlight man?"

"No Kevin, I, I had it upstairs with me, a big police model, good for hitting things and when I ran down here I ended up leaving it on the kitchen table."

"Fuck!"

"Hey, I know how ya feel, but don't go swearing like that! I think I got some matches in the furnace room for relighting it when pilot goes out. Let me try and get over there."

I heard him stumbling around in the dark, knocking over all the beer cans we had sitting everywhere until he made it to the door. I heard him open it and then the power came back on.

He let out a big ole, 'thank God' sigh and made to come back over and sit down.

I said, "Alvin you better get those matches anyway, just in case and we better go upstairs and try and get the flashlight too. I could hold Shandra off and you could grab it or you could hold her off and I could grab the flashlight."

He agreed pretty quickly, neither of us were looking forward to another power loss. I drank another beer and Alvin said that he would hold his wife off if he needed to, and he briefly sketched out the kitchen floor plan so I would know where the table was to grab the flashlight.

He went through the door first and his wife, man she was right there all big, white, old and scary. You know how sometimes thin guys seem to marry fat women, tall guys get short women or vice versa? Well Alvin was playing the fat guy here, the woman was shorter than him and rail thin. She was wearing a bathrobe and under it she still had on a white bra and panties, I could see her legs and arms, all full of half healed bites, some neatly bandaged, others with the bandages ripped off exposing bloody divots of missing flesh. Alvin used the gun to bodily force his wife back, yelling at me to get what I needed, while pushed his wife into the living room beyond the kitchen. She was pretty slow and stupid, no sign of her getting smarter with 'age'. I grabbed the flashlight and looked in to see if I could help Alvin any, he had backed her up into a bedroom and pulled the door shut in front of her. Seeing me, he said, "We shoulda done this yesterday. Coulda been eating steaks and chicken instead of canned chili and popcorn. C'mon, lets clean this up a little."

We cleaned up the things his wife had knocked over and while we did this the bedroom door kept pounding. This was an older house though, solid doors not those thin things on houses that are new. So the pounding kept on coming but she never got through.

Alvin had a large plasma tv in his living room, I eyed it and he said, "We paid for our house 20 years ago, we got the tv's, 'cause, that's what we do." By way of explaining things. CNN came roaring to life at full volume, scaring the living piss out of me, I swear I jumped a foot and Alvin, he must cleared 18 inches himself. He used the remote to turn it down and I quickly went to the front window and peered through the drapes trying not to move them much. Outside the mob was STILL there, but none of the zombies were on his front porch or even in his yard and none were moving towards his house, somehow whatever was over there kept their attention. Or they didn't hear the noise.

"Hey Alvin, the mob is still there, do you know what has their attention?"

"Uh, I think so Kevin, there was a minivan over there, had a bunch of people, they couldn't be in it still, do you think?"

I slowly shook my head 'no', "I wouldn't think so, no. But something is there. I can't see past your bushes or through the mob. God I hope they are not still out there, its been two days!" Realizing what I had just implied (that the people were dead, not still alive), I scowled.

Alvin came over and clapped me on the back and said softly, "Don't worry about it, I know what you meant.", Turning back into the living room he went on, "So steaks? They have been in the fridge for three days, probably thawed enough by now. I think we shouldn't keep any lights on up here and should still sleep in the basement, what do you think?"

As I watched him pull steaks out of the refrigerator in the kitchen through the kitchen doorway, I said softly, "Sure Alvin, sure man."

We spent the afternoon cleaning up the basement, I even went so far as to toss a bag of beer cans outside into the back yard. I also brought a load of blankets into the basement; the floor would be a bit easier to sleep on at least.