Mark Clodi - Undead Advantage, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

The doc looked both of them over, applied hydrogen peroxide to their scrapes and looked at all their bruises. Finally he said, "You'll survive, probably you just need some rest, so, rest!"

Reluctantly Juan slide into the chair next to Hank, he immediately had two of the smaller children crawl into his lap, Kevin sat down in the seat next to Juan, one away from Hank. He didn't get the benefit of a kid, but they didn't know him as well as they knew Juan. The last thing Juan thought was, 'I am not that tired.' Then he was asleep.

A few hours later he woke with a start at Hank's coughing and moaning. Moaning because he was coughing, most likely. One of the little abuelitas, a grandmotherly matron from the neighborhood, approached him and made comforting sounds to him and tried to get him to drink some orange juice, after the first sip Hank drank from the jug greedily, the old lady stopped him and gave him a couple of the pills to take, which Hank did without protest, his face having a pained expression, then he drank some more juice before trying to sit up. He stopped that pretty quickly as a sharp stab of pain hit him in the back. Looking over he saw Juan and the two kids on the chair next to him, with Nanci sitting on the floor leaning up against Juan's chair. "Juan you look like shit." Hank croaked out.

"Sì." Juan replied. "Y tu tambien. I look better than you though, always have."

Settling back reluctantly Hank said in Spanish, "Man I gotta wee. Anyway to get me up from here? So I can walk to the bathroom?"

One of the old ladies went off to find the doctor, while Juan tried to get up without disturbing the children who were still sleeping on him. He was unsuccessful in that respect and one of the kids started to cry, grumpy at being woken up from his nap. The kid's mother was there pretty quick to comfort the toddler and Nanci helped settle the other one. Juan went over to stand by Hank and pushed the foot of the chair down slowly, which sat Hank up slowly. They then grabbed each other's wrists and Hank grimaced, but pulled himself up.

"So am I gonna live buddy?"

"Sì. I think so. You hurting?"

"Pretty painful yeah. Well if my bladder doesn't get drained soon I am gonna be in pain and all wet, help me to the bathroom? You don't have to hold my wang, just get me pointed in the right direction."

Laughing Juan said, yes and walked Hank across half the store to the bathrooms. They were intercepted by the doctor, who had a Tupperware bowl in his hand.

"Ah Hank you need to take it easy, no moving around for a couple days." said Doc.

"Let me guess, you want me to piss in the bowl?"

The doctor nodded his head, "Yeah, even if it is in the bathroom, I want to see if there is any blood in your urine."

The journey to the bathroom was unpleasant with Hank handling his hardware while Juan steadied him from behind and the doctor held the bowl in front of him. "God this is embarrassing."

"Get over it Hank, you are an asset to the group and any little humiliation you might suffer is for the good of everyone, if it improves your chances of recovery." The doctor looked at Hank's urine in the white Tupperware bowl, "Yep, blood in the urine, figured that, but had to check it. We will need to keep monitoring it and see if it stops."

Hank held up one of his hands, "Wait doc, uh, lets say it doesn't, what can we do?"

The doctor looked frustrated, "Good question, normally internal bleeding requires some tests to see what we can find out. Obviously you are not dying from internal injuries yet, you are still walking around breathing and all. If it keeps up though maybe I could go in…I am not a surgeon… Still you never know if one is going to come in off the street. I should keep gathering information if I can, just in case. So we have a history to tell the surgeon." The doc muttered something under his breath.

Hank grumbled a bit and the doc asked, "What was that? Stool samples?"

"Yeah I would like those too, if you don't mind." The doc crossed the bathroom and dumped Hank's urine into a toilet before coming back to the sink and rinsing the bowl out. "Speaking of people coming in off the street, we have gotten a few more this afternoon, about half of them are kids. No sign of Michael and his crew yet." Michael and his friends had been at the clinic the day before and had refused to travel with Hank and Juan, saying they needed to get to where their parents worked and check on them, if they could. They promised they would come to the Mike's club and join Hank when they were done. The teenagers were unique in that they had been members in some sort of fantasy group and they had 'suited up' before leaving home, they wore steel mail and carried swords and axes in addition to baseball bats. The other people at the doctor's clinic had included a police officer and she had given the older kids a couple of hand guns and ammunition too.

"Well that is too bad. I don't know how much longer their armor is going to be useful, but I suspect they will do better than most people."

"Anyway, we got these newcomers coming in and we are going to have to move to, or expand to a different base of operations, maybe the sports stadium or someplace huge like that."

"Geez doc didn't you watch that whole Katrina thing? There ain't no food in a stadium, we gotta stay around grocery stores for now, so we don't end up starving anyway. Plus I don't mean to sound bad, but I bet the flow of survivors starts to trickle off pretty soon. Any sign of Dave or any other smart zombies?"

"You have only been out a few hours Hank, nothing yet. Okay so no stadium. What about a hospital? It has kitchens, lots of private rooms and we could use the medical equipment. Hank, the stragglers, they have some bitten among them. The boys won't let them in, they are keeping them in the parking lot away from everyone else."

"Shit." Hank thought for a moment, then said, "Shit. Okay who is kinda leading the men at this point?"

"Jack." said Doc and Juan at the same time.

Hank's eyebrow went up, "Really? Talk about rising to the occasion. Well have him come talk to me if he wants to. The bitten are probably dead doc, unless you managed to whip up a cure in the last few days?" the doc shook his head 'no', "Well we heard nothing new on the radio either. Kevin, he knew an old man who had been bit and didn't turn, even after a day or two so there might be a chance for some of them."

"Someone survived? How many days exactly? Is he still alive?"

"Ah, well you might want to talk to Kevin about that, say where is Kevin?"

"He was on the other side of me, when I fell asleep next to you Hank." said Juan.

"Yeah, he only slept a couple of hours and then wanted to see the sights a bit. One of the boys is probably still showing him around. The younger guys have broken out all the video games and they have some sort of tournament going on, he might be over there." said Doc.

"Well, you might ask him about it, I can't remember if he told us how long the guy lived, but he is not alive now. Just 'cause you got bit doesn't mean you are safe from them. All I know is the guy's wife got bit and she died and turned." Hank shrugged his shoulders, winced in pain and then said, "Ask Kevin." The doctor nodded, then checked Hank's bandages before heading off to try and find Kevin.

Hank and Juan made it back to their chairs and Hank was surprised to see the little girl and boy they had pulled out of the SUV sitting in their chairs, the other kids were not really playing with them, not ignoring them, but just kind of holding back. Both kids were dressed in clean white t-shirts, gray sweat pants and were bare foot. Hank could see that they had been cleaned up and outfitted from the club supplies, as he recalled though the place did not stock a lot of children's clothing. The t-shirts looked like women's smalls to him, they were just a little too big. The boy would probably die of embarrassment if he were told he was wearing a girl's t-shirt. Seeing them Hank raised his eyebrows to Juan, who shook his head, unknowing as to what was going on.