Mark Clodi - Undead Advantage, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

"Sure thing, only about a dozen of them, it'll make it safer for anyone else who comes by later too."

Juan popped open his door, to get the rear passenger door open and Mary leaned out of the back and gestured for Juan to roll down his window so she could use it as a gun rest. She took aim and hit a zombie in the neck from about thirty yards away. The zombie went down, but was not dead. Mary swore softly and took aim on the next one rapidly. She hit another four zombies before she had to feed more bullets into the gun, then made five more shots, including two shots to finish off the two zombies who she only managed to wound the first time. It probably took about fifty seconds, including the reload time. Mary hopped back into her seat while Juan whistled his appreciation. Terry nodded and said, "Good shooting." as she eased the truck forward.

"Nah, not real good, this thing is only okay, but is has a five round capacity, which makes it better than my tournament gun, which was a bolt action single shot. I missed a couple easy shots, especially that first one." Mary shrugged, "I will do better next time."

Terry pulled the truck up onto the on ramp and they merged onto the highway, there were no other moving vehicles on the road. As it had been further north where Juan and Hank had driven down it earlier in the day, the highway was clear as far as they could see. There were few zombie wandering around, but mostly there were just corpses. Those zombies that were around tended to be near the off and on ramps to the highway, like they had just wandered into the area. Terry drove them a few miles to the East Lincoln Avenue exit and took it west. Terry nodded to her left, "That's it there, see it?" Terry pulled the truck onto a street that led up to the hospital and then stopped, letting the truck idle.

Nodding 'yes', Juan said, "It is very big, looks new. There are a lot of cars though, might be a lot of zombies."

"Well I don't see much yet, not zombies anyway, oh, no, wait, there is one, see her?"

Terry was speaking of a younger looking zombie in a nurses uniform, who was stumbling down the road towards them, still some distance away.

"Hot Momma, Hot Momma, you gonna park there and make us walk up, or are we driving in?", the cb startled Terry and Juan both. Reaching for the cb mic Terry responded, "Teddy Bear, this is Hot Momma, we were just scouting it from here, I will proceed up the road so you don't have to walk. Over."

"Affirmative, uh, over?" came Jack's reply.

"Uh, over?" Terry mimicked to Juan and then laughed, "He kills me Juan!"

Terry shifted the truck back into drive and they started up the road towards a large building about half a mile away. As they passed the nurse, Juan said, "Let's leave her, not draw attention to ourselves if we can help it?"

"Oh, okay, I was ready though", responded Mary.

They drove the truck up to a side street and Terry got on it, the street looked to circle the entire complex. She pointed to the mic and told Juan, "Tell Jack we are going to circle around and see if anyone signals us or what the situation is inside."

Juan got on the cb and told Jack what we they were doing, he agreed that they were doing the right thing and went on, "Well the damn thing is huge, we could fit a lot of people in there, but who do all these cars belong to?"

As he was saying this Terry braked the truck to a halt, "We found em!"

Up ahead of the truck was a mob of hundreds of zombies they were concentrated around the emergency room doors, which were still operating and were constantly opening and closing. Stopping alongside of them Jen in the other truck rolled down her window, while Terry did the same. Jack yelled across, "Well?"

Terry, yelled back, "Well what? You want to go into that mess?"

"No, not yet, but we brought a lot of ammo for the guns, I say we shoot as many as we can and see if they keep pouring out of if this is the lot of them. There are bound to be some fast ones though too. We'll have to be careful. What's a good range for you Mary?"

Mary looked at him, "Me? Here is not bad, am I shooting alone though? I mean fifty yards is a bit far for a shotgun, and about useless for the pistols. Look they are already coming at us."

"Okay let's get turned around here, drivers stay in position, ready to roll, shot gunners and passengers get into the bed, so we can creep along, keeping a constant distant between us and the mob." directed Jack.

Once the pickups were turned around facing the other way, with two people in back of each of them they started shooting the zombies. Most of the zombies were slow, but a moving target is a moving target, plus the trucks were slowly moving too. As a result Juan made maybe one in three shots to the head, and even Mary was only making half of hers. Charlie and Jen, in the other truck were having even worse luck, hitting perhaps only a quarter of their targets. They all ran through two boxes of ammunition as they made their way halfway around the hospital. This resulted in a little over a hundred zombies dead with perhaps a dozen turned into crawlers or twitching on the ground. The mob appeared to be smaller, but not much. A growing number of zombies were coming out from in between the cars to join the slowly moving mob.

"Lets try leading them down the road away from the hospital, instead of circling back around. This road lead out again to Lincoln?" Jack asked Terry over the cb.

"Yeah, there is a, whaddya call it? Rotary thing? Up here, just veer right and take the first right hand turn, that leads back to Lincoln." she replied.

"Okay we'll go slow and see if they will follow, then high tail it back to see what else is in the hospital. I gotta check in with the home base here, it is about that time. Talk to ya in a few."

Terry stayed side by side with Jack as they got back onto the main street and drove across the front of the hospital, leading pack behind them. By the time they led the zombies out to Lincoln they had a mob trailing them half a mile back. The gunner's steady work had dwindled the mobs numbers substantially, but Jack got on the CB long enough to tell them to stop shooting, as he knew they were down to their last box or two of ammo. The noise was starting to draw more zombies from in front of them too. Terry responded that they could still see the hospital from here and it would be better to lead the zombies further away into suburbia, she told Jack to follow her and sped away in the lead, then paused for a few shots to keep the mob coming after them. Terry kept driving up Yosemit Street until she saw Park Meadows Drive up ahead, then spoke to Jack again, "Okay Park Meadows Drive loops around and become Park Meadows Boulevard, I say we speed up here, and then race back to the hospital, we'll lose them for sure then. How are things back home?"

"Uh, ten four on the plan Big Momma. Home base says things are fine, wishing us luck and not to take any chances."

"That's 'hot mamma', Teddy Bear. H-O-T. Not B-I-G. Okay tell Jen and Charlie to sit down." Putting the cb mic down she yelled out the back window of the truck to Juan and Mary, "Guys siddown! I am gonna lose 'em now, okay?" After she saw them settle in for a higher speed, Mary increased the speed of the truck to beyond walking pace and took the lead. The street remained clear enough to navigate, but there were still wrecks and the odd zombie now and then to contend with as she drove back to the hospital.

After a brief five minute drive Terry was back to the hospital again, leaving the horde behind and out of sight. They pulled up to the emergency room and found a few stragglers wandering around, Terry backed the pickup in front of the ambulance, while Juan and Mary shot the remaining slow zombies that they could see. Jack pulled up alongside the other truck and Charlie hopped out of the back.