Mark Clodi - Undead Advantage, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

"Minimal, we aren't shooting them, just clubbing them if they get too close. Mary is helping and she is bitching about her sore back again, maybe she will be okay, eh?"

"Yeah, sure thing, I mean Charlie dumped a gallon of disinfectant on her right? I am sure she will still be bitching about a sore back tomorrow. I will go over to the other side of this floor and see if the mob is still following us back up the hill, then I will come down, help you secure the doors and bring you up here."

"Ten four and out."

Juan and the other adults looked at him and Jack found himself taking charge, first he determined that none of the men, or women, had any experience with firearms, however almost all of them had been in youth sports and some of them still did adult recreation to this day, and could easily handle a bat or club of some sort. A couple of the women were new mothers and while modern medicine said they should be up and moving quickly, common sense said they should rest and recover, so he put them, the two doctors and three nurses back in the nurses station and the maternity ward. He took the other four people he had classified as adults and got them to work clearing the bodies out of the nurses station and moving the last man Juan had shot down the hall towards the ER. After that he took one of the 'men', a kid named John, who was just an older teenager really, with him to try and get a look outside the north side of the building. His goal was to see if any large groups of zombies were headed their way. They encountered no zombies, but did find several more corpses with terminal head wounds along the way.

"Say John, was there a fight at the hospital?" asked Jack pointing at the latest victim.

"Uh, no, not really, the zombies were kind of organized, um, they had a leader guy and he was uber scary, like a big demon, I friggin' pissed myself when I saw him, he was like telling them what to do and everyone did it. He left, like, this morning, told us he had to go kill a relief column and shut the radio dj up for good. You hear the dj?"

Nodding his head, Jack said, "Yeah, who hasn't, Blake the snake, broadcasting twenty four seven until the zombies get his brain. One brave mother-fucker if you ask me. On what WWEB station right?"

"Yeah, thats the guy! They let us play it, but they laughed at us a lot, you know? Hey, Jack, what happened to Juan?"

"I dunno. You were gonna tell me about these bodies though?"

"I mean his eyes, they like…" seeing Jack's face, John paled and continued, "Yeah, um, right, this leader guy, he was saying that they had to keep us 'meat', that's what he called us, 'meat', alive and not make any more zombies when they fed, there were already too goddamn many. He thought, well he sort of implied, that most of them would be 'used' up in something big coming up. He did this then, when they ate, they drained the blood, ate bits of the body and then bashed the heads in or shot them so they would not turn into more zombies."

"This leader guy, he say anything else? Like where he came from or anything?"

"Ah, Disney Land."

"What?!"

"No shit, no I mean really that is what he said, he said, 'My master sent me from Florida, not too far from Disney Land, to take over Denver.' He was totally talking to the doctor, but all of us heard it. Doc McAfee had a good conversation with him. That was back when there were like, eighty of us. The leader guy he kept feeding us, to the other zombies to make them stronger, better, smarter. He never said why this worked, but we could all see it working."

For a few minutes both men were quiet as they made their way down a wing of the hospital to peer out the northern windows. Looking out into the afternoon heat Jack was relieved to see only a smattering of zombies wandering around the hospital grounds.

"Jack, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure John, shoot."

"Have you seen what happened to Juan before?"

"No John, I haven't."

"So you don't know what it means?"

"No John, I don't."

Back at the maternity ward Juan worked with the men to clean up the hallway, paying particular care to get the window cleaned off, it just looked filthy to him and long after he had wiped it clean he kept staring at it, as if he expected it to be grimy again. One of the Doctors approached him and asked if he was alright.

"Oh si, yes. I am fine. How are the women and babies doing?"

"They are good Juan. Look, the group has a few questions about you, about the guys you are with, who sent you and all and about you, you. I mean, we all knew about the zombie Rafael, you didn't, he, well he killed people right in front of us, usually by beating them to death then biting through their throats, this was before the group got so small, in the west wing of the building before they smoked the chaplain out."

"Chaplain? Tell me about that."

"In a minute okay? You first, then I will go."

Juan proceeded to tell the doctor, Sam McAfee, about what he and Hank had been through since the whole mess had started. He summarized it quickly and was done in about five minutes. He kept thinking he was leaving something out, after all on the rooftop it had taken Hank most of two hours to get through the story when telling Kevin. Hank was more of a story teller anyway, Juan guessed. He ended with Mary getting bitten downstairs and then looked to Sam, saying, "Okay now you, what happened to the chaplain?"

"Well it was weird, we have a chapel here, St Joseph's Chapel, and we have a full time chaplain, and one part timer too, although he was not here three days ago when all this happened. The chaplain on duty was trained Catholic, he moved over to become our private chaplain about two years ago. His name was Brian Donahue, he was a priest too, but working here with us became his calling. I knew him pretty well and he was going to go back to the official clergy in another few years, but right now he felt called to serve here. He made damn good money too, but always kept his wages to what he would have earned had he been the head of a parish somewhere. That took a lot of balls too, I mean this is not exactly low end hospital and his wages had to be five or six times what he would have earned elsewhere. Anyway he was very devout, gave probably half of his earnings back to us in the form of private donations and the rest of it went to his local church. I remember the fuss about that, let me tell you! He had his paycheck set up to take the percentage out and have it deposited directly into his choice of charities and when the local administrators found out how much he was giving away, man you should have heard them, you'd think he was giving away their money!" Sam got a faraway look in his eyes.

"So what happened to him?" prompted Juan, who was Catholic himself and now had more than a passing interest the fellow.

"Well I only have the story second hand, anyone who was there and saw anything is dead now. I think John, that kid who went with Jack, was there, but he didn't see anything, he was in the west wing, I think. Anyway I heard from one of the other guys who made it over here after….well after they killed Donahue, what had happened.

He said that he was standing in the west hallway, looking towards the chapel and saw their leader, never knew his name, but saw him calling out to Donahue through the doors of the chapel. Donahue said he would not come out and if they felt they could overcome God's will they could come in and get him. That is just it though, the zombies, they wouldn't go into the chapel. Even the stupid ones that their leader tried to force through. It was a standoff, only Donahue was not exactly doing anything to the zombies except praying for them and trying to compel them to go to their final rest. He was telling them to resist Satan and a bunch of other things. They guy who told me this said sometimes it worked." Juan felt a faint tingle inside of him, some inner voice that said things might not be that bad after all.