Mark Clodi - Undead Advantage, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

Kevin raised his gun which was still in his hand and pointed it right at Jeff, who started stammering in confusion. His voice took on an icy anger that he had never used before as he said, "Jeff, I got shot, you wanna take a guess on who shot me? I will give you a hint, I got shot from behind right after I ducked down behind that car" Kevin pointed, "over there. Guess away you son of a bitch."

"Hey, hey, what is going on here?" asked a voice Kevin recognized from the crowd.

"Nothing Hank, shouldn't you be restin'?" replied Kevin.

"Nah, shoot I am alright, been sitting in that damn chair all day, I am feeling right as rain now, really. What is going on Kevin?" Hank said eying the gun Kevin was pointing at Jeff.

"This son of a bitch ran away and shot me from behind, I had cover between me and the other corner, and the bullet hit me from behind, went through my shoulder and hit the car I was hiding behind. I am trying to decide if I should return the favor."

Jeff started talking real fast, "No! No Kevin don't! I didn't mean it, I mean I didn't even know I hit you. How do you know I hit you? It could have been someone else!"

Hank waved Jeff to silence, "Quiet down there, you aren't helping." Looking around he asked, "Who else fired from the south west corner? Raise an arm if you did."

No one raised their hands. "Okay then from the south?" This got two people to raise their hands. "Did anyone see anything?"

Kristal piped up, "I did, about when I screamed I saw the zombie pull out a gun, it looked plastic and he tried to shoot me with it, only it didn't work, then he pulled another silver gun out, a cylinder one, I remember that, the round part looked huge, like from a western movie and when he pulled it out I caught Kevin running towards me out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shoot the zombie. The zombie then took a shot at me and fired at each corner a couple of times before jumping back over the cars. Then I saw Kevin duck and this guy," she pointed at Jeff, "Ran past him and then turned around and ran the other way. But as he ran I saw some flashes of light as he fired back towards us. I didn't see Kevin get hit or anything, only the flashes of light."

"Huh, we do have a situation here then. I think we have a case of friendly fire Kevin and it sucks to be you, but shooting this guy… who are you by the way?" Hank asked to Jeff, who responded with his name, "that just isn't right, there are too few of us here to start killing each other." said Hank.

"I don't care Hank, the man shot me, he wasn't aiming he could have killed one of us! Something has to happen for that, he can't just shoot someone and have nothing happen to him. My momma, she read the bible to us, you know? I was never in much for that stuff and maybe that is why all this is happening, dead coming back and evil walking the land. Maybe the bible was right, that whole 'Eye for an eye' thing. I think I get an 'eye' right now."

Sighing, Hank said, "Kevin, I am not much on debating religion right here while you got a gun pointed at a guy, but the bible is quoted out of context all the time, mostly what it says is 'Don't do bad things'. Kevin, shooting Jeff…that would be a bad thing."

The crowd stood around Kevin and time was sliding by slowly, finally Kevin took a deep breath, and lowered his gun, he put the safety on, as he had been taught earlier the previous day and put the gun in his pocket, before turning away from Jeff to face Hank. "Probably. Yeah, you are probably right. You can explain to me how letting him," he pointed at Jeff, "have a gun is a good thing though? The fucker didn't even aim Hank, he didn't aim! Something should happen to him, some sort of punishment."

"Yeah, you're right. Jeff? No more guns for you until you learn how to control yourself, give it to one of your friends to carry for now."

Jeff looked for a moment like he wanted to argue, spying the crowd he knew better and handed it over to Doug, who pointedly put the safety on and tucked it behind his back in his belt.

Another member of the crowd yelled out, "What, he shoots one of us and gets off with having his gun taken away? I say we boot him out!"

The crowd seemed to follow this sentiment and after only a few seconds they began jeering Jeff and working themselves into a frenzy. Hank finally relented and asked a couple of them to put Jeff into one of the management offices, away from everybody else until they could decide what to do with him.

"Okay, okay, lets calm down, we'll deal with this mess later when we are all more awake and calmed down. A couple of things for now though; First check your fire people, if you cannot see your target, do not fire your gun, we clear on that? Second someone needs to explain to me just how the hell this happened in the first place, I mean where were the guards?" Everyone started talking about how the guards worked and debating on how to make it better so this would not happen again, Hank leaned in to Kevin he spoke softly under the babble of the crowd, "Why don't you go get the doc to look you over, and Kevin?"

"Yeah Hank?"

"Thanks for not shooting that asshole."

The night passed quickly, but not uneventfully. The group at the hospital was busy for a couple hours after sunset going through all the rooms in the eastern wing of the hospital where they had taken up residence. There were no fast zombies on any of the floors, but they did run into maybe eighteen slow ones that had to be put down, most of these were previously the elderly or people in for major operations, as zombies they made for a decrepit group, easily taken down, yet disconcerting too. No one, it seemed, wanted to cap grandpa or grandma in the head. Juan watched the crews move into the rooms and took his own turn leading the others into the various rooms to 'clear' them too.

Their group formed a wall with the vehicles they had to block off the emergency room doors and throughout the night they kept this area well patrolled and clear of zombies too. Towards the morning this area had drawn the attention of a lot of zombies, in fact it was pretty much a raging battle. Juan had not slept all night, he felt mildly euphoric when the sun finally peeked above the horizon. They had limited their shooting as much as possible, so as not to draw even more zombies attention, but there was a crowd of probably fifty to sixty zombies milling about outside the wall of vehicles. Juan was not sure how they would be able to get out without opening a hole in their line of defenses.

Probably they couldn't do it, however no one had said anything about leaving, in fact most of the crew who had stayed here over night were quite content with staying where they were, the beds were far better than the floor of the Mike's Club and the rooms all had heavy doors too. The doors could be busted through, but anything trying that would at least make a lot of noise.

Right now Juan was on solo duty behind the wall, they had found having too many living humans also drew the attention of the zombies, but one or two people under moderate cover created only a small 'draw'. Juan smelled the coffee long before he heard the emergency room doors slide open in back of him. As Nanci walked up behind him he sniffed in appreciatively and said, "Ah mi amor, gracias. That smells wonderful!"

Unseen Nanci stiffened, then said, "How did you know it was me?"

Laughing Juan imitated Hank's southern drawl and said, "Darling you have been bringing me coffee every day for the last twelve years, who else would it be?"

Still a little unsure, Nanci said tentatively, "Juan, you know, the others, well Charlie, he said something happened to you?"

Juan scowled "Me? No I am alright, nothing bad happened."

"Charlie didn't say anything 'bad' happened to you, but that he saw you after…after you killed one of the zombies and you, well you looked different is all."