Undead Advantage

“Watch it! On your left! Other left!”, a shot rang out and Kevin jumped a foot, the voice continued, “That 'sokay, I mighta missed that one myself.”

Kevin looked around, eventually looking upward to discover a badly sunburned, Caucasian male standing next to an Hispanic male on the roof of an older Gas n’ Go convenience store. The white guy was in his mid thirties, about six feet tall and maybe two-hundred and ten pounds, he had brown hair and blue eyes, where his skin wasn’t sunburned it was a fair shade of white. The Hispanic guy was about the same age, he was shorter than his companion, maybe five-ten and a hundred and seventy pounds, he had the black hair and brown, almost black eyes with a fair tan skin. Both men looked like they had not shaved in a few days.

“Hey I am Hank, this is Jaun, he don't talk much, leaves it to me, lemme give ya a hand up here with us, okay?”, the white guy reached down offering his hand to Kevin, in order to reach it Kevin had to climb up on the dumpster by the side of the building. Once on top of the building Kevin looked around, the quickly squatted down as 'Hank' and 'Juan' did.

The rooftop they were on had several pipes spearing upwards out of it, along with a huge heater/cooler/fan that blocked off the view of the rear of the building. In front there were two islands of gas pumps with a large covering over both of them to keep customers from getting rained or snowed during bad weather and kept the hot July sun off them in times like this. The roof itself was flat with some sort of beige gravel on it, a low wall separated the roof from the 12 foot fall to the ground below. The building stood alone and apart from the surrounding stores, in the back there was a loading door and a place for employee parking. On the east side of the building was a dumpster in the alley and the other side of the building had more parking, which ended in a side street. Beyond the pumps was a large 4 lane street with a turn lane. Across from the Gas n’ Go was a strip mall, an upscale strip mall with several nice looking, if pricey stores.

“Jah, don't want to advertise our presence much, ya know? So you gotta name?”

Kevin nodded and tried to speak, but all that came out was a murmured squeal, he tried again until Hank held up his hand, “No don't worry about it partner, don't let it bother ya, seen it lots of times, hell Juan wasn't much of a conversationalist before this mess and he ain't good for shit around a campfire now. You know how to shoot a gun?” Kevin shook his head 'no'. Hank shrugged, “Well, ain't no time like the present to learn.” Hank leaned over behind him and picked up a rifle sitting on the roof of the building. “Me and Juan, we got trapped here this afternoon, just trying to make our way back to the “Mike's Club” off of Platte Street. Fucken' 'A' but we ran into a bunch of the shit heads on the way there. This was supposed to be a milk run, get to the gun shop, get back loaded down with guns and ammo, simple. Then we ran into those kids by the clinic, plus the doc hisself an' his nurse. We loaded their car up with medical stuff and a few guns and stuff and told em how to get into 'our' store, no room for us in the car. Ya think Juan could at least hot wire a goddamn car, eh? Sorry Juan, that's one of them stereotypes I could really have used to be true ya know? No offense right?”

“No”, said Juan in a heavily accented Hispanic voice.

“Alright, it don’t mean nothing anyway anymore, right? We holed up at this giant discount store, “Mike’s Club” off of Peoria, you know the one? No? Anyway we figured it would be a good place, full of food, blankets beds, even generators, right? Plus the place is huge and we wanted someplace the whole neighborhood could hole up in, by neighborhood I am talking a lot of people, over a hundred for sure. We made it to the Mike’s, it was not close, by the way, several miles on these streets, we had a wrecker though, a tow truck and we had to clear a few cars and deal with zombies to get there. Once inside the place it was empty, doors still worked and all so people and zombies were coming in, but Juan’s niece, or cousin?”

“Sabrina.”

“His niece, worked there and knew how to turn the doors off, we did that and then me and Juan and some others cleared the place out, top to bottom. We had maybe half a dozen guns among all of us so mostly it was bat and hammer work. We got the zombies out, and the women folk started in on the clean up. The men got the generators up onto the roof and started filling up the pallets of empty gas cans out at the ‘in lot’ gas station the place runs, so we are pretty much set for power and stuff for awhile. The place even sold guns, but not ammo. So Juan and I looked up the nearest gun shop and headed off to get at least a few boxes of ammo. Anyway after seeing the Doc off in the car, we started back, no big deal. I mean we WALKED to the gun store, we could hump our sorry asses back and the Doc, weell hell me and Juan, we're grunts, the Doc is a Doctor, important, right? So we walk and he rides. End of story. Only we run into some goddamn zombie party, you seen it? About two blocks over on Ivy? Maybe you seen the mounds of dead bodies in the street? No? Well probably for the best anyway, you might not a made it if you had been by there. Say, can you write? Juan you got that pen?”

“Si”, replied Juan, handing over a pen and a notepad to Kevin.

“Gimme your name, eh? Makes it easier than calling you that 'black' kid or something. No offense or nothing. Sometimes I don't think I talk so good, correct and all. I may be a southern transplant, but I ain't no racist, the feds they done burned that outta my family a couple generations ago. Lets see, 'Kevin' then eh? Good name and I am pleased to meet 'cha Kevin.”, Hank held out his beefy hand to Kevin, Kevin shook it with hardly a moment's hesitation.

Turning back to the west Hank looked at the sun, which was just a small sliver above the distant mountains, the day was almost ended.

“Well Juan, it looks like we are in here for the night. You wanna go down into the store and rummage around for a blanket or sleeping bag?”, Juan shook his head from side to side.,”No? Want me to go?”

“Si”

“Okay, sure I’ll do it, next time you gotta go though, right? Really does that look like a camping store over there?”, Here Hank gestured across the street from them. “What do you think Kevin?”

The black youth nodded yes at the same time Juan answered with his ever popular “Si”. Hank sighed and said, “Okay then I am off, just you be watching my back and, here, you Kevin, you watch behind Juan. I don’t know you from nothing yet, you might be a good shot or you might not shoot for shit, but Juan, he can peg the eye out of a sparrow at 100 yards.”

Juan protested with a “No!” pretty strongly, but Hank waved him off and continued, “Oh no need to be modest, you are a good shot buddy and it makes more sense for me to get down there, than you any day. Cover my ass bud!” With that Hank hopped off the side of the convenience store onto the dumpster below and ran across the street, the slow moving lumbering zombies followed him away from the store, but could not keep up with him.

Out of the corner of his eye Juan saw another, faster zombie, making his way down the street, taking cover behind cars so as not to be seen by Hank. This was perfect as it put him in full view of Juan, who was crouched down behind the cement wall of the convenience store roof. This zombie was a middle aged Caucasian wearing a bloodied red and white cowboy shirt and the soft leather boots to match. His blue jeans were partially torn near the ankles, a sure sign, Juan thought, that he had been bitten there, then got away, and died somewhere else. The only thing missing was a nice, white, ten gallon cowboy hat. 

Kevin touched Juan’s shoulder and pointed at the faster undead. Juan nodded and said in a soft, Hispanic accent, “Not today esse” before firing. The Talon II rifled bullet struck the cowboy zombie just below his Adam's apple.  The impact from the bullet cause him to take a step back, the cowboy then lunged forward and hid behind a yellow Toyota.  Not a bad shot considering the rifle was ‘off the shelf’ and not sighted in. However when fighting the undead ‘not a bad shot’ was fully equal to ‘a bad shot’. Without a brain destroying bullet the zombie was just winged and not dead again, and now he knew they were there.  Both Juan and Kevin could see the cowboy peering from the sidewalk through the Toyota's windows at the roof of the Gas n' Go. 

“Puta”, Juan swore softly as he worked the bolt action rifle back and chambered another round.

Kevin pointed at the cowboy indicating that Juan should try and shoot him through the glass.

"No." , Juan replied curtly.

Kevin knew from the quickness of Juan's reply that he had better leave him alone to watch Hank’s back, he returned to the back of the store and kept watch on the back parking lot and alley.

When Hank heard the shot he immediately dodged left. For about the hundredth time since leaving the Mark’s Club he wished he had radios like those soldiers out of the movies. “Always the dumb ‘good ole boy’ volunteering for this shit”, he thought. He made the front door of the store to find it was locked and had a security gate. It was a newer style store and obviously it had to follow a builder’s code of the area, which seemed to stipulate a lot of wood and earth tones. The door, while supporting painted brown metal bars running vertically up and down in front of the glass, was wood. Hank used the butt of his shotgun to smash the window in, no alarms when off, despite the fact that the area still seemed to have electricity. Hank reached in passed the broken glass and pulled the fire safety bar down to open the door. ‘Thank God for fire codes’ he thought as he let himself in. Turning he scanned for major problems, and seeing nothing Juan could not handle he pulled the door shut. Looking around he spotted a box full of ‘fold-a-chairs’, on special even, he pulled one out and stuffed two of its legs between the safety bar and the security bars outside the broken window. It was not a permanent solution but anyone messing with it would make noise trying to get in.

Sure enough the store did hold a variety of camping gear, for the most part it held overpriced, ‘high-tech’ clothing. Hank did a quick circuit of the entire place, going around the outside and looking for undead or other survivors. Finding nothing in the main room he chose to start looting immediately. First he grabbed a backpack, then went for the highest priced sleeping bags he could find, he torn them out of their boxes and stuff the lightweight sacks down into the backpacks. The three bags filled the main compartment and Hank made sure to put the ‘stuff sacks’ they came with in as well, though he kept one out to fill with other stuff from the store. He grabbed a small stove, three sets of cookware, five bottles of stove fuel and just about every dehydrated food pouch he could find. On the way towards the front door he grabbed some pants and shirts he thought would fit Kevin. He topped this off with three boxes of power bars that were near the register and then turned to the small refrigerator next to it to clean it out of bottled water. He also grabbed two of every kind of soda they had and a couple extra pepsi colas, the stuff sack was fifty pounds now if it was an ounce so he returned to the backpacks and loaded up another back instead. Jackets. They would be nice, maybe if he made another trip… No time, Juan was already firing out side and Hank started to worry about the kind of crowd gunfire always drew. He put the pack with the sleeping bags on his back, carried the other in his left hand and cradled the shotgun with his right. Heavy, but there were only the slow zombies to deal with outside, he hoped.

Juan saw Hank duck into the sporting goods store as he fired for a third time at the fast zombie on the street. Each time he fired he kept thinking, “Gotcha pendejo!”, but each time the gun was just slightly too high or too low or too far to the right or left. After missing his last shot he threw the gun down in frustration and picked up another rifle off the pile. They had brought four rifles and two shotguns with them all fully loaded and each with an extra box of ammo. In addition both Hank and Juan had pistols belted to their waists and metal baseball bats as last resort weapons. Kevin now had one of the rifles and was covering the rear of the roof. And Hank had taken one of the shotguns with him. Debating for a second Juan selected the other shotgun, it was loaded with double ought buck and while the range was extreme for a shotgun, the burst should be more forgiving for Juan’s near misses. Creeping back to the edge of the roof Juan saw that his recent firing had drawn plenty of other slow zombies back into the area.

They had originally decided to hole up on top of the roof for awhile because there were simply so many of the slow zombies around, it made getting surrounded a real possibility. They had been deciding on whether to go or leave when Kevin showed up. Kevin was beat, wearing a sweat drenched shirt and he looked like he had not slept in two days. Juan was pretty sure Kevin was not going to be up to traveling without at least a nights sleep and leaving him was not something that had crossed either Hank or Juan’s mind. So when the zombies cleared out a little Hank made the dash to the store across the street for blankets and maybe, if they were lucky, supplies. Of course they were sitting on top of a convenience store. So Juan somehow knew they would not be going hungry tonight no matter what happened.

Hank returned to the doorway and lifted his makeshift ‘lock’ out from the safety bar. Ugh, there were a lot more slowzoms out there now, plus Juan was firing at something, no doubt a speed Gonzales, 'Well Speedy', Hank thought, 'I got a little something for ya right here.'

Hank thought that if this were a movie he would now chamber a round in his shotgun and rush blindly out into the parking lot. In real life he already had a round chambered, the safety was off and he had no desire to be hit on his blind side by a zombie waiting just out of sight one side of the door.

He pushed the door open and looked down the sidewalk. Nothing one way, turning he peered the other way. All clear. Looking across the street at Juan on the roof of the convenience store he waited for him to gesture go or no go. Juan was a bit busy sighting at something beyond Hank’s vision. 'That’s okay, I can get the door shut.' Hank turned around and picked up the chair from inside the door, holding it carefully he lifted it from the outside until it was above the locking bar, then eased the door shut. Once it was locked again he pulled the chair legs back down into position, locking the door against the really stupid zombies. 'Or people.', he mused. Doing this had taken both hands and when he finished he quickly grabbed his shotgun and second backpack. Just in time, a slowzom was a little too close for comfort. This time, it was an old man wearing a hospital robe.  The ties in the back had come loose and now the only thing holding the robe on was his outstretched arms.  Hank shuffled forward, pointed the gun at his head. The discharge made mincemeat of his head and the old man's body toppled backward.

Hank aimed at the next closest target, but did not fire, thinking of the fact that he only had 4 more shots until he had to reload. Luckily this was a magazine operated shotgun, which met Hank could reload as he fired. He snaked his arm up through the straps of the backpack to the pocket on his shirt and pulled out another shell, which he then loaded through the bottom of the gun. 'Excellent', he thought, 'back to five shots.'

Juan kept the shotgun trained on the cowboy.  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Hank coming out of the front of the store, but he did not shift his view. That fast bastard needed to go down, otherwise it was going to be a long night. The slow ones were uncoordinated and unable to climb. The fast ones, well they were a different breed altogether, they could climb, they could drive cars, heck Juan and Hank had even heard one talk.

What made some come back as ‘fast’ and others as ‘slow’, they had not figured out yet. Juan’s thought was maybe it was who they ate, maybe anyone with A positive blood gave the undead brains. He shrugged, it didn’t mean anything. Sooner or later Juan was afraid they were going to run into a fast zombie with a gun, that would be bad, very bad.

The cowboy rolled out of cover and broke for Hank without warning, “Sonofabitch!”, Juan exclaimed trying to get a bead on the him. Just as Juan pulled the trigger the cowboy passed behind another, slow moving, zombie. Juan's shot completely destroyed the slower zombie's head and it fell to the ground. Even from the roof Juan would hear the heels from the cowboy's boots clopping on the hard concrete sidewalk. Hank turned towards the cowboy and brought his shotgun up, Juan watched in disbelief as Hank’s hand got caught in a pack of some sort and saw that he was not going to get the gun up for a killing round in time. Juan chambered another round and was just taking aim when Hank fired his gun. The cowboy took the shot in his lower torso and went down. His momentum allowed him to fall forward and drag Hank to the ground. Both men were out of view behind an abandoned car but, to Juan's relief, a second later Hank was up, one arm still wrapped in the backpack strap, this time though his target, unseen from Juan’s angle, was on the ground. As his shot rang out Juan saw Hank flinch and pull his head back to avoid being sprayed with cowboy brains.

Juan took a deep breath and relaxed only for a moment because several new zombies had been attracted by all the gun fire. Kevin timidly pointed to a mailman slowly approaching from Hank's rear. He watched has the barrel of Juan's gun followed the mailman's path. Simultaneously Kevin heard the shot and saw the storefront glass of the camping supply store splattered with red and black matter.

Hank immediately looked up and let out a yell, “Fuck! Don’t shoot me ya dumbass! I swear ya holed my shirt with that one!”

'It may have been true', Juan thought, that zombie had been awful close when he took the shot and the spread of the shot gun made it all the more likely he would have winged his friend. He made a mental note to check on the choke of the shotgun when he had a chance, probably it was something he could set on the fly, this was a good shotgun, they stole only the very best. If he could adjust it to a tighter pattern it should give him a good compromise between getting a head shot and getting the distance he needed from the gun.

Hank took a second to adjust how he was carrying his second backpack and then made a mad dash across the fairly open ground of the street to the convenience store. Once he got up to the dumpster Kevin was there and Hank handed off the back full of water and food to him. Kevin had trouble pulling it up onto the roof, he was surprised at how heavy the pack was. Hank shrugged off his second pack, rummaged around for the empty stuff sack he had put in it and handed the pack up to Kevin.

“I am going into the store for a second, to get some more water and uh, a couple other things, I will be right back.”, he told Juan and Kevin.

Jumping off the dumpster Hank ran back around to the front of the store. A sad part of life was that the need to use the bathroom still happened at inconvenient times, like when you are running away from slowly shambling undead. The store was full of the slow zombies too. Hank hesitated and looked up at Juan who was staring down at him.

“I need a bat Juan!” Juan threw an aluminum bat down to Hank, who slung his shotgun over his shoulder by the strap and pulled the door open. Stepping inside he resisted the urge to back out again, the smell! Oh the smell was bad, it smelled like these zombies had been stuck inside for days, decomposing. Real stupid zombies too, as the door opened outwards. The closest zombie wore the uniform of the attendant, a Gas n’ Go logo emblazoned with the name ‘Gus’ on his left breast. He showed signs of bite marks on his arms and face, half of his cheek was off revealing some broken teeth and shredded lolling tongue.

“Bye Gus”, Hank said as he slammed the bat into the zombie’s head, dropping him.

Hank counted nine zombies in the store, plus there were probably a few crawlers, there always seemed to be. Killing the slow zoms was not real hard unless they mobbed you, the zombies in the store were spread out enough that Hank felt sure he could take them all down without a problem. As he finished off the last crawler a few minutes later Hank felt pretty good, the store was cleared out, even the back rooms and office. He carefully approached the bathrooms, the men’s was clear, thankfully the electricity was still working which made taking care of his business that much easier. Once he was done he looked around the store for anything else they might need. He decided that the dirty yellow mop bucket in back would be good. The wheeled bucket was once used for mopping up the floors, now it would serve a decent sink up on the roof. He filled it halfway with water from the low tap in the back then made his way out of the store, stuffing his pockets with candy bars and grabbing a four pack of toilet paper as he made it to the front door. Outside he saw Juan peering down at him worriedly.

“No worries amigo. I just had to use the little boy’s room. Catch.” So saying Hank tossed the toilet paper up to Juan who batted it onto the roof with his shotgun. “Can you think of anything else we might need?”

“Si.”

“Er, what there Juan? I think ‘si’ is a mighty fine word, but it don’t tell me what you want, right?”

“Si, get those prepaid phones and minute cards.”, came Juan’s accented reply.

Hank raised his eyebrows a bit at this verbose reply and went back into the store, leaving the water bucket outside.

“Let’s see, phones, phones. What the hell was he talking about? Oh, I see, yeah, smart boy that Juan.” He muttered to himself as he looked over the stuff on the counter. Sure enough the store sold pre-paid phones and re-charging cards, which were behind the counter. How to charge them up though? Hank thought he had seen an extension cord in the back of the store, first he went out to talk to Juan again.

“These amigo?”, Hank held up three of the pre-paid phones.

“Si”, came the reply.

“Okay, I will toss em up. Say is there an electric outlet up there anywhere?” After tossing the phones up to Juan on the roof Hank turned around and looked at the zombies nearby, several were edging close to him and he knew he was going to have to finish them off before he went back inside to see about the extension cord. As he clubbed the first one with his bat a nearby slo zomb broke out of its shuffle and dashed at him, taking Hank by surprise, “Why you little son of a bitch!” Hank exclaimed before poking the thing back with his bat. The zombie woman was in good shape, heck she was probably still mostly a girl, maybe 17, no bite marks anywhere on her that Hank could see and her clothing was not bloody, as if it had been changed since she came back from the dead. She twisted around and came in along one side of the bat and probably things would have gone downhill if it had not been for the water bucket that Hank had left near the door. The zombie stepped right into it and it slid out from under her, spilling her to the ground, a loud blast made Hank jump as Juan shot the thing from the roof.

“Outlet. Si.”, Juan said.

Hank nodded and approached the next closest zombie, he finished off five before Juan’s voice warned him, “H-hank! Zombies.”

Looking around Hank cursed. Shit there was another whole mob of them heading his way, some at a faster shuffle leading the pack right towards him. He grabbed up the mop bucket and headed around the corner for the dumpster, where Kevin was waiting to pull up his latest acquisition and Hank himself. A few of the faster zombies were already in the mouth of the alley and as a precaution Juan blasted them. He did not know if they could climb up the dumpster, but did not want to take any chances.

Once Hank was back on the roof, the three of them backed towards the center where they were out of sight of most of the undead.

Hank started dumping the contents of the backpacks out on the gravel stone which covered the flat top of the building. They had their backs to a large piece of machinery which could have been a furnace or air conditioner and had what Hank referred to as a ‘pow-wow’.

“This is how I see it, we stay up here for the night, don’t draw anymore attention to ourselves and then try to make our way back to the Mike’s Club tomorrow morning. I think we might be able to get one of those cars working. I know I put down the worker in the store, his car is probably that piece of shit fiesta on the side of the building. It ain’t worth much, but we don’t have far to go, right? Those phones gonna do anything for us Juan?”

Juan looked the boxes over and then handed one out to each person, Hank read the box and saw that once activated they could be keyed to be used as a walkie-talkie, that would be useful. Like the others he opened his box and spilled the contents onto the roof. A few minutes later they were all reading through the manuals trying to figure out how to get their phones working. Hank pulled the credit card sized ‘minute cards’ from his pockets, he had grabbed as many of the 500 minute ‘One Up’ cards that he could fit in his shirt pocket. Entering the numbers into the phones they were able to activate them all, however the power levels in the batteries were all very low. Juan and Kevin plugged theirs into the all weather outlet Juan had found on the roof, then started messing about with the phones, trying to get the walkie-talkie feature to work. Hank gave up in frustration, pushing his phone towards Kevin, who seemed to be having the best luck figuring the set up out.

“Kev man, you gotta do it, I just don’t mix well with computers. I am a good cook though.” Juan rolled his eyes, “Well I am a cook, of sorts. You guys deal with the phones, I should be able to get this food cooked up for us.”

Stoves and cooking Hank could do. Within twenty minutes he had two bags of the beef stroganoff reconstituted and ready to eat. Everyone had already gotten into the drinks and water and before they ate Hank pointed at the mop bucket, which still had some water in it. “I know it ain’t the cleanest, but you guys might want to wash up a little before we eat. Kevin I grabbed these cloths for you at the store, thought you might want to change, but you can wash up better after dinner with the bottled water.”

They all washed their hands, Juan also pulled out a tube of clear hand sanitizer out of his front pocket which they all used before eating. No one knew what was causing the dead to rise again, but germs were a real suspicion. Hank tossed out packs of freeze dried ice cream for dessert and they all lounged around while it got dark, mostly listening to Hank talk.

“So Kevin you up to speakin’ a piece yet? No? Sh’all right, me and Juan can fill ya in about what has happened to us over the last few days. This started for us on Monday, only Thursday now, four short days, seems a lot can happen in that time…”

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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