“We are rotating sleeping, Tom is on now.” Stewart looked at her watch, “He has another hour to go, then Amelia, I take last watch so I can get the coffee going. You are not 'on' tonight. We figured with” Stewart looked upwards, “that going on you would be busy. Why don't you crash on the couch so if something happens you can be woke up real quick by who ever is keeping watch?”
“Okay. I am sorry Stewart, about this, if I could have, I mean I was even, going to do it, I mean.” said Max
“Don't worry about it. I am crashing in Nick's room. We'll deal with Sarah in the morning, okay?”
“Okay.”
Max and Tom went downstairs and Max settled on the couch. Tom turned on the television and flipped through all the channels, seeing only static.
“Turn on the satellite TV, see if they have anything.”suggested Max, “Here let me do it.”
Max flipped through four hundred channels of television, a few channels were showing old movies, one Spanish channel was still broadcasting music videos, but all the news channels were off the air. Max put the remote down and chatted with Tom for a short time before he drifted off to doze fitfully the rest of the night.
Chapter 53
“This is Blake, still holding up here at WWEB. I am sorry to say that the last group of guys who tried to get though here earlier this morning were not successful and they looked like a bunch of national guardsmen to me. I have to tell you folks that there are too many zombies down there, hell it looks like all of them showed up at my doorstep, the streets are just full of them. So. Well I hate to say it. I have to though, don’t try again folks. If a bunch of guys with machine guns, hummers and tanks cannot break me out I am afraid no one can. If you know someone with a helicopter, you might send him my way. Until then I am going to try and sit tight here…” Blake had the doors propped open from the studio all the way into the hallway, he heard a crashing sound, followed by the sounds of breaking glass.
“Well forget it folks, it looks like my show just got canceled.” Keeping his mic and headphones on Blake moved over and shut the studio door, locking it shut. He had no illusions that whatever had gotten through the fire door would be held at bay by the glass of the studio walls. Irrationally he could not give up. Diane said he was the last one left on the air and every word he spoke would help someone else. Returning to sit at his stool he started speaking once again. “Yeah, they are definitely in. Remember by the last report I had heard that the roads east, south and north were pretty clear, interstate seventy into the mountains is a wrecking yard, impassible from what everyone I spoke to said. I am sorry I can’t stay on the air any longer.” A group of zombies filed into the two rooms that abutted the radio sound booth. “They are mean looking bastards, these zombies. What the fuck are you?” This last was said when a massively huge man stepped into Blake’s view, his eyes, Blake swore to God, were glowing, “Fuck me, his eyes, his eyes, what the hell is wrong with him?” Blake found himself on his feet moving towards the man, who then gestured at him to go to the door to the sound booth, Blake tried to resist, but something compelled him to move forward and unlock the door. He pulled it open then moved around to stand in front of the doorway, hands twitching by his sides. Listeners did not hear Blake speak again, a new voice came on and they heard it start off with, “I am Og.”
At Max's house they were all up again, drinking strong coffee and listening to the radio with keen horror, hearing what they thought were the dj’s last words. Erin sat in Stewart's lap, Amelia held Jessica and the boys were busy in the living room, playing video games. Max held the remote in his hands, ready to kill the power if things got too bad. The radio was on low, hardly giving any sound off. The adults listened with rapt attention as the new voice spoke, “I am your future, as my master made me so shall you join me…” Then static, at the same time there was a bright flash outside of Max’s house far to the east, the ground rumbled and the windows rattled in their frames. When Stewart pulled the curtain back they saw a billowing flame climbing high into the air that formed a large, mushroom shaped, cloud.
Author's Note
As a first book this one has taken me a couple years to finish, the writing was done in about seven months, but the editing, ugh! Don't get me started about the editing. I am a firm believer in good editing…now. Unfortunately I have the editing skills of a slow zombie; this is the second edition of the book, and by 'second' I mean 'tenth'. I've read through Outbreak many times and in each instance I am 'sure' I caught all the errors and each time I am wrong. Hopefully the story overcame the many misspelled words, poor sentence structure and grammatical errors that I have missed. I never set out to write an American Classic and have always felt that a decent book should be read easily and make me look back on it with fond memories as an escape from the minor problems life was throwing at me at the time. If I have done this for a few people then I have done my job.
Thanks to the following people for their editing help and general advice: Mike Keleman, Jesse Masoner, Anne Clodi and Mike Picco. Also thanks to the people who left reviews of my work online, sometimes it is painful for me to read, but it made the work better in the end: C. Brunner, J. Coffey, Jessica Manning, Jessica Hannigan, W. Temple, Ian Bottomley and Jeffrey Johansen.
I am writing the second book in this trilogy right now and taking care to get the story right. I have also written a few other novels set in the 'Zombie Chronicles' universe, most of which are not connected directly with this book, however I do have this strange desire to connect all the works in some way, you can find the links if you hunt for them hard enough. The next book in this series will start with 'The Zombie Chronicles II: ' right now the working title is 'The Zombie Chronicles II: Discovery', but I might change it before all the body parts are eaten, I mean words are written. Any affiliated novels will have a title like 'Undead Advantage: A Zombie Chronicles Novel', just to keep things easy. The story of Max will be a trilogy, no more, no less. I like the character, but I have no plans to use him beyond three books, he'll need a rest by the time I am finished anyway.
You can keep up with my progress at my website: www.ctales.com, where you will find no advertising, no log ins and plenty of lightly edited things to read, including numerous short stories of those who didn't make it through World War Z and a few non-zombie related pieces of fiction as well.
Thanks for reading!
Mark Clodi
February 20th, 2010
