and was going to give it another try when I saw the guy, he had an old gun, maybe a shotgun, pointed right at me. He was an older guy, a brother, he had short grey hair, was a bit overweight and had on thick glasses, what my mom would've called coke bottle glasses, whatever the fuck that means. He said, 'You one of them?'
I shook my head and said, 'No! Could you let me in?'
The old gray hair looked me over, looked at my bloody bat and said, 'Show me your arms and legs, I wanna see that you aren't bit up before I let you in.'
I pulled off my shirt and pulled my jeans up as far as they would go, which is pretty far as they are a couples sizes from being tight, the oldster nodded and took the bar off the door. Like a big old piece of wood, like you see in old movies with knights and shit. He let me in and said, 'I'm Alvin.' His gun was pointed away from me and he offered me his hand, even before he had the door barred again. I shook it and said, 'Kevin, thanks!' Alvin re-barred the door with his hunk of wood and motioned me to head down some stairs into his basement.
I got downstairs and into an old cellar, not much like a basement at all. The whole area consisted of one rather large room with old brick walls, there were two doors in the far wall across from the stairs, between them sat an old refrigerator, probably fifty years old. There was also couch that looked like it came from a dentist office, a desk with one new looking office chair on wheels, a coffee table stained with rings and a television stand with a decent television, probably high def, but small. The mix of old stuff and new stuff definitely did not go well together. I looked back at Alvin and he shrugged, 'It's worked so far, figure it will work for both of us for awhile yet.'
I sat down on the couch and Alvin sat across from me on the desk chair which wobbled as he sat down. That is when I noticed the bandage on his leg. He saw me looking and got kind of weird, he said, 'Yeah, it's what you think it is, so far I haven't changed though, don't feel it in me and, and, my wife, she got bit up and was dead in an hour. She got it worse than me though, and lost a lot of blood. Me? I feel fine.'
I didn't say anything to the old guy, but I was already making plans to get out of there, that is when I heard something walking around upstairs. I got scared then, real scared and the old man he never quite put his gun down, in fact it was pointed right at me, he said, 'Nothing to worry about, she won't come down here, she never did when she was alive and right now she is too stupid to get through the kitchen door.'
'Right now?', I asked the old man.
'Yeah, maybe she will get better, I have seen a few smarter, faster ones, the one that got her was that way, I put it down though, not soon enough. I brought Shandra back here and cleaned her up good, but she 'died' quick, I saw her turn, her eyes, her eyes they were, so blue, 'Betty Davis' blue we used ta call it. You know that color?'
Uneasily, I answered, 'Yeah sure, my ma used to talk about it, she white? Your wife?'
The greybeard nodded 'yes', 'Used to be more of a hassle, you know? Mixed marriage. Nowadays not many care that much, we got skin heads and things, but not around here. Still old habits die hard and we were always careful, strangers come to the door and we would look em over real good. We always got more crack-heads than skin-heads though. That is why I have this.' He pointedly held up his gun. 'This is loaded with shot, pretty fatal real close, but I have some rock salt shells around here somewhere too. An eight shot, cut down shotgun, a little illegal too, they don't make them this way anymore, not with an eight shell magazine or such short 'coach gun' barrels. I never fired it, not even since this trouble started.'
I nodded, 'You got a bathroom down here?'
Again, the old man shook his head yes and pointed to the door on the right, 'Bathroom, is right through there, it is the nicest part of this basement, Shandra fixed it up for me two years ago as an anniversary present. The other door is the furnace, water heater and pantry. We won't starve anyway.'
I stumbled through the door into the bathroom, it was nice. Tile covered the walls and there was a shower stall with the kind of bars old people use to keep from falling, I did my business and headed back out. Alvin had turned on the tv. It was CNN, broadcasting live from, Chicago, I think or maybe New York. A big city somewhere. Live broadcasts from an office building, probably the second story. The reporter was saying how he was broadcasting pictures live from the street and his building was surrounded, but he was not worried because he had a whole troop of national guardsmen with him. There was constant firing of bullets, in the background and the swarm of shambling dead was growing larger, not smaller as we watched. CNN eventually cut back to the announcer and the guy was said something stupid, like, 'Well, Bill we wish you luck and will check up on you in a few minutes. Now Deana, you have more information about this plague from Florida? Good lets cut to…' I looked at Alvin and he looked at me and we both just shook our heads. After flipping through several news channels we caught the presidential order that there would be no prosecution for killing the zombies, and everyone was encouraged to fight for their lives if they needed to. I was thinking to myself, 'Thank you God almighty for allowing us the privilege of not worrying about going to jail if we fight for our lives against these things and happened to kill one or two! What a dumbass!' I could tell Alvin was thinking the same thing. He got up and said, 'You hungry boy? I got a microwave in the furnace room, got popcorn or we could get water from the sink, warm it up to make noodles?'
I nodded and he motioned me to come with him into the furnace room, once there he said to just pick whatever I wanted, I went for some chili he had and he nodded his approval, 'Probably a bit better than noodles anyway.' The microwave sat on a small counter and Alvin reached under it and pulled out a couple of bowls, grabbing two cans of chili he opened them and popped one bowl in to heat up. Once it was done he handed it to me with a spoon and put his bowl in. I went and sat on the couch and was soon joined by Alvin. After a few bites he said, 'You want something to drink?' I nodded yes and he went over to the old refrigerator, 'Ah, I got water and, uh, beer, you old enough to drin…Ah never mind you want a beer?'
'Hell yes! Thanks!'
Alvin opened the fridge and it was stocked full of beer, all 'Natural Light' pretty much from top to bottom. 'I hope you don't mind drinking my brand.' He said as he came over with a couple of beers.
'No, this will be fine. Thanks Alvin. Thanks for letting me in here too.'
The rest of the day we watched the news and ate popcorn, cookies and soup. And drank beer, probably we killed a case between us. As we got our buzz on and watched the news I knew we were dead, there would not be a way out of this one, Armageddon, like my momma always told me it would, had come.
The worst part of it was I had no way to atone for my sins, you know? I had just fucked my life into a corner and now there was no time left to make up for my mistakes. Once it was dark Alvin said, 'You mind taking the floor too much? My old bones won't do well on the cement, I have couple of blankets and there is an old kids sleeping bag in the furnace room, you could put that down for added padding.'
'No problem.', after using the pisser I made myself pretty comfortable on the floor with the old sleeping bag and fell asleep. We left the tv on and I drifted off watching the news. I woke up in the middle of the night and the tv was off, I heard the door to the basement rattling, kinda thumping and moving a bit.
'Alvin!' I whispered as loud as I dared, 'Alvin!'
'Wha-what? Who's there!?'
'Its me, Kevin! Alvin, I think your old lady is at the door near the top of the stairs!'
We listened and heard the door rattle a couple more times, before we heard footsteps moving away from it into the living room.
'See? We're okay, she never comes down here.', Alvin said.
I didn't sleep well the rest of the night. In the morning we made breakfast of some ramen noodles, with instant coffee to drink. By mid-morning we were into the beer again. The power was not off, Alvin had just shut the tv down at some point last night, so we watched as the news went from slightly graphic, to very disturbing as the day progressed. The guys at fox had charts of the whole US, predicting where the plague was spreading, the graphics were downright scary, it looked like most of the coastal cities had been hit pretty hard, plus Toledo, Dallas, Denver and Salt Lake City. Iowa looked mostly intact, at least according to the guys on Fox news. As we watched Alvin shook his head and said, 'You know I always pictured in my head that they had a room somewhere with all these charts and stuff in them, ready to pull out for any occasion. I thought to myself, 'someday Alvin, you will see something come up that they do not have a graph for' and I was looking forward to that day, just to see how they handled it. I don't guess I will ever see that happen now. They must just have people waiting around to make this stuff up as it happens. That'd be a nice job wouldn't it?'
We whiled away the whole of Tuesday and most of Wednesday that way, eating drinking beer and hoping the power wouldn't go out and that someone would save us. We got half our wish anyway, the power didn't go
