out. Every once in awhile the basement door would rattle. Once Alvin tried to reason with his Shandra through the door, he got nothing but moaning and some door pounding for his efforts. I didn't tell him to shoot her, he didn't ask me about it, just looked at me with those brown eyes of his, all sad and mopey. What did he think? That she was going to recover and they could get on with living their lives?
Wednesday afternoon we were watching CNN, Fox had gone off the air, and the power went out. It got dark. Did I mention there were NO windows in the basement. None at all.
'Alvin?'
'What?'
'You got a flashlight man?'
'No Kevin, I, I had it upstairs with me, a big police model, good for hitting things and when I ran down here I ended up leaving it on the kitchen table.'
'Fuck!'
'Hey, I know how ya feel, but don't go swearing like that! I think I got some matches in the furnace room for relighting it when pilot goes out. Let me try and get over there.'
I heard him stumbling around in the dark, knocking over all the beer cans we had sitting everywhere until he made it to the door. I heard him open it and then the power came back on.
He let out a big ole, 'thank God' sigh and made to come back over and sit down.
I said, 'Alvin you better get those matches anyway, just in case and we better go upstairs and try and get the flashlight too. I could hold Shandra off and you could grab it or you could hold her off and I could grab the flashlight.'
He agreed pretty quickly, neither of us were looking forward to another power loss. I drank another beer and Alvin said that he would hold his wife off if he needed to, and he briefly sketched out the kitchen floor plan so I would know where the table was to grab the flashlight.
He went through the door first and his wife, man she was right there all big, white, old and scary. You know how sometimes thin guys seem to marry fat women, tall guys get short women or vice versa? Well Alvin was playing the fat guy here, the woman was shorter than him and rail thin. She was wearing a bathrobe and under it she still had on a white bra and panties, I could see her legs and arms, all full of half healed bites, some neatly bandaged, others with the bandages ripped off exposing bloody divots of missing flesh. Alvin used the gun to bodily force his wife back, yelling at me to get what I needed, while pushed his wife into the living room beyond the kitchen. She was pretty slow and stupid, no sign of her getting smarter with 'age'. I grabbed the flashlight and looked in to see if I could help Alvin any, he had backed her up into a bedroom and pulled the door shut in front of her. Seeing me, he said, 'We shoulda done this yesterday. Coulda been eating steaks and chicken instead of canned chili and popcorn. C'mon, lets clean this up a little.'
We cleaned up the things his wife had knocked over and while we did this the bedroom door kept pounding. This was an older house though, solid doors not those thin things on houses that are new. So the pounding kept on coming but she never got through.
Alvin had a large plasma tv in his living room, I eyed it and he said, 'We paid for our house 20 years ago, we got the tv's, 'cause, that's what we do.' By way of explaining things. CNN came roaring to life at full volume, scaring the living piss out of me, I swear I jumped a foot and Alvin, he must cleared 18 inches himself. He used the remote to turn it down and I quickly went to the front window and peered through the drapes trying not to move them much. Outside the mob was STILL there, but none of the zombies were on his front porch or even in his yard and none were moving towards his house, somehow whatever was over there kept their attention. Or they didn't hear the noise.
'Hey Alvin, the mob is still there, do you know what has their attention?'
'Uh, I think so Kevin, there was a minivan over there, had a bunch of people, they couldn't be in it still, do you think?'
I slowly shook my head 'no', 'I wouldn't think so, no. But something is there. I can't see past your bushes or through the mob. God I hope they are not still out there, its been two days!' Realizing what I had just implied (that the people were dead, not still alive), I scowled.
Alvin came over and clapped me on the back and said softly, 'Don't worry about it, I know what you meant.', Turning back into the living room he went on, 'So steaks? They have been in the fridge for three days, probably thawed enough by now. I think we shouldn't keep any lights on up here and should still sleep in the basement, what do you think?'
As I watched him pull steaks out of the refrigerator in the kitchen through the kitchen doorway, I said softly, 'Sure Alvin, sure man.'
We spent the afternoon cleaning up the basement, I even went so far as to toss a bag of beer cans outside into the back yard. I also brought a load of blankets into the basement; the floor would be a bit easier to sleep on at least.
Dinner was great, we ate steak, potatoes, even a salad, I don't imagine I will be getting that good of meal again anytime soon. Around 8 it was starting to get darker out and we headed back to the basement. I shut the door tight and propped my bat against it to hold it shut before we went down to our nest.
About halfway through the night I woke up, something was wrong, it took me awhile to realize it was the power out again. I mean, no lights on the tv or vcr, no lights on Alvin's smoke detector, nothing. I heard a noise in the bathroom then, heard Alvin doing his business in the dark, trying to be quiet. Then I heard the back door crash in, as I heard something running around in the upstairs part of the house I jumped up and whispered for Alvin, 'Alvin! Alvin, come out of the bathroom man, somebody just broke in, sounds like a real guy.' Then I remembered the short 2x4 that Alvin used to bar his back door, nothing shoulda been able to get through that, nothing normal. Upstairs I heard the bedroom door being opened and whoever it was did not fight with Shandra, they had to be dead already. 'Alvin!' The bathroom door opened, and Alvin called out softly, 'Kevin? That you? What is going on?'
'Somebody broke down your back door, they went into your old lady's bedroom and there was not a fight.'
It took the old guy a second, then he said, 'Okay Alvin, my gun is by the couch, the flash light is on the table, grab the light, I'll get the gun.'
I had been quietly pulling on my jeans and shoes and grabbed up the flashlight and clicked it on so Alvin could see to get to the shotgun. He scrabbled over and picked up the gun, just as he got it up the basement door was pushed in, splinters came down the stairs and I heard one of the zombies doing that slow shuffle of theirs down the stairs. I also heard something else behind the first one and I heard my bat roll down a stair or two then stop. I nodded at Alvin and pointed his light to the stairs, where his wife was slowly coming down, behind her was another guy, a normal looking dude with a pretty clean t-shirt, worn blue jeans, Reeboks and he was carrying my bat! He was a white guy too, a normal enough looking man, with Sandy brown hair and what looked like he had been a couple of days since shaving, had a bit of a rough face. Something about him was not right though, he kind of gave off this, I dunno, 'aura' of power or something, like when you get a power up in a video game? Not really glowing, but he looked strong.
'Shoot Alvin! Shoot!', I yelled, only Alvin just stood there, he couldn't shoot his wife and the white guy was gonna get us because Alvin wasn't taking a shot.
He was backpedaling towards the furnace room and mumbling, 'No. God, no. I can't, I can't!'
Shandra zombie rushed him towards the door and whitey took a swing at me with his bat, I ducked around and took a pretty solid hit to the back, it put me on my stomach on the floor and whitey just kept right on going towards Alvin, who dropped the damn shotgun and ran into the furnace room, I heard him tip the food shelf in front of the door and Shandra started beating on the door. The guy, and I swear this is true, the guy just shoves her aside and smashes his fist through the door. A solid wood door, like he was a kung-fu expert or something. The light was pretty bad, I had dropped the flashlight on the floor and it was pointed directly at the bathroom door now, but I swear his hand was all mangled and broken up, as I watched it seemed to pull itself back together and he punched again, then shouldered the door forcing it open a little at a time, I heard Alvin screaming as the guy broke in. I couldn't help him, I could hardly even get up myself, somehow I made it to my hands and knees and then started crawling up the stairs, whitey and Shandra didn't pay me no mind, they just kept working to get past the door and shelving and food and get to poor Alvin. I made it outside without hearing any screaming. Once I made it upstairs, I struggled to my feet and went out the back, the board that had been holding it shut was broken
