Undead Advantage, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

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!'

'Maybe I did.', 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, slowly 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 a 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 as 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 prepaid 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 prepaid 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 any more 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. 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 his 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