"Uh, I don't know, watch out Tom, Sarah turned!"
Tom glanced up, then heaved the ladder upwards with a one handed push, grunting as he did so. The attic access closed with a thud, blocking Sarah's groping hand from view.
"That won't hold if she steps on it." Max said.
"I know, we need a board or something to prop it up."
Stewart stumbled out of Nick's room, "What is going on? What happened?"
"Sarah turned." Max said, gingerly trying to get up off the floor, Stewart put a hand out and they both paused when they heard movement in the attic.
Stewart turned to Max accusingly, "You didn't do it? I told you I would if you couldn't..." she stopped as she saw Max shaking his head.
"I fell asleep, when she woke up I tried, but she tackled me and I fell down the hole."
"Shit. Now what do we do?"
"Get a board to prop up the attic." said Tom.
"Do we have any left?" asked Stewart, "We used everything we had to barricade the back doors."
"I think I know where there is one, gimme a second to make sure I didn't break anything." Max felt his ankles, arms and ribs while they watched him.
"Anytime now Max, no rush or anything." said Stewart.
"Fine, good enough." Max leaned over and picked up his flashlight, "I gotta run to the garage and into the back yard real quick. Will you guys stay here?"
"Sure, be careful and quick, okay?" answered Stewart.
Max stumbled down the stairs, then headed through the living room, which had one candle lit providing a small amount of light. The kitchen was lit the same way, just enough to be useful, but probably not enough to let people outside see anything. Heading into the garage Max grabbed a saw off of the wall above the workbench and quietly unlocked the back door, he peered out and flashed the light around his back yard. He didn't see anything, so he eased out the door, muffling the flashlight against his leg. He headed for the patio behind the house, when he reached the edge he stopped and risked a quick look with the light. The old two by four board that they had used when they poured the patio was still on the edge. It had been years since the patio had been poured so the wood was not in very good shape, but it was long enough. Max bent down, and tried to pull the board out. It was embedded in the dirt and didn't want to cooperate. He moved to one end and used the saw as an improvised shovel to clear the dirt away from the board. Having cleared a place for him to get a hand under it Max lifted the board up easily. He pulled it along behind him as he ran, all efforts at deadening the light forgotten as he went into the garage, he slung the board ahead of him alongside his mini van, then turned and shut and locked the back door of the garage.
Max hauled the dirty board into his house after stuffing his flashlight into his front pocket. The board and saw made a clumsy burden, somehow he managed to get them up the stairs to Stewart and Tom. Amelia was outside of Jessica's door in Sarah's robe, the door was closed behind her.
"That looks a little long Max." said Stewart.
Max held up the saw, which he noticed was bent at the end from using it as a shovel. Stewart nodded. Max lifted the board and saw that he needed to take off a couple of feet to make it fit as a wedge against the attic access door. He opted to take off about a foot and a half, he could trim more off if he needed to. After sawing frantically he lifted the shorter board into place. It would not fit directly, however with it propped diagonally, one end where the hallway wall was, it fit snuggly against the door. Up above the shuffling continued, never quite getting over the access.
"Probably she won't climb onto the access, the ladder is folded up on it, she'll probably wander around the rest of the attic, so this is just a precaution. In the morning I will get screws and my drill and drill the access shut."
Stewart looked at him and said, "I can do it Max, still if you want me to."
With Amelia and Tom looking on Max leaned against the wall and said, "No, lets just leave it like this for now. I am so tired of all this...really."
"Will she come through the ceiling?" Tom asked, pointing up at the hole they had repaired before.
"Maybe, it is lathe and plaster over the rooms, only the hallway and master bedroom are sheet rock. I don't know which is stronger, thank God she didn't balloon up into a fat woman after we got married, she is still pretty light. I think she will be okay. The gun is up there."
"I don't think she will figure out how to use it Max." said Amelia, "They don't get smart right away."
"I think they get smarter by eating people." said Tom, they all looked at him. "Like vampires, I mean most of them are very dumb, only a few are pretty smart, some of them can talk. It is as good a theory as any."
The other nodded.
"That goes along with what Juan said this morning. So now what?" Max asked Stewart.
"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 Bla
ke 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
Mark Clodi (born March 30th, 1969) is the author of many zombie and science fiction novels and short stories. At an early age Mark was hooked on fantasy and the pulp fiction of the 'Golden Age of Science Fiction'. While moving around the mid-west with his parents he continued to feed his frenzied reading by buying fiction at yard sales and utilizing the local libraries. The thought of actually becoming a writer struck him at an early age, but he never followed through on his dream until he was much older and 'settled in' to a career as a computer programmer. His writing started one day while trading emails back and forth with Mike Keleman, the co-author of his first book. They started assigning chapter numbers to the emails and the rest, as they say, is history.
He lives in a small town in Iowa in the United States with his wife, two daughters, two dogs, two cats and two hermit crabs. On any given Saturday night no matter what the temperature, so long as it is not raining or snowing, you can find him on the rough 'man-deck' behind his house grilling ribs, reading and listening to the radio by the light of a kerosene.
Mark's latest and greatest works are always available at no charge on his website located at http://www.ctales.com/
An excerpt from The Zombie Chronicles II (coming in 2010):
Chapter 1
The police cruiser slewed sideways on the highway, not an unexpected event. Max had noted a debris field indicating they were coming up to yet another accident in the road. What was unexpected was the sudden lurch to the right that the cruiser made as two of its tires blew out. The driver of the car, Jane Stewart, brought it to a controlled stop along the shoulder, near the crest of a small hill. Max groaned out loud, "Not again!" Then he slammed on the brakes of the mini van he was driving, the brakes were of the anti-lock variety and he slowed to a stop while keeping control easily. He hoped he had stopped before hitting whatever the cruiser had hit.
Beside Max, his son Nick sat staring intently out the window.
"I don't see what they hit. I can't see anything." Max had been relying on his son to help him avoid any debris on the highway, in fact whomever sat in the shotgun seat had to keep an eye on the road. Even going twenty to thirty miles an hour they still ran over some things. There were times the entire highway was closed off from wrecks and as they traveled along interstate seventy six they had also come across one bridge that looked liked it had been blown up on purpose. That was an ominous sign that Max took to mean they were behind enemy lines. Skirting the blown bridge had caused them to detour about thirty miles out of their way, but they had lucked out and found another wrecked state trooper vehicle, from which they had taken three good tires.
Stopping well shy of the cruiser. Max directed the occupants of his car to get the brooms out and start sweeping the glass out of the way, while he went forward to check on Stewart and Tom, who were in the other car. Max had to pick his way carefully through a ton of broken glass. He couldn't tell what it has come from, but the shards were pretty bad. The scrub brush on the side of the road did not offer any concealment to anything in the land around the highway. This was good, some of the zombies seemed to be smarter than others and it could have been an ambush. Oh yes the zombies had grown clever, they were hard to kill, requiring massive damage to their brain to send into the afterlife, again, and they had an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Max had even reasoned with some of the smarter ones, who seemed to remember their past. Thinking, fast moving and nearly indestructible zombies made for pretty fierce opponents and Max was not sure how humanity was going to survive the war they were now engaged in.
Nukes seemed to be on the table. Max had been in Arvada, a suburb city of Denver, two days ago when the government had dropped a nuclear bomb close to the Denver International Airport on top of a radio station. The dj, Blake 'the snake', had kept broadcasting in the week since the zombie infestation had started, living off of bottled water and the station's vending machines. His co workers had deserted him one by one until he was left alone. Blake barricaded the doors to his building and to the floor of his building too and kept the whole place running on generators. Unfortunately some of the more intelligent zombies heard his broadcast too and they had surrounded the place. For some reason the smarter zombies seemed to attract the less intelligent ones around them in droves and the constant efforts by outsiders to rescue the dj had not been able to get through the surrounding undead. The last effort, by the Colorado National Guard, had involved a whole convoy of troops, they had humvees, tanks and even a helicopter. The zombies numbered in the tens of thousands, the convoy troops numbered in the hundreds. Blake had given a play by play of the fighting, including accounts of the smart zombies using rifles of the fallen guardsmen. The convoy was bogged down, then surrounded then almost completely wiped out. A single column of troops got away, although Blake reported that individual
soldiers may have escaped too, because his view was limited. The zombies relished their victory and the station was mobbed by ever more of the things. Finally, when they realized that no one else was coming to save Blake, they broke into the building and the radio audience listened as Blake gave his last performance. It ended in a few chaotic word that didn't make any sense and a white flash of superheated light, the federal government had set off a nuclear bomb with the station at ground zero.
The morning the bomb fell Max had watched his wife turn into a zombie, she had been bitten and died within twenty four hours of being infected.Through a series of mishaps he ended up leaving her in the attic where she died, Max had been lucky not to break his neck when he fell out of the attic access while getting away from her. Together with his companions they had fled Denver, passing not too far from ground zero themselves. His traveling companions were Jane Stewart, a former police officer, Tom Eby a computer administrator for MAC Co. where Max had worked before the current crises and Amelia Bryon, also from Mac Co. That rounded out the adults, who were all wounded and tired, but so far, 'bite' free. They had also picked up Max's kids, Nick who was ten and Jessica who was seven. Amelia had brought along a boy she had found who was also ten, his name was Cory. The last child they found in the police cruiser that Stewart, Max and Tom had driven to Arvada. The girl had a bandaged wrist and appeared to be twelve or thirteen years old. So far she had not been too talkative, but Amelia had coaxed her name out of her -- Erin.
The drive from Denver had been extremely stressful on all of them, one moment they were driving at a walking pace through smoky burning suburbia with no one in sight, the next they were hitting the gas and driving far too fast for conditions trying to get away from zombie mobs that seemingly sprang up from the very ground. Every place they stopped was empty and quiet, like an old western movie just before the big gunfight. It didn't help matters that Max thought there would be gun fire at the end of every one of those silent scenes. The zombies seemed to be attracted to the living in the usual ways people were attracted to each other; noise and sight, a light in the darkness was a very bad thing now. In addition they seemed to smell their prey and it was almost as if they could somehow sense them through walls too, nowhere seemed particularly safe.
Outbreak: The Zombie Chronicles Page 28