Hank and Juan's Story

The men sat around eating off their new mess kits before Hank started talking.

“Well I think we can get back today, there are only a few slow zoms down there, not the mob like yesterday. You think you are up to moving Kevin? We gotta go about two, maybe three miles.”

Kevin smiled softly and asked, “Where are we?”

“Ah, south Denver, like maybe 5 miles south of E-470 and 3 east of I-70.”

“I think I can do 3 miles. I pretty much ran from north Denver yesterday. It is a mad house. There were a lot of them and more every minute.”

Hank just nodded and said, “Yeah?”

Kevin went on, “Okay I will tell ya a little about it, you did a little last night, but I won’t talk like that, so long and all.”

“Si. Good.”, said Juan, laughing a little around his eyes at Hank. Hank scowled at him briefly and said, “Yeah, not everybody is a story teller like me, do the best you can though, any information you give us helps, ya know?”

Kevin nodded yes to that and told them his story.

“It started about three days ago, it probably started for other people earlier than that but you see on Sunday I had lost my job. It was a shitty job, loading trucks at what they call a ‘hub’ not too far from my house. I had a car a sweet, sweet ride, man it was everything to me. My friends and I would take it out, pick up the ladies, go clubbing, all that flash makes for good, good times. I supported it by humping my ass off 5 nights a week loading trucks. Hell I live, lived, in my mom’s place, you know how it is. I am only 20. Tried college, still thinking, was thinking, of going back, but now, no. I got this job loading trucks when I started at Red Rocks Community college, class during the day, boxes every night until 11. Get up, do the homework, go to class, do it again. Only I wanted this car, so bad man. I have money saved up for tuition, thought I could get more, blew it on a down payment and come time to pay for school I didn’t have the money. I was doing okay too, ya know? Not straight A’s, but close enough to get a partial scholarship, but when the money was not enough, they said I couldn’t go anymore. My fault, I had to have this stupid car. My mom was so pissed, she beat me, I mean not a yellin’ at or ‘you are dumb ass’, or even , ‘take that goddamn car back right now and get into school’, a physical beating, with a goddamn cast iron skillet. You ever been hit by a goddamn cast iron skillet? It hurts, probably she would have killed me, maybe by accident, but my old man was around and after about half a dozen whacks he got the pan away from my mom. Then, to make it clear where he stood on the matter he whacked me once too and told me I was a dumbass and “Dumbass is what dumbass does.” What the fuck does that even mean? Anyway I had to spend a few nights out at a friends before my mom let me come back home. That was three months ago, since then I just worked the box factory and tried to keep up with the car payments and insurance. You know what full coverage on a new car costs in North Denver? The insurance was more each month than the car payment, it pretty much ate up 80% of my cash every month, the other 20% when to gas and going out, no progress in getting back to school this fall. I filled out loan applications, my mom scraped, my dad saved. I was going back in a month. I had worked a little after high school, missed a year otherwise I would have graduated from Red Rocks this past spring. Now I am thinking an associate degree in computer science ain’t going to be worth much anyway. So I have been working and working, but I missed a few nights here and there, one of them was last Friday, it was an ‘extra night’ of work, we have been having a lot of those, good money but when you have to work Saturday through Wednesday, you have to have Friday off, I mean working both of the best nights of the weekend? So I called in sick, went out had a good time and when I showed up on Saturday I was talking with my co-workers on my shift about the good time I had been having, while they were all working. My supervisor heard me in the break room. Sunday I showed up for work and was handed a last paycheck and let go. Fucking bastard, people like him never went out when they were young, never had a good time. I mean I am a good worker, but I need a night off. Didn’t matter. I couldn’t go home, my mom would know right away, so I called up my friends and did another dumbass thing, we started drinking at a friends house, older guys had gotten a keg and were having a little party.

“I drank hard, around midnight I remembered that I needed to get home. Only I was in no condition to drive, you know? I did anyway. Got pulled over three blocks from the party, about two miles from my house. The guy looked at me, knew I was drunk off my ass and said, “It’s your lucky night, we got a lot of fights tonight, so here is what we are going to do. I never saw you, you never drove. You get out of this car right now, put your car keys in your glove box. Lock the door, shut it and walk home. Come and get your car tomorrow. Unless you want to do this some other way?” Dumbass I may be, but not fucking STUPID, I tossed the keys in, then, you know it took me awhile to figure out how to lock the goddamn doors, I had never done it manually before. The cop, he was a good guy, but he laughed at that, kinda made me mad, but I hid it, I didn’t need no ‘Tom Jones Whitebread American Cop’ putting a beat down on my ass. Long story short I go home about one, my mom came unglued, but the walk had cleared my head a bit and the extra time let me make up a good cover story, same thing basically, but only I got off a little early hit my friends party, got a little drunk and got a lucky break. My mom was not happy, I almost thought she was going to go for the fry pan again and dad was already sleeping. Instead she just said to go to bed and stop making stupid decisions. That was the last time I saw her.

“Monday I had nothing, I thought, I WILL stop making bad decisions, I will get up and find a job, make my family proud, make myself proud. I ended up sleeping all day, got up about two pm, watched a little television, all news crap, I switched over to a music channel and just chilled. I fired up my dad’s old pc and checked my email, updated my internet blog, read a few of my friend’s blogs and then hit some Grand Theft Auto New York City, a good game, well about seven that night I realized no one had come home, no mom, no dad, no little brother. My brother worked at the ‘Water City’ amusement park, usually the full day, ten in the morning until six at night, he had my parents old car and I was hoping he would give me a ride over to my car when he got in. They never came home. At eight I called my mom’s work. Nothing. I had to look up the number for where my dad worked, I had never bothered him before. He worked at a foundry, and they were pretty good about letting him out on time every day too. No answer. I called ‘Water City’, could not get through. By nine I was scared. One thing that had to go when I picked up the car was my cell phone. I just couldn’t afford an extra $60 a month, not when I made such a mess of buying a car. So I called around to my friends, no one answered. You ever see that movie “24 Days Later” I think it is called. Where the guy wakes up in a deserted city? That is how I was beginning to feel. I went outside. Everything looked normal, right? Only, no traffic. Now I live down a side street, we don’t get a lot of cars or nothing, but there is a cross street a block and a half up that is pretty busy, a car every three or four seconds. I looked up there. No cars. I stood there and counted to one hundred and twenty. Not one car. Even at three in the morning on a Sunday a car will go by every ten seconds. Something was wrong. I went back in and grabbed one of my dad’s forties out of the fridge, then came back and sat on the porch. I popped it, leaving the door open, in case the phone rang. I sat there until almost ten thirty, when I finally saw someone coming down the street. You know it now, I mean you can see where this is heading. From what I saw on tv later, most everything started going to hell Monday, and I SLEPT through it. So much for not being a dumbass, huh?

“Anyway this fat, white chick comes walking down the block, she has a t-shirt on, some sort of concert shirt, like ‘Bare Naked Ladies’ or something like that and these green stretchy shorts, no shoes, one of her fucking knees looks like it is missing, I mean totally not there, she was limping along, this fat chick and I was like, “Oh Shit!”, thinking she musta come out of a car accident or something, I ran in to call 911. Well this fat bitch slowly trudged in after me, you know how it is, I tried to tell her to sit down, she was hurt, lay down on the couch or floor, I mean she is the only person I see in hours and she is hurt. She came right for me opened her mouth, it was all red and bloody inside and she was attacking me. I tried to be ‘nice’ thinking, hey she is fucked up and hurt she does not know what she is doing. But she kept coming, and coming and coming. I hit her in her flabby belly, that blow ripped half her shirt off, disgusting man, totally gross. I am an ass man myself and her jumbo sized flabby titties did more to freak me out than her trying to bite me. I ended up shoving her away onto her ass and I ran into the kitchen. I yelled at her to stay the fuck out of my kitchen or I was going to brain her. She came in anyway, I grabbed the cast iron skillet off the stove and slammed her up against the head, not as hard as I could, I mean I still didn’t want to kill her. She barely hesitated before grabbing me, I slid backward and let her have it again, but she just kept on coming. I…I…I started whacking her full on, finally something just snapped and she stopped moving. Funny, huh, I mean here I had this half naked, dead white chick in my kitchen and I am thinking, “I just made another dumbass move. Oh Lord I am going to prison for this for sure.”, when actually for the first time in two years I had done the RIGHT thing. I got scared then, went out and looked to see if anyone had seen what had happened.”, Kevin laughed, “I hadn’t seen anyone since the night before in a goddamn city and I am worried that someone happed to be walking by IN MY KITCHEN to see me murder a white girl. The coast was clear, I shut my front door and dragged the white girls body into the back yard. We have one of those crappy storage sheds in our back yard, I opened it up and took her body in there, it barely fit, man that shed is crammed full of all the shit we never needed, but could not get rid of. I could barely get the door closed. Again I looked around the backyard and made my way back into the house. There was blood all over the kitchen, not the red, “Oh shit I just cut myself” kinda blood, but nasty black stuff, like half dried. I spent until midnight cleaning that shit up with the bleach out of the laundry room. I went back into the living room and turned on the news, fully expecting to see a swat squad being broadcast live outside this black guy’s house, my house, you know what I mean? And I was not let down about the live coverage, this was only a few hours before the stations when off the air, they were showing people attacking other people here in the usa, the reporter called them zombies and said one bite was fatal, you had to hit them in the head, destroy their brains and they stopped moving. They named a few places to go, to gather for help. I think they said Coors Stadium. Then I saw the light, I was NOT going to spend my life in prison the chick I killed was one of them! I went back in and got another beer while I thought about what it meant that my brother and parents had not come home.

“I cried as I watched the news. I mean I knew, then I just knew my family was gone and the last contact I had with my dad was when I headed off to work and he told me not to hot-rod, watch out for the cops, my brother I hadn’t seen since Saturday and, of course the last contact I had with my mom was seeing the look in her eyes when I told her the lie about being pulled over by the cops. Not a good ending man, not a good ending.

“I must have fallen asleep in front of the television, the next thing I knew I was waking up to static about five in the morning. I turned off the tube and stumbled upstairs into my own bed. I didn’t wake up again until I heard them in the house, not zombies, looters running from zombies. Sounded like white guys, white guys with guns. I am not too happy being around anyone with guns, but white people with guns make me more nervous than most. I am not some hardened criminal or ‘gang-banger’, sure, sure I did the show for the ladies now and then, but never in real life, I wanted to live and do something with my life not die over a handful of mind rotting stamps in an alleyway somewhere.

I heard them break in the front door, heard them make some plans while they rifled through my house for anything they could use, then heard them being attacked by a mob of zombies. The power was out, so I don’t know what time this was on Tuesday, probably still in the morning, close to noon. They almost came upstairs, then one of them said something along the lines of getting trapped with no way out and I heard them running out the back door into the back yard. I ran through the house and saw three of them climbing over my back fence into the neighbor’s yard. The zombies, they could not climb the fence. I heard more inside my house downstairs. So here I am with a full bladder, twenty zombies in the back yard and who knows how many on the first floor. We lived in an older house, it was pretty cool, two stairways one, with a door, leading into the kitchen, coming down near the back door and the basement stairs, and the other stairway in the front room. We had kind of a balcony overlooking the living room, kinda nice, but small and it made the living room look larger than it really was. I crept down the hall to the balcony and looked over it. Packed man, packed, they did not see me, I know that, but you get that many in one place and they start spreading out, some were coming up the stairs. I backed off slowly and headed into my room. Upstairs only had four rooms, three pretty small bedrooms and a bathroom, the balcony was not much of a room, ma kept knick-knacks there, all sorts of crap my dad was always threatening to toss out. He had his television; she had her loads of knick-knacks. In my room I shut the door and just grabbed the bed and heaved it over in front of it. I didn’t know what else to do. Grabbed my dresser and put it on top of my bed, then shoved every other thing I could get up onto the bed. I went into my closet, grabbed clothes, a light jacket, took the fifty bucks I had managed to save over the summer and my spare car key and opened the window. By now they, the zombies, were doing the zombie thump on my door. Believe it or not it was starting to be pushed open too, and the whole fucking floor was creaking pretty bad, it was an old house, like I said.

“After getting dressed I had a hard decision to make. You’ll laugh, no you will, but I stood there for thirty seconds while the floor creaked and the zombies were pushing open my door trying to talk myself into peeing on my floor. I mean I was not coming back, but you grow up your whole life pissing in a toilet, not on your floor. I had to go, I had 80 ounces of beer in me wanting to get out. You ain’t laughing? Yeah, maybe it ain’t that funny, but it is to me. I ended up choosing my closet, a good decision, cause while I was whizzing I took a last look around and saw the bat from, like, 8 years ago when I played little league. I took it with me and got to the window as the floor started to sag. I was half over the window sill, no problem there, I had climbed out onto the tree probably fifty or sixty times when I was younger, when the floor collapsed, just the floor for the most part. You know how weird it is to see your four walls there, hanging over empty space and your floor just gone. Dusty too, the dust that came up hid everything from view. I thought my momma cleaned house real good, but so much dust! She would have been appalled, that was one of her favorite words when describing the latest thing I did wrong, appalled.

“Anyway, here I was one leg out, one leg in and my house is collapsing, the walls were moving, like they were gonna give in. They didn’t, at least not while I was there. I grabbed for the tree limb, which seemed smaller than I remembered it and hoped it would hold me up so I could get to the main part of the tree and climb down. The zombies, zoms, were all twisting around in the main room, maybe a couple of them died, I really couldn’t tell. There was a couple down on the ground out front of the house, I thought they might come at me right away, but they didn’t notice me climb down and onto my neighbor’s porch, they were too interested in all the movement inside the house.

“Once I got over my neighbors porch I edge over into the backyard using his gate, on the other side of the house. I jumped over his back fence and headed out onto the street on the other side of that house, so I had two rows of houses and fences and stuff between me and all the zombies anyway. I didn’t really know what to do, so I moved up onto a nicer looking porch and sat down on a chair I found there. I was just sitting there when I hear this barking inside, a dog right. I look in and see this little mutt at the window, barking at me, then turning and barking at something inside the house, then at me, then it runs away from the window. I stayed real still, I figured a zombie was in there and maybe it would not notice me with the curtains and me not moving any. No luck, an old woman started attacking the curtains, then the window. It was an old house, old windows, single pane and stuff. I know all about it, cause about five years ago my old man had to replace all the windows in our house, they were cracking and cold in the winter, so he paid to get double paned ones installed, and has bitched at the cost ever since. So she hits the glass and breaks through it, cuts her arm up real bad, no real bleeding, just that thick blood like tar oozing out of her. She had an old lady robe on, pinkish and a bandage on one of her arms, like she had been bit there or something, I figure that is what killed her anyway.

“She is coming through at me and her robes get caught up in the glass, old lady titties. I tell you this undead stuff is bad for sex, I have images I will never get out of my head and why is it every undead woman who comes at me has to show me her titties? Anyway she about cuts her titty off coming through the window at me, I swear a nipple hit the porch before she was done moving. But she was caught. Old windows, old drapes, stuck solid to the wall and her tangled up in them so she about cannot even move by the time she get halfway through. Plus the dog is hitting her from behind, I can see her moving as it bites at her, though what could that little piss-ant dog really do? Meanwhile I just kinda sat there watching it all happen. I got up and took the bat to her head, I was not going to leave her there, you know, in case someone else came by. With her dead I was going to go find another house, except for that dog. I didn’t want to leave it in the house all locked up, maybe able to get out of the window, maybe not. I forced the front door in and the damn thing came at me! I fended it off with the bat and looked around the place, no more zoms running around at least. I shooed the dog outside and shut him out, but then he kept barking at the door. Fuck. Noise does seem to draw the bad guys too. I talked to him and tried to calm him down then let him back in. Nope, little bastard still came right at me. I ended up whacking him with the bat, not hard enough to kill the little dope, but he backed off after that and let me sit down for five minutes. My car was two miles away, right, but this old broad, she probably had an old person car. I could use that to get to my car if I could find her keys. Heck maybe she had a caddy or something and I could just use that to go….where? Where was I going to go? It hit me then that I didn’t HAVE anyplace to go? Not to a shopping mall to hold up like those guys in the movies, that didn’t end well for them, you know? I figured I would have to just get out of town, if the old lady had a full tank I would take her car, if not I would drive over to my car and drive it into the mountains. I went to her fridge, she had a sweet tooth, cake, coke, and more of the same in her pantry. I looked around at the door to her garage and found a note-board with her keys on it. I popped open the door and looked at her car. An old Buick, like a 1980 buick or something, a nice car, a boat, and probably fast enough, but it didn’t look like it had been driven in awhile, one of the tires was flat. I went and grabbed a coke and a couple of twinkies from the pantry and headed into the garage. It had an automatic door opener, and I found an air compressor under a tool bench in the back of the garage. Hopefully the tire had a slow leak. Now I am not a mechanic or anything, but I can handle changing the oil and checking my tire pressure. I found a pressure gauge in a little nook on the tool bench, behind a load of old lady stuff. I plugged in the air compressor, a lot of noise but I wasn’t sure it would work or not, it was old. It worked, loudly, forty seconds of loud noise to get the tank full again. Meanwhile I checked the tires, they all needed air. There was a can of ‘fix a flat’ behind all the junk, I pumped that into the flat tire then filled it up to pressure and then I went around and topped the three other tires. After this I went back into the house and grabbed the rest of the six pack of coke from the fridge, the box of twinkies and a bag of chips and headed back to the car, leaving the door open so the dog could get in and out after I left. I hopped into the car, turned the key and it started, no problem. I adjusted the seat and hit the garage door opener. Zombies man, four of them, two little kids, I knew one of them, a man and a woman. The man seemed, weird, he looked at me, his eyes were not all foggy like the others and he when he gestured for the others to get out of my way, the started moving slowly off the drive. He came at the side of the car and raised his hand, he had a tire iron! As he swung for the driver’s side window I gunned it, and killed the engine, fortunately by moving forward a few inches I had done two things, first I made him hit the place between the driver and rear passenger’s windows, so he hit metal and did not break the glass, and I had also moved forward far enough to get onto the slope of the drive. I push it into neutral and coasted to the bottom of the drive and into the street, I turned down street and kept rolling until I hit the end of the block, where I had to stop, put it into park and start it up again. Scared the piss out of me, him using a tire iron. If he had not ordered the others out of my way I probably would have gotten stuck on their bodies, and I know he told them to move, I just know it.

“The car continued to hiccup for a bit after that, but after another three blocks it started to purr like a kitten. It had a good three quarters of a tank too, so I didn’t have to go back for my car. I decided I would scout around a little, see if I could pick up one of my friends and then maybe, go get my own car. I headed over to Scott’s place, one of my buddies. The way was pretty clear, I was on back streets though, I had not tried a major street yet. I get to Scotts and his house is trashed, no bodies, but broken windows, blood on the front door, next was Jerome, his place looked good, but the front door was open, the screen was shut, but the door was open. I sat on the street and honked three times. That brought them out, oh yeah the whole zombie neighborhood. Jerome was missing an arm, he came to the door and could not get through it, his parents had installed a security door there with bars, if he had just pressed the lever he could have gotten through it. I sped off and decided to go get my car NOW, not later and get the hell out of town NOW, not later. I hit Pecos and a traffic jam of destroyed cars. I backed down 48th to get to a secondary street and made good progress towards the highway, my car was just on the other side of it, but as I got closer to the highway I kept running into more and more cars.

“I backtracked and got on to 32nd and headed towards Federal, the next main thoroughfare, it was pretty packed but I made it to the highway by driving over lawns and through parking lots. When I got on the highway I was stoked, until I hit the first big snarl up around 9 blocks later at the next major exit. Someone had broken through the guardrail though and took the eastbound lane west, I did too, there were zombies around the wrecks, probably thirty or forty. One of them was fast and he through a spare tire at me, one of those hard doughnut kind. It bounced off the right side and I hit the gas and got out of there.

Around Wadsworth I came across another accident, I was back in the westbound lane again and this one was bad, there was a white dude and his woman and some kids in a blue two door and the zombies were breaking in. The guy, he was all bloody and bitten up from trying to protect his family, I guess.  The zoms had pulled him halfway though the driver side window.  From inside the car I can see his woman, she's screaming at me but the windshield blocks her words.  I know what she wants, though, for me to help them. As I rolled past she looked me dead straight in the eyes, her blue eyes, and pleaded for me to do something.  I just know those crystal clear blue eyes followed me the whole way.  Even when I was out of sight, I still felt those blue eyes on me.  I couldn't, they were already gone. Right? I couldn't stop for them. If I had even slowed down, I would have been dead, they would have got me too. Those kids crying, and banging on the rear window, trying to get out, crying.  I won't ever forget it.

Here Kevin started to sob, tears running down his cheeks. Hank reached over and patted him on the back and Kevin grabbed him into a hug and started sobbing, “I just left them! I had to just leave them! How could I leave them, there were kids!”

“Yeah, Kevin, I know, kids, they are the worst. We saw and did worse, you ain’t the only one man, you did what you had to do.”, said Hank, trying to comfort him.

Juan moved over and patted him on the back too, saying “Its okay, its okay.” Looking anxious.

After a bit Kevin calmed down and Hank said, “You wanna go on or do you want to get out of here and finish up later?”

“Will there be a later?”, Kevin asked.

“Maybe you better finish up. See you tell a good story too, longer than mine, but mine ain’t done either.”

“Okay I think I can finish it up. We should get this out now, before we decide what we are going to do. I, uh, kept going up I-70, after the Ward exit it got a lot easier, not so many wrecks, except by Youngsfield and that was on the other side of the highway. I made it up to the hogback, well the bottom of the hill anyway, before it got into the mountains. Hank, it was terrible, like imagine bumper to bumper traffic. Only it is all stopped, every last car. Near the tail end there were cars in the median, cars in both lanes smashed up in both directions. I could see on up the hill and the cars there were still in neat little lines, with what looked like maggots crawling in and around them, only I was far away. As I got closer I stopped, they were zombies you know, crawling inside the cars, under them, over them, through them, like maggots on a piece of meat. The wind shifted a bit and I threw up in the old ladies car, it was that bad. I was still maybe a mile away from the bottom of the real mess, I could still go back or try and turn in the median. I decided to turn around remembering the wreck at the Youngsfield exit. As I did I attracted their attention. The whole mob of them started towards me. Some pretty slow, but a surprising number of them were runners, fast zoms I think I heard Juan call them. Running full tilt all out at me. It is not like they could have caught me or anything, but man it was scary. I swear some of them about touched my rear bumper as I sped off, but I know that can’t be true. I went past Youngsfield when I saw the last one disappear from my rear view. By the time I got back towards my end of town I was thinking I could head east, I-70 or I-76 or maybe north, there was too much town south, you know?

At Ward Road I got off and moved to the 'right' side of the highway, no sense in running head on into another car, not that I saw any moving vehicles on the road. I did see a couple on some of the side streets as I drove by. The hair on the back of my neck started to stand up when I saw the Wadsworth street sign.  As my piece of shat car reaches the top of this little hill I see the blue two door.  It was all pretty much over, I tried not to look, but how can you NOT look. The man was gone, probably totally eaten or a crawler and blue eyes had turned, she was munching down on one of her kids....I don't think the kids were going to come back...there were only parts of them left...guess that's a good thing right?  She stared at me as I rolled past, no screaming this time, other than the screams in my head.  I couldn't look away from her, those blue eyes had slightly changed.  Before there was panic there, now, well, now the panic was gone and was replaced with something else. Something calm and..."

"And what?"  Hank asked, breaking into Kevin's monolog.

"...evil"

“ANYWAY, I can see her in my rearview mirror and she's standing there, licking her fingers, watching me drive away, next thing I know BAM" Kevin smacks his hands together, "I rubbernecked my way into the siderail, twisted the old lady's car around and slid to a stop, but I thankfully I didn't kill the engine.  I backed up and got back on the road, some of the zoms started coming my way, but she didn't.  Nope, blue eyes just stood there, guess she already had enough to eat.

“When I made it back to the next major exit, where that zombie had thrown the doughnut tire at me I was surprised to see a couple of zombies standing about a quarter mile in front of it, just around the corner, I had time to wonder if they were still trying to catch me when I came back to the wreck site. Someone, something, had been busy, alls sorts of shit was piled on the ‘clear’ side of the road, along with maybe a dozen zoms all working pulling more crap off the wrecks to block the good side of the road. Maybe 12 of them had half lifted a little Corolla up onto the center guardrail and were trying to push it the rest of the way over. I hit all the shit in the road and I think I ran over that goddamned donut and it twisted under the car, it didn’t really stop me but man there was a bad grating and scraping sound after I got by, I was almost to Federal when all the idiot lights came on and the car just stopped. Turned off, like and I coasted it up the off ramp to try and find someplace to hide. Not a lot of luck, as soon as I started slowing down, near the top of the off ramp I got the attention of three zoms near the head of the ramp.

I just had an image of all the people on the highway, staying in their cars, waiting to be torn out by a zombie mob. I knew the car was no defense. I grabbed one of the cokes, the bat and was out of the car before it slowly ran into the first of the three zombies. I was in Red Rocks on their Engineer track, something they worked out with the School of Mines, I know how physics works, the mass of the car versus that of the zombie was no contest, the car, even going so slowly won that one, the zombie got pushed into another stalled car, practically smooshed the thing in half, didn’t kill it, but trapped it. The other two were slow, mostly one of them was a bit faster, I don’t think I could have outrun it, not over the long haul. I tried, I ran across the overpass towards the Village Inn and gas station on the other side of the highway, but it was keeping pace with me so I turned and made a stand. It tried to tackle me, but side stepped and smashed it in the back of the head, didn’t kill it though, it started to roll away from me and I followed, smashing it or the pavement with every roll. Eventually it ran into the side of the guardrail and I got it then. The other zom had already given up and was looking at the highway again. I moved to the gas station, at least I was on the same side of the highway as my car now, and only had to go about a mile to where I left it.

I headed off, keeping in lawns and near houses trying to avoid being seen, but I came across a mob of them on the side street, near a bar. I ducked into the back yard of the nearest house and tried to get in the back door. I tried to bust it down, you know, Rambo style, only I bounced, hurt like hell too, a fucking door! I got mad 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 grayhair 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 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, kind bar, 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 50 years old. There was also couch that looked like it came from an old dentist office, a desk with one newer looking office chair on wheels, a coffee table stained with rings and a television stand with a newer Television, probably high def, but not a flat screen, one of those heavy mother fucking flat screens, like I had to help my dad haul into our house. 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, its 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 though not many care that much, we got skin heads and things, but not around here. Still old habit 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 rocksalt shells around here somewhere too. An 8 shot, cut down shotgun, a little illegal too, they don’t make them this way anymore, not with an 8 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. I 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 refriderator, “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 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. Chicago was NOT hit, like I thought it had been, as 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 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 there 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 ladie’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, then I closed the back door and pulled the bag of beer cans over in front of it. I know, I know, that wouldn’t do shit to slow the guy down, but maybe he would trip on the bag and if it happened while I was close I could at least hear him pushing the bag out of the way, right? I edged slowly around the corner of the house to the front, the zombie crowd was still there and if anything it was larger than ever, a few zombies were even in front of Alvin’s place now, I decided not to risk it and went back into Alvin’s backyard, no one was out the back door yet, so I got over his fence into his neighbor’s yard, it was hard, I thought at the time that maybe that bastard had broken a couple of ribs or something. I am damn lucky he didn’t break my back!

Once in the neighbor’s yard I went over his back fence to get to the other row of houses and spent a few minutes looking around for weapons and other fences that would be easier to crawl over. One of the houses had a couple shorty bats in it and I took the longest one, I figured at least I would go down fighting. Then, a few houses down I heard the crunch of a bunch of beer cans and someone cursing. I headed to the side of the house I was on and slowly opened their gate, it squeaked enough to wake the dead, but whitey didn’t hear it, lucky me. Then I ran, back towards where I had ditched the car on Monday, no way I was going to get around the zombie mob and I didn’t know the back streets that well, I could end up lost and trapped in. In fact I was not even sure where I was now, the street I was on could end in a dead end or it might open up on Federal, like I hoped.

For awhile I ran, not even caring, I knew one thing and that was that I did NOT want to meet whitey again. Ever if I could help it. Eventually I hit Federal, I was tempted to go hide out in the car, then I remembered the mob around the car at Alvins’, no way I could chance it. Heck I was closer to my neighborhood, I could go find someplace to hide out for awhile closer to home. I was jogging down Federal when I came across this mountain bike, a real nice one, with saddle bags and everything, looked pretty good, no blood on it or anything, we are talking a thousand dollar bike here. I looked around suspiciously, a few zombies shambled around not too far enough away, slow-zoms though. I picked the bike up. No flat tires as I had feared, nothing wrong with it all as far as I could tell. I got on and started pedaling, whenever I saw zombies I avoided them, I even saw a few faster zombies, some chased me, but the bike was faster than they could run.

I started thinking how funny this was, me riding a bike around town, no shirt, middle of the night. I hadn’t done this since I was a kid, you know? I am not sure why I headed south, but it was always clear, at Colfax I decided to head east, probably not a smart move really as it leads right into the heart of down town, but I figured I would try to get to Colorado Boulevard and head south again, or keep heading east if the way stayed clear. What I didn’t count on was getting so tired, by sunrise I was hardly able to keep pedaling and daylight seemed to make the zoms more active. I looked around for some place to crash after I reached Colfax. Man though that is right where the stadium is though, and it was crowded I had to pick my way through a dozen wrecks and past 10 or 12 zombies, not good. I ended up heading further south until I hit 8th avenue, then I turned east. There was this dry cleaning place that still had power, it had a neon ‘open’ sign still light up, I tried the door, it was unlocked, I pulled the bike in and turned it around, in case I had to make a quick getaway. Then I checked the shop out, it was empty, but there were pieces of bodies in a back room, one that looked like it had been barricaded off from the rest of the shop. I had found an office with a locking door while I was searching the place and decided to hide out there for as long as I needed. On my way back to it I snagged some white t-shirts, looked like employee shirts to me, only no names or anything on them and a couple of huge bundles of clothing to use as a mattress. Once inside the office I locked the door, then shoved the desk in front of it, along with everything else I could move, which was not much considering the pain I had in my back.

I used the bundles of clothing for a mattress as I planned and fell asleep, there was one window in the office, barred on the outside and high up on the wall, it let in light, but I didn’t think anyone would be able to see inside to get a look at me. I woke up in pain, my back was killing me. I searched through the drawers and file cabinets for something to kill the pain, I found some aspirin and Excedrin and took plenty of both, washing it down with some Spanish drink I found in the bottom drawer, it was nasty, tasted like sweet rice drink or something. Then I just sat and waited for the pain to go away. Probably several hours had gone by since I broke in there, another half hour and I felt better, and hungry. There was no food in the office so I was going to have to go out. I had not heard anything while waiting for the aspirin to kick in so I slowly slid the desk back so I could open the door. Only I could hardly move the damn thing, my back hurt so bad! In the end it took me twenty minutes to move the damn thing out of the way and I threw up once. I forced some more aspirin down with the rice drink and moved out into the shop. Everything was the same, except one thing, no bike. Someone had stolen my goddamn bicycle when I was sleeping!

Looking out the front windows I saw the zoms were pretty sparse, across the street was a gas station, but I didn’t have my bat anymore, I vaguely recalled having tucked it into the saddlebags on the bike and not bringing it with me into the office when I slept. In fact I had not even seen what was in those saddle bags, it could have been food, or guns!

Searching the shop I found a metal rod about 3-4 feet long, it had a kind of ‘u’ shape in one end and I think they used it to reach hangers on the upper rack, it didn’t matter it was pretty hefty and actually better than the bat anyway.

I got out quietly, trying not to draw attention to myself as I made my way to the nearest gas station or convenience store. Before log I was outside of a 7-11, but there were zoms inside and out, not too many, but enough to make me nervous. Still I was hungry and need food. As I went for the front door a zombie clawed out from beneath a parked car and grabbed one of my ankles and started trying to pull me under the car. I fell over twitching my back, still I managed to get my foot on the car and pulled my leg out from this thing’s grasp. Of course while I was down, several others started crowding me. I used my rod as a stick and levered myself up. The first zombie died like a piece of cake in a fat man convention, it was gone so quick you wouldn’t have know it ever existed. After that things got dicey. I managed to knock out a couple more and get into the store, then I had to deal with all of the store zombies, while the others crowded around the front door on the outside, not able to ‘pull’ the door open. Stupid zoms!

Inside the store I clubbed the old clerk to death first, the pipe thing worked great, it was thinner than a bat and heavier, plus the end could poke really well, like a spear, even though it was not sharp or anything. The store had, like I said, maybe 5 zombies in there at least and after the first the others were a little easier, I had to put down one chick, man she was hot, had a bunch of wounds, like a shotgun or something, but she was still hot. You maybe understand that I waited to hit her last? Weird huh? Like I am thinking, hey this bitch will snap out of it and ‘be normal’ if she sees me off her friends. No luck there, I went around the store even looking for crawlers, but had to face the reality, the cute chica was gonna keep chasing me around. She was a little faster than most of them too, not much, but a hair, you know?”

Hank and Jaun nodded, yes.

“It seemed like she was like trying to tell me something, her in her baby pink t-shirt coated with dried blood. Short-shorts too, hot. The effect was ruined by the fact she only had on one shoe though, well that and the blood. Eventually I had to just club her.

I looked around the store, pulled open the cash drawer, grabbed the twenties, just in case. Hey I knew then money was worthless, but maybe I would run into someone who wouldn’t know that. Then I grabbed a bunch of candy and chips and headed back to the back room. Then I dropped the trash and came out looking for something with real value, you know, beef jerky, nuts, fruits, anything that was not shit. Eating with Alvin may have been a little boring when we were stuck in the basement, but it was real food, man, not sugar and fat. I took the food and went into the back room, out of sight of the zoms. It took about two minutes before I heard the glass break. I didn’t even go look, just grabbed my Mountain Dew, stuffed the granola bars and jerky in my pants pockets and lit out the back door of the place. Funny thing too, the place was pretty well built, the back door was metal and all, with all these latches and stuff, seemed like it took me 10 minutes to get it unlocked, while I heard them in the front of the store.

“Once out the back, well there was no stopping after that I kept looking for a quick car to grab, hell even a bike. I found a kids bike, like one of those bmx bikes, way too small for me, but I took it and was riding it when I came to Speer, I followed Speer kinda south east, but when it got up to this park area, it was like a zombie fest, a bunch of messed up cars and stuff ahead so I turned down Washington or some other street there, Emerson? I don’t really know, but I had some luck then, I came on these zoms finishing this guy off, three of them, pretty speedy ones too, but they had pulled this dude out of a car and the car was still running! I rode right up to them and swung the metal bar at the lead one, a guy dressed in a grey suit with a red shirt underneath, he had a nice tie too, like a bird or something, silk, nice. We when I swung he raised his hand up and I snapped his arm, just like a twig, went through his arm and smacked him in the head, I swear I heard him holler “SHIT!” as he went over. I lost the bar though, it fell out of my hands when it hit him. I stopped the bike a little after I got past that guy and after hopping off I picked it up and threw it at em. The car was behind me and I backed up until my calves were right on the door, then quickly turned and got in. It was an automatic, my lucky day! I pulled it into forward and hit the gas. The seat was wet, had splotches of blood on it. Disgusting. I checked the rear view, they were not coming after me, barely looked up as I left them in the dust.

I got up to a good through street, Alameda and headed east again, followed that until it turned into Cherry Creek and then just kept on heading south. When I reached Colorado Boulevard I had to stay on Cherry Creek, Colorado was packed. I was lucky again, someone had cleared Alameda through the intersection, looked like they had driven a truck through the entire street, pushing all the cars sideways making a path that I easily drove through.

Cherry creek was pretty clear after that, until I hit, Holly? I think it was Holly. The road kind of turned left real hard and right into a pile up, I was going a little too fast, ha! By a little too fast I mean maybe 30 miles per hour, positively speeding man. I slowed down, but skidded on, skidded on, well some bodies, all pieces and stuff in the road, it made it so slick! I ran right into the bumper of this old white Volvo, well almost into the bumper, I actually hit a couple of slow zombies, kind of cushioned the impact, but I still smacked my head hard on the steering wheel, put a fucking dent in it, the wheel, maybe my head. This old car didn’t have any air bags or nothing, just steering wheel. I think I must have blacked out for a little bit, when I came to it was to see a zombie pulling itself up the hood, only it was trapped between the bumper of my car and the trunk on the Volvo. As I was sitting there all groggy, it started pulling harder, and harder and was separating itself from its own hips, it was not quite able to do it and I started to laugh a bit, then heard a voice next to my ear, just out the window.

“Yeah pretty funny these dumb stupid ones, huh friend?”

I kinda jumped at that, then turned to look and found myself staring at a guy in a mechanic shirt, he was a large man, maybe pushing 250, had on black steel toed boots, oil stained jeans and on the left breast of his shirt was a name “Dave” printed off in red letters. I smiled back and said, “Yeah thank God for the dumb ones.”

‘Dave’ let out a hearty laugh at that and said, “Yeah, friend, thank God for the dumb ones!”

He helped me get out of the car, the door was wedged shut, and I could not push it open, but Dave grabbed and pulled while I was shoving the door and between us we got the door open. As he gave me a hand out, he pointed back into the car, “Don’t forget your bat.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but when I looked back in I saw a bloody bat on the seat, it must have belonged to the guy who had the car before me. I reached in for it and pulled it out with me. Turning in time to catch a fist to the face, it about knocked me out, only the fact that I was kind of moving up saved me from taking the blow full force on. Still it knocked me back into the car and then on my ass. ‘Dave’ reached down, grabbed my right ankle and started pulling me across the street. I was groggy, a bit, but I heard him say, “Yeah, buddy, thank God for the dumb ones.”

Only I didn’t let go of the bat, that mother fucker, dragging me across the street, he thought he had knocked me out, ya know, and he mostly had, only I was not going down without a fight. He pulled me up over the curb and across the parking lot of the local Safeway. I kept thinking, “No way, this is not happening.” As we got closer to the front door I could see a mob of zombies and the door, it had a chain around the handles, so they could not get out, I was just thinking, I knew! That this bastard was going to feed me to this mob. Why? Why!?

I gripped the bat and when the guy paused for a rest, I swung it up and around, hitting him in the knee, he went down pretty quick and rolled away, now any other guy you hit em in the knee like that, even half as hard as I did and they would be grabbing at it, cussing me out. Ole Dave, he just rolled away and onto his hands and knees and he sat there like that for a second, looking over at me, then he smiled, something in his eyes man, his eyes were like red, and I saw then, he was one of them. He started getting up, I scrambled to my feet, still a little woozy and we ended up on our feet about the same time, I shouted at him, “WHY? Why you dumb mother fucker? What are you doing?”

He kinda looked at me again and said, “Man, the kids. It’s the kids. They are hungry and the more I feed them the better they behave.”

Then he moved, he moved so fast! He came at me from the right, then he was there on the left, hitting me in the ribs and pushing me backwards. I almost fell, if I had, I wouldn’t be here right now, he would have got me. When I flailed around I managed to hit him with the bat pretty hard, glanced off his shoulder and into his head, not a killing blow, but it spun him around, he kept right on going and backhanded me. I turned it into a running start and took off, no way I could go hand to hand with him, he was tough, but maybe with him a bit lamed up, I could out run him. I looked back after running about half a block, and he was pacing me, sure enough limping a little, not much for a guy with a broken leg though.

I turned and started running again, south, south, south as far and as fast as I could go, I would run a ways, then try and rest, then run more. I kept an eye out for cars or bikes, and of course for any zombies, I had to make a few detours too, then those faster zoms got on my tail, they dogged me for a long way, until I ran into you guys, in fact. You pulled me up and I was so tired, so tired. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t say, ‘Thanks’.”

“Aw now…”, started Hank.

“No really, thank you! I mean you guys saved my life and I owe you, I will help you out from here on out, forever really, if you don’t mind me coming along?”, here Kevin looked up anxiously.

Hank looked at him real hard and after Kevin swallowed he said, “No doubt about that Kevin, you can stick with us as long as you want to or forever for that matter. Safety in numbers.”

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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