Hank and Juan's Story

“Dave didn’t show eh? Maybe he lost interest?”, remarked Hank after the boy’s wailing had subsided to a dull roar.

“No, Hank, no. That mother fucker is back there, or in front of us now, but he is around, I just know it.” Watching for awhile Kevin eventually pointed back, “Yeah, that’s him, he just came through the hole in the wreck pile we passed through, he is stopping to look it over now. Go Juan, maybe we can lose him!”

Juan pushed the pedal down, but the old fiesta did not go much faster, it was seriously damaged by the trip through the wrecks and it had not been in that good of shape to begin with. Every second it seemed like the little car was going to rattle apart. Fortunately theirs was the first and next exit and they arrived at it a couple of minutes later, they exited with no problem and pulled under the highway to where Juan let the car stop and idle quietly. A minute later they heard the motorcycle approach, then drive over them and onwards past them.

“That easy?”, asked Hank, “Think we got lucky and gave him the slip?”

“Shh”, urged Kevin, both towards Hank and the kids. “I don’t hear anything. You ready to go?”

“Si, lets wait a few minutes.”, replied Juan, so they sat for five minutes, attracting the attention of a slow zom, when it was about to touch the car Juan eased into gear and drove quietly off, going north on South Parker road. Coming out from under the highway they went about a half a mile before Kevin let out a long “Shit!”

“He was doubling back! Fuck! If we would either have gone sooner or waited another three minutes we would have slipped him! Dammit!”

“Couldn’t have know Kevin, we couldn’t have known.”, Hank mumbled, he was feeling lightheaded and a bit groggy, almost faint he thought. He turned to Juan and tried to say, “I think I am going to faint.”

Juan heard Hank mumble and then saw him sag over against the door, the shotgun stayed where Hank had it, propped up on the dash pointed out the front windshield. The windshield was not completely broken out, just shattered, so firing it like that would not have been a good idea, but this left the gun easily able to move towards either window.

The road was pretty clear so Juan put his foot down and tried to get more speed out of the car. Kevin noticed, glanced at Hank and said nothing. He did, however put his hand on the girl’s head and rub her hair, trying to comfort her.

Soon enough Juan turned west onto E. Broncos Parkway, the road was scenic and curvy, leading up to the Centennial Airport, it was also relatively clear, the fiesta got up to about 35 miles per hour and finally the road turned into Peoria Street. After passing Arapahoe Road and navigating around a four car pile up, Juan saw a large red towel hanging out of the side of a car, the end rolled up into the window of the car. He sped up and and tried to nurse the Fiesta to something higher than 35 mph, it was no good though, another mile and they would be at the Mike’s Club store, so the ambush had to be close by. Juan didn’t see anyone, however when the motorcycle passed by the car with the towel a hail of gunfire erupted from the roofs of the buildings on the east side of the street. Juan wanted to slow down and watch, but his worry about Hank made him keep going, he knew his family and neighbors well and they would take care of that Diablo who had been tailing them.

He made it to the Mike’s Club without any further difficulty, meeting his wife’s cousin in the parking lot, who pointed him towards the side of the store, where a garage bay door opened up when he approached. He drove the Fiesta in and faster than any zombie Juan had seen so far he was pulled out of the car and into Nanci’s embrace. She kept rubbing his hair and checking his body for wounds and then would stop and hug him, before checking him yet again. Juan’s neighbor, Alonzo, was pulling Hank out of the side door, yelling for the doctor and nurse as he did so. Finally seeing this Nanci left Juan and went to Hank’s side nervously. The two children were pulled out and distributed among the women and older girls, and they were crying again. Kevin tried to stand off on his own, not used to this sort of display, but he was pulled in by the group and hugged like everyone else, whether he wanted to be or not.

A few minutes later a group of men came through the service door from the main area of the Mike’s Club, they had rifles and other assorted pistols and Juan looked up at them anxiously, trying to judge their mood. The leader caught Juan’s eye and tilted his head off to the side of the garage, Juan edged that direction and the man, Jack, said, “Hey Juan, good to see you man!”

Jack was a neighbor of Juan’s, he had the looks of a person who had been ridden hard and put away wet, as the expression goes, he was about 34 years old, give or take a year, was maybe 5 foot 11, had dark brown hair, brown eyes, fairly smooth skin and usually sported an unshaven look that was popular in the early eighties. He was also slightly overweight, it showed a lot more in his face and legs than around his belly, one thing Juan noted was that the usual dark bags of skin under his eyes were not there. He had moved into the neighborhood years ago and professed to be a student at Denver University, “A Law student”, Juan thought. Eventually he got too old to be a student anymore and survived on ‘odd jobs’, which probably met selling quarter bags at the local college. The neighbors knew he was dealer and tolerated him for two reasons, first after a little discussion with him about keeping up his yard, he complied and kept it up as nice as everyone else’s and second, another part of the same ‘keep your yard clean’ talk, Jack agreed not to sell out of his house. Once those conditions were met everyone got along a lot nicer, heck they had even passed the hat to bail him out when he got caught with two ounces in a bust. Juan even broke into his house and cleared out his real stash before the cops came to search for it. Being a good neighbor sometimes met sacrificing things. Among other things Jack was not big on lying, early on, for instance, when Juan had asked him if he sold drugs, he had just looked at Juan nodded and said, “Yeah, man’s gotta make a living.” While they never became really good friends, Jack had shown Juan where he kept his stash, just in case something ever happened to him. It ended up being the only thing that kept Jack out of prison and he had been trying to show his gratitude, not only to Juan but to everyone, every chance he could since his arrest two years ago.

“Juan. Bad mother, that guy on the bike.”, said Jack.

“Si. You get him?”

“No he got away, we must have hit him 10, 12 times, he was fast, got his bike turned up onto the sidewalk and still we shot at him. I know we got his bike too, it was smoking pretty bad, and both tires were flat, but he somehow kept it up and moving until he was a couple blocks back the way he had come, then he dumped it and ran off. Limping, but alive. You know who he was?”

“Si, ‘Dave’, a bad one, pretty strong.”, Juan looked over to see the doc arrive and start looking over Hank on the ground. “Mal suerte that you didn’t get him, he needed getting.”

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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