Hank and Juan's Story

Jack walked up to the men in the recliners, “You talking about me again Hank? I suppose I am not gonna see much in the way of chronic demand for awhile huh? Well no worried man, I have seeds and the market it going to be wide open, who’s gonna worry about a little happy plant when you have blood sucking zombies chasing you down? Doc said you might want to talk to me about the bitten we are keeping in the parking lot.”

“We-ell I kind of did, how are you keeping them there?”

“We got a chain link fence roll from across the street and set it up with posts on the concrete, welded the posts together out of angle irons and other fencing, it is not zombie proof, just, but when they turn we try to get to them before they gnaw on anyone else. That wasn’t what doc said that had me curious though, he said something about you running into a guy who got bit, but didn’t turn?”

“Yeah, not directly that was Kevin, he ran into an old man who got bit the same as the man’s old lady, she died and turned, he did not. I was hoping you could keep an eye out maybe, see if any of the others don’t turn?”

“I want to Hank, but it is mess, a mess. For example a family comes in right, dad and son number one got bit getting them away from a mob somewhere, mom and the two other kids didn’t get bit. I want to let them in, but only if dad and son go into the fence until we figure out how to stop them from dying. Mom and kids don’t want that, either they go into the fence with them or dad and son don’t go into the fence or they all just leave and go elsewhere. What do I do? I send them elsewhere it is a death sentence, I put the non-infected in with the infected and they are at risk, who knows maybe you can get this shit by contact or breathing the same air? I don’t put the bitten in the holding area and we WILL have zombies in the building. Several of the ones in the holding have turned and I only set this up this morning.”

“So you enforce the rule then? Bitten in the pen, otherwise move on? That makes sense to me. No? What?”, asked Hank.

“I sorta told some of them that the people leading us would decide what to do with the bitten.”

“Yeah, who’s leading us? What did they say?”

Jack burst out laughing and merely pointed at Hank, saying, “We nominated you!”

“What? Me? For Christ’s sake why? I never led anything in my life, I am just a worker bee!”, turning to Juan, Hank asked him, “Did you know?”

“Si, it just happened.”, Juan replied while shrugging his shoulders.

“Yeah, um, we know, most of us are just workers too, in our own way, ya know? Everybody thinks you are pretty fair and even tempered, plus you were out, everyone else we tried to nominate hollered and declined, you couldn’t fight back.”

Hank sputtered a bit, “Wha-wah-what? You nominated me because I was unconscious and could not say no?”

A half circle of women, a few men and a dozen kids was gathering around Hank.

Juan waved Jack quiet and answered, “Si, it was easier, you know though, your name came up first, then we batted around a bunch of others, we kept coming back to you, jefe. If it makes it any easier they pegged me as vice-jefe, Jack, Doc and old man Gonzales are on the ‘board’. You make the big decisions, I can make littler ones the board can overrule us by a two to one majority. Plus each board member has an area they are responsible for, Jack has security, Doc has, well, medical and sanitary stuff, Gonzales has ‘resources’, which is like food, clothing, anything not involving guns and medicines.”

Hank looked at the hopeful faces in front of him, the silence lingered for a few seconds as he looked around, as he looked at the faces, he was thinking. Hank was not a leader, he knew it, he could barely lead his crew in fixing a car, he had no desire to lead a bunch of Mad Max refugees into the future. Thinking he wondered who would be better? Almost anyone, he had no plan, just stay low at the Club and wait until the authorities showed up to save them. True, it had been his idea to come to the club, he had told Juan, Juan told the whole damn neighborhood and they all ended up here, with their cars, most prized possessions and family and intact. He could understand why they had the wrong impression that he would make a good leader, he guessed. This was not a job he wanted, someone else would have to take on the chief role if they ended up being stuck in this situation for very long. Still Hank was a talker, he could reason with most people, work out deals, maybe it would not be so bad, for a couple weeks. Finally he said, “Okay I got a few problems, but okay I will do my best.” The people cheered and surged forward to shake his hand and pat him on the back, after a few minutes Hank raised up his hands and called for everyone to be quiet, “Whoa! Whoa! Slow down a bit, let me get a word in here, I said I got a few problems and as you made me your ‘Jefe’, I need to get a few things out there on the floor. First off, you all elect me while I am out, I suppose that is okay, I can see a need to fill the position quickly. Then, though you set up the board, but people there are not any women on it. I am not a genius or anything, but I think we need to have at least one womanly vote on the board from the get go, don’t you?”

“Hm, two.”, said Juan, “We kind of think that having an odd number on the board is important, so we get a couple women on the board to serve. Dios knows we have enough other areas to cover, I am thinking ‘Zales could use a hand, divide his stuff up a bit more?”

“Yeah this bares some thinkin’ on, me and you and maybe the rest of the board could spend five minutes working it out, you think? I don’t want no long-assed meetings and bureaucracy, if we are going to do things over again, we are going to do them better than before.”, Hank kind of wanted to get back to the fenced in bitten people in the parking lot, but was having a hard time thinking of a way to steer the conversation back that way then he said, “Okay Jack, we still got to discuss the guys in the pen. What about the whole parking lot? How do we keep zombies off the pen, I mean if they can see it the zoms will just head right to it, if we start firing guns to kill them, that will attract more zombies, then we will have an all out war, right?”

The crowd slowly started disbursing, several people stayed around to see what their new leader would say, the kids all got back to being children, except Cage who clambered back up into Hank’s chair with him.

“Hank we have moved the cars in the lot to the outer edge of the parking lot. Put them bumper to bumper so that the zombies have to crawl over or under them to get by. The lot is pretty big and we used the wrecker that Ted got from his work to move the cars into position. Now we have started closing off the main streets, putting cars right up to the buildings to expand our ‘territory’, by tonight I think we will have the walls far enough out to keep the slow zoms from being able to see the parking lot entirely. The fence is just outside the exit, so the people cannot be seen by anything at the back. The back though, it a problem, it is a ravine, but not deep enough to keep the zoms from crossing it. We still lined cars up back there, but it is not enough to keep them from reaching the building or the dock. Some of the boys think that we can block the street off on the other side of the ravine, but that won’t solve everything, there is a bike path on the other side of the creek too. We can block that off pretty easy, but it won’t stop everything.”

“So we maybe need to move? How many people are here now?”, asked Hank.

“I don’t know Hank, to either question. The doc, he has opinions on the matter, wants us to move to the University of Colorado Hospital, up on Colorado Boulevard. Or maybe that newer facility further south, Sky Ridge. Me? I don’t know it is like 12 miles to University and only 4 or so to Sky Ridge, but Doc says Sky ridge may not have everything we need medically, he thinks we will need and run out of the supplies they have in their ER pretty quickly. He didn’t see to want to go there, real negative on it and all. I think Sky Ridge is a better bet, from what he describes it is in suburbia, surrounded by landscaping and pretty big, there will be grocery stores not too far off to raid and stuff. As for the people, we have over 200 now, but I can’t say how many. We have, well had ten minutes ago, 22 people in the pen with bites too.”

“Well probably you should have the doc come over here when he gets time, as I am not supposed to be moving around much. Go get a head count if you can. If people won’t consent to penning their bitten family/friends, then they have to move on, make it clear you think they are dumbasses for leaving, try to get them to stay, we know, right now, that the bitten will turn, maybe not all of them, but lets make out like they all will. As for the penned, if the Doc ain’t working them over with disinfectant and such, maybe we could assign his nurse, Beth, I think? To teach some of the boys to clean the wounds until they bleed again? At least it will look like we are trying, and maybe more won’t turn, talk to Kevin, maybe he knows more about the guy who didn’t turn after he was bit that he didn’t tell me. Ask around if anyone else knows of people unaffected by the bites. Oh and Jack?”

Jack who had been turning to leave, turned back and looked questioning at Hank.

“You are going a good job with the cars and keeping things going, thanks. Watch out for any super zombies, they will eventually get guns, I bet.”

Nodding Jack waved and headed off towards the front of the store. Juan sat looking at Hank and eventually Hank turned stopped ignoring him and turned to look at him. Juan had a huge smile on his face. “Cut it out Juan, you are right here with me and don’t think for a second I will ever forget you getting me into this mess.”

Juan gulped, then recovered and grinned again and said, “Si amigo. You know we almost had some racial problems?”

“What? Already? Don’t people have better things to do? What happened?”

“You are tired, I should let you rest, but I gotta tell you, it is a good story really, ends well. We had us eighty people in here, then all the others started showing up, from what I was told, a mix mostly of whites and Hispanics, a couple Black people. Well they started settling in and went towards like, you know, white guy comes in, heads towards white people, Hispanics did the same. Jack noticed, got a little pissy about it. Went and talked to everybody, made them mingle. You know what happened then?”

“Fist fight?”

“No, no! They did, they picked their shit up and crowded in as a group. You believe that?”

“Not for a minute. What did Jack really do?”

“Really he just talked to them. I could not believe it myself. Now when people come in, they can stay with people they came with, but are mixed in with everyone else. Jack is pretty good.”

“Sounds like he should be Jefe to me, think I can dump it off on him?”

“No, no way, he made that pretty clear, he said he likes the idea of being a warrior, head of the military, but he thinks our government did THAT right, at least, put the civilian head of the government in charge of the military.”

“I think he means soldier. A warrior fights on his own, like a gladiator, a soldier fights as part of a unit. Which is why soldiers win battles and warriors, individuals, lose them. Still I could have protested louder than him, had I been given the chance.”, Hank grumbled sleepily.

“Oh we know Hank, we know, that is why we did it how we did, amigo.”

Cage had settled in for a nap and Hank roughed his hair up a bit and leaned back himself.

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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