Hank and Juan's Story

Making ‘what the fuck’ faces at each other Juan turned his attention back to the hallway, the door at the end was propped over a little, Juan could make out an arm on the floor holding it from shutting completely. He took careful aim at the side of the door and when the voice started again he fired. The voice started laughing and said, “I am not that dumb, you are mine, little Mexican, I will feast on your guts and when you die I am gonna feed them to you too. You will be my slave!”

Looking at the walls Juan could tell they were made of drywall, he slowly lowered the shotgun and picked up Mary’s 30-06, saying to Charlie, “You got her ready to go yet?”

Juan silently estimated where a person would stand at beyond the door while the zombie rambled on about making Juan eat his girlfriend and then would tell him everything about where they came from. Juan was squeezing the trigger when the voice taunted, “You would be mine too, you know I can make any zombies I create do what I want them to do, just like my master can do the same with me and I am one of the early ones you poor, dumb, fuck. You don’t even know who you are messing with, lucky you got me, my master went to deal with that DJ, otherwise you would already be dead!”

“Master? So you are just a fucking punk then?”, shouted Juan.

A heavy fist pounded on the right hand side of the door, denting it through both layers, and giving Juan the side of the door his adversary stood on.

“Punk! I’ll show you punk when I am feeding you your own di-“

Juan’s shot rang out projected where the thought the things head would be at through the drywall of the hallway. Everything fell silent.

Charlie, whispered, “Did you get him?”

Shrugging, Juan replied, “I gotta go see, get your gun and watch me from here.”

Charlie told Mary to stay where she was, but he wheeled her around with her head pointed towards the door and handed her his pistol off the stainless steel tray, so she could cover him while he covered Juan.

Juan crept down the hallway, through the propped open doorway he heard a shuffling sound, the other side of the doorway was not dark, it was well light and cheery, peeking through the door propped open by a severed arm Juan was able to see a set of feet kicking out frantically on the floor, he did not see any other zombies in the hallway beyond, he slowly eased open the door and looked at the youthful zombie in front of him. He saw that the 30.06 round had come through the wall and hit the zombie in the back of the head, at the base of the skull a little off center. The zombie was trying to move his arms and legs, but seemed unable to control his movements, his skull, Juan noticed was healing, though more slowly than his leg had earlier. Pointed Mary’s rifle at the zombie’s head Juan said softly, “You were saying?”

The zombie muffled a few garbled words out, Juan said, “I couldn’t hear you? Couldn’t understand, maybe my English is not that good?”

The zombie looked up at him in rage and what Juan saw next would have his hair raising up on the back of his neck for the rest of his life when ever he thought of it, the zombies eyes glowed. Despite the bright lights, the zombies eyes became brighter than the surrounding light and the thing started to rise up off the floor, not using its hands or legs at all. Startled Juan jerked back on the trigger sending a bullet into the things brain and ending its second life. Checking all the hallways in all directions Juan waved at Charlie and called out softly, “It looks all clear now, You get Mary out to the truck I am gonna run through a few places and see if I can find any more of them deeper inside.” After saying this Juan ducked through the door and disappeared.

“No! Come back Juan!”, shouted Charlie. Juan disappeared into the building. Once the door came back to rest on the severed old arm that had been holding it up Juan set off at a jog towards the elevators. He opted to take the stairs and was almost to the second floor with his walkie-talkie sputtered to life.

“Juan! Its Jack. Charlie came out of the ER screaming for help, that you ran off, what the hell are you doing?”

Slowly Juan pulled the walkie-talkie to his lips and said, “I am doing what has to be done, we gotta know Jack, we gotta have a better idea. Give me 5 minutes, it’ll take Charlie that long to get Mary squared away, okay?”

“No goddamnit! We can come back again later with more men!”

“I think it is empty Jack, I think there are not any of them in the building, the fast zombie pushed them all into the ER, I think. Just let me check.”

“Fuck no! We can check later! Goddamn it Juan!”

He was not sure why he wanted to see what else was in the hospital, but he felt compelled to continue his journey. On the second floor he saw several signs directing him to various parts of the building, looking up he grimaced, one word stuck out at him and he knew he had to go there.

“Jack, stop, listen!”, after Jack stopped talking, Juan continued, “Stop and listen to me. I know why I gotta go, I know now I gotta go check something out. The second floor seems cleared of them okay?”

“What do you gotta check all alone? Just wait, I will catch up, okay? I can catch up with you and can go with you? Goddamnit Juan if something happens to you Hank will kill me! And he would have to stand in line behind Nanci! Just wait! Where are you?”

“On the second floor go through the doors to your left towards the elevators, I took the stairs up to the second floor. I am heading toward the maternity ward. Okay amigo?”

“Aw, Juan, no man, no! You know they eat everything, don’t do this Juan!”, protested Jack.

Juan put the walkie-talkie back on his belt and turned the volume way down so he would not have to listen to Jack as he pushed his way through several sets of doors between him and his goal.

He moved along swiftly, but as quietly as he could, Juan had a suspicion, he could not tell where it came from, but he had a gut feeling that the babies were still alive. He made his was around the last corner to the maternity ward and saw a lone zombie standing outside of a traditional baby viewing area, the zombie turned towards Juan and his eyes started glowing a faint orange, easier to see here under purely florescent lighting. Juan felt something stirring inside him, an urge to fun, lay down, sleep, run, flashing through his mind in quick succession. His anger grew as he forced himself forward, a primal scream tore itself from his throat and he hip fired the 30.06 at the beast in front of him, striking it in the shoulder. The wound, unsurprisingly, healed almost instantly, as did the second one Juan put in its guts. The second wound however tore its way out through the thing’s spinal column and it lurched sideway for a second, during which time Juan felt the compelling presence in his mind abate completely. Using his anger to keep the thing out of his head he propelled himself forward where the thing was now levitating a slight inch or so above the floor.

Juan made as if he were going to swing the rifle as a baseball bat, barrel end out, as he did so the zombie grabbed the barrel and jerked it, with an incredible amount of strength, out of Juan’s hands. Which was fine with Juan, in fact he did not even resist the thing grabbing the rifle away from him and its over zealous grab and pull turned the zombie around from a lack of resistance. Juan, meanwhile pulled the pistol from his belt, brought it up and fired three shots point blank into the back of the things head.

It went down silently and Juan stepped over it and fired another three shots into its head, yelling as he did so. Behind him he heard the doors swinging open and he saw Jack pelting towards him, shotgun at the ready, he backpedaled when he saw Juan and his feet slipped on the smooth, still clean and sanitary floors and went out from under him. He landed on his butt and said, “Wha-what-what the fuck was that! What happened to your eyes Juan!”

Juan stood there for a second, contemplating things, then said, “Nothing, nothing Jack, I am okay amigo. I just found this one here and I think the babies are alive. What did it look like to you?”

“No-nothing, just for a second though, it looked like your eyes were glowing, kinda yellowish or something. Must have been a trick of the light.”, he said in a tone of voice indicating it was not a trick of the light.

Getting up and dusting himself off he pointed into the babies room, the window was splattered with black ichor and cracked, but Juan could still see inside the room. Not only were most of the beds filled, but crouching down among the babies were their mothers, nurses, doctors and various other people, all of whom were looking at Juan as if he were some sort of God.

“C’mon amigo. Juan?”, Jack asked tentatively from behind Juan, getting up to his feet as he did so.

“Look.”, said Juan, pointing through the splattered and cracked glass into the baby ward.

“Shit, I see, man, I see. Aw fuck. Remind me not to bet against your ‘gut feelings’.”

Jack pulled out his radio, while Juan looked for a way in. One of the few men not dressed in hospital garb came to the glass and yelled, “Through there, but they got 3 of the husbands they turned into zombies in there too, they can’t get in, we can’t get out.”

Nodding grimly Juan went to the indicated door and looked back at Jack.

Meanwhile Jack had contacted Terry and filled her quickly in on the situation. He put the walkie talkie back on his belt and moved over to cover Juan. Once he was in position Juan asked him, “You ready?”

Jack answered, “Si.”, and Juan pulled the door open. The zombies were in a small room that looked like a nurses station and had a counter dividing it into two halves. All the zombies were on the same half of the room as Juan and the only other door leading out of this place, the one to the maternity room proper.

Jack watched as Juan popped the door open, pulled his rifle into position and rapid fired three shots into the narrow half of the room before Jack even had a good idea of what was in there. He said to himself, “Holy FUCK!” and Juan looked back at him while his hands automatically popped the magazine out of the 30-06 and reloaded it of their own accord. Juan’s look was one of questioning.

“Did I say that out loud?” Juan nodded ‘yes’ to him. “Well what the fuck was that? What happened to you? I mean talk about fast, you were all matrixy man, you had the door open and those zoms down before I even SAW the zoms. What the hell happened to you?”

The door at the end of the hallway opened up and several men and woman began running towards the two men, hailing them as heros.

Jack held up his hands and said, “Whoa, whoa, people calm down here! We were just checking this place out, we were glad to save you, right Juan? Happy to do so!”

The small crowd forced its way into the hallway, with everyone clapping Juan and Jack on the back before heading to the rest rooms down the hall, a man in scrubs explained it had been awhile since they had been given ‘bathroom’ breaks. Jack, concerned ran ahead of the crowed and cleared both bathrooms before letting anyone in, then he stationed himself at one end of the hall while Juan stood at the other. Jack knew he was supposed to be watching for zombies sneaking up on them, but his eyes kept being drawn back to Juan, who was standing larger than life at the other end of the hall. As the men and women finished in the bathroom they seemed drawn to Juan as well before long the entire crowd, Jack included had gravitated close to Juan.

The walkie-talkie on Jack’s belt crackled to life, “Hey buddy, what is the situation there?”, came Terry’s voice.

Jack pulled his up and responded, “Hey Terry, we got about 10, no 11 adults and.. Uh doc? How many babies? Oh. Okay we got 12 kids, the doc says they can’t move 3 of them, they were premies and need the equipment.”

“Shit. So what do we do? Hold on the cell phone is ringing, Mother Goose is calling for their status report. I will tell them the situation and see what they recommend.”

A few minutes later Terry got back on the Motorola and said, “Can we hold out here and wait for a relief column with food and the walking wounded?”

Relief poured into Jack, and he was immediately ashamed because of it, however the mere thought of not having to leave the hospital again made him feel better, he answered, “Sure, the ammo is low, but we can barricade the ER doors, check the other entrances and do a quick sweep of the hospital to see what we can see. Plus some of these guys are pretty able bodied, they could handle bats at least and maybe some of them are shooters. How is the crowd outside?”

“Minimal, we aren’t shooting them, just clubbing them if they get too close. Mary is helping and she is bitching about her sore arms again, maybe she will be okay, eh?”

“Yeah, sure thing, I mean Charlie dumped a gallon of disinfectant on her right away, I am sure she will still be bitching about sore arms tomorrow. I will go over to the other side of this floor and see if the mob is still following us back up the hill, then I will come down, help you secure the doors and bring you up here.”

“10-4 and out.”

Juan and the other adults looked at him and Jack found himself taking charge, first he determined that none of the men, or women, had any experience with firearms, however almost all of them had been in youth sports and some of them still did adult recreation to this day, and could easily handle a bat or club of some sort. A couple of the women were new mothers and while modern medicine said they should be up and moving quickly, common sense said they should rest and recover, so he put them, the two doctors and three nurses back in the nurses station and the maternity ward. He took the other four people he had classified as adults and got them to work clearing the bodies out of the nurses station and moving the last man Juan had shot down the hall towards the ER. After that he took one of the ‘men’, a kid named John, who was just an older teenager really, with him to try and get a look outside the north side of the building. His goal was to see if any large groups of zombies were headed their way. They encountered no zombies, but did find several more corpses with bashed or single shot head wounds along the way.

“Say John, was there a fight at the hospital?”, asked Jack pointing at the latest victim.

“Uh, no, no, the zombies were kind of organized, um, they had a leader guy and he was uber scary, like a big demon, I friggin pissed myself with I saw him, he was like telling them what to do and everyone did it. He left, like this morning, told us he had to go kill a relief column and shut the radio dj up for good. You hear the dj?”

Nodding his head, Jack said, “Yeah, who hasn’t, Blake the snake, broadcasting 24/7 until the zombies get his brain. One brave mother-fucker if you ask me. On what WWEB?” “Yeah, thats the guy! They let us play it, but they laughed at us a lot, you know? Hey, Jack, what happened to Juan?”

“Dunno. You were gonna tell me about these deaders though?”

“I mean his eyes, they like...”, Seeing Jacks face, John paled and continued, “Yeah, um, right, this leader guy, he was saying that they had to keep us ‘meat’, that’s what he called us, ‘meat’, alive and not make any more zombies when they fed, there were already too goddamn many, though he sort of implied that most of them would be ‘used’ up in something big coming up. He did this then, when they ate, they drained the blood, ate bits of the body and then bashed the heads in or shot them so they would not turn.”

“This leader guy, he say anything else? Like where he came from or anything?”

“Ah, Disney Land.”

“What?!”

“No shit, no I mean really that is what he said, he said, ‘My master sent me from Florida, not too far from Disney Land, to take over Denver.’ He was totally talking to the doctor, but all of us heard it. Doc McAfee had a good conversation with him. That was back when there were like, 80 of us though. The leader guy he kept feeding us, to the other zombies to make them stronger, better, smarter. He never said why this worked, but we could all see it working.”

For a few minutes both men were quiet as they made their way down a wing of the hospital to peer out the northern windows. Looking out into the afternoon heat Jack was relieved to see only a smattering of zombies wandering around the hospital grounds.

“Jack, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure John, shoot.”

“Have you seen what happened to Juan before?”

“No John, I haven’t.”

“So you don’t know what it means?”

“No John, I don’t.”

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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