Hank and Juan's Story

John spotted the convoy first, when he did he excitedly yelled out, “Juan! There they are Juan! Do you see em?”

Juan was in the bathroom, which had a window, however he was sitting down and could not see very well out the window, let alone back along the road leading to the hospital, “No. I don’t see them, I am on the toilet! Jesus wept! Call it in to Jack, let them know they are coming, okay?”

“Sure thing, sure!”, pulling the walkie talkie of off his belt he pressed the send button and said, “I can see them Jack, they are pulling up the street now. Juan is on the pot, so I am calling to let you know.”

Some laughter came back at John a moment later as Jack replied, “Thanks, well open the doors for them and tell Juan not to rush things, cleanliness is next to godliness, right?”

John looked puzzled for a second and looked at Juan as he came through the bathroom door, “What did he mean by that? God that guy is so weird sometimes!”

“Si. Don’t worry about it. Next time though you don’t have to mention I am on the pot, right?”

John’s face blushed as realization dawned on him, then he turned quickly to look out the window again with a clipped nod. “Say, Juan, you guys got a humvee, eh? That must be nice, you run into military guys then?”

Turning to look, Juan shook his head slowly, “No, no they didn’t when we left, maybe someone came in or something, I better tell Jack, make sure it is who we think it is.” Putting his lips near the talkie he said, “Jack.”

On the other end, Jack answered, “Juan old pal, you all buttoned up already?”

“Good to go. Jack one of the vehicles coming up is a hummer? Did we have a hummer that I didn’t see at the club?”

“What? No! No I don’t think so. Aw hell Juan you don’t think they are bad guys do you?”

Peering at the vehicles closely Juan watched for a few seconds, shaking his head he answered, “Not bad guys, they look okay to me, but they have lots of guns and stuff, you better try and call them on the cell before they get to much closer!”

“Affirmative, right away!”, the walkie talkie went silent for a few minutes while John and his Spanish counter part watched the convoy approach with trepidation.

“Its them Juan! Its them! They picked up a straggler, but its okay!”, Jack’s voice brought welcome news over the walkie-talkie.

“Gracias a Dios!”, Juan muttered quietly, then said, “Good, glad to hear it, me and John will stay here until you send someone for us, okay, just to keep a couple eyes out.”

“Yeah, as planned anyway, well send someone up there to relieve you soon, we have to figure out how we are going to procede, probably me and a couple other guys will come up and we’ll shoot the shit about it in 15 or so, okay?”

“Yeah, super, we’ll be waiting.”, Juan said, turning to John he continued, “You still got that deck of cards you found?”

Closer to twenty minutes later Jack showed up with Nanci, a man in an Army uniform and no one else. The man in the uniform looked a bit shabby, he was shaved, but the uniform was a little big on him. He was wearing a military style cap, though he had a kelvar helmet hanging off of his belt. He was also dressed in full body armor, which may have contributed to making his uniform seem overly large. His hair was not close cropped in a crew cut, just a normal looking haircut. His face was tanned, not Hispanic and he had brown eyes. His eyes conveyed the look that Juan was familiar with these days, Sylvia had the same look, so had Kevin. The 2000 yard stare of a man who had seen so much his mind was no longer quite focusing on the hear on now, so much as the ‘there and then’. Juan had only a second to take this in before Nancie grabbed him by the neck and kissed him, she then started hugging him tight, while whispering endearments and praises to God that he was alive. The look on Jack’s face told Juan the other man had news, and that it was not good. After a few seconds Jack cleared his voice and said, “Just us, we’ll decide, three chiefs is enough for he tribe, no use making it a committee and taking a vote on it. Juan this is Ted Jenkins, Ted, Juan and John.”The men shook hands all around, “John you and Ted get to watch and see how we do things, if you have anything constructive to add, jump in and say something.”, turning to John he said, “You might know parts of the hospital better than we do, did you work here or were you visiting?”

“I had part time hours here after school, they called me in when there were some no shows for work. I just swept the floors.”, replied John.

“Good enough, you know the main hallways and can help us figure out where to go. I want to basically try and isolate the cafeteria, maternity ward and ER, if we can keep these places clear it will make it easier to eat and escape if we have to. Of course the guys back at the warehouse will get a call if there are any problems. Doc tells me they are getting another load of vehicles working now if we need reinforcements. They sent over twelve men, plus we got Ted and his two more guardsmen.”, pausing he pulled a box of ammunition out of his jacket and handed it to Juan, “Oh they sent a ton of shotgun ammo, you might want these, huh?”, Juan took the shells, opened the box and for awhile while they were talking he busied himself tucking the shells into all his pockets.

“Okay, John, any thoughts on how to block the hallways or anything between the areas we want to isolate and the rest of the hospital?”, asked Jack.

John thought for a moment, rubbed his chin and said, “Yeah, the fire doors! We can just shut and lock them from the central panel, I think Tim has a key and knows how to do that, he can shut the maternity ward off on the second level and shut the doors between radiology and the ER on the ground floor, there are not any doors between the cafeteria and the main entrance though, but the other ground floor rooms can be cut off. We had a problem with one of those doors locking once, it was a big deal, had to call in a contractor, patients and doctors had to go up the stairs and down the other side to get to rooms, it was a big mess….Sorry! I didn’t mean to go on there, uh, yeah we can mostly do it, except for the cafeteria, the stairway exits all open out and can be locked from this side, nothing would get through, but we could get out.”

“Okay, we can build more barricades to seal off the cafeteria from the main entrance better, we already got one up, but it is pretty flimsy. Why don’t you go ask Tim about it and get stuff locked down now John? And thanks for your help.”

John got up to go, saying, “No problem” and as he left Juan could not help but wonder at how smoothly that had been handled by Jack. Ever since the group came in, Jack had been a little edgy and Juan was pretty sure it was because of the Gaurdsman, Juan recognized what Jack did as a way to get the kid out of the room so Ted could talk to them in private. Jack waited until he heard the door at the end of the hallway clang shut and then turned to Juan again, “We may have a problem.”

“Si? I got that, what?”

“Bad news from Sergeant Ted, I am afraid, you guys saw how the road was cleared and how there were a few body bags here and there as they did it, right?”, Juan nodded, “Well, the military was trying to go and relieve that dj, who is holed up in his building, broadcasting instructions and news on how to deal with the zombie threat, well, shoot, I better let him tell it.”, Jack cast a glance at Ted and nodded.

Ted spoke for the first time, his voice was gravelly and not unlike Hank’s in many ways, he said, “We are from the depot between Colorado Springs and south Denver, near Larkspur. My unit, part of the 36th Infantry Division, was attached to the 36th Aviation Brigade, a National Guard unit, when this mess started we were equipping for rotation in Iran, we had three days to go until we shipped, that would have been, why today! Anyway we were confined to base to keep some of the younger guys from going AWOL at the last second, usually by having car trouble or drinking so much they passed out or getting into a bar fight and thrown in the drunk tank the night before, there has been a real problem since the wars started. So we got to sit on the base and almost mutiny before the army gave us our orders. This whole thing took the military by surprise, I can tell you that! A foreign war on foreign soil, sure, but a horde of zombies in our own back yard? How can we fight that?”

“Well yesterday we were ready to do it, break out and go home, find our loved ones and kick some zombie ass. We were ready to go with or without official sanction, then word comes down of a mission that might do more good, rescue one guy, a hero of sorts, and use rescuing him as a reconnaissance mission to plan future attacks into the city to rescue other pockets of humans still alive. None of us liked it much, we all wanted to rescue OUR families and check on OUR friends, however in the military they train you to know that ten individuals are not as effective as 10 men working as a team. This was a military situation; our country is being overrun, even if our foes were unconventional and unarmed. A few lectures by our superiors and most of us bought into the strategy, even if we did not like it. Plus, I have to admit, we were afraid, the only news we got was from the dj, and according to him there was a sea of zombies around and in his building. What could we do alone?”

“So we spent a restless night griping and getting what rest we could. I think all of us planned to take our vehicles and head out on our own when we reached town, most of us are from up and down the front range, maybe twenty percent are from down south where the unit is ‘Officially’ stationed, Texas and Oklahoma. My two guys, in the humvee were from Aurora, like me. We thought we scope the situation, get this Blake guy first, then head east to get our families. A humvee can hold 8 easy, and we had a total of 8 family members to go and find. Not a coincidence, but a stroke of luck that we were one of the ‘short’ vehicles. The plan was to go in rescue any civilians we could, take down as many zombies as we could, at least put a dent in their numbers and then get the hell out. We had tanks, a couple of the ‘Interim Armored Vehicles’, the newer ones, with the turreted 20 millimeter guns that can be slaved to take down aircraft, like on those navy ships, you catch that in the news a year or so back?”

Jack and Juan shook their heads ‘no’, Ted shrugged his shoulders and continued,

“Oh, that is a sight to see, works great with drones anyway and they have some anti-missile capabilities too. Anyway they mount a 20 millimeter ‘main’ gun, and an M2 .50 caliber machine gun, same gun we have on the humvee

Then they loaded us up with ammo, an extra quarter ton of the 50 caliber rounds, three extra cases of belt fed 20mm ammo for the IAVs and two cases of the 105mm recoilless rifle high explosive rounds. Plus we had two fifty gallon drums of fuel and medical supplies. Not much fucking room in there with that garbage loaded up. No problem, we knew how to deal with excess. Heck it ain’t like any of us were going to have docked pay or worry about court-martials.”

“So we climbed in our M1132 humvee, I was in command and I put Thompson on the turret with the old 50 caliber and Sanchez on shotgun. Thompson didn’t have to be up and out for the ride, so we chatted about our plan on the way up from Larkspur. It would be cake to do a fade out and we WANTED to go back to the base, there were no zombies there, we hadn’t even seen one until we hit Castle Rock. Me and the boys only saw dead ones until we got into the Tech Center. Oh and we were the tail too, we rode about a klick behind the last vehicle with orders to call in if we saw ANYTHING creeping up our ass. Mostly we were supposed to be there for re-supply, something we would not need, I mean the zombies didn’t even have guns and could not fight back, right? We were a wasted resource and fading to get our families would be no big deal, especially on the way back.”

Well when we hit Denver everything slowed way down, we had major, I am talking major crashes to content with, we were lucky to make four clicks an hour with all the moving we had to do, I guess the Major was not so stupid after all, to have brought up our heavy movers and equipment. We heard the gunfire at the front of the column before we saw any hordes of zombies, the scuttlebutt that came back to us was that the zombies were hiding in wrecks or on overpasses, or coming up the ramps at us when we stopped. I ordered Thompson into position, it should be a cake walk, the new lightweight cupolas are real effective against small arms and fragments and our enemy didn’t even have guns. He wasn’t worried, I wasn’t worried. Still when that first mob cam up the on ramp at us they made it all the way to the rear bumper before he stopped them. You ever see what a .50 caliber bullet does to a man? This gun can plow through cement walls about a foot thick with the armor piercing rounds, the standard rounds we were using don’t have quite that penetrative power, but when they hit. “, the sergeant made a ka-plowing sound with his mouth while opening a fist with one hand, “when they hit, they make great big holes in things. Especially meaty things.”

The zombies were not stopped though, they kept on coming over their dead, the slow rate we were moving kept the rain of bullets just beyond the back of the vehicle and then some of them hit us from the side. I was never happier to have Sanchez than yesterday, he knows how to work his AR-3. He muzzled it out of the firing port on his side and kept that clear and I used my pistol out of my side. Sanchez had to squirm into the back to shoot out of my side, he ended up staying there for the rest of the trip. Thompson needed someone to hand him ammo too.”

Anyway by the time it ended we had burned up half our allotted 50 caliber rounds, and most of our small arms ammunition. The Lieutenant had us catch up to the tail and we got more small arms ammo out of an actual supply truck. He told us it was ‘open’ firing too, but not to waste ammo on things that were not heading towards us or were too far away to be a threat. We took extra small arms ammo, a triple load and I grabbed a rifle off the truck too. Normally the driver just carries their side arm, the army doesn’t want a driver getting his crew killed because he is not paying attention to his job: driving. I took the rifle, just in case.”

We had taken our first casualties then too, while we were fighting off the zombies at the rear, others had been bushwhacked all up and down the line. This was our first clue that someone was planning the attacks against us. I mean people just don’t attack at the same time, unless they are ready to do so, this was not a case of ‘Fred Zombie’ hearing gunfire and coming over to join the fray, this was a case of 350 ‘Fred Zombies’ waiting until they were given orders to run up the ramps and attack us. A lot of the guys were just in trucks, not even hum-vees, the trucks just had canvas walls and no guns mounted. They took it the worst we had maybe thirty left in body bags, all with a bullet into the brain, as most of them had come back during the fight, now if anyone died, we were to put a bullet in their brains first thing.”

We made steady progress into town, the God damned radio station is in North East Denver, a rifle shot away from the Denver International Airport, by the afternoon we had made it to the station, we knew what was there, the 36th is an Aviation Brigade, which means it has helicopters, and it had done a few recon flights over the building, then they had come back and made strafing runs until it ran dry. They said there were a few left for us to mop up. They were wrong. The damned zombies just got under cover, or if they could not do that they just laid there pretending to be ‘dead again’, the details that can be seen from a helicopter are not that good for determining if a guy is faking it and just lying there or actually does have a head wound.”

“I know where we were told to stop was a four way intersection, between two major streets, each four laners, plus turn lanes, I am talking a lot of room there. And there were bodies everywhere, the helicopter had done its job well, even sawed off a street light, clean as butter, I know ‘cause I parked right under it. We had to drive over bodies to circle the wagons, nothing was moving. You ever see what a 20 millimeter round does to a building?”, shrugging again, Ted said, “No? I suppose not. Anyway, for one thing calling a 20 millimeter shell a ‘round’ pretty much says it all. You know in the old World War 2 they had anti-tank guns that were that big? For taking out a fucking tank, and nowadays we run that size through machine guns on our helicopters, is that crazy or what? Anyway, you can just imagine what the surrounding buildings looked like, the bullets go through the walls, sometimes they collapse the building, sometimes they fly all the way out the other side and into the building beyond that. Sometime even through that other building. These rounds were fired from above so a lot of the angles were up to down, the streets were uneven and pocked, kind of puckered up, like Satan’s mouth blowing raspberries at God.”

“I can’t really say much about the fight itself, we were so far removed from it that most of it was over before it was obvious that we had lost. The tanks were overkill, 180mm shell is great against soft targets or infantry that could actually bleed to death from a fragment, against zombies? Tanks against zombie, sheesh.”, shrugging yet again Ted went on, “Our part of it was a bit chaotic. The column had split into groups as we were supposed to, our group was to be the reserve, obviously, the other were in three smaller column with a tank leading each one, IAV’s those 19 ton ‘lightweight’ troop carriers we spent all our taxpayer money on? Well we had nine of those, two in each column and 3 in the reserve pool in case they were needed. Other than trucks and guys with guns we were the only other mounted machine gun in the group and we were positioned, once again, to watch our asses, make sure nothing crept up on us. Hah, that s a joke there, we plowed into them, let them surround us completely and then acted all surprised when they rose up off the ground almost as if one mind were controlling them, this was at the same time others rushed out of all those buildings that were missing doors. I saw this one guy, right before it started, at the urging of his buddies, creeping towards an open doorway, a dark open doorway. He got about 8 feet from it and froze, after that, as my old drill instructor would say, ‘the foul excrement hit the air moving rotary device’. The guy I saw by the door fired wildly into the building while turning around and running back to his buddies, they were laughing their asses off; I saw he had pissed himself, and keyed Tompson that they zombies were gonna hit us, that was all I had time for.”

“A second later the screaming started, the zombies got up off the ground and distracted us from firing at the ones rushing out of the buildings. The IAVs did well, we did fine, I thought we were going to make it, right? Then a good old fashion Molotov cocktail hit one of the IAVs, some of it must have gotten in through the rear deck too, got sucked into the air intakes, ‘cause soon that thing was dead in the water. The men weren’t dead, but they lost power and could no longer rotate the turret. The other two, and me, started moving our vehicles, instead of leaving them stationary for more accurate fire. Just in time too, ‘cause more of the Russian specials came raining down into the trucks off the rooftops. They did not hit us, but a couple of them landed on the trucks where the infantry were fighting, which forced them to bail. What a choice huh? Burn to death or get eaten to death?”

Tompson did good work, no! Great work with the machine gun, he didn’t hit any friendlys, I know that, but he would walk that gun right up to them and back. The problem is, these goddamned things have to be hit in the head to take them out, sometimes a shot to the spine will disable them, not always. Anyway Thompson’s strategy seemed to be more along the lines of ‘saw their legs off’, one I approve of. I had to keep moving the hummer forward and back, to clear the zombies away from the doors. A Sanchez was busier than hell trying to keep the doors clear. He thinks he tagged one of our guys too. That would be as much my fault as his though, I was moving the vehicle and he had a limited arc of fire, and, as I said, things were bumpy with all the pock marks and bodies all over the ground.”

I watched zombies rip apart guys, full body armor or not, I saw men screaming for their buddies to shoot them in the head, to kill them and not let them be ripped apart by the mob. I saw horror. In a normal battle you kill a few people and the others get demoralized and run away, it was always the other guy who broke too, after all who can face down the fire power of the good ole’ US of A? We fired and fired, the infantry fired and fired, the IAVs were fucking priceless for the amount of shots they could pour out and here was our enemy, not even trying to take cover or shoot us back. And they demoralized us. No other words for it. They. Just. Kept. Coming.”

Ted got a far away look in his eyes, then gathered himself together and continued, “I also saw such courage as to make me cry. You know that some of the guys managed to form a circle using one of the trucks as an anchor and forming a semi-circle around it, three guys in the bed, keeping zombies off on that side, two guys were needed, at first, to keep the zombies from crawling under the truck. After 5 minutes the zombies were piled high enough to keep anymore from crawling through and they put one of the walking wounded there to shoot any more that squirmed through. Around the outside of the circle the bodies were getting higher too, some of the zombies though, were NOT dumb, they were taking cover or ducking into the buildings, I pointed them out to Sanchez as I saw them, I made one pass in front of the semi-circle to try and clear out the bodies, not a good idea in a soft skinned vehicle, a couple rounds got through from the guys and their rifles and Sanchez was like to die screaming and praying when a bullet snapped through his pant leg, didn’t even touch him, just wet through his pant leg. My pass made things a little better I did manage to push a bunch of bodies into lower positions, or crush them with my tires, however a few minutes later they bodies were piling up again. By this time all the survivors who were going to make it were in the semi-circle, there were even a couple medics doing their jobs, with IVs and everything it was surreal, the vehicles kept circling so as not to get bogged down or overwhelmed, the marines were firing with everything they had. Thank God for small favors, the truck they had formed up around was an ammo truck. Then again that master sergeant was one smart fellow, so I doubt luck played much role in his selection of trucks to defend.”

“When a zombie managed to firebomb the front of that truck I knew they were in trouble, for a second then the attacks increased in intensity, I remember a zombie jumping up on the hood with an iron bar, maybe a prybar, he swung back and then his head disappeared when Thompson swung the gun around and let off one shot at point blank range. I was done then, wanted to bug out, fuck my friends, my fellow soldiers, it was time to go. The last of the reserve was feeling the same way, and they made a break for it after that rush. They were spearheaded by yours truly and the two remaining IAVs, some of them even made it out, including the sarg.

”Of course, all the while the three columns were being hit too, screaming at the reserve to move up here or there, eventually I had the Major talking to me, asking where the hell the reinforcements were. I had to tell them they were dead, there were just the two IAVs, one with two flat front tires, the other with no ammo for its 20 mm chain gun, and us. He told us to bug out, load up who we could, then he gave the retreat codes over the radio. There was nothing much we could do. Our group survived, the IAVs drove turret reversed behind the main body of, oh, I dunno, maybe 50 guys on foot, we drove in front clearing the way and finding the path. There were so many of them, it took us awhile to get to a point where we could stop and pass out some of our ammo to the other two vehicles. Between them they had two spares to get the IAV with the flat tires rolling again and we gave them each a third of the ammo we had carried up there. By now though it was getting dark, we had been fighting a running retreat for four hours. I think the only reason we did not run into another ambush is that I was choosing turns randomly, never going with the easiest looking path, never going back the way we had come from, two of the best ways to avoid ambushes. Dark was a bad thing though, we had some nigh vision gear, the IAVs had it built in, the infantry’s was in the trucks, so they had none, and they were running out of ammo, plus they had about a dozen walking ‘bit’ with them, which we were worried about. All the seriously wounded had been left behind.”

“I need to be clear about this too, we did have some contact with one of the other columns. Not me, right then I was not doing so good radio wise. Remember the zombie on the hood with his prybar? When he was shot off he rolled over our antenna, he didn’t knock it off completely, just broke it. We could still talk to the IAVs pretty well, I could only catch a few phrases and clips of words from the other columns, the Major though he sounded like he was rallying them. Maybe. Not winning though, definitely not winning. The IAVs picked up more communications for awhile, then nothing.”, Ted did his characteristic shrug, “Maybe the columns antenna got knocked off too.”

“Anyway we looked for gun stores, finding one in north-east, liberal Denver was harder than finding fault with a playboy centerfold, in other words we didn’t find one. Not even a fucking k-mart or wal-mart where we at least could maybe have gotten shotguns and small caliber weapons. We took refuge in an abandoned Barnes and Noble. There was a small fight inside; maybe 10 really slow, stupid zombies were in among the books, nothing we could not handle. The vehicles circled up out front and formed the perimeter; we broke out the fuel and topped off the armored cars, and the humvee. Johnson, a decent guy, a mechanic, he got our antenna fixed again, probably with duct tape and spit, anyway it has been working okay for us since. The infantry went up on the second floor of the bookstore to bed down, the second floor had a really good view of the store front. Plus there were no windows on the sides of the building only towards the parking lot and only one way up to the second level, the escalators. The power was still on, but we just moved the elevator to the second floor and hit the emergency stop, the buzzer went off, Johnson disconnected it. Not a bad defensive position, we weren’t in a fire base situation though, we were on our own.”

“The IAVs contacted the base and they told us to sit tight, they were not going to do anything unless the zombies found us and mobbed us, if we kept our heads down they said we should be alright. We heard them all night a few miles to the east and then to the south and east and then just to the south, flying missions all night shooting, and shooting. That makes me think something got out from the fight at radio station WWEB.”

“I think the night passed quietly for the simple reason that the enemy was preoccupied elsewhere. Of the twelve who were bit, eleven of them died and came back that night, one guy was fine. I almost felt sorry for him, you should have seen how everyone was watching him all the time! Come morning we started looking around the parking lot and checking the pockets of the few dead people we could find in the store, we came up with 7 vehicles, I topped them all off with some of the fuel I still had, got maybe 20 gallons extra left now. 7 vehicles for 38 men, we wanted to take on a few, but the lieutenant in the IAV overrode me, the men were not trained in the vehicles and would get in our way if the shit hit the fan, which was their reasoning. Besides there was something else the Lieutenant needed us to do. The guy, the dj, was still on the air, he was still alive and our mission had not changed. We had to go back and see if anything was left of the column. And if the zombies were all gone, we were to see if we could get the guy out. However we could and would, break off as soon as we saw a major group of zombies, those were his orders. The rest of the group was going to head back to the base, probably by using back roads, going down Sante Fe drive and heading south through Salida along the new highway. If the base could, they might send a helicopter for the troops, otherwise they would make do with the civilian vehicles. When we got to the radios station we were to radio back to them what we found and bug out quick. After hearing our orders no one else wanted to ride in our hum-vee. Me and the guys didn’t mind, you see ‘plan B’ was forming in our minds. I mean if all the zombies were HERE, they couldn’t be where we lived. So we said, ‘Sure Lieutenant, sir, we will do your reconnaissance for you, yes sir we understand why a fly by of the helicopter might not be as good as eyes on the ground, sir! You can count on us sir!’ and we left. Funny thing is we did go back to the station, at least as close as we could get, there were millions of zombies there. I swear to God millions. I saw them and got the hell out of there. Some of them were wearing fatigues and body armor now too.”

“We radioed to the IAVs what we found, they have higher powered, longer ranged communications gear, ours could not make it to the base. They relayed the message and we were told to cut and run, pronto. They emphasized that we needed to leave the area quickly. Blake, the dj, saw us and he told us to get out too, we had him on the fm we stole from the Barnes and Noble. No fm radios in hum-vees, go figure. I felt so bad for that guy, I mean we were his last hope really, if an entire armored column couldn’t free him, what could?

“We were headed home, via Aurora, along the way we lost contact with the IAVs, Sanchez unplugged our GPS transponder and I turned the radio off, we were on our own to check on our families.”

Listening, Juan spoke softly, “What did you find?”

Looking up with a haggard expression, Ted said sharply, “Did you see any fucking family members come in with us?”, he cast his eyes down and wiped a dirty hand across his face, “I’m sorry man, I just met you, I am sorry. It was the same for all of us and all bad. The kids were the worst, I would have suicided, Sanchez would have at his house, Thompson at his, somehow, we didn’t form a circle at Thompson’s house and do each other. I mean my place was first, I saw my kid at the end of the block, eating….eating… I was so angry, so mad, I ran it down, it was not my kid anymore. After my house we checked on Sanchez and his kid, wife dead, kid not around, blood everywhere. Both of us hoped, maybe you know, something would be left for Thompson, anything worth living for. There wasn’t, at least he and I knew for sure, Sanchez will always wonder if his kid got away or turned or didn’t. We have closure. In Thompson’s drive we shared a moment, looked at each other and we all had ‘that’ look, the despair, the pain, the ‘nothing worth living’ for look. Sanchez asked if Thompson was Catholic, Thompson said, no and then Sanchez asked him to kill him, he couldn’t do it himself as he still believed it was a mortal sin. He said he wanted to die. Thompson raised his gun, up to stomach high, Sanchez closed his eyes. I will always remember the sweat breaking out and beading on Thompson’s forehead, he was going to do it, I thought. He stood that way until I pushed his rifle away and said, ‘Fuck it. Lets get in the truck and go’. They didn’t argue, they just got in the truck and we went. I made my way back to the highway to get on I-25 and headed south, where I ran into your people.”

“Did you hook your radio up again?”, asked Juan.

“No. Not yet, we can do it anytime. We don’t want to go back. You mentioned a club? With other people? We might be able to take them to the base, get you almost there, if Thompson and Sanchez want to go with you, you could leave me with the hum-vee.”

“Alone? We’ll see, we should contact the military and see what they say, see if your friends got back okay, find out if they have any information.”, said Juan.

Jack chimed in, “Ain’t nothing we can say to you Ted. We have mostly been pretty lucky so far, we know the world has gone to hell, but our part of it is still alive and we need to protect it. You could stay with us until you decide what to do. Or just stay with us.”

“Yeah, it is getting dark now, I won’t drive again tonight, even with the night vision gear. We’ll stay here tonight and figure out what to do in the morning.”, said Ted.

“Okay, your machine gun still have bullets?”, asked Jack.

“Yeah, over ten thousand rounds give or take. That is quite a lot, enough for any slow zombies that might come crawling around. I think we would do better not to be making a bunch of noise though, it seems to attract them.”

“Oh yeah. No I was thinking towards the more distant future, not for right now. That gun could be useful.”

“Maybe. Look Jack, you are not a military man right?”

“Me? No way brother, liberal military hater all the way.”

Raising his right eyebrow questioning Ted said, “Well machine guns, especially the new ones actually require a lot of maintenance, we can clean ours out and keep it firing, but the barrel is usually changed out every three thousand rounds or so. We have already fired four or five times that through it. It will still fire, it is just the accuracy is going to go down on it.”

“What? Every three thousand shots? Is that possible? I mean that is like what, three minute of fire?”, asked Jack.

“No, more like 8 minutes or so, they fire about 550 rounds per minute, but they use 100 round cans of ammunition, reloading takes time, so push that to 10 minutes overall use, most fire fights are over before that and you have to realize the gun is not going to be fire full out the entire time either. Nothing like what we just went through was envisioned when they designed the gun. However ours is a new E50, basically a field upgrade that makes changing the barrel a 20 to 30 second job and improving a few other aspects of the gun too. The problem is we don’t have any other barrels. I know the IAV’s had at least one spare each, they changed them out last night, but if we want a new gun barrel we have to head back to the base for it.”, said Ted.

Nodding Juan spoke again, “No need to worry about that right now. You tell anyone else your story?”

“No, but I didn’t tell the others to keep their mouths shut, so probably everyone knows by now, why you want me to keep it quiet?”

“No, I would rather you tell them, so they have a better idea of what we are facing. I am glad you told me what happened, and Ted?”, Juan asked.

“Yeah?”, replied Ted, who was turning to walk away.

“I am sorry for your loss.”

Ted nodded his head once, then turned and headed back down the hall towards where the main group was gathered. Thinking while he walked back to his men that maybe he should have told them the whole story…

Jack turned to Juan and Nanci after Ted had passed through the fire doors at the end of the hall, “What do you think?”

Juan spoke first, “About what? He has been through a lot, probably more than most of us here.”

“I don’t know, something is not right, he seems too…I don’t know, together maybe? I mean for a man who just lost his family and seen most of his friends get slaughtered. What is keeping him going now?”, asked Nanci.

“Yeah, yeah that is what I mean, Nanci. I don’t think he lied about anything, I don’t think he did anyway, just something does not seem right. Anyway to check up on him, maybe talk to the other guys?”, said Jack.

Juan nodded his head slowly, “Well, si, if you think I should. Look Jack we took dozens of people’s stories at face value at the club, heck even here at the hosptital, what makes Ted different?”

“He works for the government man! He is one of THEM, not one of US.”

“Nah, c’mon Jack half the boys on the block served the military, and Ted wasn’t even an officer, you know?”

“Yeah, sure Juan, you think only the officers get dirt on them? Special Forces guys, they ain’t officers you know, most of em are just grunts, E-4s or so.”

“E-whats?”, shrugging his shoulders Juan said, “So what would he hide, like that he knew where they came from or that maybe he sabotaged the radio station battle somehow? I admit maybe he glossed over a few things, things he was not proud of, but that doesn’t mean he outright lied to us.”

“Yeah Jack, Juan is right, we can’t question everyone who comes in, Ted doesn’t even want to go back to the base, you heard him, even if he worked as one of ‘them’, he wants to be one of us now. So let him be one of us, okay?”, pleaded Nanci.

Jack looked at Nanci and Juan and shrugged his shoulders, “Maybe, or maybe they just want a spy in among us, to keep tabs on us or something. I will let it go, alright? However I may, MAY, keep an eye on Ted, just to make sure he isn’t up to anything fishy.”

“Sure Jack, sure.”, Juan started humming an old song from the seventies, by the Kinks, something about paranoia and how it could destroy you. Jack caught up the tune, as they all headed towards the door and looked back over his shoulder at Juan, flashing him a smile he said, “Asshole!”, which got a laugh out of both Juan and Nanci.

Chapter 16 Dave Those fuckin’ bastards. Dave had his ups and downs since joining the winning team, this was definitely a ‘down’. First he had his goddamn hand blown off. That was a bitch, oh it healed, everything seemed to heal these days, but there was a lot of something Dave interpreted as ‘pain’ involved. His feelings were all strange lately, sensitive in some areas, almost dead in others, the shot to his hand had burned like fire and when he healed over he was afraid it was going to dumb him down a bit. Dave’s theory was that he only regained his mind after he had consumed maybe a whole living being, or at least their blood, which his eyes now saw as a rainbow of beautiful color. His sentience though, seemed pretty secure he did not notice any loss of memory or reasoning, but strength? Yeah he was definitely weaker than he had been, the bullets had torn through him outside of the gas station and the hail of fire he had come under from the next ambush he had ridden right into had made his condition even worse. Talking to himself he said, “See Dave, that is the thing, prey on the weak, let others take on the strong, otherwise you get what you have right here: You weak as a kitten, unable to get stronger. You are a dumbass Dave for wanting revenge, revenge is of the old world, the new world is full of opportunity for those who don’t succumb to the old ways.”

His tirade against himself finished, Dave shut up and watched intently as a blue mini-van approached the street to the Mike’s Club, some talking seemed to go on for awhile, then the mini-van did a slow u-turn and started to drive away, all the while the men at the car barricade kept under cover and kept their guns trained on the vehicle. The van went around the corner, and Dave moved along the roof top he was on to keep it in view. It stopped about halfway down the long block and sat idling. A plan came up, if only the people would wait for a bit.

Ken and his wife Amber were sitting in the van along the street arguing. The guys at the Mike’s Club would not let them in, Amber had been bitten, twice, the kids were silent, only after Ken had yelled at them to quiet down so he and Amber could talk. They were in the middle of their own argument when Ken saw a man come around the corner from the Mike’s Club.

“Aw shit Amber, here they come, they probably don’t want us sitting here on their street now. Bunch of dumb fucks, like can keep us out of the goddamn club, what gives them the right?”, Ken said, he kept his eye on the man approaching them. The guy was wearing boots, carrying a bat and had a revolver tucked into his belt, he was also wearing a jacket with a name tag on it, Ken made it out to be ‘Dave’ as the guy approached. He powered down his window so he could talk to ‘Dave’.

“Listen man, you can’t stop us from parking here to decide what we are going to do now that your little group has booted us the fuck out of a goddamn public sto…”, Ken’s explanation, if indeed that was what he was attempting, was cut short when Dave shot him through the window in the chest. Amber started screaming, the kids started screaming. Dave looked them over, seeing no weapons, he calmly gut shot the woman, not killing her and leaned in through the window to rip out Ken’s throat with his teeth. The warm, salty blood thrilled Dave to no end, better than an orgasm? Dave didn’t think so, but while he was in the middle of his meal the woman had managed to fall out of her door and pull the van door open, she was on the ground trying to reach up to get the kids out of their car seats.

‘Stupid, stupid’, Dave thought as he came around the car, ‘First stupid to waste Ken like this, chances are good I won’t get back to him, then stupid thing number two was to let the woman get out and open the door, the screaming might bring some heroes from the Mike’s Club over, and stupid thing number three was the fact that the car seat manufacturers made seats a four year old couldn’t get out of in a hurry.’ Not having ever had kids before Dave really had no idea what he was talking about. The whole point of a car seat was to ensure the kids did not get out on their own. Dave plucked the woman off the ground and shoved her into the van onto the floor in front of the bench seat. He shut the door, which jammed up with a crunching sound on the woman’s foot, undoubtedly breaking it, then he punched the woman a few times in the gut until she stopped moving, for good measure he slugged one of the kids too, the other got the idea pretty fast and shut the hell up. Pausing a moment Dave looked the kids over, while thinking of the parapet on the roof, smiling he closed the side door, the passenger door and moved back around to the driver’s side of the still idling van. Ken was still alive, Dave took another thirty seconds to suck enough blood out of him to kill him, then pulled him out of the van and casually smashed his head in on the panel beside the door. Dumping his body on the pavement he hopped into the van and drove it away.

By nightfall Dave was back on his rooftop perch watching the men at the Mike’s Club intently. He had missed the caravan leaving, but he noticed a few of the nicer trucks and cars were gone. ‘Interesting’ he thought, ‘I wonder what the plan is now?’

One thing eating had done for him was clear his head. Revenge might be overrated in today’s new world, but a steady food supply was not. He thought, maybe, he could prey on the edges of this group, pick off a few here and there, or at the very least get the ones they turned away easily enough. A new softailed Harley-Davidson motorcycle sat in the alley fairly well concealed between two dumpsters. The hog should make catching up to anyone this group turned away a piece of cake, the new glock he found in Ken’s van with a box of ammo, rounded out Dave’s trusty pistol very well too. Dave was a bit of a throw back when it came to firearms. Automatics were nice, for ultimate reliability and jam free action though, you simply could not beat a revolver. Hunkering down on the roof for along night Dave watched the group intently.

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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