Hank and Juan's Story

The screaming started just as Jeff was ‘taking a bead’ on the movement on the roof. Kevin jumped about six inches and turned towards the sound, pulling his gun out as he did so. Kevin had been given a pistol, a very small pistol in his mind, but it was better than a bat. He pointed it in the general area of the screaming, but could not see much from the lights between his position and the other corner spot.

Jeff said, “Looks like they came through the middle, get some lights on that area boys, then open up.”

Kevin just ran forward hearing someone curse in the night, slowly a tall dark figure came into view, back light from the other position, with a chill Kevin recognized Dave. His gun came up immediately and he fired off a shot. “A head shot!”, thought excitedly, “I finished the bastard!”, then he saw Dave reel and swing about, before he jumped out of the light back into the street beyond the cars. A second later three shots rang out, one came dangerously close to Kevin’s ear and he immediately ducked down by the nearest car.

Jeff ran past where Kevin had taken cover then screamed, “Jesus Christ! The zombies have guns!”, before reversing direction and running back the way he had come, apparently firing blindly into the darkness. Kevin was pretty sure it was one of Jeff’s bullets that plunked into the fender of the car right where his shoulder was. Kevin had a second to look at the interesting pattern the bullet made on the car fender before the pattern started to run off in crimson droplets. It was blood, the next thought that ran though his mind was, “Where did THAT come from?”, then his shoulder felt like it was on fire and he knew he had been shot. His vision started to fade as the adrenaline kicked in, he started a mantra, “I will not pass out, I will NOT pass out!”.

His ears took in the sounds of a few more bullets, before he heard someone screaming to stop firing, after another second he realized it was him yelling for everyone to stop firing. A few seconds after that there were no more gunshots ringing out and Kevin rose in a half crouch from behind the car, more angry than hurt. Bright lights flooded the area, chasing away the darkness and revealing three bodies on the ground between the corner posts.

Two were not moving at all, the third was taking cover behind a spare tire that had been left with other detris inside the protected space of the parking lot. Now a lot of people were pouring out of the Mike’s Club, one of them called for crew with the spot light to point it outside the barricade and the pool of light slide through over the cars into the street beyond, there was nothing there.

Kevin used this time to dart forward to the woman he could still see in the dim light behind the tire. She looked to be okay, the same could not be said for her companions. The woman knelt down and looked like she was checking their pulse, then shook her head ‘no’ to Kevin grimly. Still kneeling she thrust her hand out at Kevin, he pulled her up with his left hand and was surprised when she immediately kissed him!

“Thanks for that shot! I think you saved my life.”, she said.

“Ah, you are welcome, any time you need me, let me know.”, Kevin replied, he had been going to say, ‘no big deal’, but it was a testament of his maturity over the last few days that he didn’t. Saving someone’s life was a big deal.

“My name is Kristal, yours?”, asked Kristal.

“Kevin.”

Kristal’s eyebrows went up a bit, “THE Kevin? Hank and Juan’s Kevin?”, Kevin nodded, “Well Kevin, you’re bleeding.”

By this time a group of people were up to them, including Jeff, who was ‘leading’ a small group of people from the corner where moments ago he had been advising Kevin on how to take care of the zombie menace. Kevin looked at him and the anger returned to his face.

“Hey Kevin, they got a piece of you man? Aw that sucks, not bitten….”

Kevin raised his gun which was still in his hand and pointed it right at Jeff, who started stammering in confusion. His voice took on an icy anger that he had never used before as he said, “Jeff, I got SHOT, you wanna take a guess on WHO shot me? I will give you a hint, I got shot from behind right after I ducked down behind that car” Kevin pointed, “over there. Guess away you son of a bitch.”

“Hey, hey, what is going on here?”, asked a voice Kevin recognized from the crowd.

“Nothing Hank, shouldn’t you be restin'?”, replied Kevin.

“Nah, shoot I am alright, been sitting in that damn chair all day, I am feeling right as rain now, really. What is going on Kevin?”

“This son of a bitch ran away and shot me from behind, I had cover between me and the other corner, and the bullet hit me from behind, went through my shoulder and hit the car I was hiding behind. I am trying to decide if I should return the favor.”

Jeff started talking real fast, “No! No Kevin don’t! I didn’t mean it, I mean I didn’t even know I hit you. How do you know I hit you? It could have been someone else!”

Hank waved Jeff to silence, “Quiet down there, you aren’t helping.” Looking around he asked, “Who else fired from the south west corner? Raise an arm if you did.”

No one raised their hands. “Okay then from the south?” This got two people to raise their hands. “Did anyone see anything?”

Kristal piped up, “I did, about when I screamed I saw the zombie pull out a gun, it looked plastic and he tried to shoot me with it, only it didn’t work, then he pulled another silver gun out, a cylinder one, I remember that, the round part looked huge like from a western movie and when he pulled it out I caught Kevin running towards me out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shoot the zombie, who took a shot at me and fired at each corner a couple of times before jumping back over the cars. Then I saw Kevin duck and this guy,” she pointed at Jeff, “Ran past him and then turned around and ran the other way. But as he ran I saw some flashes of light as he fired back towards us. I didn’t see Kevin get hit or anything, only the flashes of light.”

“Huh, we do have a quandary here then, I think we have a case of friendly fire Kevin and it sucks to be you, but shooting this guy, who are you?”, Hank asked to Jeff, who responded with his name, “that just isn’t right, there are too few of us here to start killing each other.”, said Hank.

“I don’t care Hank, the man SHOT me, he wasn’t aiming he could have killed one of us! Something has to happen for that, he can’t just shoot someone and have nothing happen to him. My momma, she read the bible to us, you know? I was never in much for that stuff and maybe that is why all this is happening, dead coming back and evil walking the land. Maybe the bible was right, that whole ‘Eye for an eye’ thing. I think I get an ‘eye’ right now.”

Sighing, Hank said, “Kevin, I am not much on debating religion right here while you got a gun pointed to a guy, but the bible is quoted out of context all the time, mostly what it says is ‘Don’t do bad things.’. Kevin, shooting this guy, that would be a bad thing.”

The crowd stood around Kevin and time was sliding by slowly, finally Kevin took a deep breath, and lowered his gun, he put the safety on, as he had been taught earlier the previous day and put the gun in his pocket, before turning away from Jeff to face Hank. “Probably. Yeah, you are probably right. You can explain to me how letting HIM,”, he pointed at Jeff, “have a gun is a good thing though? The fucker didn’t AIM Hank, he didn’t even AIM. Something should happen to him, some sort of punishment.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Jeff? No more guns for you until you learn how to control yourself, give it to one of your friends to carry for now.”

Jeff looked for a moment like he wanted to argue, spying the crowd he knew better and handed it over to Doug, who pointedly put the safety on and tucked it behind his back in his belt.

Another member of the crowd yelled out, “What, he shoots one of us and gets off with having his gun taken away? I say we boot him out!”

The crowd seemed to follow this sentiment and after a few minutes they had worked themselves into a frenzy, on the verge of becoming a lynch mob. Hank relented and asked a couple of them to put Jeff into one of the management offices, away from everybody else until they could decide what to do with him.

“Okay, okay, lets calm down, we'll deal with this mess later when we are all more awake and calmed down. A couple of things for now though; First check your fire people, if you cannot see your target, DO NOT FIRE YOUR GUN, we clear on that? Second someone needs to explain to me just how the hell this happened in the first place, I mean where were the guards?”, asked Hank, leaning in to Kevin he spoke softly under the babble of the crowd who were all trying to explain how things went wrong, “Go get the doc to look you over and Kevin?”

“Yeah Hank?”

“Thanks for not shooting that asshole.”

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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