Hank and Juan's Story

“Lets go!”, Juan yelled to Charlie, pulling Nanci along with them. They ran into the ER and Charlie yelled at some of the 'backup' men and women to go cover the entrance, something bad had just happened on the roof.

Running to the end of the hall Charlie hit the elevator button and one of the doors opened immediately, they hopped in and Charlie hit the top floor button and the elevator started to rise. Then, abruptly, the lights went out and the ride stopped.

“Shit!”, Charlie screamed. “I hate elevators! Why didn't we think about that? A bomb goes off on the roof and of course the electricity is going to go out.”

“I hope Jack it alright.”, said Nancie, then she went into a litany of prayer in Spanish. Shrugging Juan joined her after she had completed two verses.

Charlie looked at them, “What? What are you saying, I am not getting all the words, speak English.”

Juan stopped, “Prayer Charlie, that's all, asking God to look out for Jack. Doesn't the hospital have automatic generators to power up when the grid goes off? Like if they were in surgery or something?”

It was Charlie's turn to shrug, “I guess, they should, I mean they do surgeries here, maybe the elevators are not considered a medical necessity?” As he finished talking one of the lights flickered on, then the elevator alarm started buzzing. The buzzing stopped and the button light went off, then the elevator started moving up. It stopped faster than Juan thought it should and the doors opened, they were on the third floor. Not hesitating Juan jumped out, followed closely by Nanci and Charlie. “Stair okay?”, Juan asked. No one objected and they were soon pounding their way up the remaining floors to the roof access. The roof door opened to the north and as they made it out onto the roof they stopped dead in their tracks.

“Madre de Dios.”, Nanci gasped and crossed herself as she went to her knees.

Before them was a cloud they have never seen before, yet they all knew what it was from textbooks and old films. Someone had dropped a bomb on Denver, north of the downtown area, it looked more like they had bombed the airport. Juan put his arm around Nanci's shoulder and they stood staring dumbfounded for seconds which seemed to stretch into hours before they hear a voice behind them.

“Hey, I'm okay, thanks for checking man!”

Looking over his shoulder, Juan saw Jack, he was pale and looked like he had seen a ghost or worse yet kissed one.

The snappy retort Juan had been going to call out died on his lips, replaced with, “Jack, what man? What is it?”

“Oh you mean aside from the man bombing the working class to save themselves? Yeah it is worse. What's missing Juan?”

Looking around Juan couldn't tell, he saw the machine gun sitting up where he thought it might be, facing downslope to the north, the boxes of ammo were beside it and the whole mess had a tarp pulled halfway over it, probably to fend off the afternoon rains. It looked like the guys had set up their radio too, on a couple ammo boxes sat what looked like a satellite disk, pointed slightly south and west. Juan didn't see anything unusual and shrugged his shoulders slightly and shook his head.

“Maybe I should say, 'Who is missing?'”

A light went on in Juan's head, “Ah! Where are the guardsmen?”

“Dead.”, came the flat reply.

“What?! What happened?”, asked Juan, looking around for zombies or bodies or something to indicate what had happened, seeing nothing he repeated his question, “What happened?”

Nanci and Charlie turned to look around and face Jack, who sat down on the boxes the satellite dish was on.

“I went with the guys back down, right? After the lesson on how to fire, reload the guns, they even gave us a primer on cleaning them too, though we didn't do that, they left us a manual. Anyway I headed downstairs, carrying this rifle and thinking, 'Why the heck am I going downstairs? I mean I can't carry an ammo box by myself and we had an odd number of guys, so I am going along humping this gun as a guard? After we stopped for a bathroom break in the ER I told the others I would wait for them on the roof. So I get on the elevator and head up to the roof and the door is shut. We had propped it open with a piece of wood to make it easier to pull the boxes up here, right? So I was like, 'this is weird' and went to push the door open, no go. And I know that is wrong, because the door has a push handle, it cannot be locked from inside. I push harder and still nothing, so I thought they were fucking around with me, you know mess around with the wanna-be hippie or something, maybe a little military hazing to get their jollies. I hear Ted talking on the radio, he is speaking to somebody, only I can't hear what he is saying, he is talking kinda low. So I yell out, 'Hey, open the damn door!', they didn't, so I yelled louder, then started swearing, nothing. Well, I thought about it, this place has a couple of wings, so maybe there is another roof access door, only we haven't cleared the other side yet, so no way am I going through the stairs on the other side.”

Taking a breath, Jack continued, “So I got a little harder on the door. Really pushing it, then hitting it and it started to give a little, I couldn't see out, but eventually I could work my hand through and felt a piece of wood they had propped under the door handle on the outside. A bit more shoving and I was able to work it free and get onto the roof.”

“Ted was the only one I saw, he was standing over there, heading towards the vents.” Jack stood up, he headed over to the venting and various pipes that snaked up through the roof. Walking around on the other side of them the group saw three ropes tied off on three different pipes, the ropes were taunt and led over the side of the building.

“Anyway I see Ted over there and I am like, 'Ted? Man what is going on?', all he said was he was sorry, then he pull a loop of rope up off the roof and wraps it around his neck and jumps off the fucking building! Right in front of me! I ran to the edge and tried to pull him up.” Jack gestured to the edge of the roof, Juan and Charlie peered over cautiously, Charlie pulled back quickly, Juan just stood there leaned over the edge of the building looking down, he stood that way for probably thirty seconds, looking at the three bodies that dangled about 10 feet from the top of the roof, none of them were moving, all of them looked like they had long necks, obscenely long, boneless necks. One, Sanchez? His tongue was protruding, dark purple and glistening wet from between his lips, all of the corpse's eyes were open.

“Juan?”, Jack called, pulling him by the shoulders, back from the edge. Juan looked blank for a second then turned to Nanci and held her tight for a quick hug.

“Let me finish, here, before we decide what to do. I saw Ted do this and was trying to pull him up when the radio came back on, some guy on the other end, asking for Ted, I grabbed it, said, 'Ted is dead'. The voice swore, then came back on and said there was a bomb on the way, thanks to the relay booster Ted had set up, there was little immediate danger in my area, but I shouldn't look north for about a minute, in fact, I might want to get under cover. I asked where? Where was the bomb going to impact at? Thinking of the Club store, he just came back and said, the radio station, then, impact in 12 seconds. That's when I came over and started shouting for you.”

“Shit.”, shaking his head Charlie continued, “These guys relayed the coordinates for the drop! These guys nuked us!”

Nodding, Jack said, “Looks that way. I wonder how much of what they told us was true? Probably mixed in, huh? I just don't get why they would kill themselves.”

Juan pointed to the satellite disk, “That still work?”

Shrugging Charlie said, “Don't know. I doubt it, ain't there supposed to be an emp wave or something that kills all batteries and radios when it goes off?”

“Won't hurt to try, right?”, Juan went over and clicke on the rather old fashion microphone, “Hello?”

Immediately a voice came back, “Who is this?”

“This is Juan, John, who is this?”

“Juan this is Ed Stanson of the 19th Special Forces Group, currently stationed out of Fort Carson. Where are you Juan? Has there been an explosion nearby?”

Laughing quietly, Juan replied, “An explosion? Yeah, there was a bomb dropped up here.”

“Okay how safe is your position? Were you close to the explosion, did you feel a heat wave or have any debris or dust fall near you?”

“No, no we are far away, it is like over by the Airport, we are on the south side of Denver, probably 20 miles away.”

“Good! Juan that is good! Are you further to the west than the explosion? Further west of it?”

“Yeah, yeah we are, why?”

“Winds, they will carry the dust from the bomb and the dust will be radioactive. I think you are out of harms way. Do you know the address of where you are at? Do you see any street signs?”

“Ah, no, no address, I know where I am, you aren't going to bomb us are you?”

“What?! No, no, what are you talking about? We want to rescue you, send people to come and get you.”

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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