by Mark Clodi
"You got him Juan?"
Juan looked like he was losing control of the boy, who had somehow slipped around him and was on his hands and knees crawling towards his father's body. Juan was able to keep a grip on the boy's shorts and haul him in, though doing so just about pulled the little guy's pants off. This did give the boy pause for a moment and he stopped struggling long enough to try and pull up his pants, which is when Juan nabbed him by hugging his arms around the kid to keep him from getting away, "Si."
"Okay lets get the hell out of here!"
They moved back to the fiesta, where Kevin was now pointing the rifle back the way they had come, "He showed up, veered off to the right, behind all the cars, I'm not sure if he is gonna come over the top of them or is just messing with me."
Juan tried to put the boy in the car, but the kid would absolutely not stay in. Once he was put in the back seat on one side he slid over to the broken window on the other where he pulled himself out and was trying to run back to his parents before Hank quite realized what was happening. Juan yelled and intercepted him before he made it past the front of the car, picking him up and hurling him with some force upon the hood. "Stop it! Stop it nino! Now!"
The boy sobbed a bit and said, "You're not my dad! I don't have to listen to you!" and kicked ineffectively at Juan. Juan sighed, looked at Hank and then back at the kid. "Stop it or I will spank you. And it will hurt." The boy started crying then, all out wailing at the top of his lungs. Juan gathered him up and the boy clung to him like size small spandex on a size large ass. Getting the kid to let him go was the next problem. One Hank solved by telling the girl to get into the back seat, her brother was then able to grab onto her and they were all able to get back into the car and continue on again.
Chapter 7
"Dave didn't show up? Maybe he lost interest?" remarked Hank after the boy's wailing had subsided to a dull roar.
"No, Hank, no. That malcreado is back there, or in front of us now, but he is around, I just know it." Watching for awhile Kevin eventually pointed back, "Yeah, that's him, he just came through the hole in the wreck pile we passed through, he is stopping to look it over now. Go Juan, maybe we can lose him!"
Juan pushed the pedal down, but the old fiesta did not go much faster, it was seriously damaged by the trip through the wrecks and it had not been in that good of shape to begin with. Every second it seemed like the little car was going to rattle apart. Fortunately the next exit was theirs, they arrived at it a couple of minutes later. After they exited Juan pulled up under the highway overpass where he let the car stop and idle quietly. A minute later they heard the motorcycle approach, then drive over them and onwards past them.
"It was that easy?" asked Hank, "Think we got lucky and gave him the slip?"
"Shh!" urged Kevin, both towards Hank and the kids. "I don't hear anything. You ready to go?"
"Si, let's wait a few minutes." replied Juan, so they sat for five minutes, attracting the attention of a slow zom, when it was about to touch the car Juan eased into gear and drove quietly off, going north on South Parker road. Coming out from under the highway they went about a half a mile before Kevin let out a long "Shit!"
"He was doubling back! Fuck! If we would either have gone sooner or waited another three minutes we would have slipped him! Dammit!"
"Couldn't have know Kevin, we couldn't have known.", Hank mumbled, he was feeling lightheaded and a bit groggy, almost faint he thought. He turned to Juan and tried to say, "I think I am going to faint."
Juan heard Hank mumble and then saw him sag over against the door, the shotgun stayed where Hank had it, propped up on the dash pointed out the front windshield. The windshield was not completely broken out, just shattered, so firing it like that would not have been a good idea, but this left the gun easily able to move towards either window.
The road was pretty clear so Juan put his foot down and tried to get more speed out of the car. Kevin glanced at Hank and said nothing. He did, however put his hand on the girl's head and rub her hair, trying to comfort her.
Soon enough Juan turned west onto east Bronco Parkway, the road was scenic and curvy, leading up to the Centennial Airport, it was also relatively clear, the fiesta got up to about thirty five miles per hour and finally the road turned into Peoria Street. After passing a few more store lights and navigating around a four car pileup, Juan saw a large red towel hanging out of the side of a car, the end rolled up into the window of the car. He sped up and tried to nurse the Fiesta to something higher than thirty five, it was no good though, another mile and they would be at the Mike's Club store, so the ambush had to be close by. Juan didn't see anyone, however when the motorcycle passed by the car with the towel a hail of gunfire erupted from the roofs of the buildings on the east side of the street. Juan wanted to slow down and watch, but his worry about Hank made him keep going, he knew his family and neighbors well and they would take care of that diablo who had been trailing them.
He made it to the Mike's Club without any further difficulty, meeting his wife's cousin in the parking lot, who pointed him towards the side of the store, where a garage bay door opened up when he approached. He drove the Fiesta in and faster than any zombie Juan had seen so far he was pulled out of the car when it stopped and into his wife's embrace. She kept rubbing his hair and checking his body for wounds and then would stop and hug him, before checking him yet again. Juan's neighbor, Alonzo, was pulling Hank out of the side door, yelling for the doctor and nurse as he did so. Finally seeing this Nanci left Juan and went to Hank's side nervously. The two children were pulled out and distributed among the women and older girls, and they were crying again. Kevin tried to stand off on his own, not used to this sort of display, but he was pulled in by the group and hugged like everyone else, whether he wanted to be or not.
A few minutes later a group of men came through the service door from the main area of the Mike's Club, they had rifles and other assorted pistols and Juan looked up at them anxiously, trying to judge their mood. The leader caught Juan's eye and tilted his head off to the side of the garage, Juan edged that direction and the man, Jack, said, "Hey Juan, good to see you man!"
Jack was a neighbor of Juan's, he had the look of a person who had been ridden hard and put away wet, he was about thirty four years old, give or take a year, was almost six feet tall. Jack had dark brown hair, brown eyes, fairly smooth skin and usually sported an unshaven look that was popular in the early eighties. He was also slightly overweight, it showed a lot more in his face and legs than around his belly, one thing Juan noted was that the usual dark bags of skin under his eyes were not there. He had moved into the neighborhood years ago and professed to be a student at Denver University, "A Law student", Juan thought. Eventually he got too old to be a student anymore and survived on 'odd jobs', which probably translated as selling quarter bags at the local college. The neighbors knew he was dealer and tolerated him for two reasons, first after a little discussion with him about keeping up his yard, he complied and kept it up as nice as everyone else's and second, another part of the same 'keep your yard clean' talk, Jack agreed not to sell out of his house. Once those conditions were met everyone got along a lot nicer, heck they had even passed the hat to bail him out when he got caught with two ounces in a bust. Juan even broke into his house and cleared out his real stash before the cops came to search for it. Being a good neighbor sometimes required a little sacrifice. Among other things Jack was not big on lying, early on, for instance, when Juan had asked him if he sold drugs, he had just looked at Juan nodded and said, "Yeah, a man's gotta make a living." While they never became really good friends, Juan had figured out where Jack kept his stash, no one was more surprised than Jack when the police turned up nothing in their search. It ended up being the only thing that kept Jack out of prison and he had been trying to show his gratitude ever since, he didn't even begrudge the fact that almost two kilos of the finest weed ever grown had simply disappeared.
"Juan. Bad mother, that guy o
n the bike." said Jack.
"Sì. You get him?"
"No he got away, we must have hit him ten, twelve times, he was fast, got his bike turned up onto the sidewalk and still we shot at him. I know we got his bike a couple times too, it was smoking pretty bad, and both tires were flat, but he somehow kept it up and moving until he was a couple blocks back the way he had come, then he dumped it and ran off. Limping, but alive. Who was he?"
"'Dave', a bad one, pretty strong. I think we pissed him off by not letting him kill us." Juan looked over to see the doc arrive and start looking over Hank on the ground. "Mal suerte that you didn't get him, he needed getting."
Chapter 8
The doc was an older man, probably fifty five or sixty years old, he had gray hair that was combed over the top of his head, his outfit was completed with a white doctor's coat and a stethoscope around his neck. His body was pretty lean, not quite gaunt, but maybe only a day or two away from having that description. His gray hair matched his slate colored eyes, his tan skin did not, liver spots ran up from his arms and over his head, when Juan had met him, only yesterday, the Doc had explained that he was an avid golfer. There was no real problem with the Doc that Juan could put his finger on, but he made Juan uneasy, for some reason he reminded Juan of Jack. Seeing the two of them together in the same room did not make Juan think they were related, but there was something there. The nurse, Beth, had been with the doctor when Juan and Hank came across them. They had been boarded up in the clinic, but had just been rescued by some other good Samaritans. Then there were the kids, a bunch of teens and younger who had a bunch of old fashioned swords and other medieval equipment. The first people, who cleared off the zombies around the clinic, had opted to head west alone after one of their relatives and the kids too, had gone looking for their parents. Hank was against splitting the group up, but he couldn't make everyone stick together either. He hoped that Max and his friends were okay and he also hoped that Michael and the kids he was with would find their way to the club soon too. The doc and his nurse agreed to come to the club and help out, so Hank and Juan had loaded up their car with the extra guns and ammo from the gun shop they had raided.
Beth was a woman who reminded Juan of a matron mother from an old movie he had seen once, she was pretty good sized, not fat, but literally 'big boned', her huge, manly frame was bigger than Juan, seeing Juan looking at her she flashed him a quick smile by way of greeting. He smiled back, he always had gotten on with less attractive women, other than his wife, a curse he supposed, God's way of making sure he did not stray off the very narrow path of fidelity. Beth was a blond, with blue eyes, shoulder length hair and fairly pale skin, like that of a vampire. She wore a white nurses uniform, from the shoes, pants and up to the shirt, she stopped just shy of the whole get up, there was not a cute little nurses cap on her head.
"Hank get bit?" Jack asked Juan, bringing him back in the present.
"No." said Juan, mortified at the very thought, "I Just got into a little fight with Dave."
Jack's eyebrows went up, "Really? Then I guess Hank is a pretty bad mother fucker himself, eh? You get into it with Dave, Juan?"
Juan laughed a little, thinking of how the rumors would now start about Hank fighting Dave, then said, "No señor, barely a scratch on me. I stayed behind a gun and left the punching to Hank. But I did shoot Dave, so did Hank. Dave has a way of not dying, you know?"
"I could see that. Is this Dave gonna be trouble?"
Juan thought about it for a moment then said, "Yeah, I think so. We better make sure the boys keep a good watch. He almost got Hank's gun too, if he gets a gun we could have more trouble. The others are going to have to start keeping their heads down. Anyone else wander in? Some kids with swords? A cop maybe?"
"A cop? No, no one like that, but this place has been growing, we have probably a couple hundred people hear now. Up from what? The eighty we brought with us? It ain't gonna hold us all much longer. Doc figured that out when I spoke to him about you and Hank last night. He thought we should move to a bigger place, a hospital, they have food there, lots of rooms, places for people to shower, kind of like a hotel, only better able to deal with large amounts of people. We'll have to talk later with you and Hank, if he can. We need to get organized. I don't think anyone is coming for us and we need some leaders with authority to get things done."
Juan's eyebrows raised up, "sì? Really why don't you think anyone is coming for us?"
"Come on Juan it has been what? Since Monday or Sunday when this thing happened? Today is Thursday, and we have had no word at all from anyone. You know why?"
Juan shook his head.
"'Cause we are poor, they don't care about us, we didn't elect them, we didn't vote for them, we are no one they need. How many rich people you run into while you were running around?", Jack over road Juan's protests, "No, no I mean really rich people? They knew this was coming and they got out to where it was safe. If we are going to survive we gotta do it on our own, using our own heads, no more government shits telling us what to do. It is the way a lot of them feel too, we have been hung out to dry for a long time, the lower class has gotten larger, the middle class has shrunk to a pittance and those lucky few with money rule us, but are above the laws themselves. It has been happening for a long time and this is the rich man's way of wiping out the 'untouchables' of our country."
Looking at him Juan replied, "I don't know much about that Jack. I know we don't have no help, but if they wipe us out, who does the work? Some old rich dude gonna get his hands dirty fixing his own car? His rich son gonna grow his own chronic? I dunno, I can see us getting ourselves out of this mess though, I really can. The zombies, they ain't that smart."
Looking in Juan's eyes Jack conceded the point, "Maybe, maybe man, they could keep a few of us around to take care of the work. Not much better than slaves. But not here, not in Denver, we have been written off. Everyone still here has."
Hank groaned and started flailing around as the doc probed his back and Juan went forward towards his best friend. Jack clapped him on the back and called after him, "I'll tell everyone about Dave, Juan. I'll pass the word along."
The doc was sponging off Hanks back with the assistance of his nurse and several of the women. Small kids were poking curiously through the mother's legs and perched atop the fiesta looking down at what was going on. Juan called out in Spanish for the mothers to get the little kids out of here, calling to Nanci to take the gringo kids and get them cleaned up and in new clothing and not to leave them alone. Jack called out to the men to leave Hank and Juan alone and that he would come talk to them out in the main store in a few minutes. As if by magic the two men's words cleared the garage out, all that were left were some older 'grandmas' and one woman Hank had actually dated more than once, Evaine, who was holding Hank's hand while the doc and nurse cleaned him up. One of the old women made room for Juan by Hank's head and another one was taking the bloody rags from the doctor while the nurse handed him clean gauze.
The doctor was working feverishly, trying to stop to get a good look at the damage as he controlled the bleeding. Eventually he looked up at Juan, "Hm what happened?"
"He got into a fight with a super zombie and the thing bum rushed him into a car. The zombie hit him hard enough to break the car windows."
"Hard enough to break his ribs! He is damn lucky he didn't get his back broken in the process. I don't see any bubbles, but there is no way to know if his diaphragm was ruptured, the wound is pretty low so I am betting there is damage, at least a tear."
"So what does that mean? Is he gonna make it?" Juan asked nervously.
"Hm, should. He should, if his wounds don't get infected. He should be up and running around in couple of days, if it is just his ribs anyway, he is gonna be sore for a long while until they heal up. That is a best case scenario though, he might be down for months. This place has a pharmacy, but you know, I am not a pharmacist. Me mixing up antibiotics might not be such a good idea." The doc paused i
n his bloody work, holding one gloved hand up against the gauze on Hank's back he gestured for Juan to pull the pen out of his breast pocket, "Get the pad too. Beth write this down." He then listed off several medicines and told the nurse to hand the list to Juan, "You get into the pharmacy and see if there are any pills with those exact names already made up, I have been here a few times and they had the meds in white plastic bags hung with magnets near the 'pay here' sign, on the inside of the pharmacy above the counter. If there are any pre-made medicines with these names on the bottles and you bring them to me, okay?"
Juan nodded, said, "sì." And took off through the door where he ran into a crowd of people looking anxiously on. He rapid fired a few words at them and two younger men ran off back into the warehouse store and one accompanied Juan over to the pharmacy, which was still locked up.
A metal grate was pulled down over the front of the entire store front, next to the open 'cafeteria' style service counter was a metal door, which was locked. The two younger men Juan had sent out had returned, one hefting an acetylene torch, the other had a pair of bolt cutters. Juan took the bolt cutters and broke the pad locks holding the metal grate to the floor. The grate came up. The man with the torch set it down and scrambled into the pharmacy over the counter, he then unlocked the door and let them all in. The four of them looked at the white plastic bags arrayed on a metal strip and held up with magnets, right where the doctor said they would be. Juan put the list of names up on the 'upper' counter top so everyone could read the four drugs the doctor had written there and the three of them started sorting through the bags. They ended up with seven bottles of medication that matched what the doctor needed.
Rushing back to the garage Juan pushed his way through to the door, quite a few of the men were still there, however enough were gone to make Juan think that the building would be well watched.
