by Mark Clodi
As he fell sideways away from the blow Dave snapped his foot out, catching Ron in the groin with enough force to actually lift the young man off of the ground. Rolling sideways Dave sat up on the ground and got his bearings. He still held onto his sword. Ron was throwing up off to one side, Whitney was climbing wearily to her feet, the bow woman had an arrow drawn and pointing toward him, but was not firing, that left.....
"Ow! Goddamn it!" the kid hit him over the head with the Glock, the pistol shattered as it hit Dave's head. Dave reached back and grabbed the kid as he was trying to backpedal. "No, fucking no! Sonny Jim! I have about had it with you guys." Holding the boy with on hand clamped like iron around his leg, Dave struggled to his feet. As he stood up he pulled the boy's leg with him, jerking him easily off his feet. He pulled the kid up through his guts and used his other hand to lift the kid above his head. Once he hand him there, he took an arrow in the chest, wheezing he threw the kid at Whitney, knocking them both down hard, plucking at the arrow he turned towards the young woman with the bow.
"You missy, are getting on my fucking nerves!" Dave stomped towards her as she calmly drew arrows and fired at him, Dave ducked the arrow that would have hit his head, knocked one aside with his sword and took one to his thigh before he reached her. Stepping on top of the guy he had shot as he made his way towards her, Dave continued his tirade, "I mean come fucking on, how many zombies have you killed with your goddamn bow?" she continued to fire as he stepped off the guy, "For fuck's sake girl, his gun" he pointed at the slightly moving body on the ground, to the ax and revolver laying beside it, "is right fucking there!" She had spunk, Dave had to give her that, she fired another arrow almost right into his face, he barely deflected it with the sword hilt. Swinging the sword around viscously, she blocked with the only thing she had in her hand, her bow, which was cut into two parts. Panting heavily, Dave yelled into her face, "His gun is right fucking there!", he then pushed her backwards trying to knock her over.
The young woman took two quick steps backwards but managed to stay standing, she then pulled out a long dagger. Dave spat at her, "Oh Jesus fucking Christ! Don't you know when you are beat? look at 'em! All your friends are down bleeding, unconscious or dead and you wanna pull out another toad sticker and go mano-a-mano with me? I mean if you had ran I might have let you go. Now I changed my mind you stupid little cunt!"
Dave took a step forward and his back leg was swept out from under him, he spun around seeing sky then pavement then sky again. He did keep enough presence of mind to roll over and foil anyone's shot on him, when he finally stopped and sat up he was about fifteen feet away from the kid with the ax, the one he had shot, who was sitting up pointing his revolver at Dave's head.
The bow girl rushed to his side, trying to hold his armored bulk up. The kid had blood pouring out of his mouth, however the gun in his hand was rock steady. Dave noted that his foot had not made the journey with him, and was still standing upright not two paces in front of the kid.
"Dammit, I liked that foot!" he shouted, then twisted sideways as the first bullet tore into his body. Several confused seconds passed before Dave realized that he was still alive. He was on his belly crawling away from the ax guy, his arms were not moving right, not quite right, one of those bullets must have come close to taking him out, he awkwardly put his right hand on the ground and tried to push himself up, looking back over his shoulder he saw a grim faced bow girl striding towards him with the ax. She jumped and landed on his back, forcing him to the ground once again, Dave felt the strength draining out of him, he tried to scream that it was all a mistake, the last thing he felt was the blade of the ax entering the top of his head.
Chapter 26
They were lucky they were so close when Dave jumped them, otherwise the kid would have died. That's what Hank thought anyway. Still, he reflected, the kids were lucky any of them had made it. He was surprised to see them alive and knew they would have a story to tell, he would get the rest of it after he finally figured out what the hell was going on at the Sky Ridge facility. The electronics still worked, which surprised Hank, he thought they would have been destroyed by the nuclear bomb, he seemed to recall that nuke's messed up electronic devices, destroyed batteries, that sort of thing. When the power went off, shortly after the bomb had burst, he was sure there would be no more television, cell phones, cars, anything. Doc said something about the EMP, electromagnetic pulse, only knocking out electronics close to ground zero. Doc also conjectured that the bomb had been a tactical nuclear bomb, designed to take out a small, compact force, not rain down destruction over a broad area. Doc seemed to know more about it than Hank, all Hank really cared about was the radiation, were they all going to die? Did they need to move? He was in the middle of these questions when Michael and his group trickled in and Doc had been called away to try and save them.
The answers Doc gave were heartening, no they probably were not going to die of radiation, Doc thought the zombies were far more likely to overwhelm them, as he doubted the bomb had got them all, and they made more where ever they went. Doc also said 'No' to moving too, at least until someone who knew about the weather patterns could them which way the winds blew. Doc thought the winds blew kind of south easterly, which should mean not directly at the club. The one thing Doc was really concerned with was radiated zombies, if some of them were exposed they could spread the contamination to whomever they contacted. This was something Hank was not going to worry too much about, if a zombie got close enough to give you radiation poisoning you probably had other, more important, things to be worrying about.
Picking up the phone the other board members had given him, Hank put call through to Juan. The phone rang a few times, then it clicked as someone picked up, "Amigo?" Hank asked, "You there Juan?"
"Si."
Ah just like old times, Hank thought, " How're things going? Ya'll see the blast this morning? Well of course you did, everybody okay?"
"Si, well sort of Hank. Don't know 'bout Mary, she is alive, but bitten. Charlie ain't letting visitors in, he seems worried. You okay at the Club?"
"Er, yeah mostly. Say Juan you remember those kids at the clinic right? The ones with the swords and the ax and stuff? All dressed up like knights? They said they would hook up with us here after checking on their parents?"
"Yeah, yeah, oh yeah! They come in?" asked Juan excitedly.
"Well yeah, but Juan, ah, they ran into Dave before they got here."
"Mother Mary! That guy almost killed you and you are the toughest guy I know, pretty stupid, but tough. What happened Hank?"
"Most of them made it through with bruises, you ain't gonna believe this amigo." pausing for a moment, Hank continued, "They got him Juan."
Silence on the other end of the line, then, tentatively, "They got him? They got Dave?"
"They seem to think so, Whitney split his head open with that ax Michael had. Everyone was hurt pretty bad, the least of 'em were bruised up, one kid looks to have a God damned broken testicle, Doc says they will pull through, they got an ass kicking they will never, ever, forget. You know how you said you felt all weird after killing that guy at the hospital?"
Warily, Juan answered, "Si."
"Whitney and you, you two are gonna have to have a little talk when you get the chance, she says, and her friends say, something happened to her too."
Juan was quiet for a moment, then said, "Okay, we will talk, maybe all three of us, anyone who killed a zombie up close and personal. Hank, we had something happen here too, you know? I gotta talk at you about it, try and get my head around it." said Juan.
"Shoot partner."
Juan proceeded to catch Hank up with the guardsmen, telling him as much as he knew, with help from a nearby Nanci, about how they had, Juan thought, been a spotter or something to guide the bomb towards its eventual detonation. He went on to say that he was in contact with the infantry and they wanted to send troop carriers up to get people from the hospital and the Mike's Club.
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p; "Well, what do you think?" Juan asked after giving Hank a few minutes to digest the information.
"You talked to 'em, what do you think?" countered Hank.
"I don't think they mean any harm, I think they want to help. I say we meet with them and figure out how we are going to do things."
"So that is what we do then Juan, call 'em back up and tell 'em we'll see them later this morning if they can get up there to Sky Ridge, and I will get down there too, we'll get this shin dig going and see if we can actually get a good night's sleep for a change. Ask them about fallout and if it is safe for us to be outside, Doc is worried."
"Si, I will, probably I would worry about the zombies more than the radiation though, the zombie will get you first, huh?"
Chuckling ruefully Hank answered, "Exactly what I think Juan."
Chapter 27
Juan hung up the phone, he was till on top of the building and was looking out over the distance towards the still visible smoke cloud to the north east. The wind looked to be carrying the smoke to the south east, not so far south, more east, the smoke would miss Sky Ridge and the Mike's Club, Juan was sure of that. He looked at Nanci and smiled. Talking in Spanish he said, "The military guys will be here, they will figure this stuff out. You will see we will be okay again."
Nanci frowned and replied, "Military are still under civilian control, not the other way around, we are still going to need you, Hank and the others as our voice. Plus if the military is dropping bombs on the zombies we are going to be in trouble, the bombs will be gone long before the zombies are."
Looking over at the smoke cloud Juan thought that maybe Nanci was right about this. He took her hand and stared at the horizon for a few minutes wondering, what, exactly they could do about anything. Slowly he let go of Nanci's hand and approached the radio, picking up the headset he said, "Hello? Is Ed Stanson there?"
A reply was almost immediate, "Yes sir, is this John?"
"Yes." a moment later Ed's voice came back at him.
"Juan this is Ed. What is up?"
"Hello Ed, we have been talking a little bit and think we should meet up as soon as we can to figure out what we are going to do. When can you get here? Or do you want us to come to you?"
"No, you stay put, I will fly out to you in say, a half an hour? Will that be okay? If you have any badly injured, I am talking the worst couple of cases, not a whole bunch of people, we can take them with us when we leave. We pulled up a map of your location and should not have any trouble finding it, there is a helipad on the roof of the hospital right?"
"Oh yeah sure, I am almost standing on it now, I will wait here for you, okay?"
"Yes, that is perfect son, I'll see you soon!"
Nanci mumbled something about getting them coffee and Juan decided to stay up on the roof, he walked over to look down at the emergency room entrance and was not surprised to find the zombies had gotten closer. Concentrating he urged them to move away from the ER. As one the small crowd of them looked up at him, when they looked, the guards on the entrance also looked up, seeing him looking down they waved and said something that was lost in the distance. Juan waved back and nodded trying to convey an 'Everything is alright' sort of look. By now though the rumors of the soldier's death had traveled through their small community and the door behind Juan opened up much too soon to be Nanci coming back with coffee.
Seeing Jack and Charlie over by the ropes that led to the bodies dangling over the side of the building Juan started to walk in that direction, he was joined by a few of the people from inside the building. Jack explained what had happened as best he could, pointing to the smoke cloud was was now just a steady stream rising into the sky.
One of the men, he looked like a medical intern, said, "That doesn't look like a nuke, at least not what I thought one would be like. Is it true the Army guys killed themselves?"
Nodding yes, Juan announced loud enough for everyone to hear, "The Army guys hung themselves, they called in a nuclear strike on the radio station, barricaded the roof access door from the outside and hung themselves right here."
The group of men and woman babbled a bit hearing this news, one of the women actually got sick, vomiting onto the gravel rooftop, the acidic smell caused Juan to wrinkle his nose.
"Please people, stop for a minute here, that is not all." Juan held out his hands, gesturing at everyone to quiet down. One of the men helped the sick woman away from her pool of vomit and handed her a dishtowel he had draped over his shoulder to wipe her face off with. "First." Juan held up on finger, "We are not in any danger from fallout here at the hospital." One of the men called out asking how Juan knew, the others became more agitated, "Okay, let me start again. First, I just got off the radio behind me," Juan used his finger to point at the army radio sitting on an ammo crate behind him and then continued, "The army guy, I think he is a Major or something, he said we should be far enough from where the bomb went off at that we should be okay. Plus the winds should push what limited fallout there is to the south east of the explosion, but we are not in that range. That is the second thing I guess, we are not in any danger from the fallout from the bomb. Plus we didn't get hit by a pulse or anything that destroyed our electronics, another sign that we were far enough away. Third," Juan held up a third finger, "The army guys did hang themselves and are dead, I think we should pull them up and try to take care of them we I get done. The last thing, number three? Four? Okay number four is that this Ed guy, the Major I spoke to on the radio, he is coming here by helicopter, he is going to be here in fifteen minutes or so to look over our situation and see what he can do to help us out, maybe even move us to the south to the National guard base where they are at. He wants to see our set up first, then talk to us a bit. So, well so we need to get organized, I think some of us should pull the bodies up and get them into the...morgue? Is there a morgue here?" One of the people dressed in green scrubs called out 'yes!' and several people nodded.
Juan went on, "So we get the bodies into storage. I think we should do a quick count of inventory, list all the cars and trucks we have keys too, the number of phones we have working, how much food we have and how much space we have cleared here. Think we can do that in twenty minutes. I am not saying to count every packet of sugar or anything just more like how many days we could go without food, how long the generators could last before they run out of power, that sort of thing." Juan was not sure how he was going to get people to volunteer for these jobs, however Jack jumped in and just started pointing at people and telling them what to do, adding several things that Juan had not thought of before turning back to a few men, including Charlie and Juan on the roof and saying, "We get to pull up the bodies." He sent three men down to the ER for gurneys and then the three men left went to work hauling up the ropes with their grisly remains on the end.
Leaning out over the edge of the building Juan pulled on a rope with one hand and was surprised to find he could pull it up quite easily, bracing his feet against the side of the building he started hand over handing the body up. Charlie and Jack shared a disbelieving look, Juan was a hundred and sixty pounds soaking wet, though he was wiry and strong, the men below were all muscular and probably weighed in at over a hundred and ninety pounds each. Juan was not even breaking a sweat in the cool morning air. The door opened up just as Juan got the first body to the rooftop, Jack and Charlie hurriedly pulled it over the edge, Juan glanced over and saw Nanci standing with a large thermos and a plastic bag that looked to hold many coffee mugs, she was standing there with a slight 'o' on her lips, when she made eye contact with Juan her lips pursed into a grimace and she nodded slightly and continued forward.
"I saw a lot of people running down the stairs, not panicking, just with a purpose, you guys do that?" Nanci asked.
"Kind of a group effort. I told 'em what needed to be done, Jack assigned them tasks." Juan answered.
Holding up his finger and pointed up into the air Jacked nodded at his hand, "Yeah this is a powerful tool. Just poi
nt and say, 'You! Do this! You! Do that!', it seems to work. I think I should have pointed at someone else to do this job though." Jack frowned.
Shaking her head, Nanci said, "No Jack, they jumped and did what you said because, you gave yourself the worst job, they know you guys lead from the front and that makes them respect you and want to help you."
"Yeah, probably. I am too smart for my own good. Juan here though, he is doing most of the work himself, me and Charlie are just gawkers."
Juan flushed a bit and shrugged his shoulders.
"You think these military guys know what might have happened to you Juan?" asked Jack.
"I don't know, maybe, maybe not, I don't think the guys at their base were really out yet, you know? They might have seen a lot of stuff though and some of their guys had to make it back, right? Do I tell them anything? Could be risky, I don't want to end up in a room somewhere with doctors prodding me all day long."
Nanci had a fearful look come over her face, "Maybe we shouldn't say anything?" she looked at Jack and Charlie's faces expectantly.
"No probably not, maybe if you could talk to a doctor, if they have one, you know, privately, try to invoke 'patient confidentiality', maybe that would work?" said Charlie.
"Hm, when you put it that way, I say 'Hell no!'. I am sorry I mentioned it, this is 'the man' we are talking about, even if the man does not exist anymore, I mean the whole U.S. Of A. Is not this bad is it?" Jack asked.
The four of them stood looking at each other for a long while contemplating that thought.
Chapter 28
Whitney was laying on a bed with her arms around her sister Lauren. Next to her on one side was a black man, who she thought was named Kevin, he had been shot. Lauren, was softly crying to herself trying not to wake up the other patients, Whitney's tear stained face was a testament to her own grief at not being able to find their parents and almost losing her boyfriend Michael in the early morning battle with the zombie named Dave. Graig was lying on the bed on the other side of her, he was arguably the second most wounded of the survivors, the doctor they had suspected he had a broken arm, a concussion and a broken nose. The doctor has set the nose before Craig regained consciousness. Michael's brother, Matt, was nowhere to be found and Whitney had been trying to find out what happened to him. She loved Michael, and she was afraid of losing another friend more than anything. Whitney was pretty sure that her parents were dead, however she did not know for certain and that somehow made it worse.
