by Mark Clodi
Pulling herself away from Juan, Nanci kept the towel to her face and pointed to the deep freeze, her muffled voice said, “We keep some water in there for us to use for cooking and drinking, there are some coolers, just take one, we’ll get another. Be careful Juan! If you don’t come back I shall hunt your corpse down and kill it myself!”
“Only after lecturing me on the error of my ways and how you were right. And I will deserve it too.”
Ruffling his wife’s hair and then pulling her in for a quick kiss, Juan turned and headed for the freezer, where several coolers filled with water bottles were sitting, he picked one up and headed out to meet Jack.
Jack was waiting in the parking lot with the ‘men’ he had selected. Charlie was there along with three women, one Hispanic and two gringos. Raising his hands Jack said, “I asked for volunteers, these women all raised their hands first, Terry, Jen, and Mary. A lot of guys wanted to go to, but the women said something about equal representation, so I chose them.”
Charlie had changed his pants and t-shirt, he carried a rifle, had a pistol in a holster on his belt and had what looked for all the world like a doctor’s little black bag at his feet. Terry was an older white woman, perhaps forty years old, she had a pudgy stomach and legs like solid oak trees that sprang out of her gray shorts. To top it off she was wearing an over-sized Nascar t-shirt, her brown hair and silver earrings offset a face that only a mother could love. To say she was ugly would be an insult to ugly people everywhere. Something was just not right with her face, it appeared to be slightly misshapen, with a large nose, mis-sized eyes and a tight, pursed set of lips that made it seem unbalanced. In Juan’s experience he had gotten along with ugly women a lot better than pretty women, so her looks didn’t bother him at all, after all he was not going to sleep with this mujer, just ride with her. Jen was also a middle aged woman with raven hair, brown eyes and a slight scar across one of her cheeks, it had faded with age, but was still visible, she had broader hips, but looked like she was an outdoor type, tan skin, hiking shoes, and a shotgun completed her ensemble. Last but not least was Mary, a kid really, she was probably seventeen and Hispanic, acne had already taken her smooth skin away from her, leaving parts of her face pock marked with scars. Still she was dainty and attractive in body, not rail thin, not overweight, her brown hair and dark brown eyes were typical of Hispanic heritage. She was wearing a rugged western style shirt, blue jeans and boots. And she was holding the rifle like she knew how to use it. At her belt was a fanny pack, that was bulging and hanging low.
“Sì.” Juan nodded to the women and to Charlie. Behind Jack sat two pickup trucks, both Ford F-150s both white and late model. Very nice. Juan could not wait to get into one of them and crank up the air conditioning.
“Good I am driving this one, taking Charlie in the back seat and Jen is riding shotgun. You get to ride, Terry is driving. You have the shotgun position and Mary rides in the backseat. The 'shotgunners' carry shotguns. Funny, huh? The driver has one too, the back seater has a hunting rifle and all of us get pistols and bats. Oh, each of these trucks is benefiting from new CBs, tuned to channel 12 and plugged into the dash, they are not hard wired, maybe Alfonso can get to it when he has time. We have walkie-talkies for each of us too, nice Motorolas with a four mile range, finally there are two cell phones in each glove box, charged and ready to go. See Juan? This time we are not going to lose contact with each other or with the ‘home base’. I got one of my guys carrying a cell phone to answer us if we call him, we have to report in every half an hour on the half hour. Divvy up the water and lets get moving.”
The way he said it left no room for arguing, Juan was not going to drive. He waited for Mary to ride in the back seat, saying “After you” to her in Spanish as he opened the door, she looked at him and said, “What? Sorry Juan I don’t speak much Spanish.”
At the drivers door Terry smirked at Juan and said, in fluent Spanish, “Stereo types. You gotta love them huh? I lived in Mexico city for four years when I was younger. The gringa speaks Spanish, the Hispanic speaks none. Pleased to meet you Juan.”
In Spanish Juan answered, “The pleasure is mine.”, he liked the woman ugly enough to scare away small children already.
Hopping in, Terry continued in English, “I have been to Sky Ridge, so I know the way there, you have been on the highway this morning, so you know more of the local roads. At least for now we are taking the lead. We haven’t decided who gets to lead on the way back. So? Which way to we go?”
“I would go down to Arapahoe Road and go west, if it is clear, we could go back via Broncos road to Peoria, I suppose that should be mostly clear, but there was a bad wreck. I think highway twenty five is clear all the way, some army guys came through there this morning, we think.” Juan explained what had happened on the road that morning and about the pile up, the dead military men in the body bags and how the road appeared to be clear on the southbound lane.
Terry nodded. She drove on the way Juan had said and then started to say something to him, stopped herself, shook her head, then started again, “Juan, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why do you think this happened? You religious? Is this Armageddon?”
Shit, Juan thought, “I don’t know. I don’t really want to think of it too much Terry. We got to live first if we get to a safe place, maybe we can think of why stuff happened later.”
“You know when it started? I heard that guy on the radio, Blake 'the Snake', he said that the dead have overrun most of the city, you hear him talk yet?”
Seeing Juan shake his head she turned on the radio and tuned the dial to what appeared to be the only station playing. There was a man on the station giving directions on how to get out of town.
Terry looked at Juan and said, “He does more than that, he tells how to kill them, how to keep your water safe, gives highway reports. I haven’t had a lot of chance to listen to him today, I was on 'zombie killer duty', watching them come up to the lines of cars, then we club em to death as they try to get over the cars. We had radios going full blast listening to the guy, but then this morning we got mob rushed, not too long after you came in. Not everyone knew what was going on ‘cause the radios were so loud. Jack made us turn them all down so we could at least hear each other screaming, then we decided it would be better not to have the distraction, so we left them off.”
“Does he say where he thinks they all came from?”
“No, he doesn’t, but he has callers who do, everything from government secret labs, to aliens to Armageddon, you went out after leaving a safe place, your opinion matters more to me than some guy hiding in his basement who calls in to a radio show scared out of his mind and full of crack pot theories. Sure we all had to deal with them to get to the Club, but you are the only one who left the Club after you got there. Actually this will be twice now, won't it? Why Juan?”
“I can’t really say, I am just doing what has to be done. Why did you come?” turning in the seat a little he looked back at Mary, “Why did you come too?”
Terry answered first, “I wanted some of your fame, I wanted it to rub off on me. I didn’t want to be afraid, you don’t look afraid to me.”
“Me?”, asked Mary, “I was just tired of moving cars and clubbing zombies. I would rather shoot zombies than club them. I am better at it and my arms don’t get so tired.”
“Really? How did you get to the club?” asked Terry, glancing in the rear view mirror.
“I am from Castle Rock, I belong to a gun club and we had a shoot on Sunday. My mom let me off school on Monday, we had a shooting match up in Laramie on Sunday, took second place for my age too, regionals, so that is pretty good. We got back late on Sunday night, well Monday morning really, I crashed with Shelly, my friend in the club and then we slept through the first part of all this. We knew something was wrong when we went out to get some fast food. The zombies got Shelly, I made it back to her house by running, but for what? I waited for her parents
to come home, called my parents at work, at my house, everywhere, nothing. No one answered. After a couple of days I set out to go home, to see for myself what happened to my family. I was so scared, there was this one zombie that was in the back yard of Shelly's place, he was like, I dunno, a business guy or something, only dead. I had heard Blake on the radio, saying how to kill them. I knew I had to do this guy in the back, if I could not take him out, how would I ever take any of the others out and get home? I made it easy, opened the bathroom window in my friend's house so I could see the zombie, sighted him in with Shelly's dads' thirty ought six and squeezed off the shot. He...it, fell dead right away. Easy. I had my car out front, we had taken Shelly's to grab a bite to eat when we got caught by them, in the goddamn drive through, couldn't go forward, couldn’t go back ‘cause some guy had pulled in behind us. The line was not moving, then the mob showed up, the zombies started dragging people out of the cars. We ran, but one of them was faster and pulled Shelly down. I left her.” Mary, looked straight into the rear view mirror into Terry’s eyes, daring her to say something, with no words coming out in response, she continued, “I opened the garage door of her house to leave and plugged five zombies in ten seconds, then got in my car. I drove it into her garage and shut the door, easy as that. I loaded my shit up, along with anything else in the house that I thought I would need and headed out. There was nothing at my house, no parents, no zombies. Nothing. After spending one night there were a dozen zombies around the place. I didn't have the light on or nothing. So I decided to leave. I got the car loaded and hit the highway. I was going to go up to highway seventy and head west, but the road was all fucked up, I didn’t have the radio on to find the ways around the jams. I should have, I might have made it, or known not to head towards town. I totally should have headed out toward Rampart Range park. Instead I ended up log jammed on highway two twenty five, when they came for me I ran again. I took the thirty ought six instead of my target gun, not as accurate, but more practical, I mean you just can’t break a good thirty ought six right? I ended up running right up to the Mike’s Club, saw some guys waving at me, not zombies, just Hispanics. Talk about luck. I ran to them, they helped finish off the interested zombies and pulled me into the club. I wouldn’t let them take my gun from me. I still have a couple boxes of ammo for it too. I came because I want to kill zombies, just not with a bat. I won’t shoot if it will give us away, I promise. I hate them.”
Mary sat back into her seat. Juan cleared his throat, “You know, no one has a good story about how they got to where they are right now. I am sorry about what happened to your friend and family. I am glad you lived through it, someone good with a rifle will always be handy.”
Mary just nodded and went back to scanning outside the truck. Terry kept her speed down, barely hitting twenty miles an hour when the road was free and clear.
“What about you Terry? How did you get to the club?”, asked Juan.
Terry smiled and said, “Nothing you haven’t heard before Juan, but not from me. I made it.”, her face turned sad, like that of a little kid who just dropped his ice cream cone into a running stream, “Pretty much all you need to know is I lost my kid, my husband he ran off years ago. I lost my mom, my dad, my kid. And my dog. But I am alive and there has to be a reason for that. I was at work, rushed to the day care to get my son, wall to wall zeds. My parents were dead, true dead, not zombies, someone else had killed them after they turned. I drove to the club, that new Subaru wagon in the line? That was mine. Don't much matter now.”
Juan was about to ask for more, when the cb chimed in, “Breaker one-two, anybody there? Come on back truckers and talk to teddy bear.”
Terry broke out laughing, Juan didn’t get it, she saw his face and said, “It is from an old song.” Before she grabbed the mic and said, “Well you got it Teddy Bear! What’s up?” She was giggling like a school girl, trying not to laugh into the mic when she spoke, but doing a poor job.
“Well, what is your handle momma? You sound hot to me, ‘Hot Momma’?”
“Anything you like Teddy Bear!”
“Well Hot Momma, me and the little bears are wondering why we are going so slow, put the pedal down! We wanna get there before Mary turns eighteen!”
“Oh now Teddy Bear you know we gotta get there and back, I ain’t gonna blow a tire running over a bunch of stuff, just ‘cause you want me to go cruising along at an ungodly thirty miles an hour!”
“Alright, alright ‘HM’, I hear ya. Just spoke to Mother Goose, back at the home base, as planned. It seems ‘Father Time’ has woken up in a bad mood, you might be getting a call as his best friend is riding with you. Thought you could use the warning.”
“Thanks for the heads up ‘TB’, we’ll deal with Father Time if he calls. Hot Momma off.”, Terry turned to Juan, still giggling, “What?”
Juan waved his hands at the CB, “What was that all about?”
“You mean ‘Hot Momma’ or the Teddy Bear? Or the Father Time?”
“No, I think I get ‘Father Time’, Hank right? Why Teddy Bear or Hot Momma?”
Terry laughed some more, then turned on Juan accusingly, “What, you don’t think I am a hot momma? Is that it?”, seeing Juan cringe back, she laughed again and said jovially, “Cut it out Juan, I’m ugly, not blind. Teddy Bear is from a song in the mid seventies, got popular for awhile, kind of a sad song, not funny at all, just funny that Jack knew about it. He had to be a kid when he heard it, just like me. I don’t have a ‘handle’ on the cb, Jack was just being nice. I don’t like pity, but I don’t mind nice. Who would you be Juan?”
They spent the next ten minutes running through a list of cb names for both Juan and Mary, Mary ended up taking “Shooter” and Juan simply couldn’t pick, he thought maybe “Segundo”, but Mary and Terry both thought that was too lame, so the debate continued. Somewhere during this time they made it to highway twenty five, there were zombies congregating under the highway overpass, which they had to drive through in order to get to the highway. “Want to shoot them Mary?” asked Juan.
“Sure thing, only about a dozen of them, it’ll make it safer for anyone else who comes by later too.”
Juan popped open his door, to get the rear passenger door open and Mary leaned out of the back and gestured for Juan to roll down his window so she could use it as a gun rest. She took aim and hit a zombie in the neck from about thirty yards away. The zombie went down, but was not dead. Mary swore softly and took aim on the next one rapidly. She hit another four zombies before she had to feed more bullets into the gun, then made five more shots, including two shots to finish off the two zombies who she only managed to wound the first time. It probably took about fifty seconds, including the reload time. Mary hopped back into her seat while Juan whistled his appreciation. Terry nodded and said, “Good shooting.” as she eased the truck forward.
“Nah, not real good, this thing is only okay, but is has a five round capacity, which makes it better than my tournament gun, which was a bolt action single shot. I missed a couple easy shots, especially that first one.” Mary shrugged, “I will do better next time.”
Terry pulled the truck up onto the on ramp and they merged onto the highway, there were no other moving vehicles on the road. As it had been further north where Juan and Hank had driven down it earlier in the day, the highway was clear as far as they could see. There were few zombie wandering around, but mostly there were just corpses. Those zombies that were around tended to be near the off and on ramps to the highway, like they had just wandered into the area. Terry drove them a few miles to the East Lincoln Avenue exit and took it west. Terry nodded to her left, “That’s it there, see it?” Terry pulled the truck onto a street that led up to the hospital and then stopped, letting the truck idle.
Nodding ‘yes’, Juan said, “It is very big, looks new. There are a lot of cars though, might be a lot of zombies.”
“Well I don’t see much yet, not zombies anyway, oh, no, wait, there is one, see her?”
Terry was speaking of a younger looking zombie in a nurses uniform, who was stumbling down the road towards them, still some distance away.
“Hot Momma, Hot Momma, you gonna park there and make us walk up, or are we driving in?”, the cb startled Terry and Juan both. Reaching for the cb mic Terry responded, “Teddy Bear, this is Hot Momma, we were just scouting it from here, I will proceed up the road so you don’t have to walk. Over.”
“Affirmative, uh, over?” came Jack’s reply.
“Uh, over?” Terry mimicked to Juan and then laughed, “He kills me Juan!”
Terry shifted the truck back into drive and they started up the road towards a large building about half a mile away. As they passed the nurse, Juan said, “Let's leave her, not draw attention to ourselves if we can help it?”
“Oh, okay, I was ready though”, responded Mary.
They drove the truck up to a side street and Terry got on it, the street looked to circle the entire complex. She pointed to the mic and told Juan, “Tell Jack we are going to circle around and see if anyone signals us or what the situation is inside.”
