by Mark Clodi
“Fuck!” Dave spat out, pulling out his Glock he fired at the woman, who at least had the sense to dodge to the left as Dave brought the gun up. The gun jammed. It didn’t even fire once, just clicked and did nothing. “Fuckin’ gimme a break!” he swore. He put the Glock into his left hand and reached around back to pull out his revolver when the first shot hit him in the left arm. He quickly decided that he had enough of this adventure and vaulted back over the car barricade, he could not resist taking a quick shot the woman who had gone prone behind a tire on the ground. She probably thought he could not see her in the dark, not knowing about his ability to see the wonderful colors of human blood flowing through her veins. One quick shot and then he backed up, then he took a couple more deliberate shots at each of the groups with guns before he turned and ran.
Chapter 20
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!' he thought excitedly, 'I finished the bastard!'
Then he saw Dave reel and swing about, before he jumped out of the light that was directed to the area and 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 next to his shoulder. 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 moment 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 from emergency spotlights running off of car batteries. The lights chased away the darkness and revealed 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 detritus inside the protected space of the parking lot. Now everyone seemed to be 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.
“Oh. 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? I expected you to be ten feet tall with eyes of glowing fire!” Kevin laughed, then winced. Kristal noticed and said, “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?” Hank said eying the gun Kevin was pointing at Jeff.
“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. The zombie then 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 situation 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 by the way?” 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 at 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 Jeff...that would be a bad thing.”
The crowd stood around Kevin and time was sliding by slowly, finally Kevin took a deep breath, and lower
ed 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 even aim Hank, he didn’t 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 only a few seconds they began jeering Jeff and working themselves into a frenzy. Hank finally 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?” Everyone started talking about how the guards worked and debating on how to make it better so this would not happen again, Hank leaned in to Kevin he spoke softly under the babble of the crowd, “Why don't you go get the doc to look you over, and Kevin?”
“Yeah Hank?”
“Thanks for not shooting that asshole.”
Chapter 21
The night passed quickly, but not uneventfully. The group at the hospital was busy for a couple hours after sunset going through all the rooms in the eastern wing of the hospital where they had taken up residence. There were no fast zombies on any of the floors, but they did run into maybe eighteen slow ones that had to be put down, most of these were previously the elderly or people in for major operations, as zombies they made for a decrepit group, easily taken down, yet disconcerting too. No one, it seemed, wanted to cap grandpa or grandma in the head. Juan watched the crews move into the rooms and took his own turn leading the others into the various rooms to ‘clear’ them too.
Their group formed a wall with the vehicles they had to block off the emergency room doors and throughout the night they kept this area well patrolled and clear of zombies too. Towards the morning this area had drawn the attention of a lot of zombies, in fact it was pretty much a raging battle. Juan had not slept all night, he felt mildly euphoric when the sun finally peeked above the horizon. They had limited their shooting as much as possible, so as not to draw even more zombies attention, but there was a crowd of probably fifty to sixty zombies milling about outside the wall of vehicles. Juan was not sure how they would be able to get out without opening a hole in their line of defenses.
Probably they couldn’t do it, however no one had said anything about leaving, in fact most of the crew who had stayed here over night were quite content with staying where they were, the beds were far better than the floor of the Mike’s Club and the rooms all had heavy doors too. The doors could be busted through, but anything trying that would at least make a lot of noise.
Right now Juan was on solo duty behind the wall, they had found having too many living humans also drew the attention of the zombies, but one or two people under moderate cover created only a small ‘draw’. Juan smelled the coffee long before he heard the emergency room doors slide open in back of him. As Nanci walked up behind him he sniffed in appreciatively and said, “Ah mi amor, gracias. That smells wonderful!”
Unseen Nanci stiffened, then said, “How did you know it was me?”
Laughing Juan imitated Hank's southern drawl and said, “Darling you have been bringing me coffee every day for the last twelve years, who else would it be?”
Still a little unsure, Nanci said tentatively, “Juan, you know, the others, well Charlie, he said something happened to you?”
Juan scowled “Me? No I am alright, nothing bad happened.”
“Charlie didn’t say anything ‘bad’ happened to you, but that he saw you after...after you killed one of the zombies and you, well you looked different is all.”
“You think I look different?” Juan asked, raising his eyebrows. “I hope my pants are two inches too short, I could use a little height.”
Nanci smiled then looked him over more closely, “Yeah, something is different, I can’t say what it is, but there is like an air about you now, something different.”
“That’s helpful.”
Punching him lightly on the shoulder Nanci said, “You hungry? They would not let me cook, they have it handled, so you get whatever they make, but Terry said you’d like it.”
“How is Mary doing? Anybody check on her?”
Nanci frowned, “I don’t think she is doing so good, they wouldn’t let me see her, that is not a good sign. I’ll ask Terry though, when I get breakfast, I saw her coming out of Mary’s room this morning when I got up. I thought you were going to come to bed last night?”
Shrugging his shoulders Juan replied, “Shit. Too bad about Mary. I just never really got tired last night, I am still not so bad now. How was the bed?”
“Lonely.” purred Nanci, “but better than the club, the door was great, it shut out all the noise, did you guys shoot last night?”
“No, well a couple times, maybe three, mostly we just batted them if they came over or under the cars. We gotta watch that truck” Juan pointed at a four wheel drive truck with several bodies underneath, “it is too high off the ground, they keep trying to get under it. We shouldn’t have put it there as part of the wall. I think it is worse than the humvee would have been. It has gotten really quiet now, I think they have learned not to try and get in here.”
“Well we can move the truck today once we figure out what the plan is. Let me go get breakfast, and I will send someone out here to relieve you so you can come in an eat and maybe sleep a couple hours too.”
Seeing Juan nod, Nance went back inside and made her way to the kitchen where Charlie, Jack and Terry were standing drinking coffee and several other yawning residents were eating at some of the tables.
“Well?” asked Jack.
“Nothing, he is hungry, that’s all.” Nanci replied.
“He hasn’t noticed anything weird yet then?” Charlie pressed her.
“No, if he did he didn’t say anything. We got more food ready? He’ll come in and eat and then you can see if anything changes.”
“It will, you’ll see.” said Jack. What they were talking about was the fact that over the course of the night several people had noticed that if Juan was on guard the zombies tended to hang back and not attack, which is exactly why Juan was out there alone now. He had been ‘on watch’ for almost two hours and not a single zombie had tried to get past the line of cars. Some of the others who had stood watch with him, Charlie included, had noticed that the zombies never seemed to try and attack Juan, they just ignored him, treated him exactly like he was one of them.
“Alright, let me get a couple-three of these guys to go cover the exit and we’ll bring Juan in. Terry there is grub right?” asked Jack.
“Oh sure, for everyone and probably more. Anyone seen the army guys yet this morning?” she counter questioned.
“No, they needed the rest though, they hadn’t had a good night's sleep for a couple days, I gotta say the sleep I got was great, this place just feels safe and well built.” said Charlie.
“Yeah, built for the rich with the money of the poor. Well it don’t matter, right now it is ours.” said Jack, “I’ll go check on the army dudes as soon as I get Juan back in here.”
A few minutes later Jack was back with Juan and two men and a woman
had taken over guarding the ER entrance. Charlie refilled his coffee and sat down on one side of Juan, Nanci sat on the other and started to make headway into her own plate, both watched him eat.
“This is good, eggs, potatoes, good stuff, I could eat a horse.” said Juan speaking in English for the benefit of Charlie.
Terry overheard and said, “Thanks Juan, I bet it is not up to what you are used to, but I am cooking for a group here, so I am doing the best I can.”
Juan nodded and continued to eat, then asking for, and getting, seconds. A few minutes later Jack came back in and sat across from Juan. Looking up Juan said, “Ah, you guys eat already?”
Jack and Charlie both nodded ‘yes’ and continued to sip their coffee. Jack spoke up, “The army guys seem fine, they are just sleeping, woke one of them up and I got to see his lightning reflexes, he scared the crap out of me, even though he was only pointing one of his boots in my direction. I told him to go back to sleep, I was just checking up on them.” Jack’s face turned troubled, “Mary though, I don’t think she is going to make it.”
