“Tom, you okay? Tom?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am okay, I am fine.” Tom emerged from the bathroom, a towel in his hand, which he was using to wipe off the blood that had splattered on him when he was hitting the man in his bedroom with the bat.
Tom stopped in the living room, “Holy shit, you killed them all!”
Max just looked at Tom, his look saying, ‘And just why are you wiping blood off your face mister?’ Tom shrugged sheepishly, then said, “Oh shit you are bleeding!” while raising his hand to point at Max’s stomach.
Max shook his head incredulously, “No. No, seriously I am okay! This must be from one of them.”
However when he looked down his shirt was matted in blood and it was dripping onto the wood floor of Tom’s hallway. He immediately fell to his knees, dropping the gun while pulling up his shirt and babbling, “No, no, no!”
Tom ran forward and grabbed, not Max, but the gun pointing it towards the door, the firing outside had dwindled to a random shot now and again, the car horn was still blaring, though it sounded more distant.
“How bad is it Max? How bad?”
“Fucking bad Tom, very bad!” Max had pulled his shirt off revealing a mass of bloody tissue across the front of his stomach, blood was pouring out of it between Max’s fingers.
Tom threw the towel to Max and said, “Can you walk? You were walking, can you walk some more?”
Max picked up the towel, his first instinct was not to mix blood with blood, the old AIDS and Hepatitis fears welling up inside of him, then he figured bleeding to death took precedent and pushed the wadded up towel contaminated with the bald man’s blood to his stomach. It hurt now, like a fire across his stomach. Still he knew he had to move, to get up, to leave. Tom was not going to fireman carry him out of here, in full clothing, completely wet Tom maybe weighed one hundred sixty pounds, whereas Max was a good two hundred, no way Tom could carry him, at least not for long anyway. Besides Max had gotten up from the bedroom floor and had walked into the living room and he had shot the three guys…oh, the realization of what he had done just snapped to the forefront of his mind. He had killed three men. Not zombies, not former men, three living humans. He leaned over on his hands and knees and vomited on the floor.
“Max! Oh man Max, are you gonna make it? You gotta make it man! Get up! Get up!”
“No Tom, it ain’t that, it is..” Max regained his knees, sat back on his legs and gestured towards the three unmoving men near the front door.
“Fuck. You had me worried there, get up. Can you walk?”
“Yeah, yeah, nag, nag, nag. I am going.” Max slowly regain his feet and steadied himself on the counter. “Get their guns Tom, we might as well bring Stewart and Steve a present or two, eh? I will take this guys pistol from the kitchen.” The pistol was actually a revolver, Max was not intimately familiar with revolvers, but after a moments thought he managed to break it open and take out the rounds, he had three remaining. Checking the first wounded guys pockets he came up with a black belt. ‘Christ!’, he thought, ‘No wonder the guy carrying was so damn slow.’ The black leather belt with fringes had two pouches, which fell off when Max took the belt off, and continued taking it off, it must have been around ninety inches around, the screamer had been a very fat man. Max grabbed the two pouches, strung them back onto the belt, opened one and found loose rounds, in the other he found four round disks, that extended into the depths of the pouch, pulling one out Max could see each cylinder held six bullets, he pressed the back tip of the cylinder, which looked like a button, and all the bullets fell out. “Shit.” Bending over he gathered up the bullets with one hand and figured out how they went back onto the cylinder. It did not take a genius to figure out that when you used all your bullets you dumped the empty ones out and used this cylinder to quick load the gun. Max tucked the cylinder back away, reloaded the revolver from the other pouch and then slung the belt over his shoulder, bandoleer style, he tightened it until it was snug. He then went into the hallway and pulled up the linen closet and grabbed the largest towel he could see, he used both hands to slowly peel his current bandage back and then secured the fresh one around his middle, tucking the ends in as good as he could. He was ready to go.
Meanwhile Tom had gathered two pistols off the other men and had a few boxes of ammo for each weapon, he tucked one into his back pack’s drink holder and handed the smaller one to Max, “A back up weapon.” Max took it and slipped it into his pocket without a word. The honking car was a block or two away, there were no more shots from within the apartment complex.
“I figure I know this place and the area pretty good, we can go down the stairs and instead of going towards the parking lot, duck back over the railing on the opposite side, coming out towards the street side, I see the kids around here to it all the time. Then we head towards the honking and try to keep things between us and the building. Are you ready?” Max nodded yes and they headed cautiously out the front door.
Chapter 30
Getting on the highway had been a bad idea. Merging onto the road it had looked clear, but all too soon the entire road was blocked in a major pile up. Worse Amelia was afraid to turn the car around and go back, a half mile earlier they had spotted a car that had hit another one heading the opposite direction. Someone had obviously encountered the same wreck and then turned around and hit somebody else coming this direction. Amelia had not survived the horror of MAC Co. to die in a traffic accident.
“I gotta know something.” Diane said suddenly into the silence between them, “I always wondered, and it is not any of my business, but were you sleeping with him?”
“What?” Amelia was flabbergasted, here they were, on the run from zombies, the world crashing around their ears and Diane wanted to know if she was sleeping with her boss? Kirkpatrick? She let out an ironic laugh, “No.” more laughter, “ No! Did you ever meet his wife?”
Diane just looked at her, as if realizing she had not quite thought of all the parts in the equation, before she smiled and shook her head, “Sorry. Yeah, I should have considered that, his wife was there a lot and you and her got along pretty well. Were you sleeping with his wife?” This last was said in jest, but it shocked Amelia, her mouth made a small ‘o’ and then she started laughing, as did Diane.
“Oh, no, oh no! That is so wrong. I mean no! You are not a very nice lady!”
“Well, dear, you know the rumors were all over the place, you had gone on several trips with him and were very attentive to him, very respectful. And he treated you, well, now that I think about it, he treated you like a daughter, not a lover. I am sorry. I really should have put a stop to the talk ages ago. Maybe I lived this long just to apologize? Can you forgive me?”
“If it were even a normal day I suppose I could, but as you are the only human I currently know, and we are in your car, I will say I wholeheartedly forgive you. Just don’t make any passes at me okay?”
It was Diane’s turn to be surprised and after another fit of the giggles the two went back to looking at the wreckage in front of them.
“I think you could get by on the right shoulder, you might scrape the paint, but who the hell cares?” said Diane.
Amelia looked to the right, not at all certain of Diane’s assessment. She backed the car up and then slowly pulled it forward towards the gap near the very far edge of the freeway. The highways tended to be either above the surrounding communities or down below them, either way they always had very stout metal railings behind which were six to twelve foot high metal walls to help reduce sound to the surrounding communities. When Amelia pulled up to the gap in the wreckage she thought Diane was right, the wreck was about three cars deep and looked clear after that. There was no movement anyway. She eased the car forward, the Cadillac purred along, like a jungle cat getting ready to pounce. They made it through the gap touching only once, when the car barely brushed against a mirror on one of the upright cars, causing it to bend outwards and remain at an odd angle after they passed.