“Veronica, Jesus, you look beat! What the hell happened? This is Bobby and his little, scrumptious friend.” said Jimbo, thinking to himself, ‘This bitch steps outta line and I will kill her, she is so torn up I could do it.’
As if reading his thoughts she said, “Relax Jimbo, truce okay? Like I heard you say a moment ago, water under the bridge, I need your help and I ain’t Nancy.”
“Okay, truce, but what do you want?”
“There is strength in numbers Jimbo, me, you, Bobby and the girl, that is a start. Lets do it again, only this time we are going to find some guns, no more of this hand to hand shit. We recover our strength and go after a few more people, get a group together, find a car and get the hell out of here.”
“Yeah, I think so, that sounds good.” turning to Bobby he said, “We need her Bobby, I am weak, Veronica is worse off than me. Sorry, but we gotta have her.”
Bobby looked at them, “Yeah, okay, she is a girl anyway, I want another boy. I am gonna go find Cory and give him this.” he said, lifting the sack in one hand.
“Don’t be stupid Bobby, save it for the next boy we find, okay?”
“No! You get the girl I go drop this off.” he let the girl go and she scrambled away into the back of the store to hide in the shadows, Bobby moved in the other direction, towards the front of the store, where he quickly ducked under a pane of broken glass and out into the morning.
Veronica gave a start and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Aw let him go, the kid is stupid and stubborn, but I like him. Reminds me of me at that age. I have the feeling we are going to be making another trip to Target for another DSP when we find another boy close to his age. God I hate killing the little ones.”
“DSP? It is PSP Jimbo, aren't you with it enough to know what is ‘in’? I hate offing the kids too. Do you think we could just bleed her a bit and find someone still alive to take her? I am tired of killing.”
Jimbo thought about it for a second, then nodded, “Yeah that would ease my conscious a bit. We'll have to be careful.”
Together they turned back towards the girl cowering in the shadows.
Bobby found his way back to the backyard of the house behind Max’s and cautiously peered over the fence. Nothing, no Cory, but his eyes spotted the shotgun on the grass. He climbed over the fence, picked up the shotgun and sat the bag down. As he was getting ready to climb back over the fence he spotted a shotgun shell in the grass, he bent to pick it up and spotted another one, he retrieved that one and noticed it was heavier than the first one, looking at the first one he saw that it has a hole in the front end, not like the second one, which was snub nosed and folded closed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which one of them had already been fired. He tossed the empty down and looked around for more shells, he only found more empties and decided one was better than nothing. Someone started moving around in the kitchen near the broken glass doors, not sure who it was Bobby leaped up and jumped for the back fence. He cleared it in a single bound. When he got back to the convenience store he only saw Jimbo.
“Where is Veronica and Erin?” his voice took on an accusing tone, “You didn’t bring her back did you? I don’t want a little girl zombie!”
“Whoa! Whoa! No way, she ain’t a zombie, we only bled her enough to heal ourselves up a bit, we didn’t even finish the job, Veronica is going to give her to Max. Let him deal with the kid. Where’d you find the gun?” asked Jimbo, amazed.
“I picked it up in Max’s back yard and I found this.” Bobby held up an unspent shell.
“Well I’ll be damned! Good job Bobby!” shaking his head in disbelief, “We can’t find any guns and you find one laying in the yard. Un-fucking-believable.”
Bobby beamed over the praise and together they waited for Veronica to return. It was a short wait.
“I left her in the Cadillac. She’ll live. There is a gas station down the street with a car out front, like they were filling up. Lets go see if we can find the keys.”
The keys were on the body of a man lying in front of the counter, he was missing his head. The car was already full of fuel and soon enough they were headed north towards Boulder, leaving Arvada behind.
Chapter 52
A few hours had passed. Cory had woken up and was busy playing video games with Nick. Max normally would not have allowed Nick anywhere near a video game, but playing outside was simply too dangerous, with headphones on the boys were quiet as church mice. When Max had suggested moving one or both cars into the garage, Stewart had said to move the cruiser in. When she went out to move it she found a girl in the front seat, a very scared, bloody girl. The girl wouldn't talk to her, but Amelia had coaxed her name, Erin, out of her using food as a bribe. Erin's arm had been cut open in a ragged manner and she would not say what had happened to her. Amelia cleaned her up and put her with the other children, who were confined to the second story of the house.
After moving the cruiser in Tom and Stewart looked it over as best they could. Neither of them were mechanics, so they went slow and looked for obvious damage. After ten minutes of looking and not finding any problems they came to the conclusion that the cruiser had come through in remarkable shape. They pulled it out and drove the Cadillac into the garage to check it over, it was completely unscratched and ready to roll.
With all the other adults busy Max and Sarah were left to talk. At first they just held each other, then Sarah started crying. Over breakfast she had spoken with Amelia and learned what had happened to Diane. By noon Sarah no longer felt good, she described it as having a case of the flu. Her stomach felt like it was being tied in knots. When she and Max checked her wound in their master bedroom it was red, swollen and filled with a foul smelling green and yellow pus. They both cried then as they cleaned it up as much as possible. At dinner time Sarah did not help out with preparing the food, a thick sheen of sweat covered her face and plastered her hair to her head. She didn't eat dinner. As night came on the group took heavy winter blankets and sleeping bags out of the closets and garage and hung them over all of the upstairs windows, to keep light from getting out and giving away their location.
Sarah went into her bedroom and called Max and their kids in and shut the door.
Amelia spoke quietly with Stewart and Tom downstairs. “She looks like Diane did, before she turned.”
“So she isn't going to make it? How much longer did Diane last after she got to this point?” asked Stewart.
“About half the night, maybe six hours.”
“Shit, what are we going to do? We can't kill Max's wife!” said Tom.
“I don't know, I don't know. We'll think of something.” replied Stewart.
They went on to discuss piling furniture on the stairway and hiding out up there for the night, looking around they didn't have much left to move, most of the furniture in the living room had been moved in front of the door or pulled into the kitchen to barricade the patio doorway.
Inside Max's bedroom Sarah told the kids how much she loved them and would always love them, then had Max bring them to Nick's room. Max went back into his bedroom alone and shut and locked the door behind him.
“You have to Max. I won't become one of them.” Sarah pleaded.
“Don't ask me to do that, you can't and I won't. What if someone comes up with a way to reverse it? Then you would be gone forever.”
“Max I am going to be gone forever. I can feel it, it hurts. It hurts so bad. Just do it, please?”
“I can't.”
“Stewart then, send her to do it. I don't want to run around like one of them, I can't do that, killing and…and eating other people. Becoming one of them! They were evil! That won't be me.”