Once in the neighbor's yard I went over his back fence to get to the other row of houses and spent a few minutes looking around for weapons and other fences that would be easier to crawl over. One of the houses had a couple shorty bats in it and I took the longest one, I figured at least I would go down fighting. Then, a few houses down I heard the crunch of a bunch of beer cans and someone cursing. I headed to the side of the house I was on and slowly opened their gate, it squeaked enough to wake the dead, but whitey didn't hear it, lucky me. Then I ran, back towards where I had ditched the car on Monday, no way I was going to get around the zombie mob and I didn't know the back streets that well, I could end up lost and trapped. In fact I was not even sure where I was now, the street I was on could end in a dead end or it might open up on Federal, like I hoped.
For awhile I ran, not even caring, I knew one thing and that was that I did not want to meet whitey again. Ever if I could help it. Eventually I hit Federal, I was tempted to go hide out in the car, then I remembered the mob around the car at Alvins', no way I could chance it. Heck I was closer to my neighborhood, I could go find someplace to hide out for awhile closer to home. I was jogging down Federal when I came across this mountain bike, a real nice one, with saddle bags and everything, looked pretty good, no blood on it or anything, we are talking a thousand dollar bike here. I looked around suspiciously, a few zombies shambled around not too far enough away, slow-zoms though. I picked the bike up. No flat tires as I had feared, nothing wrong with it all as far as I could tell. I got on and started pedaling, whenever I saw zombies I avoided them, I even saw a few faster zombies, some chased me, but the bike was faster than they could run.
I started thinking how funny this was, me riding a bike around town, no shirt, middle of the night. I hadn't done this since I was a kid, you know? I am not sure why I headed south, but it was always clear, at Colfax I decided to head east, probably not a smart move really as it leads right into the heart of down town, but I figured I would try to get to Colorado Boulevard and head south again, or keep heading east if the way stayed clear. What I didn't count on was getting so tired, by sunrise I was hardly able to keep pedaling and daylight seemed to make the zoms more active. I looked around for some place to crash after I reached Colfax. Man that is right where the stadium is, and it was crowded I had to pick my way through a dozen wrecks and past ten or twelve zombies, not good. I ended up heading further south until I hit eighth avenue, then I turned east. There was this dry cleaning place that still had power, it had a neon 'open' sign still light up, I tried the door, it was unlocked, I pulled the bike in and turned it around, in case I had to make a quick getaway. Then I checked the shop out, it was empty, but there were pieces of bodies in a back room. It looked like the room had been barricaded off from the rest of the shop, then broken into. I had found an office with a locking door while I was searching the place and decided to hide out there for as long as I needed. On my way back to it I snagged some white t-shirts, looked like employee shirts to me, only no names or anything on them. I lugged a couple of huge bags of clean clothing into the office to use as a mattress. Once inside the office I locked the door, then shoved the desk in front of it, along with everything else I could move, which was not much considering the pain I had in my back.
I looked around and found a first aid kit, popped four of the ibuprofen tablets from it and quickly fell asleep. There was one window in the office, barred on the outside and high up on the wall, it let in light, but I didn't think anyone would be able to see inside to get a look at me. I woke up in pain, my back was killing me. I searched through med kit more, you know, hoping for something like morphine to kill the pain, there wasn't any. I found some aspirin and Excedrin and took plenty of both, washing it down with some Spanish drink I found in the bottom drawer, it was nasty, tasted like sweet rice or something. Then I just sat and waited for the pain to go away. Probably several hours had gone by since I broke in there, another half hour and I felt better, and hungry. There was no food in the office so I was going to have to go out. I had not heard anything while waiting for the aspirin to kick in so I slowly slid the desk back so I could open the door. Only I could hardly move the thing, my back hurt so bad! In the end it took me twenty minutes to move the damn thing out of the way and I threw up once. I forced some more aspirin down with the rice drink and moved out into the shop. Everything was the same, except one thing, no bike. Someone had stolen my goddamn bicycle when I was sleeping!
Looking out the front windows I saw the zoms were pretty sparse, across the street was a gas station, but I didn't have my bat anymore, I vaguely recalled having tucked it into the saddlebags on the bike and not bringing it with me into the office when I slept. In fact I had not even seen what was in those saddle bags, it could have been food, or a gun!
Searching the shop I found a metal rod about 3–4 feet long, it had a kind of 'u' shape in one end and I think they used it to reach hangers on the upper rack, it didn't matter it was pretty hefty and actually better than the bat anyway. I used the pisser, passed a little blood in my urine, that made me nervous.
I got out of the store quietly, trying not to draw attention to myself as I made my way to the nearest gas station or convenience store. Before lone0g I was outside of a seven eleven, but there were zoms inside and out, not too many, but enough to make me nervous. Still I was hungry and need food. As I went for the front door a zombie clawed out from beneath a parked car and grabbed one of my ankles and started trying to pull me under the car. I fell over twitching my back, still I managed to get my foot on the car and pulled my leg out from this thing's grasp. Of course while I was down, several others started crowding me. I used my rod as a stick and levered myself up. The first zombie died like a piece of cake in a fat man convention, it was gone so quick you wouldn't have know it ever existed. After that things got dicey. I managed to knock out a couple more and get into the store, then I had to deal with all of the store zombies, while the others crowded around the front door on the outside, not able to 'pull' the door open. Stupid zoms!
"Inside the store I clubbed the old clerk to death first, the pipe thing worked great, it was thinner than a bat and heavier, plus the end could poke really well, like a spear, even though it was not sharp or anything. The store had, like I said, maybe five zombies in there at least and after the first the others were a little easier, I had to put down one chick, man she was hot, had a bunch of wounds, like a shotgun or something, but she was still hot. You maybe understand that I waited to hit her last? Weird huh? Like I am thinking, hey this bitch will snap out of it and 'be normal' if she sees me kill off her friends. No luck there, I went around the store even looking for crawlers, but had to face the reality, the cute chica was gonna keep chasing me around. She was a little faster than most of them too, not much, but a hair, you know?"
Hank and Jaun nodded 'yes'.
"It seemed like she was like trying to tell me something, her in her baby pink t-shirt coated with dried blood. Short-shorts too, did I mention she was hot? The effect was ruined by the fact she only had on one shoe though, well that and the blood. Eventually I had to just club her.
I looked around the store, pulled open the cash drawer, grabbed the twenties, just in case. Hey I knew then money was worthless, but maybe I would run into someone who wouldn't know that. Then I grabbed a bunch of candy and chips and headed back to the back room. Then I came to my senses and dropped the trash I was carrying and came out looking for something with real value, you know, beef jerky, nuts, dried fruits, anything that was not shit. Eating with Alvin may have been a little boring when we were stuck in the basement, but it was real food, man, not sugar and fat. I took the food and went into the back room, out of sight of the zoms. It took about two minutes before I heard the glass break. I didn't even go look, just grabbed my Mountain Dew, stuffed the granola bars and jerky in my pants pockets and lit out the back door of the place. Funny thing too, the place was pretty well built, the back door was metal and all, with all these latches and stuff, seemed like it took me ten minutes to get it unlocked, while I heard them in the front of the store.