Kevin touched Juan's shoulder and pointed at the faster undead. Juan nodded and said in a soft, Hispanic accent, "Not today esse" before firing. The Talon II rifled bullet struck the cowboy zombie just below his Adam's apple. The impact from the bullet cause him to take a step back, the cowboy then lunged forward and hid behind a yellow Toyota. Not a bad shot considering the rifle was 'off the shelf' and not sighted in. However when fighting the undead 'not a bad shot' was fully equal to 'a bad shot'. Without a brain destroying bullet the zombie was just winged and not dead again, and now he knew they were there. Both Juan and Kevin could see the cowboy peering from the sidewalk through the Toyota's windows at the roof of the Gas n' Go.
"Puta", Juan swore softly as he worked the bolt action rifle back and chambered another round.
Kevin pointed at the cowboy indicating that Juan should try and shoot him through the glass.
"No." Juan replied curtly.
Kevin knew from the quickness of Juan's reply that he had better leave him alone to watch Hank's back, he returned to the back of the store and kept watch on the back parking lot and alley.
When Hank heard the shot he immediately dodged left. For about the hundredth time since leaving the Mike's Club he wished he had radios like those soldiers out of the movies. "Always the dumb 'good ole boy' volunteering for this shit", he thought. He made the front door of the store to find it was locked and had a security gate. It was a newer style store and obviously it had to follow a builder's code of the area, which seemed to stipulate a lot of wood and earth tones. The door, while supporting painted brown metal bars running vertically up and down in front of the glass, was wood. Hank used the butt of his shotgun to smash the window, no alarms when off, despite the fact that the area still seemed to have electricity. Hank reached in passed the broken glass and pulled the fire safety bar down to open the door. 'Thank God for fire codes' he thought as he let himself in. Turning he scanned for major problems, and seeing nothing Juan could not handle he pulled the door shut. Looking around he spotted a box full of 'fold-a-chairs', on special right near the front door, he pulled one out and stuffed two of its legs between the safety bar and the security bars outside the broken window. It was not a permanent solution but anyone messing with it would make noise trying to get in.
Sure enough the store did hold a variety of camping gear, for the most part it held overpriced, 'high-tech' clothing. Hank did a quick circuit of the entire place, going around the outside and looking for undead or other survivors. Finding nothing in the main room he chose to start looting immediately. First he grabbed a backpack, then went for the highest priced sleeping bags he could find, he torn them out of their boxes and stuffed the lightweight sacks down into the backpacks. The three bags filled the main compartment and Hank made sure to put the 'stuff sacks' they came within as well, though he kept one out to fill with other loot from the store. He grabbed a small stove, three sets of cookware, five bottles of stove fuel and just about every dehydrated food pouch he could find. On the way towards the front door he grabbed some pants and shirts he thought would fit Kevin. He topped this off with three boxes of power bars that were near the register and then turned to the small refrigerator next to it to clean it out of bottled water. He also grabbed two of every kind of soda they had and a couple extra pepsi colas, the stuff sack was fifty pounds now if it was an ounce so he returned to the backpacks and loaded it up into another another pack instead. Jackets. They would be nice, maybe if he made another trip… No time, Juan was already firing outside and Hank started to worry about the kind of crowd gunfire always drew. He put the pack with the sleeping bags on his back, carried the other in his left hand and cradled the shotgun with his right. Heavy, but there were only the slow zombies to deal with outside, he hoped.
Juan saw Hank duck into the sporting goods store as he fired for a third time at the fast zombie on the street. Each time he fired he kept thinking, "Gotcha pendejo!", but each time the gun was just slightly too high or too low or too far to the right or left. After missing his last shot he threw the gun down in frustration and looked at the remaining weapons. They had brought four rifles and two shotguns with them all fully loaded and each with an extra box of ammo. In addition both Hank and Juan had pistols belted to their waists and metal baseball bats as last resort weapons. They had burned through most of their shotgun ammunition getting away from the Ivy street mob. Kevin now had one of the rifles, Hank had one of the shotguns with him. Debating for a second Juan selected the other shotgun, it was loaded with double ought buck and while the range was extreme for a shotgun, the burst should be more forgiving for Juan's near misses. Turning back to the street Juan saw that his recent firing had drawn plenty of other slow zombies back into the area.
"Damn." he swore softly in English.
They had originally decided to hole up on top of the roof for awhile because there were simply so many of the slow zombies around, it made getting surrounded and mobbed a real possibility. They had been deciding on whether to go or leave when Kevin showed up. Kevin was beat, wearing a sweat drenched shirt and he looked like he had not slept in two days. Juan was pretty sure Kevin was not going to be up to traveling without at least a night's sleep and leaving him was not something that had crossed either Hank or Juan's mind. So when the zombies cleared out a little Hank made the dash to the store across the street for blankets and maybe, if they were lucky, supplies. Of course they were sitting on top of a convenience store. So Juan somehow knew they would not be going hungry tonight no matter what happened.
Hank returned to the doorway and lifted his makeshift 'lock' out from the safety bar. 'Ugh', there were a lot more slow zombies out there now, plus Juan was firing at something, no doubt a speedy Gonzales, 'Well Speedy', Hank thought as he patted his shotgun, 'I got a little something for ya right here.'
Hank thought that if this were a movie he would now chamber a round in his shotgun and rush blindly out into the parking lot. In real life he already had a round chambered, the safety was off and he had no desire to be hit on his blind side by a zombie waiting just out of sight on one side of the door.
He pushed the door open and looked down the sidewalk. Nothing one way, turning he peered the other way. All clear. Looking across the street at Juan on the roof of the convenience store he waited for him to gesture go or no go. Juan was a bit busy sighting at something beyond Hank's vision. 'That's okay, I can get the door shut.' Hank turned around and picked up the chair from inside the door, holding it carefully he lifted it from the outside until it was above the locking bar, then eased the door shut. Once it was 'locked' again he pulled the chair legs back down into position, locking the door against the really stupid zombies. 'Or people.', he mused. Doing this had taken both hands and when he finished he quickly grabbed his shotgun and second backpack. Just in time, a slow zed was a little too close for comfort. This time, it was an old man wearing a hospital robe. The ties in the back had come loose and now the only thing holding the robe on was his outstretched arms. Hank shuffled forward, pointed the gun at his head. The discharge made mincemeat of the man's head and the body toppled backward.
Hank aimed at the next closest target, but did not fire, thinking of the fact that he only had four more shots until he had to reload. Luckily this was a magazine operated shotgun, which meant Hank could reload as he fired. He snaked his arm up through the straps of the backpack to the pocket on his shirt and pulled out another shell, which he then loaded through the bottom of the gun. 'Excellent', he thought, 'back to five shots.'