Juan kept the shotgun trained on the cowboy. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Hank coming out of the front of the store, but he did not shift his view. That fast bastard needed to go down, otherwise it was going to be a long night. The slow ones were uncoordinated and unable to climb. The fast ones, well they were a different breed altogether, they could climb, they could drive cars, heck Juan and Hank had even heard one talk. Juan would not put jumping to the top of the roof past some of them either.
What made some come back as 'fast' and others as 'slow', they had not figured out yet. Juan's thought was maybe it was who they ate, maybe anyone with A positive blood gave the undead brains. He shrugged, it didn't mean anything. Sooner or later Juan was afraid they were going to run into a fast zombie with a gun, that would be bad, very bad.
The cowboy rolled out of cover and broke for Hank without warning, "Sonofabitch!", Juan exclaimed trying to get a bead on the him. Just as Juan pulled the trigger the cowboy passed behind another, slow moving, zombie. Juan's shot completely destroyed the slower zombie's head and it fell to the ground. Even from the roof Juan would hear the heels from the cowboy's boots clopping on the hard concrete sidewalk.
Hank turned towards the cowboy and brought his shotgun up, Juan watched in disbelief as Hank's hand got caught in a pack of some sort and saw that he was not going to get the gun up for a killing shot in time. Juan chambered another round and was just taking aim when Hank fired his gun. The cowboy took the shot in his lower torso and went down. His momentum allowed him to fall forward and drag Hank to the ground by his legs. Both men were out of view behind an abandoned car but, to Juan's relief, a second later Hank was up, one arm still wrapped in the backpack strap. As he came up his target was still unseen from Juan's angle, he had cover behind a car while on the ground. As his shot rang out Juan saw Hank flinch and pull his head back to avoid being sprayed with cowboy brains.
Juan took a deep breath and relaxed only for a moment because several new zombies had been attracted by all the gun fire. Kevin had crept back to the front of the store roof next to Juan. He timidly pointed to a mailman slowly approaching from Hank's rear. He watched has the barrel of Juan's gun followed the mailman's path. Simultaneously Kevin heard the shot and saw the storefront glass of the camping supply store splattered with red and black matter.
Hank immediately looked up and let out a yell, "Fuck! Don't shoot me ya dumbass! I swear ya holed my shirt with that one!"
'Maybe I did.', Juan thought, that zombie had been awful close when he took the shot and the spread of the shot gun made it all the more likely he would have winged his friend. He made a mental note to check on the choke of the shotgun when he had a chance, probably it was something he could set on the fly, this was a good shotgun, they stole only the very best. If he could adjust it to a tighter pattern it should give him a good compromise between getting a head shot and getting the distance he needed from the gun.
Hank took a second to adjust how he was carrying his second backpack and then made a mad dash across the fairly open ground of the street to the convenience store. Once he got up to the dumpster Kevin was there and Hank handed off the back full of water and food to him. Kevin had trouble pulling it up onto the roof, he was surprised at how heavy the pack was. Hank shrugged off his second pack, rummaged around for the empty stuff sack he had put in it and handed the pack up to Kevin.
"I am going into the store for a second, to get some more water and uh, a couple other things, I will be right back." he told Juan and Kevin.
Jumping off the dumpster Hank ran back around to the front of the store. A sad part of life was that the need to use the bathroom still happened at inconvenient times, like when you are running away from slowly shambling undead. The store was full of the slow zombies too. Hank hesitated and looked up at Juan who was staring down at him.
"I need a bat Juan!" Juan threw an aluminum bat down to Hank, who slung his shotgun over his shoulder by the strap and pulled the door open. Stepping inside he resisted the urge to back out again, the smell! Oh the smell was bad! It smelled like these zombies had been stuck inside for days, slowly decomposing. Real stupid zombies too, as the door opened outwards. The closest zombie wore the uniform of the attendant, a Gas n' Go logo emblazoned with the name 'Gus' on his left breast. He showed signs of bite marks on his arms and face, half of his cheek was off revealing some broken teeth and a shredded, lolling tongue.
"Bye Gus", Hank said as he slammed the bat into the zombie's head, dropping him.
Hank counted nine zombies in the store, plus there were probably a few crawlers, there always seemed to be. Killing the slow zoms was not real hard unless they mobbed you, the zombies in the store were spread out enough that Hank felt sure he could take them all down without a problem. As he finished off the last crawler a few minutes later Hank felt pretty good, the store was cleared out, even the back rooms and office. He carefully approached the bathrooms, the men's was clear. Thankfully the electricity was still working which made taking care of his business that much easier. Once he was done he looked around the store for anything else they might need. He decided that the dirty yellow mop bucket in back would be good. The wheeled bucket was once used for mopping up the floors, now it would serve as a decent sink up on the roof. He filled it halfway with water from the low tap in the back then made his way out of the store, stuffing his pockets with candy bars and grabbing a four pack of toilet paper as he made it to the front door. Outside he saw Juan peering down at him worriedly.
"No worries amigo. I just had to use the little boy's room. Catch." So saying Hank tossed the toilet paper up to Juan who batted it onto the roof with his shotgun. "Can you think of anything else we might need?"
"Si."
"Er, what there Juan? I think 'si' is a mighty fine word, but it don't tell me what you want, right?"
"Si, get those prepaid phones and minute cards.", came Juan's accented reply.
Hank raised his eyebrows a bit at this verbose reply and went back into the store, leaving the water bucket outside.
"Let's see, phones, phones. What the hell was he talking about? Oh, I see, yeah, smart boy that Juan." He muttered to himself as he looked over the stuff on the counter. Sure enough the store sold prepaid phones and re-charging cards, which were behind the counter. How to charge them up though? Hank thought he had seen an extension cord in the back of the store, first he went out to talk to Juan again.
"These amigo?", Hank held up three of the prepaid phones.
"Si", came the reply.
"Okay, I will toss em up. Say is there an electric outlet up there anywhere?" After tossing the phones up to Juan on the roof Hank turned around and looked at the zombies nearby, several were edging close to him and he knew he was going to have to finish them off before he went back inside to see about the extension cord. As he clubbed the first one with his bat a nearby slo zomb broke out of its shuffle and dashed at him, taking Hank by surprise, "Why you little son of a bitch!" Hank exclaimed before poking the thing back with his bat. The zombie woman was in good shape, heck she was probably still mostly a girl, maybe 17, no bite marks anywhere on her that Hank could see and her clothing was not bloody, as if it had been changed since she came back from the dead. She twisted around and came in along one side of the bat and probably things would have gone downhill if it had not been for the water bucket that Hank had left near the door. The zombie stepped right into it and it slid out from under her, spilling her to the ground, a loud blast made Hank jump as Juan shot the thing from the roof.