"Outlet. Si.", Juan said.
Hank nodded and approached the next closest zombie, he finished off five before Juan's voice warned him, "H-hank! Zombies."
Looking around Hank cursed. Shit there was another whole mob of them heading his way, some at a faster shuffle leading the pack right towards him. He grabbed up the mop bucket and headed around the corner for the dumpster, where Kevin was waiting to pull up his latest acquisition and Hank himself. A few of the faster zombies were already in the mouth of the alley and as a precaution Juan blasted them. He did not know if they could climb up the dumpster, but did not want to take any chances.
Once Hank was back on the roof, the three of them backed towards the center where they were out of sight of most of the undead.
Hank started dumping the contents of the backpacks out on the gravel stone which covered the flat top of the building. They had their backs to a large piece of machinery which could have been a furnace or air conditioner and had what Hank referred to as a 'pow-wow'.
"This is how I see it, we stay up here for the night, don't draw any more attention to ourselves and then try to make our way back to the Mike's Club tomorrow morning. I think we might be able to get one of those cars working. I know I put down the worker in the store, his car is probably that piece of shit fiesta on the side of the building. It ain't worth much, but we don't have far to go. Those phones gonna do anything for us Juan?"
Juan looked the boxes over and then handed one out to each person, Hank read the box and saw that once activated they could be keyed to be used as a walkie-talkie, that would be useful.
Like the others he opened his box and spilled the contents onto the roof. A few minutes later they were all reading through the manuals trying to figure out how to get their phones working. Hank pulled the credit card sized 'minute cards' from his pockets, he had grabbed as many of the 500 minute 'One Up' cards that he could fit in his shirt pocket. Entering the numbers into the phones they were able to activate them all, however the power levels in the batteries were all very low. Juan and Kevin plugged theirs into the all weather outlet Juan had found on the roof, then started messing about with the phones, trying to get the walkie-talkie feature to work. Hank gave up in frustration, pushing his phone towards Kevin, who seemed to be having the best luck figuring his out.
"Kev man, you gotta do it, I just don't mix well with computers. I am a good cook though." Juan rolled his eyes, "Well I am a cook, of sorts. You guys deal with the phones, I should be able to get this food cooked up for us."
Stoves and cooking Hank could do. Within twenty minutes he had two bags of the beef stroganoff reconstituted and ready to eat. Everyone had already gotten into the drinks and water and before they ate Hank pointed at the mop bucket, which still had some water in it. "I know it ain't the cleanest, but you guys might want to wash up a little before we eat. Kevin I grabbed these cloths for you at the store, thought you might want to change, but you can wash up better after dinner with the bottled water."
They all washed their hands, Juan also pulled out a tube of clear hand sanitizer out of his front pocket which they all used before eating. No one knew what was causing the dead to rise again, but germs were a real suspicion. Hank tossed out packs of freeze dried ice cream for dessert and they all lounged around while it got dark, mostly listening to Hank talk.
"So Kevin you up to speakin' a piece yet? No? Sh'all right, me and Juan can fill ya in about what has happened to us over the last few days. This started for us on Monday, only Thursday now, four short days, seems a lot can happen in that time…"
Chapter 2
Hank called up Juan on Monday morning, "Hey buddy you ready? Ya know I gotta change that transmission out of the caddy and man that guy is waiting for it, called me on Saturday night. At home!"
"Si, I am ready Hank, come an' pick me up.", replied Juan. Hank had moved to Denver nine years ago, he loved the outdoors and while it was not his native South Carolina, it also had things that South Carolina, at the time, did not have, namely gainful employment. When he moved up he took a job at "Carl's Imports", a garage that specialized in foreign cars, repairing them with cheaper, American made, parts to save the original owners a lot of money. Add the non-certified mechanics for their make and model of car and the place was a gold mine. The location worried Hank a bit when he applied for a job, south east Denver was filled with lower income housing and most of it was pretty old too. However under the veneer of age was a sort of quiet dignity, the houses were old, but had new paint, well cut yards and very little actual crime.
After nine months on the job Hank bought an old 2 bedroom house about 7 blocks from where he worked. Like all people moving into such a position, Hank figured he would be walking to work every day and saving a bundle on gas, the reality was it took 10 minutes to walk and 2 minutes to drive. So he drove pretty much every day, figuring he was paying the gas for an extra 16 minutes of free time every day.
At first his job was just a job, he got along with the people he worked with, even if most of them spoke Spanish and he could only remember three words of it from his high school years. Over the months though, that changed, after three years Hank was even invited over to several of his co-worker's houses for dinner and he could get along pretty well in his second language, well enough to work, well enough to joke around and well enough to understand when most of the 'old school' Hispanics started asking around why he did not have an 'esposa'.
Hank was not the marrying type, he did not talk about it much with his friends, though they could never quite stop asking him when he was going to 'settle down' with a good woman. He figured it was just a cultural thing, plus their wives could not stand to see a good 'catch' like him getting away. Now nine years later and with thirty seven years on this earth Hank could just not see himself changing to the point of marrying anyone. He drank beer on their back patios or in his friend's garage, never on the front porch stoop like a bunch of 'boyz in the hood', the women of the house would never allow that. Hank enjoyed hanging out with his co-workers, in particular he was good friends with Juan, a slightly younger man of thirty four years who lived a couple of blocks down the street from him. They rode in together, they worked like a well oiled machine on any projects they had, they just 'clicked'.
Juan's wife was a huge driving force behind the neighborhood conspiracy to find Hank a wife, so far though Hank had parried every attempt of hers to pair him up. And this was seriously hard fighting, if setting people up were a sport, Nanci would be in the major league. Parties were thrown with Hank invited, oddly there were always a few single women. Dinners with an added female companion; movies where one of her single friends tagged along. Hank didn't mind and enjoyed the odd relationship of fencing he had with Juan's wife.
Eventually Juan asked him if he were homosexual. This was not something Juan did after two years of friendship, but closer to five years into their relationship and it just came up one day when they were working on a Camaro that belonged to one of Juan's cousins. A nice car and Hank could not figure out what the hell Juan was talking about butterflies for. He had a surreal moment where he was thinking to himself, "This can't be right, 'Am I a butterfly?', what the hell Juan?" Juan had looked at him really embarrassed and as he explained Hank become more and more embarrassed. They had been working together for so long that sometimes Juan forget that Hank was not a native speaker and didn't understand all of the Spanish slang. Juan patiently tried to explain that 'mariposa' was a word with a slang meaning of 'homosexual'. It was a gentle, teasing way of asking if Hank were gay.