Doc went by and checked again on Hank, who was doing far better than Doc would have ever thought possible. Broken ribs do not heal up, yet Hank was managing, getting himself to the bathroom, running around in the middle of the night while people were shooting each other, never complaining. Doc edged over to him and touched his forehead, checking for a fever, nothing. As Hank lay in the lazy boy that had become his home, Doc peeled back the bandages on his wounds slowly.
"You know that hurts more when you do it slow doc." Hank said, startling Doc.
"Sorry, I thought you were asleep." Hank gave him a look indicating that he had been, "Sorry. I just got done with Kevin, I thought I should check you out before I went to get a couple more hours of sleep myself." replied Doc quietly.
"What? It is morning out, no sleeping for us now." Hank said, pointing to the doors of the Mike's Club where the dawn light was clearly visible.
Nodding, Doc said, "You are probably right, but I am tired and need to get a little rest, the last few days have been pretty hard." Doc continued working on the band aid around Hank's ribs, not quite removing it, but pulling it up and shining a flashlight down into the crevice created between Hank's skin and the bandage. The bruising was very mild, almost gone in fact. As he worked his way over toward back he had to have Hank roll over. "Sorry Hank, I know this is a pain in the ass, but if there is an infection I want to nip it early, we don't have the means to deal with full scale sepsis." Behind the doctor the doors to the Mike's club flashed brilliantly, lighting the entire building briefly. Both Hank and the Doc looked around, thinking that someone had just taken a picture of them, when they saw no one nearby they looked to the door where people were scrambling around outside. Then a wave of sound hit them, rumbling through the ground, through the building and waking everyone from the smallest child to the oldest adult among them from their slumber, save one. Kevin would always regret the fact that he was blissfully unconscious and asleep when what remained of the government started fighting back in earnest and dropped a nuclear bomb on North East Denver.
Chapter 23
Dave threw another rock at the zombie kid, it was a heavy stone, and it hit the kid on the forehead and bounced off high into the air, coming down on the parapet of the roof before spinning on the edge and then falling off into the alley below. The kid's head looked dented and Dave laughed at the trickle of black blood that started to slowly ooze from the wound.
"Stupid little fuck, didn't dodge that one, did you?" Dave laughed again and reached for another rock from the top of the flat roof they were on. He had moved about three blocks away from the Mike's Club, the new plan was to ambush people trying to get to the club and to that effect he had parked his motorcycle in the middle of the street. On the seat of his bike he put that piece of shit, plastic fucking gun. He figured if the bike was not enough of a reason for people to stop, the gun might draw attention. It was just after dawn and business was dead. He plunked another stone off of the kid's head, aiming for the eye, he hit it, Dave had to admit that his accuracy throwing things had gone way up since 'passing on'. The rock was not large enough this time to do more than bruise the eye lid, it did not even draw blood. Still the kid slowly raised his hands to his face and held one over his eye while holding the other out towards Dave, as if trying to block any more incoming missiles.
Dave didn't know how old the kid was. Three? Eight? He hadn't been around kids much, who knew they could be this damned fun? Dave reached down and grabbed a handful of pebbles and threw them half-heartedly at the zombie kid, just to see what it would do. The kid flung his hand around ineffectively and let out a kind of moan.
"First thing kid, is I am gonna get you some food, once you are smart we are gonna start rounding up others, probably little ones, like you, I get a whole pack of you and we go after any hold outs we can find. I got a plan, a good plan to get into Mike's, and you are gonna help me do it. Holy…"
Only halfway through his planned speech Dave was interrupted by the flash of a nuclear blast many miles away, it caught the corner of his eye and drew his attention in as it grew. Dave quickly made himself look away and threw himself over the kid, knocking him down as well. He was not sure if he could go blind anymore, but nothing would be worse than being a blind zombie looking for food.
'The funny thing', Dave thought, 'is that I have never seen a nuclear blast before, yet I know what that was a nuclear bomb.' Thinking about it more Dave was curious as to why was the bomb dropped there? The bomb, as near as Dave could tell went off North of downtown Denver. He saw the light silhouetted by the large buildings. What was in that area to bomb? The airport? Going to the airport had not even occurred to Dave, maybe there were a lot of living out there and hence, enough zombies to make dropping a bomb worth it. Still a lot of people would die too and that did not seem like something the government would do. Or maybe it did. Now he had to think, how was this going to change his plans? 'Probably not at all', he thought, 'unless they drop more bombs, make the place a glass plain or something.' Dave sat up, pulling zombie boy with him. Dave looked the kid over, checking his eyes particularly carefully. "Can you still see you little fuck? Answer me!"
The boy nodded slowly, really slowly. "Goddamned retarded zombie, just what I need. We got to get you some food, I sure hope the gun trap works cause I can't stand having such an r-tard follow me around." Pushing the kid away, Dave looked over to the ballooning mushroom cloud.
"Huh, you know you seen pictures in books and the film of the bombs and they just don't do it justice. No wonder all those peace-niks of the fifties wanted to ban these things. Look at how high the smoke goes. Shit." Dave sat back on his well worn denim jeans and looked at the cloud for awhile. "It just goes so high, it is beautiful, just beautiful." he whispered to himself.
Chapter 24
"Let's go!" Juan yelled to Charlie, pulling Nanci along with them. They ran into the ER and Charlie yelled at some of the 'backup' men and women to go cover the entrance, something bad had just happened on the roof.
Running to the end of the hall Charlie hit the elevator button and one of the doors opened immediately, they hopped in and Charlie hit the top floor button and the elevator started to rise. Then, abruptly, the lights went out and the ride stopped.
"Shit!" Charlie screamed. "I hate elevators! Why didn't we think about that? A bomb goes off on the roof and of course the electricity is going to go out."
"I hope Jack it alright." said Nanci, then she went into a litany of prayer in Spanish. Shrugging Juan joined her after she had completed two verses.
Charlie looked at them, "What? What are you saying, I am not getting all the words, speak English."
Juan stopped, "Prayer Charlie, that's all, asking God to look out for Jack. Doesn't the hospital have automatic generators to power up when the grid goes off? Like if they were in surgery or something?"
It was Charlie's turn to shrug, "I guess, they should, I mean they do surgeries here, maybe the elevators are not considered a medical necessity?" As he finished talking one of the lights flickered on, then the elevator alarm started buzzing. The buzzing stopped and the button light went off, then the elevator started moving up. It stopped faster than Juan thought it should and the doors opened, they were on the third floor. Not hesitating Juan jumped out, followed closely by Nanci and Charlie. "Stairs okay?" Juan asked. No one objected and they were soon pounding their way up the remaining floors to the roof access. The roof door opened to the north and as they made it out onto the roof they stopped dead in their tracks.