Silence on the other end of the line, then, tentatively, "They got him? They got Dave?"
"They seem to think so, Whitney split his head open with that ax Michael had. Everyone was hurt pretty bad, the least of 'em were bruised up, one kid looks to have a God damned broken testicle, Doc says they will pull through, they got an ass kicking they will never, ever, forget. You know how you said you felt all weird after killing that guy at the hospital?"
Warily, Juan answered, "Si."
"Whitney and you, you two are gonna have to have a little talk when you get the chance, she says, and her friends say, something happened to her too."
Juan was quiet for a moment, then said, "Okay, we will talk, maybe all three of us, anyone who killed a zombie up close and personal. Hank, we had something happen here too, you know? I gotta talk at you about it, try and get my head around it." said Juan.
"Shoot partner."
Juan proceeded to catch Hank up with the guardsmen, telling him as much as he knew, with help from a nearby Nanci, about how they had, Juan thought, been a spotter or something to guide the bomb towards its eventual detonation. He went on to say that he was in contact with the infantry and they wanted to send troop carriers up to get people from the hospital and the Mike's Club.
"Well, what do you think?" Juan asked after giving Hank a few minutes to digest the information.
"You talked to 'em, what do you think?" countered Hank.
"I don't think they mean any harm, I think they want to help. I say we meet with them and figure out how we are going to do things."
"So that is what we do then Juan, call 'em back up and tell 'em we'll see them later this morning if they can get up there to Sky Ridge, and I will get down there too, we'll get this shin dig going and see if we can actually get a good night's sleep for a change. Ask them about fallout and if it is safe for us to be outside, Doc is worried."
"Si, I will, probably I would worry about the zombies more than the radiation though, the zombie will get you first, huh?"
Chuckling ruefully Hank answered, "Exactly what I think Juan."
Chapter 27
Juan hung up the phone, he was till on top of the building and was looking out over the distance towards the still visible smoke cloud to the north east. The wind looked to be carrying the smoke to the south east, not so far south, more east, the smoke would miss Sky Ridge and the Mike's Club, Juan was sure of that. He looked at Nanci and smiled. Talking in Spanish he said, "The military guys will be here, they will figure this stuff out. You will see we will be okay again."
Nanci frowned and replied, "Military are still under civilian control, not the other way around, we are still going to need you, Hank and the others as our voice. Plus if the military is dropping bombs on the zombies we are going to be in trouble, the bombs will be gone long before the zombies are."
Looking over at the smoke cloud Juan thought that maybe Nanci was right about this. He took her hand and stared at the horizon for a few minutes wondering, what, exactly they could do about anything. Slowly he let go of Nanci's hand and approached the radio, picking up the headset he said, "Hello? Is Ed Stanson there?"
A reply was almost immediate, "Yes sir, is this John?"
"Yes." a moment later Ed's voice came back at him.
"Juan this is Ed. What is up?"
"Hello Ed, we have been talking a little bit and think we should meet up as soon as we can to figure out what we are going to do. When can you get here? Or do you want us to come to you?"
"No, you stay put, I will fly out to you in say, a half an hour? Will that be okay? If you have any badly injured, I am talking the worst couple of cases, not a whole bunch of people, we can take them with us when we leave. We pulled up a map of your location and should not have any trouble finding it, there is a helipad on the roof of the hospital right?"
"Oh yeah sure, I am almost standing on it now, I will wait here for you, okay?"
"Yes, that is perfect son, I'll see you soon!"
Nanci mumbled something about getting them coffee and Juan decided to stay up on the roof, he walked over to look down at the emergency room entrance and was not surprised to find the zombies had gotten closer. Concentrating he urged them to move away from the ER. As one the small crowd of them looked up at him, when they looked, the guards on the entrance also looked up, seeing him looking down they waved and said something that was lost in the distance. Juan waved back and nodded trying to convey an 'Everything is alright' sort of look. By now though the rumors of the soldier's death had traveled through their small community and the door behind Juan opened up much too soon to be Nanci coming back with coffee.
Seeing Jack and Charlie over by the ropes that led to the bodies dangling over the side of the building Juan started to walk in that direction, he was joined by a few of the people from inside the building. Jack explained what had happened as best he could, pointing to the smoke cloud was was now just a steady stream rising into the sky.
One of the men, he looked like a medical intern, said, "That doesn't look like a nuke, at least not what I thought one would be like. Is it true the Army guys killed themselves?"
Nodding yes, Juan announced loud enough for everyone to hear, "The Army guys hung themselves, they called in a nuclear strike on the radio station, barricaded the roof access door from the outside and hung themselves right here."
The group of men and woman babbled a bit hearing this news, one of the women actually got sick, vomiting onto the gravel rooftop, the acidic smell caused Juan to wrinkle his nose.
"Please people, stop for a minute here, that is not all." Juan held out his hands, gesturing at everyone to quiet down. One of the men helped the sick woman away from her pool of vomit and handed her a dishtowel he had draped over his shoulder to wipe her face off with. "First." Juan held up on finger, "We are not in any danger from fallout here at the hospital." One of the men called out asking how Juan knew, the others became more agitated, "Okay, let me start again. First, I just got off the radio behind me," Juan used his finger to point at the army radio sitting on an ammo crate behind him and then continued, "The army guy, I think he is a Major or something, he said we should be far enough from where the bomb went off at that we should be okay. Plus the winds should push what limited fallout there is to the south east of the explosion, but we are not in that range. That is the second thing I guess, we are not in any danger from the fallout from the bomb. Plus we didn't get hit by a pulse or anything that destroyed our electronics, another sign that we were far enough away. Third," Juan held up a third finger, "The army guys did hang themselves and are dead, I think we should pull them up and try to take care of them we I get done. The last thing, number three? Four? Okay number four is that this Ed guy, the Major I spoke to on the radio, he is coming here by helicopter, he is going to be here in fifteen minutes or so to look over our situation and see what he can do to help us out, maybe even move us to the south to the National guard base where they are at. He wants to see our set up first, then talk to us a bit. So, well so we need to get organized, I think some of us should pull the bodies up and get them into the…morgue? Is there a morgue here?" One of the people dressed in green scrubs called out 'yes!' and several people nodded.
Juan went on, "So we get the bodies into storage. I think we should do a quick count of inventory, list all the cars and trucks we have keys too, the number of phones we have working, how much food we have and how much space we have cleared here. Think we can do that in twenty minutes. I am not saying to count every packet of sugar or anything just more like how many days we could go without food, how long the generators could last before they run out of power, that sort of thing." Juan was not sure how he was going to get people to volunteer for these jobs, however Jack jumped in and just started pointing at people and telling them what to do, adding several things that Juan had not thought of before turning back to a few men, including Charlie and Juan on the roof and saying, "We get to pull up the bodies." He sent three men down to the ER for gurneys and then the three men left went to work hauling up the ropes with their grisly remains on the end.