Nothing, no Cory, but his eyes spotted the shotgun on the grass. He climbed over the fence, picked up the shotgun and sat the bag down. As he was getting ready to climb back over the fence he spotted a shotgun shell in the grass, he bent to pick it up and spotted another one, he retrieved that one and noticed it was heavier than the first one, looking at the first one he saw that it has a hole in the front end, not like the second one, which was snub nosed and folded closed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which one of them had already been fired. He tossed the empty down and looked around for more shells, he only found more empties and decided one was better than nothing. Someone started moving around in the kitchen near the broken glass doors, not sure who it was Bobby leaped up and jumped for the back fence. He cleared it in a single bound. When he got back to the convenience store he only saw Jimbo.
“Where is Veronica and Erin?” his voice took on an accusing tone, “You didn’t bring her back did you? I don’t want a little girl zombie!”
“Whoa! Whoa! No way, she ain’t a zombie, we only bled her enough to heal ourselves up a bit, we didn’t even finish the job, Veronica is going to give her to Max. Let him deal with the kid. Where’d you find the gun?” asked Jimbo, amazed.
“I picked it up in Max’s back yard and I found this.” Bobby held up an unspent shell.
“Well I’ll be damned! Good job Bobby!” shaking his head in disbelief, “We can’t find any guns and you find one laying in the yard. Un-fucking-believable.”
Bobby beamed over the praise and together they waited for Veronica to return. It was a short wait.
“I left her in the Cadillac. She’ll live. There is a gas station down the street with a car out front, like they were filling up. Lets go see if we can find the keys.”
The keys were on the body of a man lying in front of the counter, he was missing his head. The car was already full of fuel and soon enough they were headed north towards Boulder, leaving Arvada behind.
Chapter 52
A few hours had passed. Cory had woken up and was busy playing video games with Nick. Max normally would not have allowed Nick anywhere near a video game, but playing outside was simply too dangerous, with headphones on the boys were quiet as church mice. When Max had suggested moving one or both cars into the garage, Stewart had said to move the cruiser in. When she went out to move it she found a girl in the front seat, a very scared, bloody girl. The girl wouldn't talk to her, but Amelia had coaxed her name, Erin, out of her using food as a bribe. Erin's arm had been cut open in a ragged manner and she would not say what had happened to her. Amelia cleaned her up and put her with the other children, who were confined to the second story of the house.
After moving the cruiser in Tom and Stewart looked it over as best they could. Neither of them were mechanics, so they went slow and looked for obvious damage. After ten minutes of looking and not finding any problems they came to the conclusion that the cruiser had come through in remarkable shape. They pulled it out and drove the Cadillac into the garage to check it over, it was completely unscratched and ready to roll.
With all the other adults busy Max and Sarah were left to talk. At first they just held each other, then Sarah started crying. Over breakfast she had spoken with Amelia and learned what had happened to Diane. By noon Sarah no longer felt good, she described it as having a case of the flu. Her stomach felt like it was being tied in knots. When she and Max checked her wound in their master bedroom it was red, swollen and filled with a foul smelling green and yellow pus. They both cried then as they cleaned it up as much as possible. At dinner time Sarah did not help out with preparing the food, a thick sheen of sweat covered her face and plastered her hair to her head. She didn't eat dinner. As night came on the group took heavy winter blankets and sleeping bags out of the closets and garage and hung them over all of the upstairs windows, to keep light from getting out and giving away their location.
Sarah went into her bedroom and called Max and their kids in and shut the door.
Amelia spoke quietly with Stewart and Tom downstairs. “She looks like Diane did, before she turned.”
“So she isn't going to make it? How much longer did Diane last after she got to this point?” asked Stewart.
“About half the night, maybe six hours.”
“Shit, what are we going to do? We can't kill Max's wife!” said Tom.
“I don't know, I don't know. We'll think of something.” replied Stewart.
They went on to discuss piling furniture on the stairway and hiding out up there for the night, looking around they didn't have much left to move, most of the furniture in the living room had been moved in front of the door or pulled into the kitchen to barricade the patio doorway.
Inside Max's bedroom Sarah told the kids how much she loved them and would always love them, then had Max bring them to Nick's room. Max went back into his bedroom alone and shut and locked the door behind him.
“You have to Max. I won't become one of them.” Sarah pleaded.
“Don't ask me to do that, you can't and I won't. What if someone comes up with a way to reverse it? Then you would be gone forever.”
“Max I am going to be gone forever. I can feel it, it hurts. It hurts so bad. Just do it, please?”
“I can't.”
“Stewart then, send her to do it. I don't want to run around like one of them, I can't do that, killing and…and eating other people. Becoming one of them! They were evil! That won't be me.”
“No, no one is going to do anything…final. We will figure something out.”
“Max this isn't a mountain you can climb, this isn't a game you can win by putting more effort into it. This is it. I got bit. I got infected and I am going to die. Tonight. You cannot sit there and say you are going to figure something out.”
Max bowed his head into his hands and sobbed. Sarah continued, “You have to do it. I want you to do it.”
Max raised his tear stained face and looked at her. Giving her a curt nod.
“Good, should we go into the back yard, away from the kids?”
Horrified Max said, “I'm not doing it now! You are still alive!”
She smiled at him, “Better now before…I turn. At least we could get away from the kids and they wouldn't have to see. If you wait until I change we could be out there all night, plus if I stay here it would be a mess to clean up.”
Max just stared at her, then with some anger in his voice he said, “You are going to die and you are worried about the mess it would make in our bedroom?”
Sarah shrugged, “I am being realistic. If you wait until I change you would have to shoot me here, then drag me out past the other bedrooms, maybe the kids would see, maybe not. Then you would have to deal with the blood and stuff. It is better to just go do it now and get it over with, before the pain gets worse.”
“No, I think I can do it after you turn, but no way, no way can you ask me to do this before that happens. I would always think maybe we were too soon, maybe you would fight it off, maybe you wouldn't turn out like the others.”
It was Sarah's turn to nod, “I won't make a murderer of you, any more than I would commit suicide. When I am gone you have to do it, it won't be murder then, so don't think it will be.”
Of the two of them Sarah was the more religious. Max was always the one who attended church 'just in case', he felt he that an hour of fellowship was not as important as a week of treating people right, but went with Sarah at her insistence. Sarah was far more apt to obey the commandments to the letter than Max and had very strong feelings on things like abortion, suicide and murder. During their college years she had even been arrested protesting at a candle light vigil the night Colorado put one of it's murderers to death. The two of them had gone around several times about raising the children in the church, Sarah did not approve of Max's casual attitude regarding their religious education. It was for this reason alone, Max surmised, that Sarah would not put a gun to her own head and pull the trigger right now. Suicide was still a mortal sin and she fully expected to be waiting for
