'Puta', Juan swore softly as he worked the bolt action rifle back and chambered another round.
Kevin pointed at the cowboy indicating that Juan should try and shoot him through the glass.
'No.' Juan replied curtly.
Kevin knew from the quickness of Juan's reply that he had better leave him alone to watch Hank's back, he returned to the back of the store and kept watch on the back parking lot and alley.
When Hank heard the shot he immediately dodged left. For about the hundredth time since leaving the Mike's Club he wished he had radios like those soldiers out of the movies. 'Always the dumb 'good ole boy' volunteering for this shit', he thought. He made the front door of the store to find it was locked and had a security gate. It was a newer style store and obviously it had to follow a builder's code of the area, which seemed to stipulate a lot of wood and earth tones. The door, while supporting painted brown metal bars running vertically up and down in front of the glass, was wood. Hank used the butt of his shotgun to smash the window, no alarms when off, despite the fact that the area still seemed to have electricity. Hank reached in passed the broken glass and pulled the fire safety bar down to open the door. 'Thank God for fire codes' he thought as he let himself in. Turning he scanned for major problems, and seeing nothing Juan could not handle he pulled the door shut. Looking around he spotted a box full of 'fold-a-chairs', on special right near the front door, he pulled one out and stuffed two of its legs between the safety bar and the security bars outside the broken window. It was not a permanent solution but anyone messing with it would make noise trying to get in.
Sure enough the store did hold a variety of camping gear, for the most part it held overpriced, 'high-tech' clothing. Hank did a quick circuit of the entire place, going around the outside and looking for undead or other survivors. Finding nothing in the main room he chose to start looting immediately. First he grabbed a backpack, then went for the highest priced sleeping bags he could find, he torn them out of their boxes and stuffed the lightweight sacks down into the backpacks. The three bags filled the main compartment and Hank made sure to put the 'stuff sacks' they came within as well, though he kept one out to fill with other loot from the store. He grabbed a small stove, three sets of cookware, five bottles of stove fuel and just about every dehydrated food pouch he could find. On the way towards the front door he grabbed some pants and shirts he thought would fit Kevin. He topped this off with three boxes of power bars that were near the register and then turned to the small refrigerator next to it to clean it out of bottled water. He also grabbed two of every kind of soda they had and a couple extra pepsi colas, the stuff sack was fifty pounds now if it was an ounce so he returned to the backpacks and loaded it up into another another pack instead. Jackets. They would be nice, maybe if he made another trip… No time, Juan was already firing outside and Hank started to worry about the kind of crowd gunfire always drew. He put the pack with the sleeping bags on his back, carried the other in his left hand and cradled the shotgun with his right. Heavy, but there were only the slow zombies to deal with outside, he hoped.
Juan saw Hank duck into the sporting goods store as he fired for a third time at the fast zombie on the street. Each time he fired he kept thinking, 'Gotcha pendejo!', but each time the gun was just slightly too high or too low or too far to the right or left. After missing his last shot he threw the gun down in frustration and looked at the remaining weapons. They had brought four rifles and two shotguns with them all fully loaded and each with an extra box of ammo. In addition both Hank and Juan had pistols belted to their waists and metal baseball bats as last resort weapons. They had burned through most of their shotgun ammunition getting away from the Ivy street mob. Kevin now had one of the rifles, Hank had one of the shotguns with him. Debating for a second Juan selected the other shotgun, it was loaded with double ought buck and while the range was extreme for a shotgun, the burst should be more forgiving for Juan's near misses. Turning back to the street Juan saw that his recent firing had drawn plenty of other slow zombies back into the area.
'Damn.' he swore softly in English.
They had originally decided to hole up on top of the roof for awhile because there were simply so many of the slow zombies around, it made getting surrounded and mobbed a real possibility. They had been deciding on whether to go or leave when Kevin showed up. Kevin was beat, wearing a sweat drenched shirt and he looked like he had not slept in two days. Juan was pretty sure Kevin was not going to be up to traveling without at least a night's sleep and leaving him was not something that had crossed either Hank or Juan's mind. So when the zombies cleared out a little Hank made the dash to the store across the street for blankets and maybe, if they were lucky, supplies. Of course they were sitting on top of a convenience store. So Juan somehow knew they would not be going hungry tonight no matter what happened.
Hank returned to the doorway and lifted his makeshift 'lock' out from the safety bar. '
Hank thought that if this were a movie he would now chamber a round in his shotgun and rush blindly out into the parking lot. In real life he already had a round chambered, the safety was off and he had no desire to be hit on his blind side by a zombie waiting just out of sight on one side of the door.
He pushed the door open and looked down the sidewalk. Nothing one way, turning he peered the other way. All clear. Looking across the street at Juan on the roof of the convenience store he waited for him to gesture go or no go. Juan was a bit busy sighting at something beyond Hank's vision.
Hank aimed at the next closest target, but did not fire, thinking of the fact that he only had four more shots until he had to reload. Luckily this was a magazine operated shotgun, which meant Hank could reload as he fired. He snaked his arm up through the straps of the backpack to the pocket on his shirt and pulled out another shell, which he then loaded through the bottom of the gun.
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
