no?'
A half circle of women, a few men and a dozen kids was gathering around Hank.
Juan waved Jack quiet and answered, 'Si, it was easier, you know, your name came up first, then we batted around a bunch of others, we kept coming back to you, jefe. If it makes it any easier they pegged me as vice-jefe, Jack, Doc and old man Gonzales are on the 'board'. You make the big decisions, I can make smaller ones the board can overrule us by a two to one majority. Plus each board member has an area they are responsible for, Jack has security, Doc has, well, medical and sanitary stuff, Gonzales has 'resources', which is like food, clothing, anything not involving guns and medicines.'
Hank looked at the hopeful faces in front of him, the silence lingered for a few seconds as he looked around, as he looked at the faces, he was thinking. Hank was not a leader, he knew it, he could barely lead his crew in fixing a car, he had no desire to lead a bunch of 'Mad Max' style refugees into the future. Thinking he wondered who would be better? Almost anyone, he had no plan, just to lay low at the warehouse and wait until the authorities showed up to save them. True, it had been his idea to come to the Mike's Club, he had told Juan. Juan told the whole damn neighborhood and they all ended up here, with their most prized possessions and families. He could understand why they had the wrong impression that he would make a good leader. This was not a job he wanted, someone else would have to take on the chief role if they ended up being stuck in this situation for very long. Still Hank was a talker, he could reason with most people, work out deals, maybe it would not be so bad, for a couple weeks. Finally he said, 'Okay. I got a few problems, but okay I accept. I will do my best.' The small crowd of people cheered and surged forward to shake his hand and pat him on the shoulders, after a few minutes Hank raised up his hands and called for everyone to be quiet, 'Whoa! Whoa! Slow down a bit, let me get a word in here, I said I had a few problems and as you made me your 'Jefe', I need to get a few things out there on the floor. First off, you all elected me while I was out, I suppose that is okay, I can see a need to fill the position quickly. Then, you set up the board, but people there are not any women on it. I am not a genius or anything, but I think we need to have at least one womanly vote on the board from the get go, don't you?'
'Better to get two.' said Juan, 'We kind of think that having an odd number on the board is important, so we get a couple women on the board to serve. Dios knows we have enough other areas to cover, I am thinking Gonzales could use a hand, divide his stuff up a bit more?'
'Yeah this needs some thinkin' on. Me and you and maybe the rest of the board should spend five minutes working it out? I don't want no long-assed meetings and bureaucracy, if we are going to do things over again, we are going to do them better than before.' Hank kind of wanted to get back to the bitten people in the parking lot, but was having a hard time thinking of a way to steer the conversation back that way so he just said, 'Okay Jack, we still got to discuss the guys in the pen. What about the whole parking lot? How do we keep zombies from outside off the pen, I mean if they can see it the zoms will just head right to it, if we start firing guns to kill them, that will attract more zombies, then we will have an all out war.'
The crowd slowly started disbursing, several people stayed around to see what their new leader would say, the kids all got back to being children, except Cage who clambered back up into Hank's chair with him.
'Hank we have moved the cars to the outer edges of the parking lot. Put them bumper to bumper so that the zombies have to crawl over or under them to get by. The lot is pretty big and we used the wrecker that Ted got from his work to move the cars into position. Now we have started closing off the main streets, putting cars right up to the buildings to expand our 'territory', by tonight I think we will have the walls far enough out to keep the slow zombies from being able to see the parking lot entirely. The fence is just outside the exit of the store, so the people cannot be seen by anything at the back. Plus we didn't have to use as much fencing because one long side is up against the building. The back of the store is a problem, there is a ravine behind it with two loading docks. There is enough room to line up cars, we just don't have enough of them yet to cover the whole back of the store. The ravine is not deep enough to keep the zombies from crossing it either. Some of the boys think that we can block the street off on the other side of the ravine, but that won't solve everything, there is a bike path on the other side too. We can block that off pretty easy, but it won't stop much either.'
'So we maybe need to move? How many people are here now?' asked Hank.
'I don't know about moving Hank, the doc, he has opinions on the matter, wants us to move to the University of Colorado Hospital, up on Colorado Boulevard. Or maybe that newer facility further south, Sky Ridge. Me? I don't know it is like twelve miles to University and only four or so to Sky Ridge, but Doc says Sky ridge may not have everything we need medically, he thinks we will need and run out of the supplies they have in their emergency room pretty quickly. He didn't seem to want to go there, real negative on it and all. I think Sky Ridge is a better bet, from what he describes it is in suburbia, surrounded by landscaping and pretty big, there will be grocery stores not too far off to raid and stuff. As for the people, we have over two hundred now, but I can't say exactly how many. We have, well had ten minutes ago, twenty two people in the pen with bites too.'
'Well probably you should have the doc come over here when he gets time, as I am not supposed to be moving around much. Go get a head count if you can. If people won't consent to penning if they got bit, then they have to move on, make it clear you think they are dumb asses for leaving. Try to get them to stay, we know, right now, that the bitten will turn, maybe not all of them, but lets make out like they all will. As for the penned, if the Doc ain't working them over with disinfectant and such, maybe we could assign his nurse, Beth, I think? To teach some of the boys to clean the wounds until they bleed again? At least it will look like we are trying, and maybe more won't turn, talk to Kevin, maybe he knows more about the guy who didn't turn after he was bit that he didn't tell me. Ask around if anyone else knows of people unaffected by the bites. Oh and Jack?'
Jack who had been turning to leave, turned back and looked questioning at Hank.
'You are going a good job with the cars and keeping things going, thanks. Watch out for any super fast zombies, they will eventually get guns, we didn't have any problems finding some.'
Nodding Jack waved and headed off towards the front of the store. Juan sat looking at Hank and eventually Hank stopped ignoring him and turned to look at him. Juan had a huge smile on his face. 'Cut it out Juan, you are right here with me and don't think for a second I will ever forget you getting me into this mess.'
Juan gulped, then recovered and grinned again and said, 'Si amigo. You know we almost had some racial problems?'
'What? Already? Don't people have better things to do? What happened?'
'You are tired, I should let you rest, but I gotta tell you, it is a good story really and ends well. We had us eighty people in here, then all the others started showing up, from what I was told, a mix mostly of whites and Hispanics, a couple Black people. Well they started settling in and gravitated toward each other, like, you know, white guy comes in, heads towards white people, Hispanics did the same. Jack noticed, got a little pissy about it. Went and talked to everybody, made them mingle. You know what happened then?'
'Fist fight?'
'No! They did it! They picked their shit up and crowded in as a group. You believe that?'
'Not for a minute. What did Jack really do?'
'Really he just talked to them. I could not believe it myself. Now when people come in, they can stay with people they came with, but are mixed in with everyone else. Jack is pretty good.'
'Sounds like he should be 'Jefe' to me, think I can dump it off on him?'
'No, no way, he made that pretty clear, he said he likes the idea of being a warrior, head of the military, but he thinks our government did that right, at least, put the civilian head of the government in charge of the military. He doesn't want anything to do with policing people though, 'infringing their rights' he called it.'
'I think he means soldier, not warrior. A warrior fights on his own, like a gladiator, a soldier fights as part of a unit. Which is why soldiers win battles and warriors, individuals, lose them. Still I could have protested louder than him, had I been given the chance. That is pretty good about him and the police force, doesn't he realize he just became 'the man'?', Hank grumbled sleepily.
Juan nodded, then said, 'Oh we know Hank, we know you can get loud, that is why we elected you how we did, amigo.'
Cage had settled in for a nap and Hank roughed his hair up a bit and leaned back himself.
