Chapter 11
Before looking up Cisco Gonzales to get some bottled water Juan went looking for Nanci. He found her in the back of the store where a dozen grills had been set up to act as a makeshift kitchen. Nanci was busy cooking up dinner, which was still several hours away by Juan's thinking, however he had never cooked for two hundred people either. He knew more than half of the grills were set up to smoke all the meat from the deep freeze into a more portable form, dried jerky. The freezers were still working, but they drew a lot of power, Alfonso, their only electrician, didn't think they could keep everything running, if they could shut down the deep freezers that would allow them to have that much more power for the industrial sized refrigeration units. Men and women had spent quite a bit of the morning reorganizing the refrigerators, packing stuff in for storage as opposed to leaving it in the display cases. They had also duct taped all the doors closed to make them more efficient, except for one refrigerator door, which they now used as an access point. This way they would not have to open and close the fork lift sized door on one side of the refrigerator very often. If the power did go out the deep freeze would be shut down, the food would stay very cold for a few hours, maybe a few days, but they would move as much of it as possible to the refrigeration units, which should be powered by three of the generators on the roof. How long that would last depended entirely on how long they had a fuel supply.
Juan approached Nanci and she smiled tentatively at him from where she was cooking, then frowned as she read his expression. She always could read him like a book.
'I know that look.' she said in Spanish, 'It is the look you get when you want to tell me something I am not going to like. What is it?'
Sighing Juan outlined the plan to scout out the hospital. Nanci looked at him for a minute, her face displaying a variety of emotions from sadness, to anger, to a flushed embarrassment, she finally settled on a cross look of sad anger before she said, 'Fine. Go. You don't have to, but you will, someone else could do this, but you have to be the one. Yes? Always you now. I was proud when you got Segundo, more than proud, but I was also happy, I thought maybe you would be sending others out for things like this. Not risking yourself, so I was happy because you would not come back dead or as, as, one of them!' Nanci then lowered her head into the dishcloth she held in her hands and started to cry. Acutely aware of the hostile looks the other women in the kitchen were giving him, Juan stepped forward and pulled his wife into a hug. 'I will be careful, mi amor. I will come back okay, no one wants to go, if the people they put in charge do not lead, do not take any risks, then they will not be in charge very long. I will be fine, you'll see. I have to go. I need water for six men, is there any here or do I need to talk to Gonzales?'
Pulling herself away from Juan, Nanci kept the towel to her face and pointed to the deep freeze, her muffled voice said, 'We keep some water in there for us to use for cooking and drinking, there are some coolers, just take one, we'll get another. Be careful Juan! If you don't come back I shall hunt your corpse down and kill it myself!'
'Only after lecturing me on the error of my ways and how you were right. And I will deserve it too.'
Ruffling his wife's hair and then pulling her in for a quick kiss, Juan turned and headed for the freezer, where several coolers filled with water bottles were sitting, he picked one up and headed out to meet Jack.
Jack was waiting in the parking lot with the 'men' he had selected. Charlie was there along with three women, one Hispanic and two gringos. Raising his hands Jack said, 'I asked for volunteers, these women all raised their hands first, Terry, Jen, and Mary. A lot of guys wanted to go to, but the women said something about equal representation, so I chose them.'
Charlie had changed his pants and t-shirt, he carried a rifle, had a pistol in a holster on his belt and had what looked for all the world like a doctor's little black bag at his feet. Terry was an older white woman, perhaps forty years old, she had a pudgy stomach and legs like solid oak trees that sprang out of her gray shorts. To top it off she was wearing an over-sized Nascar t-shirt, her brown hair and silver earrings offset a face that only a mother could love. To say she was ugly would be an insult to ugly people everywhere. Something was just not right with her face, it appeared to be slightly misshapen, with a large nose, mis-sized eyes and a tight, pursed set of lips that made it seem unbalanced. In Juan's experience he had gotten along with ugly women a lot better than pretty women, so her looks didn't bother him at all, after all he was not going to sleep with this mujer, just ride with her. Jen was also a middle aged woman with raven hair, brown eyes and a slight scar across one of her cheeks, it had faded with age, but was still visible, she had broader hips, but looked like she was an outdoor type, tan skin, hiking shoes, and a shotgun completed her ensemble. Last but not least was Mary, a kid really, she was probably seventeen and Hispanic, acne had already taken her smooth skin away from her, leaving parts of her face pock marked with scars. Still she was dainty and attractive in body, not rail thin, not overweight, her brown hair and dark brown eyes were typical of Hispanic heritage. She was wearing a rugged western style shirt, blue jeans and boots. And she was holding the rifle like she knew how to use it. At her belt was a fanny pack, that was bulging and hanging low.
'Si.' Juan nodded to the women and to Charlie. Behind Jack sat two pickup trucks, both Ford F-150s both white and late model. Very nice. Juan could not wait to get into one of them and crank up the air conditioning.
'Good I am driving this one, taking Charlie in the back seat and Jen is riding shotgun. You get to ride, Terry is driving. You have the shotgun position and Mary rides in the backseat. The 'shotgunners' carry shotguns. Funny, huh? The driver has one too, the back seater has a hunting rifle and all of us get pistols and bats. Oh, each of these trucks is benefiting from new CBs, tuned to channel 12 and plugged into the dash, they are not hard wired, maybe Alfonso can get to it when he has time. We have walkie-talkies for each of us too, nice Motorolas with a four mile range, finally there are two cell phones in each glove box, charged and ready to go. See Juan? This time we are not going to lose contact with each other or with the 'home base'. I got one of my guys carrying a cell phone to answer us if we call him, we have to report in every half an hour on the half hour. Divvy up the water and lets get moving.'
The way he said it left no room for arguing, Juan was not going to drive. He waited for Mary to ride in the back seat, saying 'After you' to her in Spanish as he opened the door, she looked at him and said, 'What? Sorry Juan I don't speak much Spanish.'
At the drivers door Terry smirked at Juan and said, in fluent Spanish, 'Stereo types. You gotta love them huh? I lived in Mexico city for four years when I was younger. The gringa speaks Spanish, the Hispanic speaks none. Pleased to meet you Juan.'
In Spanish Juan answered, 'The pleasure is mine.', he liked the woman ugly enough to scare away small children already.
Hopping in, Terry continued in English, 'I have been to Sky Ridge, so I know the way there, you have been on the highway this morning, so you know more of the local roads. At least for now we are taking the lead. We haven't decided who gets to lead on the way back. So? Which way to we go?'
'I would go down to Arapahoe Road and go west, if it is clear, we could go back via Broncos road to Peoria, I suppose that should be mostly clear, but there was a bad wreck. I think highway twenty five is clear all the way, some army guys came through there this morning, we think.' Juan explained what had happened on the road that morning and about the pile up, the dead military men in the body bags and how the road appeared to be clear on the southbound lane.
Terry nodded. She drove on the way Juan had said and then started to say something to him, stopped herself, shook her head, then started again, 'Juan, can I ask you something?'
'Sure.'
'Why do you think this happened? You religious? Is this Armageddon?'
Shit, Juan thought, 'I don't know. I don't really want to think of it too much Terry. We got to live first if we get to a safe place, maybe we can think of why stuff happened later.'
'You know when it started? I heard that guy on the radio, Blake 'the Snake', he said that the dead have overrun most of the city, you hear him talk yet?'
Seeing Juan shake his head she turned on the radio and tuned the dial to what appeared to be the only station playing. There was a man on the station giving directions on how to get out of town.
