Juan was curious so he asked one of the men, 'Why are you always cleaning up everything? The mops in the maternity ward, yeah I get that, but to do the ER and now the kitchen, man that is a lot of work, we can get it later, right amigo?'
The man just looked at Juan and replied, 'No, Juan, they might pass this by blood contact, you get an open wound you get infected, you die, you turn, you make them stronger and us weaker. The doc said to clean up and disinfect to the best of our ability, so that is what we do, and the kitchen, well I get the impression you are going to be moving in here with us and we are going to need this to be working. So cleaning it up is very important.'
Juan left him at it and rummaged around for some food they could make quickly, he didn't find any. Didn't the hospital have any snacks? Apparently not. He found plenty of raw chicken, hamburger patties and other frozen meats, even steak and fish, but nothing that fell within his domain of cooking experience. Admittedly his abilities were very limited. Nanci took care of the cooking, unless it was on the grill. They were a very liberal 'traditional' family. Nanci still managed the household, Juan managed….to earn the money. Their system had worked out so far even if it hearkened back to the nineteen fifties.
Sighing Juan turned towards Jack, who was also sighing and turning towards Juan, their eyes locked and they both laughed.
'You thinking what I am thinking?' asked Jack.
'If you are thinking that I hope Nanci is coming with them, then yeah.' answered Juan.
'Well I was thinking something along those lines, do we dare ask Jen, Terry or Mary for help in this or do we just say there was nothing we felt we could cook?'
'Uh, I think we just say we can't cook and let it go at that, if they volunteer good, if someone volunteers good. Not Mary though, she is hurt.'
The other men were finishing up with the last of the pans that had been sprayed and after a quick question confirmed they were not much in the way of cooks either. They went into an adjoining hallway and blocked it off with furniture from the cafeteria to cut it off from the western wing, then headed up to the second floor to rejoin their friends and see how Mary was doing.
The first thing they saw was a group standing outside of the door where they had put Mary. Terry turned to Juan and approached him, saying in Spanish, 'They don't know anything, they cut her up a bit, disinfected her more and started an IV, but they don't really know anything about stopping an infection like this. Hell Juan from looking at her wound I almost think it came from a chair leg, not from being bitten.'
Shaking his head Juan replied in Spanish as well, 'No, the zombie, he said he had her taste, I don't think he was lying, maybe he was.' Shrugging Juan, went on, 'Can you cook? We can't, all the stuff down there needs to be made, like chicken or beef or whatever. I could warm up some green beans. Like a gallon of green beans. Not a very good dinner though.'
It was Terry's turn to shake her head, 'Never was much good for industrial cooking, I can help, or we can wait, I think these folks are hungry though, didn't they have any fruit or anything to tide the mom's over?'
'Uh I didn't see any, do you want to come help me look again, maybe I missed it.'
'Sure I'll go with you, let's take Jen too, she is feeling useless up here, grab the janitors and lets head back down.'
'Janitors?' Juan asked.
'You didn't know? Yeah they work here, the doctor played them off as nursing staff, which I guess they are, that was the only thing that kept them from being killed by the zombies. The zombie leaders thought they were professionals or something. They are though, aren't they?'
Juan nodded, 'Well that explains how they always know where to find the cleaning supplies. I'll get them.'
They went downstairs and this time Juan asked the janitors if they knew were the fresh food was kept. They went to another door that Juan thought led to a deep freeze, but was, in fact, just a giant walk in refrigerator. The janitors also knew which door led to a pantry full of dried foods. Soon enough the group was back with a bag full of crackers and fruit, the new moms ate first, but all the former captives had a couple pieces of fruit, the group from Mike's Club shared their granola bars around and they waited for word from the caravan while they watched the sun creep steadily towards the mountains.
Back at the Mike's Club they were keeping close track of the caravan, which was creeping along at very slow speed towards the hospital, maybe making twenty miles per hour, so it would take them about forty five minutes to reach it. Among the riders on the caravan were the most hurt people from the club, those who needed medical attention the Doc could not provide for them. There weer also several non-combatant women, a couple of children and of course, Nanci. She was in the first car of the caravan, urging her driver to hurry and be cautious at the same time.
Finally getting irritated he turned around and told her to keep her eyes on the sides of the road around them and stop being a back seat driver, even if she was in the back seat. Disgruntled, Nanci sat back and did as she was told, fingering the shotgun safety as she prepared to blast any zombie stupid enough to get in the way as she made her way back to the man she loved.
Chapter 15
Back at the Mike's Club warehouse Hank was not happy. The doc told him he was going to have to lay low for a couple weeks, take it easy and concentrate on mental tasks while his body repaired itself, however with his best friend out running around clearing zombies from a hospital he could not 'rest easy'. One thing Hank had learned in his years was that good friends, truly good friends, could never be replaced. It had taken Juan and his family a long while to convince Hank that just because he had been through hell once, not everyone was like that. The funny thing to Hank was he didn't think all people were bad, or evil, only that a very small percentage of people were, maybe one in ten thousand. No, the problem with Hank was not that he believed most people were good, his problem was he no longer trusted implicitly his ability to tell the good people from the bad ones.
When he was a young pup he was more than happy to choose and stand by any of his friends and family, until death if need be, he was that sure of himself and that sure that he was bullet proof. Then came his ex-wife, after that mess it was a wonder he didn't spend some time in a sanitarium somewhere. Not that Hank ever would have admitted anything in so many words, hurting was not something he had been raised to share around. Now when he was stuck sitting in a lazy boy discussing work shifts of the people at the club with the Doc, or reading the kids stories, or snoozing like he was supposed to be.
When he woke from his nap and found that Juan had gone without him, well that made him feel…lost, almost. He and Juan had been together for a long time almost inseparable for the past three or four years and now Juan was gone, and Hank might not ever see him again. Nancy was on the edge too, and Evaine was trying to keep both of them sane, but really only made matters worse. Hank had to give her credit, because she then did the only thing that could have helped, she backed off and left them to stew alone. Cage and Sylvia came by, Sylvia had their shoes, Cage wouldn't put his on, he said the other boys weren't wearing them and he liked the way the concrete kept his feet cool in the hot warehouse. Hank held on to both of them for awhile, shoes or no, but they only stayed with him for a little while before being caught back up into the pack of tweens running wild through the warehouse. Well, not quite true, they were still being shadowed by a group of older girls, who were quick to step up when any of the kids tried to do anything the adults wouldn't like.
This left Hank alone to think, old man Gonzales was handling most of the current moment to moment things. Everyone could tell Hank was in a funk, heck, Hank figured they could even have handled the rotating shift problem without his input, but he thought they wanted to make Hank feel a little better by giving him something to do. Feeling useless was new to Hank and didn't care for it. Worse his side itched, under the bandages, itched something fierce, but every time he moved around to scratch or touch the wounds, he writhed in pain. The Doc just told him to pop another pain pill.
