ammo, plus they had about a dozen walking 'bitten' with them, which we were all worried about. All the seriously wounded had been left behind.'
'I need to be clear about this too, we did have some contact with one of the other columns. Not me, right then I was not doing so good radio wise. Remember the zombie on the hood with his crowbar? When he was shot off he rolled over our antenna, he didn't knock it off completely, just broke it. We could still talk to the LAVs pretty well, but I could only catch a few phrases and clips of words from the other columns, the Major sounded like he was rallying them. Maybe. Not winning though, definitely not winning. The LAVs picked up more communications for awhile, then nothing.' Ted gave another one of his his characteristic shrugs, 'Maybe the columns antenna got knocked off then too. Anyway we looked for gun stores, finding one in north-east, liberal Denver was harder than finding fault with a playboy centerfold, in other words we didn't find one. Not even a fucking k-mart or wal-mart where we at least could maybe have gotten shotguns and small caliber weapons. We took refuge in an abandoned Barnes and Noble. There was a small fight inside; maybe ten really slow, stupid zombies were in among the books, nothing we could not handle. The vehicles circled up out front and formed the perimeter; we broke out the fuel and topped off the armored cars, and the humvee. Johnson, a decent guy, a mechanic, he got our antenna fixed again, probably with duct tape and spit, anyway it has been working okay for us since.'
'The infantry went up on the second floor of the bookstore to bed down, the second floor had a really good view of the store front. Plus there were no windows on the sides of the building only towards the parking lot and only one way up to the second level, the escalators. The power was still on, but we just moved the elevator to the second floor and hit the emergency stop, the buzzer went off, so Johnson disconnected it. Not a bad defensive position, we weren't in a fire base situation though, we were on our own.'
'The LAVs contacted the base and they told us to sit tight, they were not going to do anything unless the zombies found us and mobbed us, if we kept our heads down they said we should be alright. We heard the helicopters all night a few miles to the east and then to the south and east and then just to the south. From how the helicopters sounded it was like they were providing cover for one of the columns, so I think something got out from the fight at radio station.'
'The night passed quietly for the simple reason that the enemy was preoccupied elsewhere. Of the twelve who were bit, eleven of them died and came back that night, one guy was fine. I almost felt sorry for him, you should have seen how everyone was watching him all the time! Come morning we started looking around the parking lot and checking the pockets of the few dead people we could find in the store, we came up with seven civilian vehicles, I topped them all off with some of the fuel I still had, we've got maybe twenty gallons extra left now. Seven vehicles for thirty eight men, we wanted to take on a few, but the lieutenant in the LAV overrode me, the men were not trained in the vehicles and would get in our way if the shit hit the fan, that was the official reason. Besides there was something else the Lieutenant needed us to do. The guy, the deejay, was still on the air, he was still alive and our mission had not changed. We had to go back and see if anything was left of the columns. And if the zombies were all gone, we were to see if we could get the guy out. However we could and would, break off as soon as we saw a major group of zombies, those were his orders. The rest of the group was going to head back to the base, probably by using back roads, going down Sante Fe drive and heading south through Salida along the new highway. If the base could, they might send a helicopter for the troops, otherwise they would make do with the civilian vehicles.'
'When we got to the radio station we were to radio back to them what we found and bug out quick. After hearing our orders no one else wanted to ride in our hum-vee. Me and the guys didn't mind, you see 'plan B' was forming in our minds. I mean if all the zombies were here, they couldn't be where we lived. So we said, 'Sure Lieutenant, sir, we will do your reconnaissance for you, yes sir we understand why a flyby of the helicopter might not be as good as eyes on the ground, sir! You can count on us sir!' and we left. Funny thing is we did go back to the station, at least as close as we could get, there were millions of zombies there. I swear to God, millions! I saw them and got the hell out of there. Some of them were wearing fatigues and body armor now too.'
'We radioed to the LAVs what we found, they have higher powered, longer ranged communications gear, ours could not make it to the base. They relayed the message and we were told to cut and run, pronto. They emphasized that we needed to leave the area quickly. Blake, the dj, saw us and he told us to get out too, we had him on the fm we stole from the Barnes and Noble. No fm radios in humvees, go figure. I felt so bad for that guy, I mean we were his last hope really, if an entire armored column couldn't free him, what could?'
'We were headed home, via Aurora, along the way we lost contact with the LAVs, Sanchez unplugged our GPS transponder and I turned the radio off, we were on our own to check on our families.'
Listening, Juan spoke softly, 'What did you find?'
Looking up with a haggard expression, Ted said sharply, 'Did you see any fucking family members come in with us?' he cast his eyes down and wiped a dirty hand across his face, 'I'm sorry man, I just met you, I am sorry. It was the same for all of us and all bad. The kids were the worst, I would have suicided, Sanchez would have at his house, Thompson at his, somehow, we didn't form a circle at Thompson's house and do each other. I mean my place was first, I saw my kid at the end of the block, eating….eating… I was so angry, so mad, I ran it down, it was not my kid anymore. After my house we checked on Sanchez and his kid, wife dead, kid not around, blood everywhere. Both of us hoped, maybe you know, something would be left for Thompson, anything worth living for. There wasn't, at least he and I knew for sure, Sanchez will always wonder if his kid got away or turned or didn't. We at least have closure. In Thompson's driveway we shared a moment, looked at each other and we all had 'that' look, the despair, the pain, the 'nothing worth living' for look. Sanchez asked if Thompson was Catholic, Thompson said, no and then Sanchez asked him to kill him, he couldn't do it himself as he still believed it was a mortal sin. He said he wanted to die. Thompson raised his gun, up to stomach high, Sanchez closed his eyes. I will always remember the sweat breaking out and beading on Thompson's forehead, he was going to do it, I thought. He stood that way until I pushed his rifle away and said, 'Fuck it. Lets get in the truck and go'. They didn't argue, they just got in the truck and we went. I made my way back to the highway and we headed south, where I ran into your people.'
'Did you hook your radio up again?', asked Juan.
'No. Not yet, we can do it anytime. We don't want to go back. You mentioned a warehouse club? With other people? We might be able to take them to the base, get you almost there, if Thompson and Sanchez want to go with you, you could leave me with the humvee.'
'Alone? We'll see, we should contact the military and see what they say, see if your friends got back okay, find out if they have any information.' said Juan.
Jack chimed in, 'Ain't nothing we can say to you Ted. We have mostly been pretty lucky so far, we know the world has gone to hell, but our part of it is still alive and we need to protect it. You could stay with us until you decide what to do. Or just stay with us.'
'Yeah, it is getting dark now, I won't drive again tonight, even with the night vision gear. We'll stay here tonight and figure out what to do in the morning.' said Ted.
'Okay, your machine gun still have bullets?', asked Jack.
'Yeah, over ten thousand rounds give or take. That is quite a lot, enough for any slow zombies that might come crawling around. I think we would do better not to be making a bunch of noise, it seems to attract them.'
'Oh yeah. No I was thinking towards the more distant future, not for right now. That gun could be useful.'
'Maybe. Look Jack, you are not a military man right?'
'Me? No way brother, liberal military hater all the way.'
Raising his right eyebrow questioning Ted said, 'Well machine guns, especially the new ones actually require a lot of maintenance, we can clean ours out and keep it firing, but the barrel is usually changed out every three thousand rounds or so. We have already fired four or five times that through it. It will still fire, it is just the accuracy is going to go down on it.'
'What? Every three thousand shots? Is that possible? I mean that is like what, three minute of fire?', asked Jack.
'No, more like eight minutes or so, they fire about six hundred rounds per minute, but they use a hundred round cans of ammunition, reloading takes time, so push that to ten minutes overall use, most fire fights are over before that and you have to realize the gun is not going to be fired full out the entire time either. Nothing like what we just went through was envisioned when they designed the gun. Most enemies take cover, they don't stand
