retrospect was probably exactly what his ex wanted, was to pound her into the ground for murdering his parents. He somehow thought past that and merely nodded and said he would have a check for her when the estate was settled, but that he had nothing now, as his parents bank accounts had been depleted by his divorce and paying for their funerals. Hank told her it would take a few months to settle everything. She told him he had a week to make the first of many payments. He asked how much she wanted. She said he could keep anything over seventy thousand dollars. He merely nodded to her.
If he had beat up his wife at his parent's funeral for what he knew she had done, she probably would have sued him for every penny he owned. Instead he buried his parents, and spoke to several guests who recognized his ex-wife. He told them that she had told him she had killed his parents and if he didn't pay her seventy thousand dollars she was going to kill him too. A little white lie. He cried too. The rest was as easy as it was painful. First his ex had violated the restraining order, a fact seen by any number of attendees at the funeral, second the district attorney already had a history of his ex harassing him and knew the story of what she had put him through. The district attorney's investigation into the possible murder of Hank's parents was far more thorough than it might normally have been. Witnesses were found, alibis turned up to be false, his wife was in a lot of trouble.
The day his ex wife was charged with the homicide of his parents and the police went to her home to arrest her they found her incapacitated in her apartment. She had slit her wrists, after drowning her two children. She had also left a long, rambling note accusing Hank of abuse, and made up stories of harassment. Worse yet the bitch did not have the courtesy to die. They rushed her, barely alive, to the hospital and she recovered. The kids did not recover. His ex-wife was remanded to custody for her trial and had the great big, brass balls to send Hank a letter saying she still loved him and asking him to hire her an attorney to defend her. Hank had never answered her and her subsequent letters were less kind, in fact they were used by the district attorney at her sentencing hearing, the last Hank had heard anyway. By then he had left South Carolina to start a new life.
By this time Hank and Juan had given up all pretense at working on the Camaro and Nanci had started bring them beers, beer after beer after beer. Hank had ended his story well and truly drunk, he recalled. Coming back to the here and now, he looked out over the mostly deserted and still eerily light streets and says, 'Ain't that about right Juan?'
'Si. Yeah Hank.'
'Of course after that, everyone knew about it. It was great that not everyone was talking about my sexual orientation anymore, but it took a few months before the pity came out of their eyes and that was pretty hard to take. Juan though, he was always there for me, so was Nanci. Nanci….', Hank stared off into the night some more.
Kevin heard the story and knew there was more to come, he doubted Hank or Juan would be up here on this roof, leaving Juan's wife behind.
Hank started a bit, as if he had half fallen asleep and then said, 'Hey Kevin, you can take some of the extra water and wash up a bit around back of this furnace, I got all these cloths for you, I hope something fits anyway. We should probably be hitting the hay, you want first watch Juan?'
'Si.'
'Okay, wake me when you start dozing off. Kevin you get a night's sleep, you need it more than Juan and I do right now.'
Kevin nodded his thanks and moved over to the clothing Hank had picked up.
Hank drifted off to sleep thinking of the way things had been, might have been and how they were now, the last thing he heard that night was Kevin quietly cleaning up behind the furnace.
Chapter 3
Juan watched the dark areas between the street lights very closely. Kevin had long since gone to sleep and was snoring pretty loudly, the noise was making Juan nervous. Tomorrow he was going to try and find some of those sprays or metal nose clips to help keep Kevin from snoring, it could be the difference between life and death these days. Juan made every effort to stay very, very still as he watched the darkness, the slo-zoms had mostly wandered off, the few left in the street were wandering around aimlessly. Those were not the creatures Juan, or Hank, worried about. They both had seen faster, deadlier zombies over the last few days, zombies that made the one that had attacked Hank earlier today seem slow. Some of them were definitely super human in speed and strength. So far there was nothing. Juan lifted a set of light intensifier binoculars from his vest pocket and checked all the pockets of darkness again. One thing about the Mike's Club store was that it stocked a ton of camping gear this time of year and they had about two hundred pairs of these pocket sized 'see in the dark at four times your normal eye power' gizmos. They had both grabbed a pair before heading out. Unfortunately July was just a little too early for the Mike's Club to have started stocking firearms for the fall hunting season. While there were no guns out front they had found a pallet of shotguns in the back, which was better than nothing.
As for the rifles they carried, well they had gotten them from the gun store. Hank had originally suggested they head for the Mike's because he thought they would have guns and ammo in stock by now. The group that had gotten into the Mike's had not found any firearms on display only the one pallet in the very small backroom inventory of the club, hence they had to make the trip out to one of the very few 'local' gun stores to better equip their group. They left most their neighbors back at the club with what few weapons they had, mostly old thirty eight revolvers, hunting rifles and a couple of shotguns, except for the shotguns, none of the firearms had more than fifty rounds of ammunition.
Even though the place didn't have the guns they were hoping for, it did have literally tons of food, enough to feed everyone there for weeks or maybe even months with careful rationing. Hank had been worried about more and more people showing up, however the refugee rate had been pretty small, most people were holed up in their houses or at work. Better yet the store had six generators that ran on unleaded fuel and there was a gas station associated with the club in the parking lot.
Juan had enough family that had worked in blue collar positions to know what to do to get the pumps working, so long as they could get a power supply, which they could so long as they had a little gas. It was a self feeding circle. Hopefully, when everything died down a little, his family and neighbors (which were the same in many cases) would be able to restart their community. Juan was thinking of the future constantly, he thought that with the grace of God his family and friends might come through this horror okay. Hank had been putting on a bit of a show for Kevin, making like Juan was not able to speak for some trauma or something, like Kevin had gone through. The truth of the matter was Juan just did not feel a need to speak out that much. Hank and Juan had known each other long enough to almost be able to read each others minds.
After Juan had finally succumbed to his family's subtle pressure to ask Hank point blank about his sexuality, they had grown far closer, for the last five years, not only every day working together, but most nights socializing. Hell Juan could not even remember a time in the past five years when they hadn't gone on vacation together. Hank just asked if it was okay if he went with Juan and his family and tagged along with them wherever they went. California one year, the Black hills another, Gaudelupe to visit Juan's great grandmother, that had been a vacation worth remembering! Why Hank had actually, almost, gotten romantically involved with one of Juan's distant cousins! It had been Nanci's dream to marry Hank into the family five years ago, now the entire neighborhood was working on it.
Hank didn't even know it yet, but he was doomed. His family and customs allowed a man only so long to mourn before they slowly and steadily started working on the individual to succumb to the social norm. In this case, marriage. After all Juan and Hank were already like brothers, why not make it official? Juan would be honored to count Hank among his family and Juan's father, Juan senior, had already told Juan that when that happened he would probably let Juan and Hank take over the business, which he owned.
Now, well now, who knew what tomorrow would bring? Juan half expected to see golden ladders reaching down out of the clouds that people could climb into heaven like the bible said. Or perhaps if zombies were running around, maybe they would see people flying around on broomsticks, like those movies his children loved so much.
