Mary sat back into her seat. Juan cleared his throat, "You know, no one has a good story about how they got to where they are right now. I am sorry about what happened to your friend and family. I am glad you lived through it, someone good with a rifle will always be handy."
Mary just nodded and went back to scanning outside the truck. Terry kept her speed down, barely hitting twenty miles an hour when the road was free and clear.
"What about you Terry? How did you get to the club?", asked Juan.
Terry smiled and said, "Nothing you haven't heard before Juan, but not from me. I made it.", her face turned sad, like that of a little kid who just dropped his ice cream cone into a running stream, "Pretty much all you need to know is I lost my kid, my husband he ran off years ago. I lost my mom, my dad, my kid. And my dog. But I am alive and there has to be a reason for that. I was at work, rushed to the day care to get my son, wall to wall zeds. My parents were dead, true dead, not zombies, someone else had killed them after they turned. I drove to the club, that new Subaru wagon in the line? That was mine. Don't much matter now."
Juan was about to ask for more, when the cb chimed in, "Breaker one-two, anybody there? Come on back truckers and talk to teddy bear."
Terry broke out laughing, Juan didn't get it, she saw his face and said, "It is from an old song." Before she grabbed the mic and said, "Well you got it Teddy Bear! What's up?" She was giggling like a school girl, trying not to laugh into the mic when she spoke, but doing a poor job.
"Well, what is your handle momma? You sound hot to me, 'Hot Momma'?"
"Anything you like Teddy Bear!"
"Well Hot Momma, me and the little bears are wondering why we are going so slow, put the pedal down! We wanna get there before Mary turns eighteen!"
"Oh now Teddy Bear you know we gotta get there and back, I ain't gonna blow a tire running over a bunch of stuff, just 'cause you want me to go cruising along at an ungodly thirty miles an hour!"
"Alright, alright 'HM', I hear ya. Just spoke to Mother Goose, back at the home base, as planned. It seems 'Father Time' has woken up in a bad mood, you might be getting a call as his best friend is riding with you. Thought you could use the warning."
"Thanks for the heads up 'TB', we'll deal with Father Time if he calls. Hot Momma off.", Terry turned to Juan, still giggling, "What?"
Juan waved his hands at the CB, "What was that all about?"
"You mean 'Hot Momma' or the Teddy Bear? Or the Father Time?"
"No, I think I get 'Father Time', Hank right? Why Teddy Bear or Hot Momma?"
Terry laughed some more, then turned on Juan accusingly, "What, you don't think I am a hot momma? Is that it?", seeing Juan cringe back, she laughed again and said jovially, "Cut it out Juan, I'm ugly, not blind. Teddy Bear is from a song in the mid seventies, got popular for awhile, kind of a sad song, not funny at all, just funny that Jack knew about it. He had to be a kid when he heard it, just like me. I don't have a 'handle' on the cb, Jack was just being nice. I don't like pity, but I don't mind nice. Who would you be Juan?"
They spent the next ten minutes running through a list of cb names for both Juan and Mary, Mary ended up taking "Shooter" and Juan simply couldn't pick, he thought maybe "Segundo", but Mary and Terry both thought that was too lame, so the debate continued. Somewhere during this time they made it to highway twenty five, there were zombies congregating under the highway overpass, which they had to drive through in order to get to the highway. "Want to shoot them Mary?" asked Juan.
"Sure thing, only about a dozen of them, it'll make it safer for anyone else who comes by later too."
Juan popped open his door, to get the rear passenger door open and Mary leaned out of the back and gestured for Juan to roll down his window so she could use it as a gun rest. She took aim and hit a zombie in the neck from about thirty yards away. The zombie went down, but was not dead. Mary swore softly and took aim on the next one rapidly. She hit another four zombies before she had to feed more bullets into the gun, then made five more shots, including two shots to finish off the two zombies who she only managed to wound the first time. It probably took about fifty seconds, including the reload time. Mary hopped back into her seat while Juan whistled his appreciation. Terry nodded and said, "Good shooting." as she eased the truck forward.
"Nah, not real good, this thing is only okay, but is has a five round capacity, which makes it better than my tournament gun, which was a bolt action single shot. I missed a couple easy shots, especially that first one." Mary shrugged, "I will do better next time."
Terry pulled the truck up onto the on ramp and they merged onto the highway, there were no other moving vehicles on the road. As it had been further north where Juan and Hank had driven down it earlier in the day, the highway was clear as far as they could see. There were few zombie wandering around, but mostly there were just corpses. Those zombies that were around tended to be near the off and on ramps to the highway, like they had just wandered into the area. Terry drove them a few miles to the East Lincoln Avenue exit and took it west. Terry nodded to her left, "That's it there, see it?" Terry pulled the truck onto a street that led up to the hospital and then stopped, letting the truck idle.