Z Walkers: The Complete Collection by Luke Shephard

Author:Luke Shephard [Shephard, Luke]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

*****

Hank – Episode 3

"Do you think I want to work late?"

Hank heard his wife of almost fifteen years sigh dramatically through the phone, and he added, "Do you think I want to be here until midnight? Do you think I like the smell of teenage B.O. long after the little cretins have left?"

"Well, I just don't understand why you have to stay." She sounded just about as exasperated as he felt. Did she really think he'd rather be here, the high school that had been sucking out his soul since, well, he attended it all those years ago, than at home with her? It was late—too damn late to be here. If he were at home, he'd have his feet up on the footrest, a bottle of beer in one hand and a bowl of chips on his lap. Susan would be dozing on the other couch, as she usually did in front of the TV as they watched the late night news, and he'd smile at her like he always did before gently prompting her to go to bed.

Yeah, scrubbing floors and toilets and gym lockers sounded so much better than a night in with the love of his life.

"Susie—"

"I mean, this is the third week in a row where something like this happens," she continued. In the background, Rudy, their cocker spaniel mix, started wailing at something, and he smirked when his wife told him to can it. She cleared her throat before continuing, "Can't they make Bill or Louise stay late just once?"

"Bill was supposed to," he argued as he sat on one of the cushy couches in the teacher's lounge. "I was supposed to be done two hours ago and he was supposed to work the graveyard, but his kid got in a fight with another kid at the mall, and he needed to go down to the police station to sort it out."

There was a brief pause from his wife, a sign that she was unimpressed with the reasoning behind his late-night work hours. "Ah."

"I told him to go," Hank insisted. "Wouldn't you want to be there if we had a kid in jail?"

Five years ago, the mere mention of a kid or baby would have sent her into a crying, dry-heaving mess, but she'd come a long way since then. They had Rudy instead of a baby—they had incompatible downstairs parts, apparently.

"I'd probably let my kid spend the night in a holding cell," she said without missing a beat. "Maybe he'd learn something. Bill's kids are menaces."

"Yeah, well, it's done now." Even if those kids were neighborhood jerks, Bill was a good guy trying to be a good dad, and Hank wasn't going to hold it against him. He had tomorrow off anyway—he'd try to make-up the late night with Susie then. Maybe he'd cook her a fancy dinner and surprise her when she got home from her shift at the hotel, her feet sore from standing behind a reception desk all day, her head killing her from assholes arguing about reservations.

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