Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

the front of the building again and I stopped, getting off my bike.
    “What are you doing?” asked Peter, panic in his voice.
    “I’m just going to look in the window.   I’ll be right back.”   I walked over to Peter, sliding the backpack off my arms.   “Take Buster and keep him quiet.   If I see anything disturbing, I’ll let you know.   Be ready to ride like hell out of here.”
    I crept up to the porch of the restaurant, headed not for the front doors, but for a small window that I knew looked into the gift shop area.   All these places were the same, with a gift shop in front that you had to walk through to get to the dining room.  
    As soon as I got to the window and looked in, I knew why we weren’t seeing Bodo anywhere.   He was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, tied to it with zip ties, and a small girl was pointing a rifle at his head from just a few feet away.
    My heart fell down to my feet.   I could see he was talking fast, probably trying to convince the girl not to shoot him in the face.   She kept glancing behind her as if there were another person in the room, but I couldn’t see him.   There were still some racks of shirts there, and whoever he was, he was behind one of them.   He must be pretty short, though, because the racks were only about four feet high.
    I left the porch and ran around the back, gesturing to Peter to stay put.   I found the back door I had seen on my earlier trip around and tested it.   It was locked, but I decided not to let that stop me.   I searched the nearby ground and found a piece of old rusted rebar.   I jammed it into the space between the door and frame and pulled on it as hard as I could.   I felt the frame bending a little, and encouraged by my little success, put more of my back into it.   I could feel my shoulder muscles nearly popping with the effort, but I was rewarded by the metal giving a little bit more.   I stopped to check my progress and saw that I’d moved the frame enough to the side that the lock was no longer holding the door closed.   I pulled the rebar out and held it in my hand.   It wasn’t brass knuckles or a knife, but I felt a little less guilty using it as a potential weapon than the gun.   I had to conserve my bullets anyway.
    I eased the door open, praying they hadn’t heard me breaking the lock.   The only sounds that had reached my ears were those of my grunting, so hopefully that meant they’d heard nothing inside.
    I found myself in a kitchen.   I tiptoed around the stainless steel prep tables and over to a door that had a round window on it.   I could see into the dining room from there but not the gift shop.
    I slowly pushed the door out, watching through the window as I did, making sure no one was coming.   I slipped through the crack, entering the dining room as silently as I could, my sneakers making slight squeaking sounds on the dirty tile floor.   I took two steps out into a narrow hallway that had coffee machines and racks of glasses set up on a long counter.   This must be where the waitresses poured the orange juice.   I went to the end of the hallway and found myself at the spot where the gift shop met the dining room.   I had a perfect view into the room where Bodo was being held captive, and now I knew why I couldn’t see the person who’d been standing behind the girl before.  
    It was a guy in a wheelchair, his head below the level of the rack of t-shirts.
    I found myself facing a moral dilemma.   All my life I’d been told to take special care with handicapped people.   I never used the handicapped bathroom, even when it was the only one available and I had to pee really bad, just in case someone in a wheelchair might come in and need it.   I offered to push people in chairs up ramps.   I took things down off high shelves in the grocery store for ladies in walkers.  
    But now a guy in a wheelchair and his girlfriend or sister or whatever, were holding my friend hostage.   Did I sneak up behind him and put a gun to his head, taking advantage of his obviously inferior position of strength?   How could I live with myself if I did something like that?
    I heard his casual-sounding voice from across the fifteen-foot space.  
    “Just shoot him in the face and be done with it.”
    Moral dilemma solved.   I snuck out and flicked the safety off my weapon, coming up slowly behind the guy, my gun raised level with his chair.
    As soon as I reached him, I put the