by P. S. Power
“What's wrong?” He asked, his voice almost sincere sounding. “Other than the being trapped in a zombie infested world with a bunch of people you never would have picked to be your friends I mean?”
She looked at him, shocked. He felt that way a bit himself, since, really, he'd intended to snap at her and tell her off for staring. Insult her a bit and make her feel bad for being a bitch. For some reason she actually told him what the deal was. Probably just taken off-guard.
“It's September seventh... My birthday. I'm thirty-one today. Unmarried, childless, and living in a zombie infested world. That part kind of sucks every day, but the getting older part just hit me, the whole “what am I doing with my life” thing. I'm a lawyer for God's sake. I mean I was. I studied all that time, sacrificed a chunk of my life and now all I have to show for it is a diploma I keep under my mattress. I was doing fine, I had my own practice at thirty and it rocked. A nice car, a decent house that had running water and everything, and a cat. Sure, the lonely cat lady, but the only thing good to come out of all of this is the weight loss. Only everyone else did that too, and no one cares. If I weighed forty pounds more still, I'd be exotic, but no, now I'm just saggy and thin like everyone is.”
Jake looked at her, probably for too long, because she looked down, clearly embarrassed.
“I didn't get you a present, and singing is out of the question until we can set up under ground. Want a hug?” It was a joke, he meant it as one at least, smiling and holding his arms out, but she nodded and accepted it happily enough to make him feel good about offering. Tipper came in and stared for a second.
“Um,” she said, as if she couldn't decide whether to say something or not. Her look was odd, as if she wanted to order him away from the woman or something, not shocked that someone in the place would bother hugging him. Basically she just looked pissy really.
“It's her birthday. She's thirty-one.” Jake said it warmly, trying to convey that the other cleaner had better act pleased or there would be... problems. Maybe not “shoot someone in the head” level, but he could sulk at her or something.
The woman smiled when Tipper murmured happy birthday and hugged her too. It was the living room, so a lot of people decided to do the same thing then. The woman, Susanne, still didn't get any presents, but she didn't seem to care as much after all that.
Jake had his own bed back, not having to share it with anyone just using him to... What had she been doing anyway? Heather could have found another place to sleep if she wanted, or a better looking guy to sleep next to or whatever. She'd done it instantly when she decided to, right? Not even hesitating for a second to consider him. So why bug him all that time? Probably just to screw with his head as a game. She liked him? She'd said it several times while holding him in the dark, hadn't she? See how much a woman's word is worth? Jake asked himself, but he knew it wasn't purely true. Almost everyone did the wrong thing sometime. Said something they didn't mean, or lashed out when they shouldn't.
The girl wasn't that well connected to reality even. She still went around telling everyone how the cannibals were coming in the winter all the time even. It wasn't that he didn't believe her, it made sense, but what else could they do about it? Even a wall would only help so much. What they needed was more ammo, and guns that didn't make as much noise. Ones that magically had at least the knock down power of a forty-five. That would be good. He'd have to ask Burt if he had some tucked away in his shed.
This whole thing would be so much easier without zombies.
Or women.
People.
Yeah, he'd be better off alone. Maybe after the winter he'd do that? Just move in somewhere else, have his own farm and a little place to live. No one to bother him but some occasional looters and undead looking for a snack. If he could learn enough and use the tools here, he might be able to do that. It was a thought and a better dream than the nothing he had right now. For a while he'd hoped that he and Heather might be something, but that had been foolish. Smiling into the dark, a forced grin for no one, he curled up and fell asleep. Eventually. He didn't dream, not that he could recall in the morning. That always cheered him up. Dreams were seldom good things anymore.
Before breakfast he climbed up on the frame of the greenhouse and used short fat nails to cover the thing with the huge sheets of plastic, the space was forty by thirty, but they had to cover the west end of it, the east side snug against the house. That meant it had to be smaller than the amount of plastic they had by a good bit. It took several people to hold each sheet in place correctly, Justine up on the log beams with him, Burt and some guy he didn't care about on the ground.
The other man was whiny.
Quietly so, but he complained about having to get up so early and then about not having coffee. No one had any for months and he was going on about it as if a civil liberty had just been stolen from him. The fellow had brown hair, round cheeks that still were lean somehow and newer clothing than anything Jake owned at all.
He wasn't even a new guy. Clint. He'd been around since the first month. Jake still didn't care about him, which either said something about him, or Clint, as a person. Given everything it might just be both.
Normally the man avoided Jake like the plague. With good reason too, since that incident early on when one of the women claimed that Clint had felt her up while she slept. Jake hadn't said anything at the time, letting others handle it, and Clint had denied it, but the guy apparently thought that doing anything would get him killed. Really, he didn't care if the man wanted to feel some woman up in his own bed. If she was sleeping with him, what did she expect? The offer was implicit, wasn't it? They'd had a lot of bed space then and only twelve people. She could have slept alone if she wanted. Or with another woman, or they could have talked about Clint not touching her first. In most places that would have been called normal, the guy making a move, and the girl wouldn't be there if she wasn't interested. True, rules had changed a lot, but back then? Big whoop. If the woman had minded that much she could have just killed Clint anyway. Jake would have lent her a gun.
Later that same woman had gone around claiming that most of the men were doing similar things, including their leader, which finally got her invited to leave. Nate didn't do it, Vickie had. Back Before she'd been raped, a pretty gruesome gang thing it seemed. She'd mentioned it, but only in passing and Jake hadn't pried. It still clearly bothered her. That's why she'd gotten good with weapons and didn't mind killing so much. It was what she told them at least. It ticked her off that some woman would be going around crying wolf like that, because it made every real claim seem like a lie.
Clint was still afraid of him.
But not enough to shut up now. That's what he got for not killing people without a good reason. If he'd just offed a couple of people just because...
“I keep telling people we should have a more democratic system. Right now it's not fair, a few people decide everything and the rest of us just have to do what we're told. A lot of people agree too, it isn't just me.”
The guy had a point. Not about democracy, that was stupid and never really worked, but about a few people making all the decisions. What he didn't seem to get was that, like Jake, most of those people just did stuff. They came up with an idea, found people to work with them and got it done. Like the greenhouse. They didn't need a vote on that, everyone wanted one. All voting would have done was caused them to sit around debating it for weeks on end because a few people didn't want to do any hard work.
“And the food, couldn't we have planted any sugar cane? I'd kill for some sugar, but nooo, that wouldn't fit with Mr. High and Mighty Nathanial Burns' idea of clean living.” The guy sounded very sure of himself, but Burt gave him a look.
If Jake had gotten that look from the man he would have been certain he'd said something incredibly stupid. Clint tried to keep talking only to find Burt smiling at him and nodding absently as Jake pounded in the last few nails.
“Sugarcane grows best in warmer
climates, you could move if you really want some. Around here the best we can do are sugar beets and we only have a few, that area over there? About three acres? We need to let them go to seed, some of them, for next year's crops. We can refine it part way to sugar, a sweet syrup. More like molasses in flavor, but it's the best we have. If you want we'll gladly put you in charge of refining it. It can be taken all the way down to sugar I hear, but that's a multistage process, not just cooking it down.” He held his part of the plastic while the hammering continued.
“As for voting, all the votes in the world won't make it go back to how it was. We listen to ideas though and if you notice, most of them get done, if anyone cares to do it.” Burt almost sounded sad. Annoyed, but still a little down.
Clint still complained. Maybe he always would?
Jake wondered about that for half a second. It seemed a horrible fate, being doomed to whine forever. Hopefully the guy would fix it and learn to be happy.
“What would you vote for? What do you want? More women? Coffee? Cheese Danishes in the morning or an eradication of all zombies everywhere? Vacation time and overtime for the work we do past eight hours a day?”
The man bristled a bit, but Jake actually felt curious. Justine snorted.
“He better not want more women. Coffee would be nice though and I'd mug a nun for a cheese Danish about now.”
“His words not mine hon. You're more than enough for me.” At least in this Clint sounded sincere and not too complaining.
That they were a couple came as news to Jake. He didn't care, he told himself. That whiny little Clint got a girl and he got... what did he get out of this again? Food? A place to live? He could get his own place to live and if he hadn't been here helping, food could have been done too. So... Not much. He'd learned things. How to build some stuff and to think things through. How to plan and that. But that learning didn't really rate too high right now.
Clint stopped complaining for a bit, once the roof was secured in place. Then he and Burt fixed the walls in place while the others got on the ground and started on the other side. It didn't take as much holding now. Half an hour later it was done. Except for the air vent panels, but those were simple enough. Jake cut the plastic out and then lightly hammered the nails into the movable frame. It didn't have hinges, just some rounded wooded nibs sticking into holes in the side of the wood, letting it open from the bottom if you pushed on it. The whole thing wasn't that high, except in the middle of the roof, which was about six feet above the wall edge. Making the whole thing about ten feet tall. That or twelve. Jake wasn't sure and didn't care enough to ask at the moment.
Burt thought that the extra slope would pay off once the snows came. Thin plastic wouldn't hold a lot of weight, but with that, being careful and keeping the place warm, it should be alright.
After breakfast they had corn to pick, which would take more work than it seemed like at first. They had a lot of it, and it was all going to be ready inside a week. At the same time their strawberries, late season ones, everything had been started later than it should it seemed, because the initial work had been slow, had to be picked too, meaning two teams, and the berries had to be processed within a day, so the canning crew took the berries directly from the field and cleaned them, removed the stems and started reducing them in a big pot. It wasn't jam or jelly, more like thick strawberry syrup. The corn was just being stored in an outdoor covered area in big wooden pens for now.
Back Before, Jake had seen some shows on television, mainly when he was younger, about the pioneers and Amish people, how at harvest time they all worked frantically from sun up to sun down trying to get all the crops in. He'd seen it, saw the actors sweating in the fake Hollywood sun and hadn't gotten it. Not at all. By noon he felt a little bored and tired, gritty and sore, but kept going. They didn't stop for lunch, just grabbed food, a bowl of stew each, a table set up at the corn dump box with the large black pot and went back to work after getting some water. He had a sack that he filled every ten minutes or so and then jogged over to the bin. Dump, pick, repeat. They didn't stop at all, and didn't trade jobs. Corn took greater strength and endurance, strawberries were easier for shorter people.
Jose apparently thought Jake was strong, hence he got to pick corn. Nate did too, so at least there was that. Shared misery. Forty acres to pick and the bins filled with one. Jose had a plan for that, husking, stripping the kernels and laying the grain out to dry in the sun on old bed sheets. Very labor intensive. They didn't stop for dinner, just got more stew. Since Mary died, there was no real bread at all, not even that awful oat stuff. Some attempts had been made, but it kind of sucked. If they dried corn, they could make bread from that though, right?
They all worked until dark, all the pregnant women in the kitchen. Probably spitting in his food to spite him. Or maybe just Heather would be doing that. Why she hated him so much he didn't get, but why else would she treat him like crap? Well, at least he felt too tired to care about that right now, a bit down about it, but then everyone kind of dragged as they walked in. He'd run through his day and had to get up early to do it again.
He forced himself to his feet at sun up.
Jose met him in the field, coming out at nearly the same time and they both started picking fast, the man pushing him to go faster with his own work. Jake smiled, a contest then? He tried to match the man one for one, which they did for hours, managing a lot more than he'd thought they could with just the two of them before most of the others showed up.
First light meant different things to some people Jake guessed. To him, if he could see a zombie at ten feet, it was light out. To some of the others that meant closer to nine in the morning or so. It had to do with fear, he knew, which is why he tried to be the first out. If anything attacked he could handle it and no one would be the wiser. Except for the bangs. That might give it away. No problems so far, except sore muscles and the need for more firewood to be turned to kindling, which seemed to be Ken's job that day. Jake could see him at it, working intently as the two zombies ran toward him. Fast. That weird loping hop thing taking them high into the air.
Fudge.
Jake pulled his side arm and dropped the bag of corn at the same time.
“Aaahhh!” He yelled, trying to scream but failing pretty badly, the zombies barely paused. Fuck. He couldn't generate any sound that way, if he were closer it wouldn't matter, he ran at them and tried again.
“Aaaugh!”
Still nothing, behind him, suddenly, a cacophony of yelling and screaming started as Ken stood, not running at all, readying the axe for battle.
Brave.
Suicidal... but so was running in this case. Really it was about the best option. Behind Jake in the field, everyone that could screamed or called out. They spread out too. All holding weapons. Brilliant. It was exactly the right thing.
The two forms turned and ran at them, bobbing up and down like something sea tossed, hard to aim at from those distances, harder to hit. Jake rushed in. He blanched a little when he saw them, wearing their black outfits, heads pristine and unblemished. They still had their boots though, so these were new ones, police that had been turned. Not ones that he'd already killed. That was good. If the dead gained the ability to regrow heads, they were screwed. At about ten feet they had to stop jumping if they wanted a delicious Jake treat, so he shot the lead, a fairly dapper looking man for a zombie really, neatly trimmed mustache with fairly clean clothes. No rips or anything yet. The center of his face gone now, of course, removing the big, somewhat roman nose he'd had. Jake couldn't make fun of that, the guy could have been his brother in looks.
The other guy looked like a swat team member and acted like it, rushing into the void his friend left. Hitting his buddy as he fell, causing both of them to roll on the ground for a moment. The one able to found his feet fast, instead of eating his “friend” but not faster than he could be shot. Not once but a lot of times. Eight at least. The thing didn't move after that, not past the small twitc
hes and little movements they all made when their brain was destroyed. People ran out of the house and Ken shrugged, then went back to making big pieces of wood smaller.
It was a point. A real one, they didn't have time for distractions now.
“OK, back to work, I'll handle these two and then come back. Don't worry I won't slack off too much.” He called this out to a chorus of teasing, which made him point his gun at them. They were being loud again and not in a good cause this time. They kept laughing, a slightly hysterical thing, but got quieter, which was good enough. He took the time to shoot both of the freaks in the head again and then get the machete they used for head removal, and a face mask. It took a while, but when he got back after burying the things everyone was working again. Jake had to wash up first before he could return to the field.
He had to. It may have been a mental thing, some psychological quirk or lack of fortitude, but touching food with dirty zombie hands seemed too gross to him by far. Standards had to be upheld after all.