by P. S. Power
When he got back to his house the interior had changed a little in the kitchen and main bedrooms. He walked in to find Burt sitting at the kitchen table sipping at something, a cup that smelled like broth with more garlic in it. Given what he had around, that made sense. On the flat part of the stove, in an old cast iron pan, meat was being fried, with thinly sliced apples. Sammi stood working at it with an intense look on her face. On the walls there were hangings. Just blankets nailed to the walls at the ceiling. Burt looked at him and grinned.
“Insulation. We don't have the material to do it at the house, not yet, but if you create an inch or so of dead air along a wall it will keep the room a lot warmer. Our young friend here did it. Very capable young lady, don't you think?” He looked proud of her and winked at Jake conspiratorially. “Lois says she's indispensable in the kitchen you know. She could run the whole thing if she wanted.”
The food was dumped out onto a large plate then transferred to smaller ones, large sprigs of some green on each. Something brown and crunchy looking was on the plates too, like slivered almonds, but that couldn't be. Picking one up with his fingers gently, the fat from the meat coating it, making it moist and too hot to hold really, Jake tasted it. He'd never had one before, but he got what it had to be anyway.
“Pine nuts?”
The little girl who wasn't young at all turned and nodded at him.
“Tis the season for them. You should collect up the cones now, before all the nuts fall out. They don't burn very hot, but you can use the cones for heat in a pinch too, so you get double benefit for your labor. They taste like pine trees, but they have calories and you can pretend they're gourmet. These things used to cost about twenty dollars a pound in the city. I got that much today in about two hours.”
Amazing. Not as cool as if a real little girl had thought of it, because experience made a big difference, but still a good idea. Sammi seemed different now, suddenly acting more confident and competent. That kind of seemed right, here she could be in charge after all, or at least do whatever she wanted, without pretending to be a real little girl. Jake knew her story, real or not and Burt didn't really work closely with her at all normally. He might just think this was normal.
The man at the table asked about Jake's plans, the tone not all that casual about it either. He didn't say anything for a while, but he did have some didn't he? Jake nodded, taking several bites before speaking.
“Tomorrow I'm going to get into town for more brick and maybe see if I can find some hand tools. A forge. I'm planning to retrofit part of the barn for that, because I really don't have the ability to pull large timber alone yet. I can cut them down, but not load them onto the cart. I also need to work out an improved water pump. I drove a well, like we did by the cow pasture, and it actually works. But the hand pump I made leaves a bit to be desired. It takes about ten minutes to get a bucket of water, I think the well is better than that and it's really just a failure of how I made the pump, the seals not being tight enough and some air getting in maybe?”
The man shook his head and looked down at the table for a minute, so did Sammi. If she was acting he couldn't tell, it seemed like they both wanted to ask something, but couldn't. Jake took a bite of slightly sour apple, sweeter for having been fried like this, he thought. It was a near thing that he wouldn't have noticed Back Before, used to refined sugar and being able to reject food if he didn't find it perfect. He hadn't even been a picky eater really, not compared to a lot of people. Things had just taught him not to be too prissy anymore. Back then if a fruit fly had gotten in his food, he'd have thrown the plate of it away and gotten more.
Now he ate the fly, glad for the tiny bit of extra.
The old man shook his head and looked up finally.
“It's not fair to you Jake, after those fools voted you away like they did, but we need you back. Especially for the winter. Things started falling apart in days after you left. People stopped working, thinking that they had everything they needed for the winter, but they don't, not by half and they wouldn't listen to the rest of us. We're going to be locked up for months if it snows hard and we have babies on the way... Without someone keeping order it's going to be a disaster.”
He looked around at the room and shrugged, it looked more ragged and humble now, the wall hangings weren't exactly fine tapestries or anything, were they? It was his though and he kind of had things set up, didn't he? It would be hard, being alone all the time for months on end, he could feel that already. But here no one gave him strained and fearful looks. And if there were no women to possibly have sex with, there was also no rejection. No love for Jake at either place, but this one didn't hold out any promise of it and then steal it away. This was better, he decided.
Jake got what was being said, he was already the bogey-man there. If he went back, especially after having helped kill all those people the other day, it would help keep things going, give people something to fear. That didn't take a genius to figure out. Why no one else had stepped up he didn't get. He asked and Sammi answered, not caring that Burt might think deep insight strange from what appeared to be a little girl.
“No one really could except the cleaners. Dave is fantastic at what he does, but if Nate hadn't managed him as closely as he had, he would have killed a lot of innocent people too. Some people are just that annoying. Carl... He's a good fellow, but he's too good natured when it comes down to it. Too nice. I think he must have been very sweet before, don't you? He acts hard, but he cries when people die. He hides it, but it takes away a bit of the air of authority you have.” She ticked the people off on her fingers as she listed them off.
“Burt believes in non-violence, Lois is good at her job, but can barely bring herself to walk out to the fields, even with guards. Julio is needed where he is, no matter what else is going on and Nate would be suicidal in a week if he had to kill anyone not actively trying to kill him. Even then it would be close. No one respects Tipper or Vickie enough, mainly because they're women, which is foolish, and all the sleeping around Tipper does means that too many people wouldn't believe she'd kill them and I can keep listing, but you get the idea. We could, if we had time, force a group into play, the cleaning team leaders, Dave and Barry. They could do it, together, but not as well as you can alone. Groups move too slowly for what we need.”
Jake stopped her and held up his right hand after putting his fork down. The light was fading and he didn't have a lot of candles so they'd opened the front of the wood stove for light. It worked, he just had to watch for sparks since it didn't have a grate on it.
“Julio? Please god don't tell me we've all been calling him Jose all this time because we're a bunch of racist pricks, that's... We may have just as well called him “chico”. I also don't know who Barry is off the top of my head. I didn't make a point of getting to know anyone overly...”
Sammi smiled into the dark and reached over to pat him on the arm.
“Julio, not Jose. Yes, everyone has been tending to be a bit stereotypical there. Do you know he has a PhD in agricultural sciences? He was in the States attending a conference when everything happened. What, did you think he was an illegal farm worker that just happened to be around?”
Since that was exactly what he'd thought Jake put a hand on his forehead and nodded. He felt guilty for a second. A Doctor? And the whole time he'd treated the man like... Honestly he'd treated him like everyone else, only more important. Food guy. Yeah, that kind of trumped Doctor of agriculture now, didn't it? Or at least meant basically the same thing. Plus the man had never bothered to correct the name, so maybe he didn't care. Jake wasn't fluent in Spanish by any means, but he could have gotten “My name's not Jose, asshole” easily enough.
Burt gave him a considering look and filled in the rest for him.
“Barry, he's the older man on Carl's team, the war vet? Steady guy. Not as agile as the others anymore. He's glad enough to be on the hunting team now, except that for the last month the cleaners have all been on g
uard duty the whole time. It was voted on. Fear winning the day. I get it, I mean I wouldn't have come here on my own, even with guards, not if I could have helped it. I guess I need to grow a pair?” He sounded a bit sour suddenly, as if this was an old issue with him. Like he expected Jake to call him a coward.
“Heh, well you're doing better than a lot of people. I wouldn't worry about it. Brave is the same as dead anymore, as often as not. Smart is better and if the smart money says be careful, then that should be the plan.”
The man just grunted at him a little.
“Easy for you to say.” The man didn't grin but his tone had lightened a lot. It was still soft, because of the wounds, but he didn't seem to be nearly as injured today as the day before when he'd seemed half dead.
Sammi spit to the rescue?
Jake finished eating. He didn't want to go back. It really was that simple, wasn't it? He didn't want to and no one could make him. He didn't need them.
But they needed him.
Maybe.
Crap. That part of things was unexpected to him. What had happened to the selfish little jerk living at home off his parents for all those years? He knew, since he'd lived it, but it was hard to believe.
That guy had died in the house he'd grown up in and Jake had come into being instead. Maybe the only good thing to come out of the end of the world so far. Jake was a lot better of a person than Mickey Robson had ever been. If they'd met now Jake would have shot that little punk after about fifteen minutes. Lazy, loud and whiny. Only he wouldn't, because Mickey was smart enough to learn to be quiet. Good enough to adapt when he had to. To realize when it was time to work and not worry about himself too much anymore.
The name was just what popped out of his mouth when he first met Nate on the street. He'd been in shock, walking when he really should have hidden, carrying a gun with him because that's what you did in a zombie attack. It had been what the main character of the video game he'd been playing at the time had been called. Jake Hardkill.
He'd left the last part off. Mainly because it sounded silly. Hardkill? What kind of name was that supposed to be anyway? Dutch? Gamish?
Did he owe them anything? He thought about it as he finished eating and moved to wash the dishes in the pan of stove warmed water, scrubbing them as best he could without soap. He did have a scrub brush at least. He had bar soap too, but dish soap hadn't been high on the list of things to look for yet.
Those people had kind of been his family for months, but then they hadn't been that at the same time. No one there cared for him after all, just what they thought he could do for them. After a while he decided he didn't really owe them at all. He'd have made it on his own if he had too. Or died, also a real possibility, but he wouldn't have done half the dangerous things without other people to protect. The next question was the real one though. Did it matter? Did they still live in a world where the only people you helped were the ones that could do things for you in return? Well...
Obviously.
That was pretty much the rule everyone lived by and had been for a lot longer than zombies had been around.
Was he like that though? That part caught him out and made him feel very small for a while. Would he endanger fifty odd people just because it might make him a little uncomfortable for a while to help them? It didn't sit well with him and he shook his head hard, which got the other's attention. Burt looked a little crestfallen. Sammi just sat and watched him, as if curious about what he'd do.
“Fine, I'll go back, but I'm leaving this place stocked just in case. It makes a good place to hunt from if nothing else. I want to go on the record here though as saying that I don't like it. I'm doing this for everyone else and if anyone gives me grief, I'll... leave again and take my real share of things from the house. I'll have to, in order to survive if I have to lose time here by going back and...” He'd what, kill them? Whine and complain? Cry at them all?
It might not even be true he knew, Jake had enough to get by for the winter he thought, even for a few people.
Luckily the others just made relieved sounds and didn't force him to finish the other part of his half thought out threat. That was good, because he had nothing. They went to bed shortly after that, and if Sammi did that creepy wound licking thing again in the night, she was careful to do it before it got light enough for him to see. She'd made his bed up for him while he was getting the fruit, so he got to sleep like a person and not a refugee that night at least. The sheets were crisp and, if not new, at least clean.
It took three days for him to move to the main house and that only after some hard talks with Nate and a few others, which included all the cleaning team leaders and Carley. They agreed to his terms, he'd come back and no one would give him any grief over things, they'd treat him like an actual person and everything, even be nice to him. That was the claim at least. Jake didn't buy it and he didn't stay there that first night at all, instead he went and got more brick in town, scavenging bedding and going house to house on his own, cleaning out any undead he found without help. There were a lot less of them now, so it wasn't hard. He had the big cart, so he brought back a stack of mattresses too, when he went back the next day. The weather had turned and everything had to be covered with a plastic tarp. The odd thing there was that everyone that had a garage had at least one of them, normally hidden in the back. When he'd gone to search for the one he was using he'd gotten a big surprise.
Well, two really. The dusty and dark space didn't have windows, just the light from the door, left open to let in the pale morning light. He barely saw the shambler, but his sudden fear warned him along with the smell. That took two bullets.
The rest was what he found amazing though. In the back, covered by the very heavy plastic he'd been looking for was an old looking wooden box. A big box, hard to even pick up it was so heavy. Inside the chest were tools. Old fashioned hand tools. They had wooden handles and dust on them, in a box or not, probably antiques. He nearly yelled he was so happy. Of course then Jake would have to kill himself so he refrained.
Tools. A wide variety of them, hand drills and saws, hammers and mallets and more, things he didn't even recognize at all. The box must have weighed what he did or more, making it a chore to carry to the cart, but he wouldn't have traded for its weight in gold. Not even its weight in women willing to sleep with him. It was like finding a pirate's treasure or something. Only more useful.
The trip back to the house was a cold trudge in the rain, but he still smiled every now and then.
Real tools. Heh.
He kept doing the same thing for a while after that, going and getting materials most days, then he'd alternate for a day or two working on the forge and getting Carley to go with him and a team of people to cut and haul a huge stack of green logs. They'd need them for charcoal Burt had told them. The older man wasn't up to doing much yet, but he walked out and made suggestions on the forge and the space around it, plus a few other ideas he had. They ended up spending a lot of time together because Burt didn't want to be trapped in the house any more than he had to be. Not after having been stabbed there.
Jake could get that.
People had been surly and negative toward him when he left, a little whiny and dark, but the events that had happened had really shaken the survivors. Most of the people wouldn't leave the house at all now, unless someone threatened them into it. Even getting them to go out and get firewood for the kitchen had to involve someone looking at the adults menacingly. Sammi just did it, which meant Ken went with her, armed with a rifle now when he went out. It was strange, because if anything the world around them was safer now than it had been before. The danger had all been from within.
Heather came out too, and tried to visit with him in the forge as he worked with Burt several times, but didn't say much, as if waiting for him to be alone. Jake never was. That, privacy, he missed. For a whole month he had it and now it was gone again. The only time no one looked at him was on the toilet or when he went into town
. Worse, the girl watched him. A lot. Not flirtatious staring or anything nice either, just watching as if he were an entertainment. Or looking for weaknesses. Jake ignored it. Really he tried to ignore all of them as best he could except Carley and Burt. Sammi too.
Julio, Doctor Julio Mendez, worked daily in the greenhouse and grabbed him the day after the forge was done, and smiling, took his arm and led him to the kitchen where breakfast was being made. A corn mush, heavy and sticky. Sammi knew how to make it. They ate it with a bit of strawberry syrup to sweeten it most days. Jake liked it but a few people complained because it was too bland. Julio pointed at the stove, gesturing to it and then running off a steady flow of Spanish far too fast for Jake to follow. He got fire and hot out of it, but that was about all. Sammi nodded though.