by P. S. Power
Kind of a douche move, if it was really the case.
Molly sat on the ground crying and glaring at him between sobs. At least she was muffling the noise now. Really, Jake felt like just getting a new screamer, or just doing it himself. He really couldn't though. His voice always stayed too soft now.
The chubby girl would end up getting him killed and the way she'd been doing things, he'd come back as a zombie. That would suck.
For one thing he really didn't think human flesh would be all that tasty, since zombies didn't even cook it first. Plus everyone was thin and stringy now. The other thing was the whole look they got going, pasty and torn up. The rotting didn't help either. Yeah, he was white, but finally had a little color to his face from all the hunting the team had done that summer, along with the farm work he'd put in. He'd hate to lose that now. It was the best tan he'd ever had.
Nothing happened at all, not for hours. Finally, just about the time he was getting ready to call a halt to the day, a single form walked out of a house near the one they'd been working in. The form didn't shamble or run. No, the thing just walked carefully, looking around. It could be one of the rare smart ones, or it could be a regular person. Not their problem if the later, the former was though. The intelligent zombies were the worst. No easy way to tell if it was a dead person for sure from there, or, well there was one, but it was kind of dangerous. After watching it for several minutes, still not able to tell, except that it seemed like a girl, or a woman... or a young man wearing a dress. Jake decided on the easy thing. First he signaled to Dave and Tipper, a single wave from him to the target, cupping his hands in front of his face to explain the plan. They both nodded back, ready to move if need be.
“Hello!” Jake yelled, his voice still hoarse from all the whispering he'd been doing over the last months. Then he waited.
The form didn't run toward them, instead it turned and ran away. Human then. Good. They could go. If the person had wanted to talk they would have either yelled back, or if they were sane, waved and waited to see what happened. Of course their hunting group were cleaners, the people that moved in and cleared neighborhoods of the undead, which meant, if not a safe group, at least one that probably wouldn't rape or rob you. Everyone knew that by now. Most other groups were a little spottier than that.
Really, that wasn't exactly correct.
Most groups were made of decent people that would as soon leave you alone as not, truth be told. Those groups hid and kept their heads down when they could. But some of the worst went out looking for victims a lot. There had been a biker gang that terrorized the area for the first two months for instance. That group had been a pretty rough and tumble lot.
They didn't make it.
What worked to intimidate good regular people Back Before didn't work very well on zombies at all, and people that hunted the already dead didn't just give up because you looked a little scary or waved a gun. It was an attitude thing.
The biggest problem they still had in Westwood was the police. The remaining piece of the police force, that was. The fire department had held together for nearly three weeks, scrambling to fight fires and protect people, even if they weren't armed for it at all. The EMTs held nearly as long after the announcement from the Center for Disease Control came over everyone's radios and television sets.
The police had started breaking inside four days. They didn't just run, which could have been forgiven, Jake guessed. After all, they weren't trained for Armageddon any more than the next group of people. What they did though was use the taxpayer provided weapons and their badges to loot the town, then took over Castor's farm, which, thanks to crazy Mr. Castor's paranoia, had a fence around the whole place topped with barbed wire. They made occasional raids still and had taken to stealing women for some reason, or so it was rumored. The reasons why varied depending on who you asked. Jake didn't know himself. He just kind of hoped it wasn't for food.
All he knew for certain was that they didn't send out small groups like his. Any group over ten people had to be watched, just in case it turned out to be them. Luckily, the police were trained to be cowardly. They constantly feared everything, meaning they didn't go out too often. That worked for the rest of them at the moment, since it meant they could just walk back home before dark. It was only about five miles, which meant two hours, since they had Molly along. She couldn't keep up with even a slow jog and whined about a fast walk.
If she did that today though, Jake was going to have to shoot her.
It wasn't a rule that you had to go quickly or even that you couldn't whine, he'd just had enough of her for the day. Hopefully the others would back his story about how she'd turned into a zombie without warning and he'd had to “help her along”, or they could claim she'd tripped and gotten lost... Or that gypsies had stolen her.
No one would buy it, but that would be halfway funny at least.
The journey went even slower than normal and Molly did, of course, start complaining about halfway there. Not loudly, but it still rankled. Mainly because she'd decided everything that had happened was his fault and harped on the idea without pause.
“We agreed on left, that's what we practiced and then you moved right. How am I supposed to do anything about that? Those things nearly got me!” She said, her tone rather sincerely bitchy.
Jake, thankfully didn't have to answer her, since Dave did.
“You stupid cunt, you ran the wrong way. It's always your own left. You went to the right. Not doing that is how you're supposed to stop it. Yeah, Jake took the spear to the other side, scrambling not to stab your chunky ass. It nearly got him killed and you're trying to blame him for it? God. Look I know you're not exactly Mensa material, but you could at least learn to notice when you mess up that badly, can't you?”
The girl, no make-up on a round face that actually looked better now than it had early on, having thinned a good bit due to reduced rations, looked to Tipper for some girl solidarity. Her big brown cow eyes were kind of imploring actually. Jake nearly felt bad for her, but she wasn't trying for good will from him. Just Tipper.
She didn't find it.
One thing about Tip, she was all work in the field. Hardcore, like a soldier or even a special forces guy. Most of the rest of the time, too. Freaking tough really. It meant she called things like she saw them, no matter who it might offend. Including him if he was the one screwing up, but this time that wasn't her reaction at all.
“No shit, Mol. Jake went by the plan and the only thing that saved you was how quick his reflexes are. Twice. If you think Dave or I could have saved you back there, think again, we were in the wrong place totally and would have taken half your face off if we'd tried to hit those hostiles with shotguns at that range. What was with the screaming off plan crap anyway? That should have bought you a bullet to the brain you know. I'm really kind of shocked that it didn't.” She fired a strange look at Jake then, one that spoke of fear she hadn't shown when everything had happened at all.
Worry about Jake having not killed the girl? Maybe he was being too soft?
The dark haired girl looked at the other woman with venom in her eyes, but didn't say anything. Tipper may have given them a funny name to call her, but that was the only joke she'd told. If it was one. Dave just walked, bored with the conversation already. Jake could see that. There would be more of it to come, obviously, from the way Molly stared at him, but hey, that was part and parcel to being around other humans, wasn't it? People generally whined, and almost always about useless shit. Before, back when he lived in his parent's basement and played video games sixteen hours a day that's how he'd been. A whining and annoying little waste of space. If he was going to be honest, Molly now was a better person than he'd been back then. At least she tried to help people by screaming.
He'd mainly just moped, and felt like the world had wronged him.
They kept walking and the complaints became less frequent as they sped up. It really wasn't that Jake wanted to silence Molly, just get
back in time for dinner, since it was potato night. The night before they'd had venison, a treat, which Carl had taken down on his way back from a clean-up with his crew. That was rare though. No one hunted regularly and the deer avoided town. They still had some left, which would probably be a stew or something for dinner, but they'd had mashed turnips the day before. Not exactly a culinary delight as far as Jake was concerned.
Then again he'd complain about that out loud about the same time he could run into town to pick up a big bag of something else for dinner. It was food and that's what they had, so he ate it.
A few people still went on about things like that, or dreamed of foods they didn't have. It didn't help. It just made you hungry for things you couldn't get, which left you unsatisfied. Better to just forget about food as anything more than what you had at the moment, and tonight was potatoes. Early ones they'd managed to grow on the farm that their group had taken over. It had been backbreaking labor, but they'd gotten nearly two hundred acres planted back in May. The big harvest was coming, and then they had to can, dry and all that other stuff he'd never done before and had barely heard of. Thank God they had Lois and Mary to run that for them. If it wasn't for the two women, one an old hippie that used to live on a commune and the other a survivalist, they'd have been going hungry the next winter for sure.
The farm was in the middle of a field of green, low things planted around the house, corn off a ways, so that no one could sneak up on them too easily. They had herbs near the back, which improved the food a lot, and beets as well, maybe carrots too. Jake didn't really know for certain off the top of his head. Most of the crews that went hunting didn't do a lot around the place. He tried, when he could, because it made sense. If everyone pitched in, their odds of survival went way up. If they carried dead weight... Well, winter was going to be hard that way.
He didn't mind the kids that much, because really they weren't dead weight, just young. The two that were left did their chores without complaint and even did a decent job of it. Better than a lot of people to tell the truth. The old people... well no one really old was alive, were they? The oldest people they had were Burt and Lois, and both of them stayed in and around the house, or went into town to loot only with a heavy guard. Burt knew stuff, how to make water pumps and wind turbines from scratch, and things like that. He didn't just carry his own weight, but part of everyone else's as well. All Jake could do really was manual labor. He tried to learn at least, when he could, and work as best he was able.
But they had dead weight.
The moron crew. They weren't hunters or even useful at anything, they weren't even good for guard duty for the most part, since they were too lazy to trust. It was a team of four or five, led by the oh-so popular Derrick Holsom.
He'd been on the police force before, but they hadn't taken him in when they raided the town. Holsom had claimed it was because he was a “good” cop and that the criminals on the force just hadn't liked that he'd wanted to try and protect the civilians. Jake was pretty sure he understood what they'd really been thinking now though. At very best Derrick would have been a pain in the rear. Even here he tried to undermine Nate, their leader, at every turn.
Normally that wouldn't have been such a huge deal, but Holsom had three things wrong with him for this situation. He was popular with the women, and had slept with most of them already. He was a former authority figure, which meant the others, especially the younger women, still looked to him for guidance. The worst thing though, was that he was stupid. If the man had ever come up with a good idea Jake had been gone at the time, and no one had bothered to inform him of the red letter day.
To him the situation fairly screamed what was going on most of the time. Holsom thought he was the best one to lead, but if he ever did, they'd all be screwed. The man couldn't even be bothered to do his share of the work, and relied on bullying others to get by.
He had his people too, all men, all large and all at least as stupid and lazy as he was. Jake hadn't even bothered to learn their names. As soon as he had a reason, he planned to kill them all if they didn't shape up. Before winter set in at the latest. They were a burden right now. When the cold hit and food got scarce, having them could mean death. He'd need a real reason, of course, or the women would lynch him though, for taking away their favorite boy toy.
Shallow bitches.
Oh, it wasn't fair of him to think that about them, he knew, and tried to get himself to stop. Still, there were plenty of other reasons to dislike Holsom, not just him getting all the girls.
The house had white siding on it, so it gleamed in the bright sun, the green in the field stark and wonderful to see. It had a rust red trim, also done in vinyl siding, which was also kind of pretty really. The people that had lived here before had really invested in the future. Unfortunately they didn't know what that meant at the time and wasted their money on home improvements that didn't mean much now. Siding and a nice electric range in the kitchen, a really nice matching washer and dryer combo and a deep freezer off in the barn. A huge thing for storing meat. None of that worked of course, except the vinyl. They should have put in another cellar, that would have actually helped.
In the back of the house Burt, gray haired and wearing a bright blue Hawaiian shirt and some tan colored shorts that looked to fall off if he wasn't careful, worked to prop up the edge of a windmill blade, trying to set it in place. Jake jogged over, and helped get it upright, then held it as the older man tamped the base down and set brace supports for it.
“We really should have a concrete base, but the store was out last I checked. I don't think they've gotten a new order in yet. We should go look again soon. Check construction sites and people garages? Not that I'd want to be the one doing it.” The tone sounded relaxed, happy even. Burt always did. Almost. When he didn't, there was a real problem.
Jake looked at the windmill, trying to make sense of how it transferred power. It had a belt of heavy cloth, nylon webbing, instead of gears. Behind the blades, large wooden paddles, there was a circle, a wheel that the heavy strap wrapped half way around, then it rested snugly over a similar, but much smaller circle on the bottom. It was all wood. It had to be, until they got enough power going to run an arc welder. Burt said he knew how to use one and even had a few sitting in the shed he used as a workshop about fifty feet away toward the fields.
The old man started laughing as Jake checked the whole thing out, “I know, far from ideal, but it's a start. With this we can pump water from the well to fill a cistern, a big water tank on a platform. That will get us water for the house year round. If we manage a wood fired water heater or two and some wood stoves, then we may not even freeze to death in four months. I'll just put you in charge of that. We need something like twenty cord of wood and six wood stoves. Really, we could do it with three stoves, except we'll need to replace the little one in the kitchen with something bigger. It's not a proper stove right now and more of a fire hazard waiting for someone to get lazy. That basically means welding, which means electricity, so a generator first and a better wind tower. We need the wood regardless though, so you can do that first.”
The man didn't laugh at him, but the tone was playful. Almost happy. It was clear to anyone listening that Burt didn't really expect Jake to see to it at all. Why not though? It had to be done and while he wasn't the person that he'd have picked either, no one would care who did it, as long as it got finished in time.
Jake thought about it for a second and realized that wood shouldn't be too hard to get. They had a wood lot not a half mile away, and could use the human powered wagon Burt had built for that. They could grab dead fall and even new logs if they had to, and bring them back for splitting and all that stuff. He'd never done anything like it before, but pioneers used to do it. They weren't wimps, those people from way back, but a lot of them had come from the city, and had less to work with than they did now. If they could figure it out, chances were that modern people could too. Just with more bitching and comp
laints.
The modern American totally owned that part.
Jake nodded at the man, noticing the bright and cheery blue shirt again. Nothing Jake owned had color. Most of it was kind of a drab off gray.
“I guess I can try to put a team together for it. Um... what's a cord of wood?” Jake felt stupid asking, but Burt didn't make fun of him over it, he just answered. The man was good that way.
“It means a stack of split wood four foot high, four foot wide and eight foot long. The real answer here is that we're going to need a lot more of it than we think. Maybe more than we can get. We should have been doing this already, but no one wants to risk going into the woods.” The man shrugged and looked down at his own feet.
Burt didn't leave the grounds of the house at all now. Not if he could help it. A lot of people didn't, so he wasn't alone. The cleaners all had to, so that was twelve people right there, but they slept in shifts, since they also did most of the guard duty. That left about thirty people that might be willing to risk it to be warm in the winter. Well, more if he could get some of the others to break through their personal terror. Or at least face it. He nodded at the older fellow.
“OK. I'll get on that. Um, do we have any saws or anything like that? I guess axes would work and we could blow some of the wood into chunks with small explosives but...”
Burt laughed and patted him on the arm firmly.
“A man after my own heart, if you don't have a chainsaw, find a different way to do it! Explosives... That could work, but I have axes and even some brand new chainsaws set aside. Even a few old manual rip saws, the two person kind,” He blinked at the blank look Jake gave him.
“Ah... right, that means nothing to you, does it? Here, I'll show you.”
That got them both headed to the shed out back. The others all went in the house, Molly first, without even paying attention to the fact that he'd stopped to talk to the older man. Tipper listened for a few minutes and walked off too. Dave had just disappeared, probably to go kill something.