Dead End Stories From the End of the World

by P. S. Power

  Well, not Jake, but the others. The hunters were mainly men and a lot of the women had selected partners once given the idea, not just the pregnant ones. They had more women than men too, so eight guys being gone all at once made a big mental difference around the place.

  They came back on the eighth day, loaded down with meat that had been smoked and cut into large roasts, hunches and chunks. They carried all this on two man litters and had four of them full. The smoking had taken longer than Carl had thought, since they had to build the little smoke house too. The hunters used part of the wood from the barn at the place Jake had started working on for that, just pulling the boards off the side.

  They had actually taken a lot of animals, but lowered the carrying weight by getting rid of most of the bones. A good enough idea, but Jake still lamented the loss of the barn. He'd have to go and fix it if he ever got a chance before it let too much rain and snow in and fell apart. Not that he had animals to go in it, but it had been his. Kind of. Was still his.

  It was set up for him to live there.

  Everyone seemed very glad to have the team back, which he got. It was a fifth of their people now, nearly, and Carl along with Barry and Spence from Vickie's team were a good part of the cleaners. If they lost them it would make a difference. For one thing Jake would have to stand extra night watch duties.

  They had real, honest and official bath houses now, with an insulated outdoor hot water heater. It held five hundred gallons of water at a time and was high enough to fill up tubs inside each house. They had two in each but several sinks too, so people could wash up that way if they didn't want to wait. The floors had crude drain pipes that carried the water away, but they'd freeze if they weren't deep, which meant that someone had to dig the three foot deep trenches to the underground wash out plain that Burt designated. It was about fifty feet of pipe, which they had, but meant a lot of work if they wanted to take a bath anytime soon. They cleared the charcoal first, finally, and then Jake started digging while the pregnant women chipped large pieces of burnt wood into smaller bits. By taking turns digging and being careful they got the pipe in the ground at an angle, so that the water would always be flowing downhill and set up broken rock shards in a large pit so it would always soak in.

  The days flowed into one and other for about a week, Jake got up, worked before breakfast, ate, tried to learn to use the forge to make basic tools. Hammers, tongs and chisels first, then in the afternoon he worked at sawing wood rounds from logs. It was hard, and he failed at making tools every other day at first. By the end of the week the most complex thing he'd made was a metal tong that could be used to take things out of the fire better than the much abused oversized pliers he'd been using.

  The next week, his leg still healing up, but feeling a lot better already, probably thanks to Sammi and her magic saliva, as gross as the idea was, Jake made a saw. A real one, with hammered and folded high carbon steel. Not too much, just enough to strengthen the metal, it still had to be springy and flex under pressure or it would just snap. It took three days and then he had to learn how to sharpen it using files and stones, but it gave them a second two person cutting saw for rounds. When Justine saw it she smiled at him and pointed at the windmill she had ready and waiting.

  “Power conversion gears next, please.” Her eyes actually lit up at the idea, so Jake decided to give it a try. Plus she sounded cute when she said it, like gears were a special treat, just for her.

  Those were actually a lot harder than a mere saw and took a week each, since he had to make them fit each other just right and the metal was a lot thicker. Nearly two inches in places. They didn't work the first time either, and it took another week to fix. In the end they had an electric generator though, which meant they could run a couple of lights and charge some batteries most of the time.

  As long as the wind blew.

  People felt cheated by it, if only a little.

  Jake wondered if they thought that having a generator meant they'd be able to live like they used to? Hot water inside, light on demand and toasty electric heat? If they did, they were fools. The old world, Jake had come to understand, was gone.

  If things were better here than anywhere else that didn't start out prepared, then even if they got things back eventually, it really wouldn't be the world they started with. Too many dead, too much trauma and fear, for too long.

  He felt caught up for a minute though, nearly at least. Two saws worked in the yard and six people split wood constantly, as fast as the rounds came off. Faster really. Splitting was the easier task until they got to the green wood. Then it slowed way down and they had to use the hammers and awls to break the things apart. The sawing went as fast though, possibly faster than before, since Jake could actually sharpen the blades now and did that every other day or so. Samuel was learning to do it too, so they could take turns.

  That meant that it was time for another road trip, he decided, before it got too hard to drive. There was solid frost on the ground each morning now, and in a few weeks it would freeze hard for sure. He went to Nate after diner and just shrugged.

  “Going into town?” The man asked lightly, obviously getting what some of Jake's looks meant by now. Or reading his mind. Either way worked for him.

  “I want to go into Clyde. There was a gun-smith there and the place is tiny, barely a town, we haven't cleared it, but if the shop hasn't been burnt or stripped, well, we might get something useful. I want to take the police van and the small wooden cart. I checked, the one Burt made will fit in the back.”

  The other man had a nice beard now, salt and pepper and fuller than Jake could manage, he thought. The look that came from his eyes, brown, to match the hair of his youth, was considering. They all knew they needed bullets and that meant making them or finding a stash. Possibly both. They also knew that odds were good that the gun-smith in Clyde had been about the fourth thing the police of Westwood had raided. The same rationale applied for them after all and Clyde was only about twenty-five miles past their compound with very little but farm land between one point and the other.

  They were getting desperate though, mainly because of Heather and her annoying habit of being right. Especially her dreams. It was pretty freaking annoying as far as Jake was concerned.

  She'd saved Justine just two days before from a structural collapse by going out with Randy and setting up a single pole in the middle of the new wood working shop that was going up. When the half constructed roof fell in, the off-center and slender pole held it up until the large boned woman had managed to crawl out. When asked why she hadn't just told people of danger, the girl had shrugged and told them that hadn't worked. Not that she dreamed it wouldn't work, but that it hadn't. It was just weird.

  The thing with her being right all the time was that she kept waking up screaming about the cannibals. Coming out of the snow. That meant they needed ammo. A wall, she assured them, would do nothing. Again all she said there was that it hadn't worked. Then on top of all these deep insights and foreknowledge she'd turn around and pester Jake about why they couldn't still be friends and berate him for being selfish and cruel.

  Because obviously it was all his fault.

  Certainly, that made total sense. What with the way he... Nope, no sense at all.

  Just to spice things up Tipper and Carley had both decided he was being too standoffish and mean as well and told him so without preamble one day about a week before, hitting him from two sides at once. He hadn't said anything, choosing to take the high road and just leave the room. If they were too stupid to get it by now, or too selfish, they probably never would.

  Each night he slept alone and had to listen to everyone else cooing and chuckling in the dark, almost everyone. Each night he wanted to die just a little harder than before. A few of the women didn't sleep with anyone, but even Nate found a guy that liked both sexes and worked out an arrangement. That was Chris, the man kind of got shared between Rita and Nate. So every time Jake went to bed he woke up
feeling just a bit worse. To make things rosier, no one else even noticed it was happening. That or they didn't care. It was dark, so Jake went with the first option, no one noticed. It didn't help much, but left him with some small belief that not everyone was an asshole.

  He tried to cling to that.

  He'd had about enough at any rate, and seriously considered just going back to the second house again. It was too late he knew. If he'd stayed there it would have been fine, but now he just couldn't get things done fast enough. Not without a lot of extra supplies. The snows would come soon, and he needed to be ready for Heather's cannibals. That would be tough enough with food, water and heat taken care of. Without... He might make it, if he could hide well enough, but it wasn't likely.

  So he decided to get out, away from everyone, as he could. Nate may have been able to read minds or emotions or something, but the man didn't seem to understand what Jake was really getting at when he finally explained it. He was going. The leader thought that meant a whole team should go with him. It made great practical sense on the group level. It didn't on the personal one. Kind of a dilemma. Jake got that. It just wasn't his problem.

  “It's an unsecured location. Bad enough you keep going into town alone, but Clyde is forty miles away. What if you get stuck? You need people with you. Or if you have to clean the town. Let me get some volunteers. I'll... we'll talk in the morning.” Then the guy just turned and left. Like that was going to stop Jake from doing what he wanted? Just cutting the conversation short?

  It was true a team would help. The lone wolf bull that worked in Westwood now wouldn't cut it anywhere else. He just didn't want people around.

  Was it too much to ask?

  Probably.

  But Nate should have gotten it anyway. The loneliness here was magnified somehow over what he'd have had alone. Worst of all was the shunning and disregard of him as anything other than a machine to kill things and get work done. That hadn't gone away when he returned, promises aside. If anything it was even worse now. As Jake tried to reach out to people more, he got pushed away harder.

  Most of the people just didn't want him there. None of the women did. Maybe Dave, Nate and Burt. Possibly Julio. The rest just wanted him gone again, Jake thought morosely as he went to make sure the latest charcoal burn was going well. That hardly needed to be watched at all, he'd learned over time. The only thing he had to do was watch to make sure the soil didn't get so wet it put out the fire inside. That had happened with the second burn and they barely got any charcoal from it. The whole thing had to be restarted and allowed to burn hot for days to finish it. This was the third burn, he wanted to do more, but hadn't had time to go get the wood. No one seemed exactly eager to help now that it was getting cold either.

  So it made sense to him to go alone when he could.

  If only in an angsty “my life sucks” kind of way.

  Which meant Jake was sorely disappointed the next day when he woke to find Tipper, Dave, Carl and Carley waiting for him along with Nate and Heather. At least Nate and Heather didn't have guns with them. The others did, and small bags packed already as well. Heather didn't, thankfully, since he didn't want to fight about her not going, but she stood there anyway, arms crossed on top of her large stomach, looking ready to fight. Jake stared at them and shook his head.

  “I won't be gone long. Just there, get some things and come back. There's no need...” That got interrupted by Tipper who chuckled darkly.

  “You can't drive a stick shift can you? I can and so can Carl. Plus, you know the first rule of cleaning; never go alone. You should at least, it's your rule. You made it up just before you saved my ass the first time, remember? It worked then.” Her voice wasn't kind, in fact it sounded a little sour. Bitter and harsh. Bitchy came to mind, if he wanted to be honest about it.

  Jake sighed and shook his head.

  “Fine Carl and Dave can come. Let's go.” He walked away without waiting to see if they'd follow.

  Tip was right about the stick shift and probably the backup too. But it didn't have to be her. Heather ran after him and grabbed his arm, the right one this time, and pulled him around by force. His impulse was to break free and start shooting. He really thought he'd had about enough, but when she spoke something inside snapped finally.

  “Jake, it's not fair for you to keep cutting out all the women around here. Just because it's been a little hard for you to meet someone...” Her voice was calm and silky, gentle and rage making all at once. Why he didn't know, but it was clear the girl was doing it on purpose, trying to start a fight. She was goading him.

  It was working, too.

  Carley chimed in before Nate could stop her. He tried, desperately, seeing where the whole thing was going, like a train wreck, putting out his hand and getting a half manic look on his face, but Carley had never been too good about shutting up. Not if you didn't threaten to shoot her. She wasn't yelling though.

  “Yeah, I mean, you're OK when it comes to work, but you won't hardly even talk to anyone anymore and if you're a woman, forget it, I didn't expect that kind of chauvinism from you. You always seemed like you believed in equality before. It's like you're saying we aren't your equals or even worth being around. We're people too, you know.”

  Then Tipper gave a short sharp nod.

  “Yeah, we're teammates Jake, closer than family. We're supposed to be on the same side, but I keep wondering when you're just going to decide to not back me up in the field. Or maybe just put a bullet in my brain when my back is turned. I keep trying to make sure we work together, to patch things up but-”

  Jake stared. Then slowly, he held up his left hand, palm out.

  “By a little hard, you mean impossible? By chauvinism you mean me not letting you rag on me endlessly about not wanting to be put down or hurt again and again? And Tip, you're the one that said I wasn't good enough for you and then slept with half the guys here after claiming you were a lesbian. So, really...” Jake took a huge breath.

  Then he decided not to just shoot them all. It was probably a mistake, but you didn't kill people you didn't have to. It was a rule. Not one of his, one of Nate's, but he'd enforced it a few times, which meant he had to agree now.

  Darned rules anyway.

  “I'm done with this, you all have exactly five seconds to get your shit together and start realizing that I matter too, or I'm taking my real share out of this place and going back where I evidently belong.” Jake turned and looked at their leader hard. “That was the deal, Nate. You all promised when I came back that I wouldn't have to put up with this kind of crap, remember? You all said that I'd be treated better. It hasn't happened at all, and now I have to put up with more of this crap, and from these people?”

  From the look on their faces they did remember, though it was clear that Tipper didn't think this situation should apply for some reason, even though she'd personally agreed not to do this anymore. She'd said it wouldn't happen, but here they were. Then, Jake knew she was a liar, so it was his own fault for believing her.

  “And I should get more, at that, because I can't take the forge. I suppose I could take it down, but that seems a big waste. It was a lot of work. You all wasted my time here, made me feel unwelcome and now hit me with imaginary girl crap after what you've all done? Everything you've done has been a slap in the face. Every night here is a nightmare for me and every day is a big pile of shit.” He waited the five seconds he'd stated, but none of them apologized or even tried to explain. Jake nodded, looking at Nate again.

  “All right then. If that's your choice, I'm fucking gone.” It was a whisper, but a cold one, not speaking of the violence that wanted to pour out of him.

  “Wait...” Nate sounded worried, and a little pissed. “We can't just part everything out now, winter's almost here. You... don't have time to get ready.”

  “So? No one cares. I don't even care anymore. I have absolutely nothing to live for and making it all better for you people isn't doing much for me. No one's even tr
ied to be nice to me, not one female in this whole place, the whole time, has bothered to try to get to know me, it's always just 'you're not my type' or 'I don't like you in that way', sometimes without me even doing more than saying hi. Well screw that. Those aren't apologies or even explanations, they're insults and I don't have to take that crap from anyone now. In case you haven't noticed it's the end of the world and... I'm taking it all, everything I brought in or worked on, and you'll give it over or fight to the death for it. I can't take all of you maybe, but it's mine by both right and your own agreements, and if you get in my way I bet a few people go down before I do.” He grinned, a vicious thing. Soulless. They all stared disbelieving. As if they thought he was just having a bad day.

  “Think I won't?”

  Jake moved into action without saying anything else.

  He loaded up the weapons and ammo he'd brought in first, if they were going to fight, he'd have a bit more than his nine on him and more rounds than he'd probably ever get a chance to fire off. It didn't even matter to him which they chose, not really, either way they were going to pay. It would take a while to get it all, but that was fine. He had a month or so. A few trips a day should do the trick.

  He didn't eat breakfast with them, but a meeting was called after and he was asked in by Nate. He came, but this time he walked in with a semi-automatic pistol in his right hand and a sawed off shotgun in his left. Both could be used at the same time after all. His aim wasn't as good with his left hand, but with a sawed off he'd hit something.

  Nate explained what had happened and what was going to happen, but no one said anything until Jake started listing off what was his by right. All the wood stoves, except the original little one they used for cooking in the first months. That came with the house. And the one Vickie had gotten. All the new warm bedding, sheets, towels and cookware and some of the old. Most of the old. The weapons and ammo he'd already taken care of, all the food he'd brought and helped get with plus enough extra to make up for the forge work and the hot water heater work. Though he could, he reminded them, just knock those down if they didn't want to bother trading. That would be fair, no one else had learned to use the forge yet anyway and they didn't really deserve warm baths, because they all sucked.