by P. S. Power
They worked quickly enough, and Nate got Carl to start writing out who was in who’s group. Not everyone was happy with who they got put with, but no one did more than whine a little. It was mainly busy work really. Groups of three seemed to be the order of the day, meaning his was too large. He’d need to travel though, so this would allow them to mix and match two groups with various skills at need.
They didn’t know what the new enemy could do, so they couldn’t defend against it. Really, they didn’t know if this was a new enemy even. Jake had a strong suspicion that whoever it was might be behind the zombie plague to begin with. Or at least have a clue or two for them to investigate. When he mentioned it to the room, everyone went still, except Morten and Vickie. It was the Val that spoke though, just loud enough for everyone to hear.
“The Technologists… Yes, they could do it. I hadn’t thought of them, to tell the truth. They have the knowledge, the ability to come up with new things like that, turning the world into a place of the undead. They’re peaceful though. Pacifists even. It doesn’t sound like what they’d do at all. Still, that woman… The one that looked like your mother, Jake? She could have easily been one of their creations. Biological… robots. That isn’t what they really are, but I don’t have the knowledge to really understand the idea, so explaining it is out for now. I know that they aren’t real copies or clones though. They don’t think and feel, but they can really seem like it. I’ve never seen one, not before that I know of, but it sounds right. A nearly exact duplicate.” She turned to him and put an arm around his shoulders.
“Though, to do that… They would have had to be watching you for years. She knew who Colleen was. I don’t know the specs, but I’ve heard that kind of thing takes an in-depth brain scan to make work like that. One of a living person. You said that you were kind of a loner for a long time, years, right?”
Jake considered it all and bobbed his head abstractly.
“Yeah, three, four years almost, before all this happened. Colleen wasn’t exactly over all the time before that either. In the store a few times, at some functions that we all attended. The voice was right and everything too. The speech and mannerisms. Like it really was my mom.” It had been eerie to tell the truth.
Looking around Mort sighed.
“It was the right place for them, but we should check it out. It might not be them. Maybe someone was just pretending to be them or… I don’t know. The Valkyrie is right though, it doesn’t sound like them at all. They’re a little strange, but harmless and friendly most of the time. They might be guilty, or they might need our help.”
That was enough to get a large group assigned to go and check things out, made of Teleporters and warriors. Jake started to go himself, but Nate stopped him.
“No.” His tone sounded bossy and firm. More so than Jake had heard it before. A hand came out and touched him on the chest.
“You’re staying here for this one. I don’t know what just happened to you just now, but you’re mind shifted somehow Jake. You went from being one person to someone very different as I watched. You aren’t going anywhere until I have Lamont and his people check you out. Maybe the Grand Comtrice.” The man rubbed at his gray tinged beard and smiled. Then he looked around.
“Don’t get me wrong, Jake seems perfectly sane. Just… very different. So, he’s not going. If anyone has a problem with that, kindly stick it in your ear? We don’t have time for that kind of thing now.”
Jake looked at the man and shrugged. If this enemy could make biological robots or whatever they were called that looked like anyone, then, yeah, it made sense to hold him back, if Jake didn’t seem like himself, didn’t it? An unforeseen consequence of becoming someone new in the presence of a mind reader.
“Fine. We just need a search. I have a stake in the matter, but it’s information I need, not being there personally. Besides, like it or not, someone tried to kill me. I mean, a lot of people have tried that lately, and no big deal, but this time was the second one that was personal. Without reason this time. Not that I know of.”
It was true that Derrick Holsom had tried to kill him, several times, but that was done now. Only the last major attack really counted anyway. This was different for some reason. Probably because, no matter how they’d done it, those people, the Technologists, had managed to use his own mother as a weapon. If they could do that, what else could they do?
They could end up killing everyone just to get Jake.
It was insane of course, but could happen. They knew where he lived too. After all, they’d sent Alyssian to him specifically. Though they hadn’t just killed him…
It didn’t make sense.
Unless they wanted him alive for some reason? If so, the incredible exploding mom act was a little over the top. Very much so in fact. Though it was clearly driving him in a specific direction, wasn’t it? If they knew it would, it might have been done to control his actions.
To what end he didn’t know at all.
He closed his eyes and thought for a while, opening them only when he had something approaching a plan. He wasn’t running, and he wasn’t going to abandon his group, but they couldn’t stay at the House.
He couldn’t. Not that he wanted too… Except that wasn’t why he was thinking that was it? Honestly staying was the better choice, he knew. Easier to set guards on one location than two for instance. Jake just didn’t want to put up with the pain of being alone in a house full of people that hated him. But it was safer for everyone, if they had the Val’s and the other warrior groups there and didn’t let their guard down. They needed someone to keep things moving too, and like it or not, that had to be him.
It always had been, and he’d been letting them all down. Trying to let everyone else lead.
Not anymore.
“OK, we need to move everything from my place back here. I want twenty-four hour watches, and every group leader here the day after tomorrow for a meeting. We need that sweep done right now of the attack location. Let’s move.” He didn’t speak loudly, but he clapped his hands when he was finished, which got people into motion.
Vickie stood next to his shoulder, leaning into him gently, her body firm, but cool, from having been outside for a while.
“This is different. Trying to go all military on us now? Not exactly standard for a VGM.” She didn’t smile, but her voice was warm. He nodded to her.
“Not military. But like Nate said, we don’t have time for games now. This isn’t about any one of us, or individual needs. If these people, beings, whatever they are, have anything to do with destroying most of the world, we need to find them and stop them. Permanently. So they can’t easily do it again. If they come for us… Well, they most likely have been already, haven’t they? All the zombies for instance. We need to really get ready.”
He looked around and smiled.
“We can do it. All of the people here are strong. Survivors. We’re the people they couldn’t just do away with, whatever their reasons are. Now we’re going to find them and take the fight to them. Wherever they go, wherever they hide, we will dig them out of their holes, and make sure they never try to harm anyone, ever again.”
No one smiled back, but slowly, starting with Colleen, people clapped.
In unison.
It was freaky, sending a chill down Jake’s spine. Heather moved in next to him and took his hand, gently, but firmly enough to get his attention.
When he looked at her, she had a smile on her face, and tears streaming down. She shook her head gently and leaned in to him. Body odor still sour. They needed to fix that if she was going to be hanging out with him from then on. Changed he might be, but that part of him had stuck around. It was important to stay clean.
“I’m so sorry Jake. I’m so sorry we had to do all this to you. That I did this to you. It’s the only way that works though. In the end.”
“What me going insane and becoming some kind of warrior?” He grinned at her, trying to lighten the moment.
/> “No, you finding the bottom of yourself and becoming the worst thing that anyone has ever seen.” Her voice sounded sad then, but people were listening to her, so she kept going.
Always a bad thing to do, letting crazy have the floor. You’d have thought they’d learned that by now, Jake thought, fighting to keep his face serious, just in case she had real information.
“This is the saddest day in history. Worse than anything else ever has been.” She whispered to the room. “This is the day when A Very Good Man became A Very Dark Thing, to save us all.”
He stuck his tongue out at her, getting her to smile.
“Seriously? I get to be all evil now? Woo-hoo.” His voice was dead, but he managed a smile back. He knew that he was changing. Becoming something different. He had too.
They needed him too.
Sammi walked over and took his arm, shaking her tiny head. Not that she was that little, but she was smaller than most of the adults, wasn’t she?
“No, not evil. Just what you have to be. It’s like I said. A Very Good Man isn’t just the nicest person in the room, he’ll adapt to be whatever the world really needs. This is just what you have to be for the rest of us now.”
Jake didn’t bother waiting for anyone else to comment. They already thought he was pretty bad, didn’t they? It didn’t matter what he was, not after what had happened. Now it was just about what they could do toward their continued survival and the survival of the species. Even though what they ended up being might just be a lot different than what humanity used to be. Most of the old kind of people were dead already. Now it was time for something new.
Hopefully that would be something better.
It probably wouldn’t happen that way though. Putting people through hell didn’t tend to make them any nicer, did it? Then… it really wasn’t his job to make everyone play nice. Just to get together well enough as a single unit that they survived. Everything else was gone now. That was the change Nate had noticed, Jake guessed.
Before he’d worried and fretted over things that didn’t really matter, pretending that they did. Concerned with things he couldn’t influence at all. Feelings and love, those he’d hurt and killed, and those that didn’t like him for one reason or another.
No more.
Now it was all about making it through. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else ever really had.
Had it?
Well, one thing mattered. He took Heather by the hand and started to lead her out, gesturing for his new group to follow. At the kitchen door Heather pulled back and stopped, a dark look on her face.
“Where are we going?”
Not wanting to embarrass her Jake just gestured at the wash houses.
“I need to wash up. That means we all have to go.” New him or not, being rude wouldn’t help anything. Not in this case.
“Jake…” Heather looked at him skeptically.
“Yes Heather?”
“Are you trying to tell me that I smell?” She was looking right at him, but it was everyone else in their little group that answered, almost all at once.
“A bit” Colleen, said, looking away to hide her smile. If it had a manic edge to it, well that was normal enough, right? A dead person she used to know had tried to blow up on her already that day and the day before cannibals had kicked her behind. That she made the effort to smile was huge.
“Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to mention that. It’s not just you though, so I didn’t know how to bring it up.” Cam said, not grinning at all.
Sammi shrugged, “you know, my sense of smell is around two hundred times keener than yours? Everyone here smells a bit most of the time.”
That got a smile from Jake. It wasn’t real, but no one seemed to care about that. Not as long as the right expressions got pasted on his face. He spoke confidently, and surprisingly it actually sounded that way for once.
“So, we bathe, then we find our enemies and take them down.”
Happily enough, everyone agreed. It was kind of nice, having a group of friends that were willing to go along with you. For a second he nearly felt loved.
Then he let that go and focused on what was to come. The scary part was that he just didn’t know. Then again, that’s why they had Heather, wasn’t it? It would be hard living with them all, but he’d manage. There just wasn’t another good choice, not if they were all going to survive.
And that, survival, was all that was left inside of him anymore. That and a tiny single ember deep in his soul that he barely had a name for. It wasn’t something soothing and calm, or controlled in any way. He’d harness it though. He had too.
Rage.
The people that had tried to kill him had taken too much from them all, their lives, their loves, their homes. They’d made them live in fear for almost ten months. No more though. Now it was time to take a little bit of their lives back, to find the freaks that had killed them all and then rebuild the world.
Nothing else really mattered. For him, nothing else might ever matter. Jake shrugged and pulled the girls out the door with him, into the snow, still smiling. He’d go and wash away the old him and become something new. If he could. A person that could just possibly save the world.
With a whole lot of help.
If anyone wanted to help whatever it was that Jake had become now. If not, he’d have to find a way to make them. Because one way or the other, they were going to survive.
Even if he had to kill them all to do it.
A Very Dark Place
P.S. Power
Orange Cat Publishing
Copyright 2014
Chapter one
Jake hit the glowing red metal firmly with the heavy sledge. It was a bit dim in the blacksmith's shop and the noise was annoying, but he focused on the work in front of him to try and block it out. It wasn't the shock through his arm that was bugging him after all, or the ringing sound of metal against metal. It was the complaining that took place the second he stopped. It meant he was milking the heat a little too much, trying to forge metal once it had gone just a little too cool, instead of putting it back on the coals like he should.
Looking at the ax head he knew it was time, and sighed, trying not to hit the boy next to Colleen who was helping her with the bellows. He settled the metal in the hottest part of the brick forge, and waved at them to start pulling on the levers that would make the carbon get even hotter.
"Go please." He always said please now. Mainly because he didn't mean it at all, and that was starting to show pretty badly in everything he did. That sounded backwards, but the more he felt like that, the greater the need to show he didn't feel that way seemed important.
As if the hot air had to run through the thin pale sixteen year old before it could do its real work, Henry started whining. Again. Every single time.
"I don't belong here." He spoke as if he hadn't said it fifteen times that day already. It was only his first morning too and they hadn't even been working for two hours.
"I should be out training or... I don't know, doing something useful."
That was his mantra. That working on something as mundane as making weapons was beneath him. That even a few hours away from "real work" was what they had the humans for, not someone special like him. A Denari.
That part almost made sense, because so far a lot of the Denari had been like that since they'd shown up. They had very high self-esteem as a rule, and supposedly were just about the perfect fighters, though Jake hadn't seen any in action yet himself. It wasn't like with the Vals, who were strong and fast, as well as hard to kill. The Denari were different. They could take a beating, but their reflexes and ability to learn to fight were just different than a human's. In a pinch they could suddenly turn into killing machines. They also had really good endurance, so they could do it for a long time, too.
And apparently they also a tradition of being little bitch men if they didn't feel properly utilized.
"It isn't fair."
Jake just nodded and ad
justed the coals a little, finally at about the point where he'd had enough of this mental munchkin. Colleen shook her head first though.
"It's the job you have right now. You need to concentrate on doing it right and worry about that for a bit, instead of running off to play soldier in the snow. Trust me, there will be time for that later. If you don't insist on hiding inside all the time, you'll have to fight." She was always nice, but a tiny hint of exasperation crept into her voice. She didn't even look up at Jake or roll her eyes, just pulling after each push the boy made, doing the harder part of the work without complaint.
"I know." The kid looked at the door and leaned toward her, face tightened into a frown.
"I just... They stuck me in here to get me out of the way. I'm kind of a... goof, I guess you'd say. I'm not very good at fighting. I don't belong here, at the house of The Very Good Man, at all. I guess that's why I'm being a pain. Sorry. I shouldn't even be here at all and I know it. I should probably have been left in the woods as a baby, but we don't do that anymore."
Jake nodded again, using the sprinkle can to cool the coals in the areas that they weren't actively using. It would save on fuel and he really didn't want to try for another charcoal burn that winter. It was January and that meant the ground outside was hard to about five inches down. Digging through that meant lighting fires on top of it first and that meant burning good dry wood that could be used to keep the people inside warm and happy.
Warm at least. No one was happy anymore, with the exception of Lois in the kitchen, who'd kind of lost her mind. She got her work done though, and that mattered too. If she wanted to seem happy all the time, well, it was better than moping, right?
"Bull. Look, Henry, this is important work and the fact that you're here right now means you belong here. You can go out and practice later. If we don't make a run into town for supplies. Cam mentioned that Burt wants some materials for his latest generator. We'll need to make the gears for that too, so it won't all be bellows work." He smiled, hoping to make it sound like a treat, but the kid didn't get it at all.