by P. S. Power
Silently though.
They'd even taken the spankings that Nate, the leader of the House, used to punish them, without a whimper. Then they had all the toys taken away and were given jobs. They were both around nine or so, which meant that they were in charge of making sure the kitchen had a constant stream of kindling for the fire and that no one else ever had to get wood from outside for any of the spaces in the place. That was mainly just to keep them busy though.
They needed to come up with more jobs like that.
There was a school at least, for the youngest, where they learned to read and write, do basic math, and all that. Useful things that kept them busy and out of the way.
Jake moved back toward the forge though, since the fire had been left going unattended. Colleen and Henry followed him automatically. Colleen was his "buddy" for the day, since the others in their group were all in the kitchen. That worked well for Cam, who was used to the job, and Sammi, who even though she was a princess managed to have top notch skills in that area, just due to the fact that she was something like a hundred, and things like needing food came up, rich or not. She looked twelve though, so didn't seem all out of place that way, regardless of her true years.
It didn't work that well for Heather however, who was really too pregnant for useful work, and too stubborn to just sit like a sensible person. Jake had actually forbidden her from the forge, claiming that the smoke would be bad for the baby she was having. The truth was that he just didn't want to keep moving around her all the time. It slowed things down too much, and he didn't really think they had time for that.
Neither did she, which was a bit scary, or would have been if he cared about fear anymore.
They worked until dinner, Jake making a point of taking Colleen with him to sit at the head table with Nate and Burt. They had to rearrange some chairs for it, but no one acted like he didn't belong. They never really had, but he was close to the youngest person that was considered a leader really. Lois was the oldest regular Human in the place, and Burt was second. Nate was in his mid-forties. Jake was still twenty-four. It made him feel like no one would listen to him, but they did, for some strange reason.
Probably because they all kind of thought he really was The Very Good Man. It wasn't the case though. Not really. It was a fiction that Sammi had put together, even though she claimed that he really was the fabled savior of all the cousin races. Worse, it meant she was kind of claiming that he was the "second coming". No one had mentioned that part of things once it had been spoken about the first time, but some of the people looked at him funny now.
Funnier.
It wasn't just fear anymore. Now there was something in their eyes that he hadn't seen in nearly a year, ten months at least, since the world ended and the dead started walking, contrary to all rules of physics or sense.
They had hope.
Not all of them, and not all the time, but after Sue had told them that he, Jake the hardened killer, was the one that they'd all waited for, some of them had started to change for some reason. It didn't help him at all, but if it got people through the night, who was he to tell them to stop?
They ate in silence, and for once no one bickered at the other tables or lingered while others hung back waiting for a seat themselves. They had nearly twice the people they used to have, and could only fit so many in the room. It pretty much broke down into two groups. The adults over thirty in the first one, then the younger people in the second.
If he wanted to talk to the grown-ups, he had to be pushy though. Otherwise everyone would be off to bed after the meal, and he wouldn't be able to find them at all.
"I'd like to start a new push on the work front. We need supplies I hear, and should get teams out and training for cleaning, as well as making weapons. A new forge and maybe a pottery kiln. I don't know how to do it, but glassworks, too." He waited, expecting people to grumble and go on about the problems instead of finding ways around them, but Burt spoke first. He had a long gray beard and was thin for it, but was kind of the modern, post zombie world model for Santa Claus. Literally. He'd played the role for Christmas, and everything.
He was also pro-hard work for everyone, including himself, and was a certified genius. Definitely someone worth listening too.
"Looms too, as well as working with Julio on expanding our ability to grow food. We have a lot of supplies now, thanks to our new friends bringing us things, but we should be self-sufficient if possible. Besides, too many people have been sitting around most of the day lately. That's Jake's fault, for not riding them to work constantly, of course." He grinned when he said it, knowing that it really wasn't all up to Jake at all, but rather that things had just gotten in the way. It happened, but the real culprit was fear, not laziness.
Everyone was afraid to go outside because of the walking dead that wanted to eat them, and staying inside was almost as scary now, after a group of cannibals had come in one day while all the fighters were gone and killed several people and kidnapped two more for food.
Ken had killed three of them by himself, with a kitchen knife, and probably would have gotten more of them if they hadn't had guns on them. Five of their people had died though. Jake had just kind of lucked into finding Sammi and Barb, the kidnapped ones, when they'd managed to work the cannibals toward his house. His old place. He lived here again. It wasn't fun, but it really made sense for everyone else. It was easier to guard everyone that way and even if it was all a fiction, the other groups really wanted to make sure that their Very Good Man stayed alive.
Jake looked at Burt who kept smiling at him, teasing.
"Right. We'll get on that now though. Colleen, you and Carl had a list of which people were supposed to be doing what, right?"
She blinked, clearly not having thought he was going to speak to her at all. It wasn't like he ignored her, but she clearly wanted more from him than he was giving. He kept her with him, since Heather had insisted, and it sounded important. It was hard though, because she constantly reminded him of Rachel. The only person he'd ever really loved. Just thinking the name caused him pain, but he tried not to let that show. Colleen was a good person after all, worth loving all on her own. She always had been, and apparently had loved him for years. Nearly a decade.
That had come as a shock to him when he'd found out, and he hadn't really addressed it yet. Not just with her, but with himself. The sad thing there was that if she hadn't been Rachel's sister he'd have loved her pretty easily. It was insane not to, but then, they lived in a world that had gone so crazy no one would call him on it. Most likely.
The short blonde made a face, but nodded and looked at Carl, the vastly muscled dark skinned man who sat several places down, across the table.
"Yes. Carl, do you know where that went?"
He nodded, taking a small bite of something made of corn and meat strips.
"Yeah, in my things. I can get it now." He started to move, but Nate held out a hand stopping him.
"After you finish eating. We'll have time during the second meal. It's a good idea. We need another building project soon too. I know it's hard in the snow, but we have to have the space. I'm pretty sure I had sex with someone last night that just kind of rolled into my bed. A woman too, I think, though it was hard to tell." He didn't seem to be joking either, from the worried expression on his face in the dim light.
Lucky him. Except for the fact that he was gay, and didn't really like the female half of the species for that kind of thing.
Jake still hadn't gotten any at all.
Next to him Colleen snorted, "and here I was going to make a big speech to Henry about how Human women weren't all loose and diseased."
She didn't explain it, but no one asked her too. They also didn't talk about the Denari. That part was a little odd, but it was like they figured that Jake had already handled that, or something, sending them away. He hadn't though, he was just insisting that they come back with a crew that could get along. They might not be able too, but if
that was the case he was going to have to work something else out.
Starting out by killing a bunch of them couldn't help though, could it?
After dinner Jake moved into the kitchen to start on dishes with the first half of the after crew. They had to pack in tight at the sink and work together to get the job done by the light of a single candle. It wasn't easy to get things clean that way, but there was still cooking going on the whole time and that was even harder. He wasn't needed for anything else, so, less than fun job or not, he did what he could. Most of the people with him were older this time, and surprisingly Nate was at the end, drying the plates and glasses with a cloth.
No one spoke as they worked though, silence being the habit now.
The funny thing about it all wasn't that Nate was working on dishes, but that so many people just kind of faded into the woodwork after each meal. Really, what else did they have to do? Listen to the radio? It was something that he hadn't had a chance to really do yet, being too busy, but apparently a lot of them snuck down to the radio room when they could, and just sat for hours, listening to old music and earnest sounding military men and women talking about all that was being done to save not only the nation, but the world. They even had commercials for chocolate bars that no one could afford to buy.
It was meant to prop up people's morale and probably worked to an extent. The other part of that was the regular promise they made, at least once a day. Make it to the House and everyone would have a place.
This was policy it seemed. The President himself had signed off on it. Like they worked for the man? It would have been handy if they'd asked first. For all the Military knew the House wasn't there anymore at all. Especially since they were guiding not only the survivors of North America straight toward them, but also every insane cannibal within earshot of a radio. Because, of course, that made sense. Kind of concentrate all of them into one spot so that they could be killed more easily without all the pesky hunting first.
Jake thought he understood the reason, which was all about hope, but he didn't think that the Military was really paying attention to what people were willing to do now. They'd been getting a slow trickle of people already, even in the winter. Once things warmed up, there would be more. A lot more. Their facility couldn't easily hold anyone else though. If they wanted to be ready something was going to have to give.
"Can we use explosives to dig through the frozen ground, do you think?" He just asked the room at large, the person next to him, Carley, jumping a little.
"I..." She stopped for a second then shrugged. "Not my area, but it makes sense. Then if we have the wood ready and some of that earth moving equipment the Teleporters said they could bring in, yeah, it should work. Where do we get the explosives though? Make them?"
Jake didn't know. The closest he'd ever come to making an explosive involved some duct tape and twenty sparklers when he was thirteen. Still, they had a lot of people around Which meant that someone had to know about that kind of thing, didn't they? If not, maybe they could find a book. That or get with one of the other groups. It had to be possible.
The meeting after the meals was ended went quickly, with most of the new people surprised that they were being put to work, but not totally displeased by the idea. It seemed most of them had kind of felt at loose ends, like they weren't being take seriously. Jake asked about explosives, and mentioned why they needed them, but no one volunteered either a special ability to make things explode, or that they had their grandmother's secret plastic explosive recipe. It seemed odd to him, but Back Before most people didn't exactly have that kind of thing on tap, did they? How often did it come up?
Jake got himself to bed after that, tucked into the cold third room next to Vicki. She didn't need heat, being a Valkyrie and he was young and healthy enough to just cuddle under a blanket next to her. She was his girlfriend after all, though she refused to do anything sexual with him in a crowded room. That was what she said at least. Other people did, for hours each night, but Jake had kind of learned to tune them out.
It was a survival strategy. Otherwise he couldn't have taken the stress of it all. Colleen had taken to sharing the bed with them, even though she was thin and small enough to be in one of the warmer spaces. Most nights she was sleeping tucked between Vicki and him, at least until the Val got up in the middle of the night to start her day. She was working a half shift then, making ammo.
Her kind didn't need a lot of sleep. About two hours a day.
It was when she left that Colleen made a point of moving closer to him, just holding him as he slept, for warmth. He thought that was why she'd been doing it at least. Until her hand found the front of his pants. It... wasn't unpleasant, and he did like her, as complicated as the whole thing with her dead sister was. They'd been friends too, after a fashion, for a long time. Vicki and he weren't really going out even, so that wasn't the problem. No, it was that, as far as he could tell the girl next to him was asleep still.
Acting out a dream or something.
Frustrating, but he pulled back, so that she wasn't in contact with him as she twitched and moved in ways that would have been pretty nice if he could have justified taking advantage of her to himself. It really wasn't fair, but he just waited, until finally she woke up enough to find him in the dark and hold him close again. If she remembered the dream at all she didn't mention it, but it was time to be asleep. You couldn't see much in the dark room.
He was hard though, which was a bit embarrassing. Mainly because she was pressed against him so solidly she would have been able to tell if she was awake.
Jake finally managed to get back to sleep himself though, the room filled in the dark with soft snoring, and got up well before first light, taking the time to make sure the fires were lit in the empty bath houses and to start the forge back up. He'd put a large chunk of hardwood on the coals to keep it slowly smoldering all night, so he wouldn't have to start it again the next day, since it could take hours to do that. This way it was about forty minutes of work instead. He was out alone, which was against the rules, but there was no one to tell him it was wrong. Besides, the work really did have to get done.
On the good side, when the attack came he was awake and already outside, so was able to see the torches in the hands of the people that ran from the woods. Fast. So either not human, or those crazy strong and fast cannibals Sammi and Heather had been talking about. Windigo. He ducked down, since they weren't zombies and would know where he was as soon as he fired. That meant he needed to move, because chances were they'd have guns too. There looked to be five with fire, but that didn't mean that was all of them.
Taking a slow breath he let go of everything, not really carrying about anything for the moment, Jake waited for them to get closer. They were running to him after all, so it was going to happen. When the first one got about fifty feet away he pulled the trigger on his nine, making a female head explode. At least the hair was long, which didn't really mean it was a girl he realized.
The second one went down just as fast, but the others managed to throw their fires at the house, one of them actually reaching the roof.
Jake had to deal with the threat in front of him first and couldn't yell fire at all, since it could cause zombies to join the fight, which he really didn't need. He missed the last two men, who rolled and flopped in the snow in strange patterns that didn't make sense. It worked well he realized, because he just couldn't predict what they were going to do. He had to switch to his back-up weapon, rather than reload, which made them think he was out of bullets, at least the one on the left screamed to the other as they closed on him. It made him wince, and got that one shot first, the second hitting him hard and stripping the gun from his hand which got dropped.
Jake felt the bite and a chill ran through him, nearly making him freeze as terror pulsed and flesh broke, until he remembered that this being wasn't a zombie. He pulled his new knife from its sheath, and stabbed the man as he tried for his throat, lying on top of him.
The man finally stopped biting, trying to scream, which got him stabbed again, inexpertly in the throat for his trouble.
Thankfully everyone else had realized what was going on and were trying to fling water on the torch that was slowly staring to work on the roof. It wasn't a vast fire, but no one was in love with the idea it seemed, which got most of them out to at least try to do something pretty quick.
Unfortunately the noise they made doing it was enough to get a rather decent stream of undead started toward them. He was almost out of ammo, though he found his forty-five and managed to reload both weapons as the shamblers crossed the field from the woods. They were coming from the road too, of course. No doubt from the back of the house at the same time. It made sense, but was a pain in the behind. Jake waited again, choosing his shots, and then pulling back just before he was down to three bullets.
Others were on the porch, most of them still half asleep, but holding weapons. A few even had axes with them, to take the heads as soon as a zombie went down. That, or maybe they intended to fight that way, if they had too. It was a bad plan overall, but not everyone had a gun. It was better than nothing and would allow the others a chance to run and hide if it got that bad.
It really wasn't though. It was a good fifty undead, and coming in a tight pattern, but he had four of them down already and just needed to get to work on the others as soon as he had ammo. His left arm hurt in an arched shape bite, but it was still dark enough no one could see it to question him on it. They'd have to think it was from a zombie after all. He would have. Hopefully they'd let him explain before shooting him.
On the porch he grabbed new ammo from Molly, who looked scared, a bit pale and very determined. She had her own rifle with her, but it was too dark to see anything. Jake knew that it would be best to wait on the porch, but something told him he had to rush out and fight at a closer distance for some reason. He didn't know why though, but did it, moving fast, whispering for everyone to hold their fire.