by P. S. Power
"No, Jake, you can't leave again." He spoke the words softly to no one, leaving the smaller man behind him. You were either a soft spoken now, and reasonable person, or things fell apart, and then the undead would descend upon you and eat your flesh. Until you died.
If you were one of the lucky ones.
Those less lucky? They turned. Into walking, mindless, shambling things with only one true desire. They became everyone's worst nightmare, and would go around seeking the tender flesh of those they once called friend.
That wasn't the real problem right now. Or, it was, of course, always, but that wasn't why he was shaking slightly, in the cold morning air.
It was simply that he knew, on a very deep level, that if Jake left again, the people of their group wouldn't last a month.
It had happened before, and that had not gone well. Without the knowledge that they had a strong leader, people simply fell apart. They'd all started to think that they were good enough to be in charge. Unfortunately, as it was before the fall when the dead rose to kill them all, those that thought they were the most able, and suited to lead, were often the worst at it.
Jake didn't even think he was a leader. It was nearly a blind spot for him.
It made a vast difference in how everything worked. A thing that was probably the reason most of them were still alive. The man never asked for anything that wasn't for other people. Not even once in the time that they'd been friends. His every waking moment was spent on everyone else. Without end, or reservation.
Plus, he made Nate feel safe.
Rubbing at his hairy chin, knowing that he had to do something about the whole thing, Nathaniel Burns walked slowly back toward the large white porch of the place they all lived. Their home. It was hard to do at the moment, since everyone was feeling a little down, after all that had happened. More than that, a lot of them were so scared that it sent a chill of terror through him just getting close to the place.
Not that he could blame them. It was nearly impossible for anyone sane to feel good about the world at the moment. Everyone kept dying. Over and again. It was so bad that he barely felt it anymore when they lost people. If they weren't close personal friends, he hardly noticed now.
That was a sad thing. There was supposed to be pain when anyone died. It was the natural order of things.
Worse, for him, so many of the people inside the place were... Loud. Not externally, which would have them shot before they could call death down upon them, but inside. Where only he could hear them. It was dismal.
The first wave of things would be in the kitchen, of course. That was never too bad, but it existed, all the same. Little Sammi, the kitchen girl would be there, and her brother Ken... They were quiet enough, most of the time. Inside, too.
Today was really no major exception. As the aluminum screen door squeaked open, he rapped out a message on the hard wood of the sturdy door beneath it. The entry code. Without it, the door wouldn't be opening. It was one way people tried to stay safe now. If he tried to simply walk in, people would panic at first, until they got who it was. That always hit him like a wall of pain when it took place, so Nate knocked, even at his own house.
Inside, there were three bodies, working away already, to make certain they'd have a nice lunch in a few hours. It was these three that fed them all each day. Doing work that should have been shared between many hands. They never complained about it, but it was far from fair. Short of risking a confrontation it would be hard to get volunteers. Everyone was too tired, all the time now. Drained by their constant fear.
Ken, the young black kid, turned to look at him. Unsmiling. He had a knife in his hand, and was ready to use it. To take it, and start hacking at the tall light skinned man's neck. Even after he saw who was there. At first. It wasn't anything too overt, but the mental shift was a good enough thing to see happening. Ken, unlike most of the adults, was ready to fight. To protect Sam, and even Lois. Even if it meant dying himself. His family now. There were no words, or even a smile, but his features relaxed, and the plan he'd been working on, to dash across the room, slashing at the intruder's jugular faded. There was a single nod then, and he went back to what he was doing. Peeling potatoes.
It was Sammi, the youngest person in the house, that spoke to him. Her words were lilting and strange. Old seeming, compared to what should have been there. She was about eleven or twelve he thought. Or, if what had been heard from her mind was right, a hundred and forty-six. It was one of the things that truly convinced him that his marbles had dropped out of his skull.
"Nate, you look upset. Is there anything I can do?"
That the young girl felt it was her responsibility to hold everything together was both heartening and soul flaying at the same time. It was his job to protect them. They called him the leader after all. It was a thing he kept failing at.
"I... Might need to talk to some people later. It's..." He didn't want to complain about Jake. Not again. The man did more than anyone to help keep them together. When the hard work needed to get done, he was always the one stepping forward. The first one out the door in the morning, and often the last one in at night. With very little rest in between.
Most of them just hid.
They were all so scared now. Jake was too, but there was a strength inside of him that transcended what was normal. A mountain of pain, and sorrow too, but rising above it all was an undying desire to help the rest of them survive. No matter what it cost him.
It clearly did too.
That feeling of goodness and concern had simply been pushed to the breaking point, and far past it, several times now. It wasn't the Zombies at their door that were doing it either. It was that he felt unloved. It sounded weak, and worse, there was no fair way to tell anyone about it. Not really. They needed Jake to be the strong leader that he was. Seeing him as human, and as fragile as the next person... That just didn't even occur to most of them. That he was as close to committing suicide as he was at that moment... It was the kind of thing that had to be hidden.
If he did that, Nate sort of thought that everyone in the place would follow. One way or the other.
Looking across the room at the big metal woodstove, a real cook stove that had a build-in oven, Nate tried to recover before the whole thing spilled out.
Then, for some stupid reason, the words just came out anyway. It felt odd, since he was really trying to hide it from the girl in front of him.
"It's Jake. He's going to leave again. I was talking to him, and I can tell. I think for good this time." There, it was a dark bit of news, and Lois, who was in her gray apron across the room, in the same dress that she wore for working in most days, chopped up something for stew. Carrots, he thought.
Sammi, little girl or not, took a deep breath, her mind going nearly blank. That was a thing that happened a lot there. The people with them were all survivors. Some of them though had seen a lot more than the others had. Those with the worst traumas often stopped thinking at times. Mainly so they could hide from the pain of the world and make it from one moment to the next.
Her mind flat and calm or not, the girl screwed up her face. It seemed...
Annoyed.
"Of course he is. Can anyone blame him for it? We promised him that he'd be treated more politely when he returned to us a few months ago, and since then... I fear that many of the ladies here have been less than gentle with him. Especially those that were once with Derrick Holsom. We truly need to find someone that will sleep with him. Everyone is simply too afraid to, I think." There was little girl eye rolling then. "Which is ridiculous. Anyone should see that he'd be less likely to hold them to the rules if they were his main source of love and attention than the other way around. No one ever claimed that human's were universally intelligent however."
It was true enough, and at the actual heart of the problem. The man was constantly being set back from the people he protected. It shouldn't have been happening, but every day he was pushed a little further away from the rest o
f them. Sex was a symptom, not the actual problem, but Jake having a close friend or two wouldn't hurt things at all.
To his surprise, without indicating anything internally, Lois turned, a soft smile on her face.
"Jake is a hard man, Sam. You can't ask anyone to cozy up to someone that might have to be the one to kill them later. Really, it would be an unkindness to him. It might not be fair, but right now, perhaps the best we can do is just let him hover over us all, ready to rain down destruction, as he sees fit?"
That... Nate could feel it too, really. That didn't mean it was the best thing for anyone else. It was a safe feeling, knowing that there was someone around that he could lean on. A person that didn't look down on him for being weak and afraid. That left him feeling safe. Protected from the worst of the world outside.
If Jake were only willing to give men a chance, the guy could have gotten laid that night. It was another trouble that he personally was having on the issue.
Nate was, he knew, more than a little attracted to the man.
Not just because he represented protection, and life, either. That was a big part of it, but there was more. For one thing, he was clean. All the time. That was no small mark in his favor, now. Plus, though a bit thin at the moment, he got a lot of exercise, and looked hard, and tight. More than anyone else around.
Nate had never gotten a hint from him that he was interested in anything other than women though, so he buried that part of what he felt. A lifetime of experience had taught him that one.
If you liked someone, you had to be very careful. Men that weren't gay would freak out, if they thought you were coming on to them. They could, at least. It was best to go slowly, or, if he wasn't insane, read their minds to find out what they liked first. That was how he'd noticed Chris, really.
His boyfriend.
Or at least three night a week booty-call. The man had been standing around in the living room one day, talking to his girlfriend, Rita, and thinking about going down on Nate. It had been a bit of a shock, but feeling more than a bit alone himself, he'd walked over and simply asked the man if it would be possible for them to get together. Even Rita had just shrugged about it. She was still in love with someone else, after all, and with Chris mainly because she liked sex. It wasn't love, or even a sense that she wanted to be protected. Not by him.
No, that was the strange part. A thing that was close to insane, in a way. She really wanted that to be done by Jake. Even though she was afraid of him to the point of horror, and felt enough hatred toward him that it made her thoughts on the matter nearly impossible to tolerate. When things were going badly though, her natural inclination was to hide, right behind him.
A lot of people were like that now, though. It wasn't even just geared toward Jake, either. Many of them had ideas that weren't exactly well balanced. Superstition was common, or the belief that they had more than human powers. Over half the people there were like that. Including him, apparently. At least he was in good company that way.
Sammi shook her head a little at the kitchen lady. Her face went slightly too hard, given the discussion they were having.
"I disagree, Lois. What's being done here is exactly the wrong thing. We should be protecting him, not forcing a good person to do all the dirty work. We've made him our scapegoat, after a fashion. Letting ourselves blame him for what we make him do, so that our hands and minds can stay clean. It's a failure on our part. Worse, we aren't giving him the normal perks of that kind of job. Most men that are placed in that position are given most anything they want. We haven't even managed to get him a few smiles, or kind pats on the back. What reason does he have to stay here with us? To gather a full weekly allotment of scorn and derision in each hour that passes? Most here would leave given the same thing, even if it meant dying."
There was, as Nate had noticed before, too much wisdom in the youthful sounding words.
Not that what he'd thought he'd heard before was correct. She couldn't be nearly as old as all that. Shaking his head, he didn't let anything else show on the outside. No one wanted to think their figurehead of a leader had truly lost it. Knowing that kind of thing would probably end them all nearly as fast as Jake abandoning them.
"I... Agree Samantha. It's just not a thing that you, or I, can fix. The people that could, well, most of them won't, for one reason or another."
He looked up, when a body entered the kitchen door. The face attached to the man looked normal enough, but Troy was seething inside. Ready to fly off the handle and kill everyone. Again. Nate had to sooth the man at least twice a week. It was really just cabin fever, and not anything more than that, but the press of bodies in the place had hit some people harder than others. Combine that with a total fear of even going into the back yard, and it left several people on edge.
Nate smiled at him, knowing from experience that it was the right thing to do, even as a wave of anger slapped him in the face from that direction. Ken gripped the knife a little harder, ready to kill the man if he started anything. He wouldn't though. Troy was a decent guy, and no matter what he felt at the moment, wasn't a killer.
Really, he was just bored, and didn't have anything to do.
"Nate, I need to talk to you." The aggravation was so sharp in his tone, signaling that the man seemed ready to hurt someone. Ken got ready and even started to move, but managed to stop when Sammi put her hand out a little. As if she knew who the real target of Troy's upset would be.
That would be, at a guess, Sandy.
The woman was a never ending source of joy and delight to the world, after all. Nate would have thought of her as a shrew, before the world had basically ended. Now, unfortunately, a combination of constant fear, close quarters, and unwillingness to even go out to the bathhouse to wash regularly had made her harder to deal with. That, plus her charming habit of aggressively pushing people.
Not asking them to do things when it wasn't their turn, or even bickering. No, that could have been smoothed over with a few explanation, and possibly a hug or two.
Just walking up to them, and shoving with both hands, putting all her strength into the move. It was her way of letting off steam, but they'd talked about it before. It was violent, and too many people there were on edge for it not to backfire on her eventually.
She'd even tried to push Ken like that. A boy that barely spoke at all, and who hadn't been anywhere close to being in her way. He'd punched her in the stomach, several times, and once to the jaw, taking the thin, but decently tall, woman to the ground. Luckily Sam had gotten him not to kick her to death. The boy had been shocked about not being punished for it, but no one there thought it was his fault. Except for him. He'd felt guilty afterward.
They didn't need things like that there.
Nate nodded, having picked up the scene from the other man's thoughts. If that was real. It was right so often that Nate had just started to go with it, even if it was just his imagination putting things together for him.
It seemed that Sandy had a new tactic now, and had kneed him in the groin. Without warning or provocation. The man was pretending that he wasn't hurt, not letting himself double over or clutch at his crotch, but it was still there. Pain strong enough that nate had to marvel a bit at the fellow's restraint in the matter. Anyone else there would have been fighting, if they were that angry to start with, and anyone did that to them. Nate would have been himself, and he did his best to be non-violent, whenever possible.
Not wanting to seem like a freak, acting like he could read minds, he moved closer to the man. Troy was another one that needed to bath more. Justine and Jake, with help from Burt, had put in two, wonderful, warm water bathhouses out back. They were huge things, made in an attractively rustic style. Almost like something you might find at a nice camp ground. They were warm enough inside, and the weather hadn't gotten even really cold yet. That wasn't the problem though. No one was refusing to bathe because the situation was a tiny bit more primitive than they liked.
People were si
mply afraid to go outside, since doing that could mean having to face off with the walking dead. It was a real enough thing for all of them that everyone got the idea. So most did their best to wash up in the little bathroom on the first floor, rather than use the proper facilities out back. The deodorant was gone now, so sketchy washing wasn't going to cut it. Not in deep winter when the press of bodies meant you were going to smell everything, all the time. It really hadn't been for the last months, but now it was getting even worse.
It was just so hard to tell everyone that they had to be clean all the time. An insult. One made worse by the fact that from time to time he avoided going outside for the exact same reason. Sure, he had a small pistol on his side now, but that didn't mean he was ready to do battle, did it? The dead were hard to slow down and more difficult to stop. You had to hit them in the head to really do anything, and that was nearly impossible for him. His hands just shook too much when monsters were coming for him.
Troy glared at the room, angry with the world, but managed to take a breath. To try and fight for calm, even if it was slow in coming. Trying to be understanding, even as he wanted to cry in agony.
"Sandy again. This time she kneed me right in the boys. I've been doing what you asked, and trying to avoid her, but that isn't working." He was thinking about broaching the subject of the death penalty, but knew that simple assault wasn't going to be enough to get a good person like Nate to throw in with that sort of thing. It was tempting to just kill her anyway, but the man knew that he didn't have that kind of thing in him. Not after everything.
Nate grimaced, not really knowing what to do either. The woman created problems, all the time, and not just with the one other person. Most of the women she harassed didn't even mention it. They just lived with an extra source of dread in their lives. Another thing for them to hide from, except that they were all trapped with her. It was like a bad prison movie, where the bully was always right there, and you couldn't escape them.