by P. S. Power
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 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 mopped 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, stuff 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, 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, 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 ti
me 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 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 came 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 complaints.
The modern American totally owned that.
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.
In the little metal shed, a white colored aluminum thing with a metal roof in shining silver, Burt showed him the saws, starting with the funny looking two handled ones he'd stolen from a historical reenactment in town at the Fort Jessup monument.
“I also stole all their blacksmithing gear. If we can work that out, smithing, we'll have a lot of things faster. We can work on that in the winter though. Right now we need even more basic stuff.” He pointed to the saws and described the pit set up they'd want for making planks and even parting out firewood rounds.
The chainsaws all worked, and Burt showed him how to start and use one, then had him do it, getting that Jake learned best by doing things himself. It had taken a long time for that to sink in, that he learned by doing, but Burt had picked up on it in weeks.
The action of pulling the cord felt a lot easier than he thought it would. Too easy almost. The roar of the yellow and green saw made him feel uneasy at first, but that wouldn't stop him from using it. The days of balking because you weren't perfectly comfortable with something had left a long time ago. It felt like forever. A lifetime at least.
The old man didn't make mention of it, but fuel would be the big issue. Hence the human powered saws being needed. No one would like the additional effort, both not wanting the extra work even at the best of times and because everything was harder on short rations like they'd been. Jake was already dreading the idea and they hadn't even gotten the first log in.
They did have axes, nearly a dozen in different sizes, wood awls, which Jake thought looked a bit like giant Hershey's kisses, all silver and pointed on one end and a lot of sledge hammers to hit them with. With all this and the big metal cart, they should be able to do something.
“OK, I'll start working up people tonight. We'll try for the first load tomorrow, unless we get word that someplace needs to be cleaned out. My team's up for all that this week.” Not that anything would come in. After the initial rush and the freakishly scary first two months, things died back a lot. The weak had already been turned and the people they had left knew how to avoid zombies. If there was anything suspected the other groups tended to send word over to their place, but really, no one had even come by for nearly three weeks. Everyone protected themselves and set watches, but theirs was the main group that actively took out threats in town. They had to, because of the burners. If they left any zombies for too long, the wacky end times Christians would set the houses around them on fire. Regardless of there being living people in them or not.
The older man sighed and gave Jake a funny look, “You know Jake I should have mentioned this to you a month ago. I keep bringing it up with Nate, and he keeps putting me off. I think it's the fear. Well, I can't fault him there, I don't want to go and do it either, but we have to. Either we do it now or in December after the kids and small women have died f
rom the cold.”
Thinking about it for a second Jake just shrugged.
No one really asked the cleaners to do anything but guard and kill. That was considered their job after all. An important one too. Still, he didn't feel like freezing or eating uncooked food all the time. Warmth meant life. So did water and even an old video game freak like him knew that being clean did too. That meant warm water, if not hot. Right now it was all he could do to make himself wash in the cold ground water each morning and it was toasty out still, being August. The warmest part of the year. Some of the people kind of smelled already, skipping out on being clean for comfort's sake. That or laziness. So stoves and water heaters. Along with rules requiring them to be used. He asked Burt for a list of materials. Jake went into town pretty often, so it wouldn't hurt to scout things out.
“I can do better than that, I have a book inside that has plans. You should read it as soon as possible. That way we can work out all that will be needed.”
On their way back they carried a heavy metal pole, once a flagpole from the local middle school, but now it was going to serve as the base for their new wind tower. Strong, but a bitch to move. It must have weighted close to two hundred pounds. That was what they were doing when Carley started laying into him.
She ran at him, which made him want to kill her by reflex, but luckily his hands were full. She didn't deserve to die yet. Not for running.
Zombies didn't care if you ran at all, so in principle, Jake didn't either. It was her raised voice that really concerned him. True, they were probably safe here, this area was pretty clean, but why take chances? The words she used weren't that rough, but sounded angry and would carry. For the moment Jake managed to ignore her and work with Burt to carefully take the metal pole off their shoulders. It dropped to the ground with a soft clang, landing on the dirt. The noise got Carley to pay attention though, and stop talking for a few seconds as Jake turned to her.
