by P. S. Power
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 from 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.
He held up his left hand, the right instantly finding the weapon on his hip and drawing it. That, more than the pole dropping, helped silence the good looking woman. She had shoulder length hair, blond and a little curly, even without perms and all that, and devastating light blue eyes. Of the nearly forty odd women at the house she was easily the best looking. The
kind that would have easily made the college cheerleading squad, if it hadn't been for the militant feminism keeping her out of such things. Her good looks were one of the only things that had kept her alive so far. More than once he'd thought of killing her himself. Maybe today if she pushed things? It wasn't like he had a real use for the woman. She made a point of telling him he'd better not ask her for sex months before, so it wouldn't cost him anything personally to get rid of her.
Probably not though.
Having a bad attitude didn't get you killed. Not by Jake. Raising your voice while you did it would and Carley had seen him do just that three times in the last few months. It was a rule. His rule, but everyone else followed it or he shot them. In the head.
“Carley, I don't care if you feel like you need to take me to task for something, but would you be willing to not scream while you do it? If you make too much noise, I'll have to kill you.” His voice went lower than it had to, because loud people sometimes shut up once you pointed it out and worked harder if you whispered. Carley wasn't insane yet, just annoying.
“I can't believe you nearly let Molly be killed just because she won't sleep with you, you pig!” Carley whispered at least, so Jake put the handgun away. For now.
“Um, Sorry? I don't see how my saving her life today counts as nearly letting her be killed. She lost it and started screaming at the wrong time. Not my fault. Even if it was, why would her not sleeping with me be the problem? None of the women here sleep with me. That hasn't stopped me from trying to protect them all.” Jake felt baffled, more than a little. Molly was telling people that he nearly got her killed? And that it had anything to do with sex? That was hardly fair of her, was it?
What the fudge?
That thought distracted him, but he made it stop. Fudge wouldn't be found for a long time, if ever again. He didn't even like it that much. Oh, sure, Jake would have killed a person for a square of it at the moment, but that wasn't the point.
Carley wasn't convinced of his good will for some reason and kept after him. And after him. Finally, after about five minutes of griping at him, Jake had to move to help Burt put the windmill on the pole, which turned out to be simple, just sliding it all into place through some metal brackets that would let it swivel a bit. Then they had to try and stand it up, that would be harder.
“Carley,” Jake said, trying to get her attention with a hoarse whisper.
“Don't you interrupt me!” She yelled at him, her voice going just high enough to make him glare at her and roll his eyes.
She fell silent then at least. She may hate the “patriarchal machine” and him for being part of it, meaning he had a penis, but she respected the fact that there were rules, once reminded. Jake pointed to the metal in front of them.
“Sorry, not trying to ruin your misplaced rant, but could you help us set this up? It's kind of important.”
Trying to do all the jobs, except cleaning out nests of undead, was something Carley actually did. She didn't want anyone to think women couldn't do their part. Jake didn't care, as long as they got help. Feminism was a stupid idea now though. Moronic. Not because women weren't equals or anything like that, but because they were, obviously.
It was a simple fact in this world. Complaining about not having the same rights as anyone else was close to insanity right now. He let it go, because it got the woman to work and she rarely complained about manual labor. That might look weak after all.
If that was the way she really thought. Jake felt himself slide, as far as his opinion of her again. Not because of her looks, it was just that he couldn't really know her heart, could he? She acted like a feminist and seemed to be acting tough, but that didn't mean it was what she was really thinking, did it?
They had to kind of wedge themselves into place and found that they didn't have enough strength to do it, not with just the three of them. After a minute Jake just jogged to the house and stuck his head in the door.
“Hey, everyone, come quick and help set up the new wind turbine!” He said, urgent but soft. He never yelled anymore. Not unless he was ready to shoot someone. Even then it was rare. Just killing them tended to work well enough. Most of them got that they'd displeased him somehow then.
At first no one came, but then Lois did and she brought two kids with her, Sammi, a fairly cute eleven year old girl and her “brother” Ken, who wasn't related to her at all. He had dark skin and hair, compared to her lily white complexion and slightly Asian looking features. One of the new families that had sprung up in the days following... things.
Ken didn't talk at all.
Jake liked him.
A few minutes later others started coming out, Jose, the Mexican guy that ran the farm operations first. He didn't speak much English, and only a few people here could talk to him at all, Nate mainly. Jose got things done by grabbing people, putting them where he wanted and pointing a lot. It worked. He didn't seem to get what they were going to do at first, but the second they started working on it, he ran away. It made the people on the porch watching laugh.
Holsom and his group.
All men, all big enough to be helping lend some muscle and all nearly worthless, at least when the ex-cop was around. Jake didn't know for certain, but the men may all have been ex-cops of one kind or another. Jail guards or something. They'd all had short hair to start with, and seemed to have that narcissistic attitude that all police and prison guards project as a rule. Well, the ones on television had. Real ones might be different. It wasn't fair to compare them all to Holsom, or even the Westwood force.
“Trust a wet back to avoid honest work.” Holsom said, getting a laugh from his buddies, none of them seeing the irony of it at all.
Freaking morons.
Less than a minute later Jose came back carrying a length of rope, which he tied quickly to the pole, wrapping it around once Jake saw, not tied at all. So that it could be released easily by letting go of one side. Smart. He pointed at the men on the porch and pantomimed pulling on the rope. Holsom looked ready to shoot him for it, hand going to his side, where he wore a gun.
“Fuck...” The words came clearly, and loudly, from the ex-cop. Too loud.
Yet.
Jake didn't say anything, he just drew down and started to pull the trigger. Being too loud was a good enough reason to take the man out. If he went for a weapon that would work too. Jake had a good line on the man's head already, which got the larger man to freeze.
Darn.
Other people saw him go quiet too. Maybe if he asked the man to be loud again that would work? Jake tried to think of something fast, but Holsom just didn't do anything.
Just then Nate walked out the back door of the house, the screen making a soft scritching sound that riveted everyone's attention pretty quickly. His brown eyes sized up the situation and stared at Derrick Holsom with a soft smile. He spoke so softly that Jake, only fifty feet away, could barely make out the words.
“Got a little loud there Derrick? Now, let's see about helping get this windmill in place before dark, shall we?” The tenor of the words was calm. Relaxed even. Gentle.
That quality made Nate seem weak to some people, but it meant that their house didn't have to get into a fight with everyone on the planet for each scrap of bread either. They managed to get along with most of the other groups, even the ones that feared and hated each other. Nate did something that Holsom just couldn't manage, he listened to people. Then, if he heard a good idea, he took action. Normally at least.
The firewood thing was a bit odd, but Burt probably had that situation right. Nate really feared the zombies. He always had. That didn't make him a coward though. He walked past the group of armed men and walked toward the rope that Jose held in his leather work glove.
Finally, one by one the men on the porch started to move. Jake didn't put his weapon away until Holsom started walking. Even then he watched the man, ready to draw if he had to. His decision to kill the man wasn't personal, but who would blame him for trying to t
ake Jake out first? Probably no one at all. Jake just wasn't as popular with the ladies. Or the other men. The guy who'd shoot you for speaking too loud generally wasn't going to be your best bud. It was kind of a shame really.
Once they had help it took less than three minutes to get the whole thing into place. Then they all held it while Burt ran around putting the braces up. The operation was finished about ten minutes later and everyone wondered off again. Everyone but Sammi, Lois and Ken.
Sammi stood next to the nervous looking kitchen lady, who eyed Jake like he might molest the kids or something if she blinked too long. Or shoot them. Lois really didn't care for him for some reason. Maybe he needed to do more work in the kitchen? It could be that she thought he was freeloading like Holsom, since she did most of her work there, meaning she wouldn't see what he did at all. Food was important, so he nodded to himself. That was doable.
The girl tilted her head at him just slightly, “Would you have really killed him just for cursing?”
Jake shook his head and spoke softly back to her, a small smile on his face.
“It wasn't the bad language, use all the bad words you want. I don't even care if you want to use them to make fun of me. It was the sound level. If he wanted to complain about having to work like everyone else, but in a whisper, I wouldn't care at all. Especially if he did it while actually helping. Yelling right now puts everyone in danger still. It's just hard for people to control sometimes. Though no one should be complaining about work right now, there's way too much to do to waste time on things like whining.”
