by P. S. Power
She didn't speak, no one did for a long time, until a slightly blue man from the back came forward, staring a smile on his own lips.
"Ah. I see?" It sounded funny, a thick accent along with a question where it didn't belong. He was dressed in white loose clothing and a headdress, with a single brown dot between his eyes.
"You are the exile?"
He didn't seem upset about it though, just like he was clarifying something that had happened while he wasn't there.
"Nope. I'm Mickey. Not exiled at all." He looked at everyone and let the joy within him spread to the room, let it touch them all, radiating from every cell in his being, resonating with one single thought, carrying peace and love with it.
This time they got it. At least some of them did. They started to bow, a few going to their knees in supplication. He walked over to them, pulling them up into hugs, patting backs and smiling radiantly the whole time. Like he used too. He'd forgotten what it was like being him.
"Now, I believe there are some tests in order? Shall we see to them? For real this time?" The last time they'd been faked, of course, now they needed something a little more certain.
The Grand Comtrice came forward first, with Terras the T'srith leader pulling his own blade and slicing her palm for her, to make certain it was being done for real. A lot more blood than she normally would have used too, but the stocky man held her hand up and invited people to look at it for a while first, as it pooled in her palm. She didn't wince about it though, just looking scared.
"Don't worry Debbie. It's alright." Taking her hand Mickey let his true self flow into her, the woman yelped, but that was fine now. There were no zombies within ear shot.
Her eyes rolled back into her head and she shook, given a real and proper reading this time, one so obvious that no one would doubt it. Well, they wouldn't doubt that she was at least faking it better at any rate.
"He... he..." She stopped even trying to speak for a long time, gasping instead.
"This is him. The Very Good Man. There is no doubt. It's so clear..."
Then she wept openly, letting him hold her close, a bit of her blood getting onto his jacket. He didn't mind though. It wasn't new and something had to stop the flow. Looking around he found nothing to do that with, so took his coat off and wrapped her hand.
No one wanted to listen to Lamont or the other Telepaths, but agreed to try other tests on him. The T'srith one was the most interesting, since it involved charging him from across the room, counting on his innate love and goodness to stop three of them from killing him. He just stood smiling the whole time. They were killers, but he knew they wouldn't harm him. So did they it seemed, on some level, because they all stopped short, even though it was considered a sign of weakness to do that.
It was the great and wild looking Denari leader that summed it up though, looking annoyed with everyone else for some reason.
"Good. I'll say it again, it doesn't matter if the smith is anyone else, the man is the only one that's managed to keep our heads out of our collective asses. We were wrong to send him away and should grovel on hands and knees to get him back. Or just possibly, work together like he said in the first place. If I, an old and hidebound Denari can see the truth in it, I can't see why you other people can't. We don't have any tales of some shining one coming to save us, but you do. Tossing him out just wasted time."
He nodded, still happy, waiting for everyone to see him do it.
"Exactly. So we got through this without any killing at all. Wonderful!" He didn't sit, just looking at the new council members sitting up front or whatever they were.
"Am I back in now or do we waste more time with this?" It came out sounding almost like a joke, enough so that people smiled at it, even the ones that were about to lose power.
The woman in the middle looked like a slightly overweight city council member in a green pants suit with curly helmet hair that had to be either a racial trait or a perm. She sighed and looked around, then smiled herself.
"I think we can forgo the vote on that one... Great one. I... Why are there two of you then?"
It made sense to Mickey, though Jake wouldn't have gotten it in a million years.
"Easy enough. Because it will take more than one. I'm here to help get past the end of the old world and Hope is here to make sure the new one is what we really need. That's all. It's a good thing, not a bad one. Now, if everyone is fine with me not being in exile, I need to go back to being how I really am again. Hanging out like this, being kind and loving, will get me killed and if I have it right, that might not be perfect for everyone else?"
No one seemed to object, so he relaxed and let his mind go back into survival mode. Jake seemed to dim somehow and faces that had been happy and smiling suddenly relaxed, a few even seeming sad. Then they started to turn on Sammi, looking angry.
"You said he wasn't The VGM. We exiled him and..." Yalla sounded horrified and had something in her hand. A knife, because if it was a gun she was a fool. The bodies were far too packed into the room for that to work.
The small blond girl froze in place, but Jake didn't.
"Stop it. Minor hiccup. Right now I need an update on how the Linster family is doing and how the supply chain is being developed. Morris?" It seemed right to him, but when the man, dressed in black this time, stepped forward, he didn't look like his normal cheery self at all.
"I've... we've had to steal the raw materials for it. That's been kind of slowing us down. We all know what has to happen, but the second you were out the door everyone decided to try looking out for themselves first." He sounded sincere enough about what his people had been doing, but someone from the back of the room growled, pushing their way forward, fist shaking.
"Damn straight you stole. Thieves the lot of them. Took the sacred iron!" The man was short, not more than three foot five inches, but nearly that wide, all of it muscle it looked like.
"That was meant for Vulcan, not you playing around and spreading it on the ground like you plan. There are no undead underground!" He seemed about ready for violence, and was moving on Morris pretty fast, a weapon coming into his hand. Jake started to draw a weapon himself, but stopped, enough of Mickey's good will toward everyone left to leave the fellow alive.
"Wait." Somehow that got the room to go still.
It was pretty cool.
"You have iron, can you get more? We need... A lot of it. Sulfur too." They could do burns to get carbon from trees, but the other things seemed nearly impossible to get to him.
"You can do that?"
"Aye. We can Good Enough. But it shouldn't be taken by stealth or force." His fist shook on the words and his deep red beard twitched a little. It was tied at the bottom with something that had gems hanging off of it.
"Sorry about that, a communications error. We'd really love to not have the world die because of this. I don't suppose you and your people could forgive us this once? Just for the sake of the future?" He didn't expect much, since the little man sounded pretty angry, but he flapped his arms, making several people back up, and put the hatchet he had out back in his belt.
"Done then. As long as it was just the once. We don't crave the death of the world more than the next, we simply don't wish to see ourselves abused in the fixing."
"Who does? I promise that we'll ask from now on. In fact, why don't you and your people take over as far as that portion of things goes? Collecting the raw materials needed? I'm sorry, I don't know your name yet..."
"Winsor." He didn't add who his people were, and Jake would be damned if he was calling them Dwarves. They could just be "Winsor's people" until he was told otherwise.
Morris swallowed his pride and apologized too, and they actually had raw materials headed to the correct location by the time everyone was ready to leave. It wasn't the only thing they had to do though. They needed teams to start getting things spread too. No one had organized anything, just handing out capsules for people to spread around their own dwellings and encampm
ents. It wasn't a horrible place to start, but it didn't save the world either. Most of the things were just sitting in South America, waiting for someone to do something with them. They hadn't even set up any secondary manufacturing sites.
It was Lamont that informed him of that, not making eye contact at all, as if he figured Jake would be mad at him. It didn't make a lot of sense, so he ignored it and looked around for people he knew, most of whom were at the back of the room, eavesdropping.
"Becky Fines, get a crew together. I'd like you to go with me to the Linster's place and see about setting up a few of these manufacturing plants if possible. Are you up to it?" She might not be, or she might just decide to flip him off, even if he was supposed to be super-Jesus again. It was always a toss-up with her.
"On it. How many people?"
That was a harder one to come to, he just didn't know. Really it would probably have to do with how many of the building units were possible to make and then how much raw material they could get.
When in doubt make stuff up though.
"Ten for now. People willing to relocate and get along with others. They'll be the project leaders, so make sure they're ready for it. Reliable people. Be ready to leave in... An hour." All the Teleporters were gone, but hopefully someone would be back before then. If not they could spend the time picking out where the things would be placed.
The locations needed to be well guarded, but otherwise as random as possible. Like that would be happening. Anyone with half a brain would want these things as far away from themselves as possible. That the main one hadn't been attacked yet was incredible.
He was missing some people though, and it was starting to bug him. His personal group was missing in action except for Colleen and Sammi and for whatever reason the Bawdri girl still hadn't spoken to him. Vicki was somewhere around, but not in the room at all and Heather was down below with her new baby. That was safe enough, most likely, but it would have been nice if they could have looked in on him. Instead of waiting for someone else to come to him, Jake decided to be the one to reach out. It wasn't what he'd been doing for a long time, but it made more sense now, suddenly. It was one of the better things about how he used to be and even though he was trying to claim he was actually changing, the truth was that no matter what he said, just pretending to be nice or in this case all tough, didn't alter who he really was. Then he wasn't totally certain that he hadn't fooled them all with the power of crazy. It just didn't matter now.
It was another odd thing, but Jake had never been down below in the underground rooms since they'd been built. He'd helped on the work and knew the basic layout, but he wasn't really ready for how dark and oppressive they really were. There was no light except for some very weak battery powered LEDs that Burt had rigged up. A single one in each space. It wasn't a lot to work by but would milk the energy they had a lot. The place was also stuffed with people, even in the long hallway that linked the separate rooms together. It was warm enough, but smelled a little of unwashed bodies and mildew.
Tiny eyes stared at him from the dark, children mainly, looking up from the games they played together, seeming scared when they recognized who it was that stood there. The boogey man.
Jake the killer.
If he was a kid he'd have wet himself. These youngsters just got a bit wide eyed and only some of them did that. No one whimpered or made a sound though. That was the rule to surviving Jake, wasn't it?
"Hey, has anyone seen Heather around? I'm just checking up on her. In my group, you know..." For a second he wondered if he needed to explain more, but then they saw Colleen, who smiled and waved at them. That got a happier reaction. She was the music lady after all. Everyone should love her.
One of the girls near the back walked forward, Barb, who wasn't working in the kitchen even though it was her regular job for the dinner meal. Instead she'd been sewing a pair of jeans by hand. Just putting a patch on the behind it looked like.
Jake grinned.
"Hey Barb. Um, I wanted to see Heather? By the way, you should get with Becky Fines, she's putting together group leaders for a really important project. We need ten people, so really, if anyone wants to give it a try, they should. It means traveling some and I can't claim it will be safe, but it really is needed. As in world-saving."
Barb was one of the group that he generally referred to as the "Jake Haters". It was a charming name, but accurate enough. They still needed to work and from everything he could see the sixteen year old in front of him was a natural leader. She might decide that his suggesting that meant he wanted to rape her or something, which was about in line with her normal behavior, but she actually just walked up to him and...
Gave him a hug.
"I bitched them all out you know. When they made you leave. Nate and that creepy old guy. Sammi's grandpa? They should have stood up for you. Jerks. Are you back now? Until they get rid of you again I mean?" It wasn't even said with a sense of irony.
"Nope." Jake said it quietly, but Colleen gasped a little behind him. So did Heather, who'd popped her head out of one of the open doorways.
"You're not?" This came from Colleen, who took his hand, the left one and gripped it so hard he was afraid something was going to break for a few seconds.
"I thought, they said you weren't exiled anymore."
"Right. But it's time to get out and start fixing things. We can't do that from here We need help and I think I know where to start with that." He pointed at Barb.
Barb looked at him funny, but moved closer to him rather than away like she normally did.
"You want me to help with that? Like... Fighting or something?" She sounded scared, but didn't back off.
"No, I want you to run one of those plants that makes the compound that shuts zombies off. I don't know what that takes, it could be really hard and complex, but you can do it. Then we need teams to travel around spreading the stuff. We can't hide here anymore. Not if we want the world to make it."
From down the hall he heard a tiny voice. One he wasn't familiar with at all. It was male, but the kid was new, maybe nine from the look of him.
"I'll do that. Get me the stuff and I'll take it and kill them all."
He sounded fierce though, so much so that Jake just nodded.
"OK. Anyone that wants to help, meet me in the front room in half an hour." Then he turned and gave Heather a hug, which included both a Colleen and a baby, so it had to be done carefully.
Heather smiled at him, but made a face at the same time.
"It's gone Jake."
"What is?"
"The future. I can't see it anymore."
Chapter four
Jake didn't even have to think about what he did next, which was hug the girl again, happily. Smiling he even leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Everyone else seemed to be taken aback by it, so he explained, still using a hushed voice that was probably not needed at all at the House anymore. It was still a good habit, since spreading the compound around the world would mean going where the undead were, so he didn't make himself change up from that.
"Good. We can get by just by being careful, we don't need you to go crazy in order for us to be safe." She had a useful talent, but it could also be a troublesome pain in the rear at times. His words got a smile in response though.
"I... is it OK though? That's the only thing I really do here. I see the future. Crazy Heather and her vague predictions of doom. Without that, what am I?"
Jake shrugged stepping back a little.
"Sane, most likely. Do you know why it stopped? Or when exactly?" There was a chance that it meant something bad, like she wasn't seeing a future at all, because it was about to end for the final time in the next few moments after all. He didn't mention that, since if it was the case, they couldn't stop it.
"About three hours ago. I saw you coming back and telling everyone that you were that guy, the one they all waited for and then everything split into a million lines and vanished. It's so empty now.
My head I mean. Quiet and peaceful." She looked around and glared at someone in the back of the hallway.
"Don't try claiming that my head is always empty either Marta, that isn't the case..." Then she made a face.
"OK, so it isn't all gone, is it? I just saw her saying that and responded... What's going on?"
It was a bit of a puzzle, but Jake had a guess. Heather had always had problems understanding that he could do something truly good or selfless. She just couldn't believe it, so she would kind of ignore those lines, which meant that at times he could change things in a way she couldn't see at all. When he proved that he was The Very Good Man to everyone, it had pushed all the realities into something she wasn't ready for. So it went blank on her.
Not a real respite from the torture her mind had to endure at all. Not a long one anyway. Poor girl.
He didn't explain it though, letting her have what little time of peace she could. Maybe he was wrong anyway. It wasn't like Jake had some kind of actual proof after all.
"Anyway, let's just enjoy this for now and get everything else set up? I need to get with Cam."
That caused him to go back up top, which smelled better if nothing else, fresher and like warm smoke, instead of slightly sour bodies. They needed to make another push for hygiene or else people would get sick, being so close together like that. Being a zombie was off the table for most of them maybe, but that didn't mean the flu couldn't take them all out.
Cam was nowhere to be found though. Not at first. None of the Teleporters were. It was a little worrying since Alyssian, the Bawdri Princess and Sammi's mother, had passed a message to him that said one of Cam's people might be involved in her kidnapping. It wasn't an absolutely certain thing, because Technologists were involved and if anyone could build a machine that let them mimic teleportation it would be them. Still, Morris had been at the meeting, and Morten had been around too. Why wasn't Cam?
She was supposed to be his personal teleportation assistant or whatever they were calling it that week. Or she had been. Hopefully she hadn't gotten in trouble for being too close to him or anything when that whole exile thing had come down. As it turned out she was just working on the mid-day meal in the kitchen, pitching in since she wasn't doing anything else at the moment.
