Dead End (Book 4): A Very Dark Place

by P. S. Power

  "Nope. We just got caught in a snow storm so headed here to make sure you weren't getting pudgy on all the good food. Not that I'd blame you at all. As soon as this is all over I intend to gain a good sixty pounds myself." He grinned, knowing that this work would never really be done. If anything he was losing weight still, which wasn't a good idea. He was a walking "stick figure" already.

  "As to Cam being my girlfriend... I don't know... you sound a little jealous. Are you sure you don't just want me for yourself?" It came from out of the blue and was as close to flirtatious as he'd ever managed with the woman, who actually blushed.

  "Um... are you sure that Vicki would be Ok with that? I mean... You are my favorite guy. You know, since you, Burt and Nate are the only ones that I can stand practically."

  Nate was gay and Burt was pushing sixty, so that was probably her point.

  "I don't know, remember to ask if you see her? She hasn't been around me a lot lately. Mainly my fault, but it's... well, I don't know that it's a real relationship." He shrugged, but Carley made a face.

  "Heh. I was kidding goof ball. Like I'd want to sleep with you." She sounded pissed suddenly, and stormed off, but not too far away, just refilling the hopper on her machine.

  Jake felt bad about having even tried to be nice then, wondering if he should just give up on women altogether. Maybe it was just time? Or past time. He'd pretty much made the decision to really do it for good when she walked back over.

  "Can you take a couple of food assemblers to the House? I haven't had any of your people around to do it that I knew and the others were mainly men, so..." She addressed Cam directly, ignoring Jake.

  The copper haired girl nodded.

  "I think so. Let's do that next, Ba-Dehist?" She said it all while staring at Carley, who looked worried suddenly. It seemed to be what Cam had been going for, because she smiled as they walked over to the section of the cavern the things were held in.

  It was a huge place, the ceiling hundreds of feet overhead and about a mile long it seemed like. It took a bit to get to the food assemblers, but they were smaller and easier to manage than the nano device for some reason, about the size of a large bread box. It meant that Cam could take him and ten of the things with them. They left Carley standing alone, a strange expression on her face as they vanished.

  They came out standing in the back yard of the House, an area kind of designated as a landing zone for incoming teleported goods. They weren't there five seconds when Cam started chuckling. She didn't explain at first, just making sure that they got the things out of the circle they were in. That way no one would land on top of them, which depending on what was incoming could be fatal. A truck was a truck after all and would just crush them if it came at the wrong time. So far there hadn't been a problem yet though. Most of the good Teleporters could tell if something was in the way, if they paid attention. The problem there was that a lot of them didn't bother most of the time and a few seconds of carelessness could be a mess.

  Jake helped move the things fast, doing most of the physical labor himself.

  Once it was safe he looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

  "What?"

  Cam waved it away, still smiling, but she answered.

  "Oh... Just that Carley wants you so bad. "Oh, you're the only man I like Jake. Are you certain you couldn't make it happen, even though it would mean challenging Vicki for you?" Yeah, she should be a little nicer about it, but that's a Killy for you. She kind of expects men to beg her for the privilege, you know? Probably because that normally worked before. Did you see her face when I reminded her about who you really are? Priceless."

  People started coming out of the House then, not really sure what they were looking at, but Jake had them set up in the front room quickly enough. The power source was something he didn't understand, but they didn't need to be plugged in or anything. They just needed some biomaterial to put in the top, which he collected from the wood pile and the kitchen scraps. Lois gave him a skeptical look as he loaded the top, holding her ladle firmly and eyeing Cam as if expecting her to make a grab for it, but she softened when Jake asked the machine to make her a slice of cherry cheese cake. Out of some kindling and scraps. It made her a plate too, from the same material.

  "Those just go back in the top again when you're done, so no washing. You can make food stuffs, flour, sugar, whatever, spices too, as well as whole foods. This isn't really enough devices for everyone, since it takes about five minutes to make a meal, but it should help take some stress off the kitchen if they're used right. Plus, out here people can use them to get snacks. We just need to make it a rule that anyone using them needs to be responsible for collecting the correct kind of bio-material." Not that people would, being more than a bit lazy.

  That wasn't really fair though, a whole lot of them were just afraid to go outside anymore. If the new cannibals, like the ones he'd seen with Cam and couldn't even hit with a bullet so far, if they were coming, if that's what Heather had meant the whole time, then things were still dangerous enough that they needed to be scared.

  Lois took to the new tech like she'd grown up with it though, sending Ken out to collect plants, corn husks and other things buried in the snow to replace what she was making, which were large portions of fancy sauces to go on the meat for dinner. Things she couldn't have made on her own it seemed, lacking things like cream and butter. Now they had it, as long as the work got done.

  Something about the whole thing bugged Jake though. It took a while to figure out, but Ken didn't have a buddy with him. No one was supposed to go anywhere, even inside the House without one. Looking around he realized that a lot of people were kind of like that. All of them people that were "different". Cisco didn't have anyone either. It probably wasn't on purpose, but it was moronic. The regular people were sticking with their friends, who were mainly regular humans. The people that had collected at the House before the announcement had each other though, even if they weren't doing it right.

  Jake took Cisco by the hand, dragging her out to Ken who had a large pile of things growing in the field already. At least he had a weapon with him, a rifle slung over his left shoulder.

  "Ken, Cisco, meet your new buddy. You don't have to sleep together, but stay close and make sure that no one else is left alone either, will you?"

  That got the dark skinned boy to give him a funny look.

  "Do we need that anymore? I thought that was over now, since the zombies were gone. From here at least."

  Jake let his mouth work like a fish. Ken wasn't stupid, not as a rule, but it was ridiculous.

  "Zombies didn't shoot you! That was regular humans and there are other things out there now, more dangerous than those were by far. No, we all need a buddy and to be practicing our shooting skills and teamwork. You two have to take care of that from now on. Get with Tipper on it and make sure it happens daily. This isn't over yet. Not at all." He kept explaining, about the things he and Cam had seen, about how they'd been in cleaned zones, so weren't some new kind of zombie, but were just something else.

  At least these two believed him.

  Cisco looked scared, which was good. As long as it didn't make her stop thinking.

  "So, you want us to get ready for these... things? In case they're the cannibals Heather used to talk about?"

  "Right. I'm going to be gone most of the time for a while. Nate's a great guy, but he won't do what's needed to make this happen. Get with the Cleaners and set it up. After we get this bio-material moved in I mean." He smiled then, which got one in return from Cisco. Ken just nodded.

  It took a while to arrange, meaning that he was there for dinner along with everyone else. The food was better and they got to eat in the first shift, but that meant that Vicki, Tipper and Colleen crowded around him at the table he was at. Colleen got Tipper to scoot over, so that she could sit by him, but it didn't really make sense. Not that he cared overly. He was fine with all of them.

  Vicki leaned into him, whisperin
g though.

  "Hey, now what's this I hear about you throwing me over for Carley?" She didn't sound angry, but wasn't playing either.

  He sighed.

  "Well, it's not like we've ever... you know, so I figured that you were just trying to keep morale up. I can't make you do that. It wouldn't be fair." It made sense to him, but apparently he was the only one. They didn't talk about it at the meal though, but the second it was over, he found himself being dragged out back by the arm.

  The Valkyrie wasn't hurting him, but wasn't exactly gentle about it either.

  "OK... now what the fuck? I'm not dating you to make you feel better, we're going out because I like you. Ok, so it hasn't exactly been a physical relationship yet, but that has a lot more to do with the circumstances and all the people, not you. I didn't know it meant that much to you. I mean, you've had a dozen different chances to get me alone and didn't take them. It doesn't have to be at night, we can just lock ourselves in a room, if you can ever find an hour when you aren't running around trying to save the world." She softened a little then.

  "Not that you shouldn't be doing that. Just, really, don't get rid of me over a few timing issues. That's something to fix, not worry over. We can get Cam to take us to Valhalla for a night maybe? Not tonight, I have late watch, but soon?"

  Leaning in she kissed him, still warm from being inside, even though it was about twenty degrees out. She wrapped him up for a bit, touching his lips with hers. It was nice, and about the most prolonged contact he'd ever had with a woman. At least in any way that wasn't accidental or just him having to fight against his natural desires. He stiffened in response, but it was dark enough that no one noticed anything, or even came out to see who was there. People tended to stay in at night. The only people he saw were wearing white and walking with flashlights in the distance. The guards, checking to make certain no one was getting through to them.

  For just a second Jake felt like things might actually be changing, his girlfriend being willing to sleep with him and actually touching him at the moment, the world around him safe from zombies, if not other things and having a full stomach, having eaten some food that he wouldn't have believed would have happened a month back. It was nearly perfect.

  Or at least as much as things could be at the end of the world.

  Until he looked up to see something that blocked out the stars above them. It was quiet, nearly hidden in the sound of the soft breeze, but it was right there, hovering over them, maybe a thousand feet up. The thing was huge and black against the night sky. It looked like...

  A blimp.

  At first his mind couldn't make sense of what was happening, there was a sense of movement in the black, and then things falling in the field in front of them. It wasn't until the moaning started that he got it.

  "Seriously?" He sighed and started to feel a little scared. He caught on before Vicki did though, drawing his side arm.

  "What? I'm not sure..." She sounded baffled, but it made sense, after a bizarre fashion.

  "Someone is bombing us. With zombies." He tucked his head inside and called for everyone to get weapons. It was so absurd that no one believed him at first. Who'd do that? If they were going to bomb... why not use explosives? That answer was clear enough though.

  The technologists, even the bad ones, were personal pacifists. By using zombies it didn't really count as them doing the killing. Not to them. To Jake it did, so he tried to put a few holes in the thing overhead, hoping it was filled with hydrogen. Either it wasn't, or he just missed the whole thing, because nothing at all happened.

  "Well, OK. This is a cleaned zone, so in about three hours all these things are going to be dead. We just need to hold out until then. We should take them down though, because there are a lot of them. We don't know if this is the only drop coming either."

  Jake didn't panic though. It was a lot of zombies, that was clear, maybe even hundreds of them, but they could do it, as long as they held together and worked as a team. The big problem was all the new people. The Vals and T'srith were fine, at first, until they started trying to insist that he go inside and hide with the children in the lower section. It wasn't just the rudeness of it that got to him, even though no one meant it that way, but the fact that he had a pocket of nano compound. Actually on him. Because Jake was prepared for zombies unlike some people. He just made a face and released three of the things on the porch, firing after that, not letting anything get too near. It would, ideally cut the time they had to fight down by a lot.

  For a while, about half an hour he wondered if the bad guys had figured out how to get around the new technology or something, because that would just figure, but the undead started to slow down in the fields around then, the low and constant moaning growing softer, until about an hour into the fight, there was nothing left.

  Almost nothing. One lone form crawled toward them, slowly and without stopping. It didn't look right though, it had legs, but was crawling with them trailing behind. Wearing a police uniform. Not a local one either.

  Crud.

  "Don't shoot him." Jake walked into the field, paranoid on a dozen different levels, ready to hit the thing in the head if he had to, tempted to try even if he didn't need too, after what the Westwood force had become. Looking around he saw that half a dozen others were with him too, so he reminded them not to shoot until they had too. If only to save ammo.

  The man didn't look good at all, he had a dozen bites on him and was missing three fingers, chewed off but not bleeding for some reason.

  "Um, hi." Jake spoke softly, not wanting to scare the man.

  "Could you use some help?" He almost asked if the man could use a hand, but stopped himself. That would have been cruel given everything.

  "Eh? Who're you?" He sounded almost drunk, but that could be anything, so Jake just broke a capsule over his head, in case he was infected.

  "I'm Jake, and this is the House. We've got you. This is a safe place, zombie air drops aside. That was a new thing though. Why don't we get you inside and checked out?" It sounded polite enough, but the man probably shouldn't have lasted the flight if he'd been in the hold with the undead, so having Nate read him might also be a great idea.

  Both the man's legs were broken, but even though the field was littered with bodies, none of them moved. They brought out a stretcher to carry him in, an actual first aid team doing the work. Mainly people he didn't know. That was almost everyone anymore.

  The man mumbled his story by candlelight, head resting on a fairly soft pillow that was being smudged with black gore from where things had bled on him. Jake kind of wanted to execute the man, but that was old thinking. They didn't have to now. He might still die, of course, from blood loss or regular infection, but he wouldn't go Z.

  "I'm Tony Zeffario. I was caught up with a group of dead people, got tossed in with the corpses. Just scooped up. Used to draw the things into the hold. I managed to find a place to hide, between the wall and a counter of some kind. I don't know what it was. There were no lights. It didn't protect me totally, but mostly. When the bottom fell out I got dumped. Legs snapped in that field. That's mainly where I got bitten. I... You have to kill me. No way am I not turning now."

  "Heh, right you are, or you were. We have a way to keep people from doing that now, I treated you outside already. It's how we stopped most of the rest of them." Jake looked up at Nate, who was straining it seemed, trying to read the fellow's mind. That could be hard to do after all, with trauma victims.

  He didn't say anything, until the man asked a single question. It sounded innocent enough to Jake, but Nate went wide eyed instantly, before the words were spoken.

  "Say... you said this was the House? The place the military said to come to?" Before he could answer Nate was pulling him away, screaming something.

  "Run!"

  They did, even though Jake didn't know what was going on. Not everyone managed it though, being to slow on the uptake or trying to figure out what was happening. They didn't g
et out as the man exploded. It was a wet thing, and he was behind Nate using his body to shield the man as he was pushed into the kitchen. Shards of bone flew like shrapnel, no one being protected from it. The force of the blast, which wasn't a fiery thing at all, knocked them through the door, Vicki ending on top of him.

  She stood first, her back riddled with two inch long irregularly shape spears of bone. They were white and pink, little spots of red on her white clothes. Jake felt like he'd been hit nearly as much, including one that had skipped off his skull, thankfully and several in his back. They weren't that deep, as long as no arteries of veins were hit. Nate had one in his shoulder and was groaning like the world had ended.

  "Vicki, secure the scene, get others to do it. We need to get cleaned up and to tend the wounded. That..." Jake shook his head bitterly.

  "Shouldn't have happened. From now on we don't let anyone in, no matter how hurt they are, without being checked first."

  He turned and started pulling bone shards from his girlfriend's back and neck, Since she'd heal fast and close the wounds faster than that, sealing them off somehow... almost instantly. He'd need bandages though. It wasn't going to be fun. First they needed to see to everyone else, there hadn't been a lot of people in the room, not close to the man, thank god. People were shy around strangers now. It had saved a lot of lives. Still, three were dead and they had six injured. Three of those were Vals, who just needed someone to help them pull the things out of their flesh for the most part, the other three included him, Nate, who was being a giant baby about it and Colleen, who had only one bit of bone in her, sticking out of her leg. It was bigger than most of the rest of them had, but looked nicely lodged into the muscle, which had to hurt, but wasn't life threatening yet.

  They'd need antibiotics though. Otherwise they were probably going to die.

  That was for later though. Jake moved to his friend, smiling a little, trying not to let his back move too much. He started to get a cloth from across the room when a man he didn't know ran over and told him to sit down.