by P. S. Power
Orange Cat Publishing
Electronic Publishing Division
2012
All rights reserved.
Orange Cat Publishing books by P.S. Power:
The Infected:
Proxy
Gabriel
Gwen Farris:
Abominations
Dead End:
A Very Good Man
A Very Good Neighbor
A Very Good Thing
Keeley Thomson:
Demon Girl
Keelzebub
The Young Ancients:
The Builder
Knight Esquire
Knight of the Realm
Ambassador
Counselor
Stand alone titles:
Crayons
A Very Good Thing
By
P.S. Power
There was a sense of exhaustion in the air, masked ever so slightly by people hurrying around before the guests came. So in that way, just like a traditional Christmas from Back Before. It was frantic, but in a tired, low key style. The people that had spent the night fighting, and the morning cleaning up the still moving bodies of zombies, looked the worst Jake knew, himself included. No one had slept though.
All the shooting probably made that impossible. It certainly would have for him. If that hadn’t done the trick, the fact that a few hundred undead had come to eat their flesh would have. That always made it hard to rest properly.
Looking around the bathhouse, the men’s side of it, Jake saw Carl, who’d been out in the fight the whole time, just like he had, slowly shake his head, trying to clear it. The man had dark skin, black hair and a kinky beard that was a little wild looking right now, shot through with gray near the chin. That wasn’t what most people would notice about him first though, but when you got to know a person, you noticed the major changes first. The man was vast. Hugely muscled, with no fat to speak of under his skin. He’d stripped down to scrub, like they all had, not wanting to carry ichor or bits of undead flesh with him into the tub.
Jake smiled and looked down, feeling incredibly happy, even as he noticed his own pale, very lean, form. It wasn’t much to write home about, but then, he didn’t care at the moment. If Carl looked ready to be in a bodybuilding magazine from Back Before the undead came, then he looked more ready for a place in “Refugee Today”. He finally had nice abs though, except for the red, half healed blotch of scar tissue where he’d recently been shot. He didn’t care about that, just feeling happy instead.
“Merry Christmas!” He said softly, joy filling his voice. In many ways it was the very best holiday he’d had in a long time, wasn’t it? He’d actually gotten what he wanted. OK, so it wasn’t Santa that had delivered it, but still, he wasn’t going to be ungrateful for the present.
It was Nate, their leader and all around great guy, that answered, an extremely tired expression on his own bearded face. He carefully kept his eyes front though, not looking at anyone, pretending to just be busy washing. It wasn’t really that, Jake understood, taking half a second to think about it. Everyone knew the man was gay, and really didn’t care, not outwardly. Nate’s ability to read minds meant that he’d catch the internal part too. In truth he probably couldn’t help it. The hidden unease if his gaze lingered too long, the revulsion a few of the men still felt about things like that, afraid they might secretly be gay too, when they bothered to remember to care. Like gay could trump zombies? People would adapt though, eventually. Soon fear of catching gay would no doubt trump the undead once again. Nate just had to hold out long enough. He could do it though. Jake knew he could. Then he’d be back as one of the most feared things on the planet.
The guy grinned, still not looking at Jake and nodded in answer, just a little as he splashed water onto his face, it steamed slightly, making him look a bit like a dragon to Jake.
“Merry Christmas everybody. I know that this has been tough, but I don’t know how to tell the guests not to come, so we may be kind of stuck.” There was a yawn then, which just made sense. So much so everyone else did it too.
Jake laughed and scrubbed hard at his head, using strong dish soap instead of the bars people regularly shared. They didn’t want to wipe zombie juice all over those. Or at least he didn’t. People considered him a little fussy when it came to keeping clean he knew, but all the fighters just used the soap he’d gotten for them out of the store room inside the house anyway, and didn’t even ask why he wanted to do things that way. So they either got it, or just couldn’t be bothered to care at the moment. His plastic bucket of water steamed in the cold room, the fire warm enough to heat the water, but not enough to really make the whole place warm. Not this early in the day.
Jake stretched his arms up briefly and bent back then went back to scrubbing, his reaction to what was said so slow he nearly sounded drugged. Just the gap before them though, when the words came out he managed to speak quickly enough to sound half human still.
“Heck no. We don’t cancel parties just because of a few zombies. If we start doing that we’ll all end up sinking into a depression and crying every time someone breaks a nail. We didn’t lose anyone, and all the preparations have already been made. Nearly. We still need to make sure Lois gets extra help today. She was cooking and baking all night through that little dust up we had. So no fair claiming to be too tired to help now. She has to be exhausted too.” He stuck his head in the bucket and rinsed his hair for a bit, until it felt free of soap.
“Besides, Santa is coming for the kids, and we will not disappoint them.” He’d meant to sound happy and playful, but the low tone of his voice, the new norm, made it sound like a threat somehow. Like he’d look up the man in red and shoot his behind if he didn’t show personally.
It was a funny thought, and he grinned about it, but the others just nodded as if it made some kind of sense.
It was clear a few of the men wanted to actually soak in the tubs, which really did sound nice. His body was sore from the activities of the previous night, but it was a low level thing, except the bruising all over his right hand. From where he’d punched a man in the groin for about ten minutes.
A dead man.
So, yeah, it was overkill, and didn’t make rational sense, the man was dead after all and wouldn’t be getting anyone else killed, or just as important, pregnant. Not now. Jake had just been so mad at the guy. Half of everything that had gone wrong in the last six months had been because of Derrick Holsom and his innate ability to make almost any woman fall desperately in love with him.
So Jake had slightly overreacted.
He didn’t regret it though, even as his gun hand tried to stiffen up now. That couldn’t be allowed to happen of course, hurt or not, so he kept flexing it constantly, when not actively doing something at any rate. If he had to shoot someone, then a little thing like injury couldn’t stop him. Especially not knowing what else the day would bring. They had guests coming, true, but they weren’t all exactly normal people, were they? Not American most of them, sure, but they weren’t even just from a different culture that he knew about already or anything that predictable.
They were made up of the leaders of several very special groups of people that had survived the undead largely intact for one reason or another. The Bawdri, Valkyrie, Telepaths, something called Comtrices and “Cam’s people” who could all teleport. They had a real name, and it sounded kind of cool, but Jake couldn’t pronounce it to save his life. Possibly some other groups would make a showing too. Those were just the ones that he knew by name. They even had a representative or two of each group already living with them at the House.
It basically meant that his friends’ relatives were co
ming for the holiday. Jake didn’t want to disappoint them. Especially since at least four or five of them were basically the rulers of their kind. They might only have a few tens of thousands of people, but those were vast numbers compared to almost any other remaining group. The military guys that had come a few months before had said that the House contained more people than almost any other place that hadn’t been preparing for something like this for decades. The numbers had more than doubled since then too. That meant these other groups were just vast compared to almost everything else now. It would just look bad if they had to send them away without a party at all.
On the good side none of them really had a traditional Christmas celebration of their own. Jake reflected on that, and shook his head a bit, feeling hungry and a little thirsty. He didn’t know that about all of them, did he? The Bawdri and the Vals didn’t have it as a celebration, but no one else had said. Except that Cam had mentioned her people didn’t really “officially” do Christmas, right? He couldn’t remember at the moment. Only that she knew what it was, if not the particulars.
Not that it mattered. This wasn’t going to be a regular celebration anyway.
No tree for one thing.
He’d just forgotten it all together. They should have a tree though. They had some evergreens out in the woods, even some that had been too small to bother cutting down for firewood and building materials. They’d need a stand, and then something to decorate it with. It was a good idea though, wasn’t it? What meant Christmas more than a tree?
He didn’t mention the idea out loud, not yet. Everyone else was tired and that might make the idea seem like too much work to them. Jake could feel it in himself too, so it probably wasn’t that far of a stretch thinking that almost everyone else felt the same, was it?
Nate shook his head without needing to hear the words.
“Jake, for all we know there are a hundred more zombies in the woods, just waiting for a snack. You might want to just leave this one.” He’d finished washing, dried, and slipped into a nice, warm looking sweater in bright red with reindeer on the front and back in white, woven into the pattern. It was certainly festive. More so than the same old, well worn, but clean, clothing he had. Just layers of flannel and a blue jean jacket, with a thick green canvas coat to go over the top. He had a lot of layers, but needed them to stay warm.
Plus, if a zombie tried to bite or scratch you, it could make a difference. Just having similar things on had saved him a half dozen times already, at least. He wore his normal boots, a newish pair taken off of a dead police officer. They were black, but not that shiny looking. He didn’t have any polish. No one did.
Everyone else gave him a strange look. Not Nate, who’d just started talking, after clearly reading Jake’s mind. No, that was almost just accepted now. But they all knew that Jake would eventually explain, and that Nate would try to claim that what he read in someone else’s mind was too private for him to talk about, unless it was an emergency.
No one could claim this as one of those, could they?
Sighing, but still happy, he looked at the other six men, three of whom were in the half filled wooden tubs already, just relaxing. Jake stood a bit straighter, trying to pretend he wasn’t just as done in as everyone else.
“I’m just going to go get a Christmas tree. That’s all. In the woods. Anyone want to help?”
Several of them groaned, a low thing that sounded a bit too much like the dead for Jake. To his surprise, Samuel, who wasn’t normally a Cleaner or even a guard, stood up in his tub, water splashing. The man was blond, thin, and nearly as pale as Jake, but so laid back the feeling fairly poured off of him.
He’d noticed that effect before, but now he wondered it if was some kind of power or extra ability. A lot of people left had something like that, at the House at least. Everyone but Jake, nearly. Maybe Lois and Burt. Still, on the good side, most of the powers were kind of lame, so it didn’t make him feel all that much less than everyone else. Just a bit.
Samuel nodded to him seriously. The guy was clearly as tired as everyone else, but he’d gone out to fight the night before, hadn’t he? Laid back nature or not. If it was hard for Jake right now, it was probably worse for him, not being used to it. The blond man plastered a grin on his face.
“We need a tree. Yeah. OK. Let me get dressed and I’ll go with you. You can guard me while I chop it down.” He said it as if that was the natural division of labor. Jake holding a weapon while others worked.
Hardly fair. He tried really hard to do his share too.
Carl grunted and shook his head.
“But are we going to have a Kwanza celebration? No… I don’t think so. No love for the traditions of my people… Sigh, oh mighty sigh.” He smiled though, as Jake tilted his head.
“I don’t know anything about that. We should though. Really, we should try to have some kind of party or something at least once a month for now and keep any tradition we can. Make up our own too.” He looked around the room for a second, then nodded. It was a real point. They needed stuff like that to distract them.
“You know, like an end of harvest festival, charcoal burn day, hold barn raisings and anything else we can to keep the mood up. Maybe have a little ceremony when new people come? I don’t know. Whatever we can think of.”
Jake felt dumb having said all that and wondered if people were going to call him on it, since surviving had to be their main priority right now. The last night had shown that. Still, it had really been an attack by Holsom and some of his women, leading in several hundred of the undead in wave after wave. It wasn’t like the undead had just all shown up on their own. Yes, the world was dangerous and would be for a long time, but that didn’t mean they should all just stop living, did it?
The massive black man just shrugged good naturedly.
“I’m in then. On the tree. I don’t know anything about Kwanza either. I barely even celebrated Christmas. Not for the last fifteen years or so. I get the idea though. We can’t give up living just to survive. Not and keep things together in the long term.” It sounded friendly and wise when he said it.
No one else volunteered to go into the woods. Probably because they were sane. If the woods weren’t crawling with zombies Jake would have to proclaim it a Christmas miracle and start believing in a higher power again. After putting his weapons back on, the familiar black nine millimeter on his right hip and the larger .45 caliber revolver in the special holster on the back of his waist, Jake went to see about tools and if anyone else wanted to tag along. It could be a new tradition, everyone going into the woods to get their own tree and everything.
He got a hatchet, a full sized tree ax, as opposed to one of the ones he’d made himself for cutting off heads, a small saw, and several pairs of work gloves. They all needed to keep their hands warm and flexible as much as possible now. Ready to fight. He felt a little awkward trying to carry it all, things sliding out of his hands as he walked toward the back porch, hoping he didn’t drop everything. That would just be embarrassing. It was mid-morning already and the back yard looked horrible, like a small war had been fought there or something already, but the scent from inside was really good. Like a real holiday used to be. He could even smell pumpkin pie.
Amazing. They’d had pumpkins, but that took eggs to make, didn’t it? Did they have chickens then? It normally would have been a stupid thing not to know, but Jake didn’t actually live at the House anymore, having his own place now, a few miles away. It worked better that way, since for some reason half the people he knew really seemed to rather dislike him. The female half mainly. Some of the others too, so at least it was equal opportunity.
Part of that had to do with Holsom having gotten all of his many girlfriends to really hate him and think he was just creepy. The man had been afraid of Jake. Terrified really.
With good reason.
After all, in the end, he’d killed him, hadn’t he? Kind of a good call, in hindsight.
The other reason the
y didn’t feel bright and sparkly when Jake was around had to do with the fact that he tended to shoot people when they got too loud.
It had to be done, since human voices called zombies in droves and the reality was that undead things didn’t just fall down with a little poke or single gunshot like they did in the movies. You could mess them up, by destroying the brain and taking the head, but that didn’t stop them from moving. Most people didn’t realize how hard it was to hit a moving target in the head accurately as it charged you. It took practice.
Still, they pretty much all had that now, didn’t they?
But when people got loud, someone had to stop them. Either they did it themselves, or Jake did it for them. He really hated doing it. The nightmares about it alone made him want to stop. If he did though, everyone else would end up dead, so he kept going. Kept killing to save lives. He knew why he did it, agreed that it was logical and needed, and it still sounded insane, even in his own head.
When he started fighting to get the back door of the kitchen open, juggling his load, metal and wood clanking and clacking just a bit, the door opened. It nearly made him drop the whole mess as the handle moved suddenly under his sore right hand. When it opened wide enough for him to see who was there, a familiar face greeted him. A tiny and exotic one topped with golden hair.
