by P. S. Power
They’d all seen a dead creature come at them faster than they could run and they were drinking something that would slow them down? Brilliant. It wasn’t what he’d have voted for if they’d asked, but it probably didn’t matter for those people. As long as they didn’t get loud. If they did he was going to have to get Morris and his people to get them away. There were just too many dangers in the area for extra noise right now.
It was Jill that handed him a warm earthenware mug of spiced apple juice. It wasn’t exactly great, a little too sour for his taste, but it was better than a lot of things, so he tried to enjoy it as he took the first sip. Jill didn’t move from in front of him though, or frown, she just nodded at him as if it had meaning. Finally she explained herself at least.
“I think we should invite all the women that Derrick used to attack the place here. It wasn’t their fault, but a lot of people are angry and I’ve heard a few suggest they be kicked out, or even killed. This isn’t as safe a place for them as it looks. We could take them in though, if we got some of the food from here? I think Nate would agree. Is that OK?” She sounded humble about asking, meek almost. Everyone around him was watching though, as if to see what he’d do.
He knew what to do though, which was shake his head no.
“Jill, that’s a very kind offer, and I understand the reasoning, but those are the same woman that lied about me and made my life a living hell for months. I left here to get away from them. Besides, I think you’ll find that people are more forgiving than they seem, given enough time.” It was petty of him not to just accept them like she wanted, but he couldn’t take that kind of strain.
It would be hard enough as it was, with five women living with him that didn’t want to have sex at all. He didn’t need to add even more to it, did he?
Jill looked down, lank hair drab under the gray and white sky, jumping almost imperceptibly each time the report of a gunshot came across the field. Her nice red jacket still looked new and sharp, but the tan pants she wore had seen better days. Jake felt bad for her, but there had to be limits as to what he was willing to put up with, otherwise he wouldn’t make it very long at all.
She didn’t get to say any more on the subject, because the gray haired Val leader came gestured to him with a small smile.
“Besides, Jake has already suggested that we have some of my people come in for training. I was thinking twenty? We can have food brought in, Morris has already agreed to help with that, along with fuel, weapons and a few superior vehicles. I’d like to attach half with Tiberia Skolu… With Tipper and half with Victoria. I understand that you have an arrangement in place with her? So she should be around your place often?” The woman smiled about that part, seeming happy for some reason.
Jake tilted his head. It was kind of true, that Vickie was supposed to be his “girlfriend” but they hadn’t really done anything of note yet and until they did, he wasn’t going to count it as real. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had kind of used him as a convenience that way, would it? He shook his head at the woman, whose face went stiff. Insulted looking.
Jake sighed.
“I can’t explain it all right now, but I don’t know if she really means for us to have a real relationship or not. If it’s… If it was just a joke or something she’s having to make herself do, that can’t be counted. I can host twenty if I have too, but part of them should stay here, I think. This place is a better target, for now, if anything is coming. It would be fine with me though, I think. None of your people have gone out of their way to wrong me personally. Well, except Tipper, who thinks I’m just fundamentally creepy.” He smiled at the words, but they were the truth. The woman knew more about him now, but that probably hadn’t changed how she felt.
Odina North Yalla suddenly looked pissed though, like he’d insulted her personally. What he’d said though to make her feel that way he didn’t get and certainly hadn’t meant offense. Still, given her reflexes and toughness, he really didn’t want to have her hitting him. He got ready to shoot her, since a fistfight with a superhuman warrior just seemed like a horrible plan.
Before he could move much at all, Lamont stepped forward and spoke softly, even though it didn’t keep anyone else around from hearing them. It was just good noise control.
Jake approved, but kept going for his weapon anyway, slowly, so as to not attract attention.
“She isn’t upset by you, or about to attack, Jake.” That was all he said. Then he stepped back as if it was enough. It probably was, after all, if she really wasn’t going to start laying down the hurt, then Jake didn’t need to respond to that threat, did he?
The woman blinked several times, took a deep breath and let it out with a hiss.
“Yes. I just need a word with Tiberia Skolu, before I leave.” The older woman’s voice was hard. Almost vicious sounding.
Tip heard enough of the conversation to tense up and winced a little as if it were a playful thing. The Odina didn’t smile though, or take her to task right then, mad or not.
Jake ignored it all. He was trying to make things right with Tip and while it was kind of hard to just forget that she thought he was… wrong somehow, it wasn’t exactly like she hadn’t been trying to be friends, was it? Probably a unit cohesion thing, but she’d gone out of her way to talk to him and not suggest he was just a whiny freak that should never be allowed to touch a woman. For almost a month now even.
OK, so she hadn’t done it very well, but she really did seem to be trying, didn’t she?
When the next shambler started walking towards them, this time from around the back of the house, Jake pulled his nine and found that his hand had already stiffened too much to really use it well. After a few seconds he walked over to Alyssian and handed the dull black piece to her, handle first.
“You wanted to try?” She didn’t need to, both Len and Molly had rifles pointed and ready, but they hadn’t fired yet. The nicely dressed woman took the weapon like she knew how to use it and glanced at him, her youthful face happy suddenly.
“Just aim for the head?” She said as if unsure.
He nodded and without hesitating three shots rang out, all of them taking the former woman walking across the yard at them squarely in the nose. Accurately, even as she fell back. It worked pretty well, taking the zombie all the way down instantly.
“Nice shooting. Now, take the one beyond her that’s closing on us?” He made his voice bland, but it was another super-z. That or at least a fresh regular zombie that had been an athletic man in life. It was hard to tell.
She fired, several shots, and they all hit, knocking the man, who was mainly naked, down. He rolled like an acrobat and came back up, his face smashed, part of his head with it, but not stopped. He was partially thawed? That, or some kind of internal armor made sense. Like the one earlier, but fitter.
Jake nodded. So something actually new and different, not just a onetime thing? Damn. They really didn’t need that, did they?
“Everyone head shots please. Don’t stop.” He pulled the forty-five from the holster on his back and handed it to the Odina. If she didn’t know how to shoot, he’d have to eat his shorts.
Without even questioning the move she took the weapon and started firing. The thing was tough, but it couldn’t stay on its feet, not being hit in the head repeatedly. After forty direct hits the thing finally just stopped moving on them, the center of his face gone. He really hoped it didn’t turn out to be a new variation of the plague. What they had was too much already.
Wasn’t it?
Enough at least. They really didn’t need more. It was almost like someone had decided to end it all and took the fact that they’d survived personally, and had finally decided to do something about it.
Jake was about to freak out, or at least start cursing when one of the people he hadn’t noticed much before, a guy from the mixed group of visitors walked over to the slightly flopping corpse they’d just put on the ground. He looked distinctive with a big nose,
black and gray hair and very dark eyes, a deep brown that was probably called black most of the time. Mediterranean, Jake guessed. That helped make him look a little angry, but there was just something off about him.
He was too thick in some places, almost as if fat, but there was clear muscle under the skin, showing at the jaw for instance, that chubby people just never had.
After closing on the downed zombie he pointed to a blue tattoo on his left upper arm. It was a reasonable enough thing, being a sun with a lot of little flames around the edges. No face in it or anything like that, just clear skin underneath.
“Misklos.” The man said in a thick accent that sounded a little Russian to Jake’s uneducated ear.
“Is that his… group?” Jake almost said race, but didn’t know if that was the right thing to call it.
“No, Ruel. Is name of one here. Misklos Tomoslaw. Is good man. Was. Hendris is group. Like me.” The man turned and looked at them all, very seriously. Glaring at some, but just going stoic when looking at Jake.
“Should not be here. Home. Other side of world. Was with three days ago.”
It was a little start and stop, but the man speaking was a Hendris, Jake understood, which was he found, basically a walking tank. In the main nothing normal could hurt them, but they weren’t immune to disease. Or acid, if it came up. Or apparently forty rounds directly to the head. Really though, the man on the ground and probably the one from earlier shouldn’t have been able to be bitten at all, or scratched, not by something with only zombie level strength. Maybe a super-z? Jake tried to ask but the man didn’t have context for it, even having seen one before that day, those just scrambled in the snow. It didn’t give him enough to go on.
Yalla shook her head.
“We should go into lock down. This is clearly an attack and we don’t know what’s going to be sent at us. Really, we might want to evacuate the whole place.” She looked at Tipper and gave a clipped nod.
“We’ll take the VGM with us to Valhalla Central. It’s secure and fortified. Then we can call in reinforcements. Maybe the Sh’elle-erid will help?” Turning to Jake she clarified that last bit.
“Teleporters.”
That got a nod from Jake, “I actually knew that, Cam told me. I just can’t pronounce it. But we aren’t leaving.” He didn’t know why he said that, leaving was a fine idea if they had someplace better to be. It just felt really important to him at the moment.
“First, we’re having a party, and, you know, like it or not, “good times”. As for later, I don’t know what’s going on here and I agree with you, but if it’s an attack, well, it’s kind of a poor one so far, isn’t it? Also, it may not be aimed at us. Not the people at the House. It might be directed at one of our guests. If that’s the case then odds are whoever did it must have known about the party and who was likely to be here. So either some kind of precognition, advanced telepathy or something similar… or someone told them.” Jake smiled.
“If it’s that last, then they probably have an agent or two here. We need to check that out. Regardless, right now it’s Christmas. We have a meal, a story and presents to get too first. Everyone be extra watchful and speak about this only to those you personally trust, even among your own people.” He winked at the Odina, then, very obviously, he did the same towards Alyssian.
“By the way, if any of you is actually the ones doing this, please act as suspicious as possible, so that we can easily tell. Everyone got that?” Looking around he saw most of them actually nod, as if agreeing to out themselves. It was cute. If in a scary and bizarre fashion.
The Hendris in front of him was named Gregor, and allowed that at most a few hundred of his kind could be used as the two from that day had been. Of those, most were in hiding, but not all had bothered to be that careful. Why move when almost nothing can hurt you? Even as the man said it, Jake could get a sense of what he meant. Zombies shouldn’t be a threat to these people at all, so like Sammi and Carley, they didn’t have to worry as much about them. It was even more than that, because a bite just wouldn’t hurt them. It would be like the threat of homeless people coming up and hitting you with pillows. They’d be off putting and smell bad, but not dangerous really. Of course homelessness could be cured by giving someone a home, and a bath would take care of a lot of the rest.
If only the zombies were so easy to help.
Most people wouldn’t like the idea of such an annoyance, but very few Hendris could really fear it. The worst that could happen would be getting gross things on you. Bodily fluids and so on.
The point was though that it would be hard to get most of the others, who lived in a couple of decently large and isolated communities. Jake liked that part for multiple reasons. It was really sad that someone had hurt these two though. That had to be on purpose didn’t it?
Jack got another cider and sipped it slowly. It tasted better now for some reason, a fuller flavor than before. It wasn’t alcohol, but different, like cherry flavoring had been added. No, almonds, it had a taste of almonds to it. He froze. Slightly bitter almonds. He spit it out, laughing a little bit. It wasn’t really possible, was it?
He held the cup out to Sammi, knowing her nose was about two hundred times better than his.
“What do you get off of this?”
She sniffed it, then closed her eyes and did it again. Then she took a sip. Opening her eyes she passed the cup to her mother, and the somewhat airheaded seeming “girl” act got dropped the second she inhaled.
Alyssian gave her daughter a knowing look. It was cold though. Stern.
“Arsenic. Not a vast amount, nothing instantly lethal to anyone here, but in a strong enough dose to clearly be an attempt to kill.” She got wide eyed and scared looking then, which didn’t fit with the calm she’d used facing the dead not ten minutes before. Not at all.
“Someone is trying to kill The Very Good Man.” The woman opened her mouth as if to scream for help or possibly order an alert.
A small hand suddenly found her arm.
“No mother. Don’t yell. Jake will shoot you if you do, and then we’ll probably have to fight off many more of the undead. Also,” The tiny woman looked at Jake, then everyone else.
“We don’t know that this is about Jake at all. As lean as he is, this wouldn’t kill him for some time, even if he were regularly poisoned. He doesn’t show the symptoms of it, so I’m assuming this is a new thing for now. No, this may very well be an attempt on someone else. We need to get everyone together and see what we can do when we pool our resources.”
Jake shook his head and looked at the ground, the snow an almost blinding expanse of cold.
“This is the worst party ever, isn’t it?”
Lamont the Telepath smiled and shook his head.
“Not even close. For one thing I haven’t even fallen asleep once, and at my age, I assure you that means the whole thing is lively and moving quickly. We should probably not let anyone eat any of the food yet though, just in case. Drink anything either.”
It was a good point and Jake turned, carefully so as to not slip and jogged back to the House, half expecting to find everyone dead on the floor inside. They weren’t though, they just worked tiredly.
“Good. Everyone, don’t let anyone eat or drink anything for a while. Until I say so. Please? Make sure no one else does either, especially the kids and small people.”
Lois nodded and looked worried, a white hand towel clutched in both hands.
“Is something wrong?”
“Um, yeah, someone put arsenic in the mulled cider, or at least the cup I had. So we need to check everything before dinner.” He spread his hands and forced a smile.
“If this is someone’s idea of a joke, I’m going to be very unimpressed. You know?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
They really did know.
Chapter three
“You know what I hate? Riddles. Always hinging on some bit of secret information that you aren’t supposed to know, set
up to make a few people look and feel smarter than everyone else, when it’s really just a trick. Mysteries are generally the same.” Jake muttered to Sammi as they waited for the hunters to finish killing the last of the zombies they’d called in. It had been slowing down in pace for some time, and they were down to a lone crawler, one with no legs for some reason, who barely managed to scoot along the ground.
Something pretty bad had happened to her, after she died.
It was about to get worse. Or better, depending on your definition.
Sammi tilted her head cutely, a small smile on her young looking face.
“Except that in real life we can just torture people if we have to. A last resort, surely, but something to keep in mind if we get stuck.” She took his hand again, gave it a quick squeeze and let go before anyone could frown about it.
She liked Jake, or so she’d said. Loved him even. As in “in love”. It was a problem though, because Jake couldn’t be sexually interested in her, even if she was in him. She was over a hundred, but she looked like a little kid and that was a deal breaker for him. It wasn’t fair to her though, was it? The whole thing just left him feeling bad, but nothing useful came to mind as a fix.
Darian fired first, hitting the lady crawler right in the nose, just above the base of it. Then it was Morris’s turn to shoot. He missed totally, causing a small line to appear in the snow with a puff after the weapon fired. No one laughed at him as he grimaced, but Darian smirked, as if shooting things made you somehow superior to others? The idea nearly made him want to laugh, but Jake didn’t and waited for Darian to take the second shot. It went nearly to the exact same place as the first. Jake could have made a shot that good, he thought. But he might have missed by a bit too. The man was clearly a firearms expert, if currently being a bit of a tool about it.
That stopped the woman at least, turning her movements from purposeful crawling to something approaching a dying insect kicking all of its remaining legs in the air. She didn’t go anywhere and while her mouth made biting motions, the eyes didn’t track with anything. The eye that was left at least. The right one had popped out.
