by P. S. Power
The girl, Heather, helped. Not so much in added strength, but she managed to get the cart in place and hold the whole thing steady while he tied it together. It was awkward and top-heavy, but that could still work in the morning. There was no way that he'd make it back in time and Jake would be damned if he'd try walking the whole thing back at night.
Instead he took Heather and they used the last of the light to search some of the houses for usable goods. He could stack them on the bottom of the cart and use it to make the whole thing less unbalanced. Maybe. The wood stove was a giant thing. If it tipped at any point they were going to have to leave it and come back with help and a real cart.
Tomorrow was going to suck, he knew. Then, that prediction was right almost every day anymore. It was like being gifted with second sight. Prognosis for tomorrow? Suck with extra hurt thrown in and lots of scary. The seven day forecast? More of the same, with extra alienation from women thrown in for good measure.
Sleeping would be a bad idea, and even though the girl invited him to her place he had her load her few belongings onto the cart and follow him to the first house he'd gone to, since that one had been checked already. It might throw off any friends she had looking to attack him. Of course robbing him of some seeds and a wood stove that they didn't have any use for would be stupid, but most people weren't bright, were they? Heather looked at him in the dying light, when he got out his food and gave her half of it without saying anything. If she was really on his team, she got half. It wasn't a question, was it?
She nodded and pulled out her backpack.
“Um, here?” She offered him a can of peaches and a small kitchen can opener.
Smiling he opened it and handed the can opener back, and then the can. She blinked at him, slightly shocked to get it back apparently, and took some of the peaches off the top and handed it back, then loaded hers onto the slice of oat bread that Mary had given him before he left. He did the same, since it seemed like a good idea.
It was good. Sweet, like cake, or no... pie.
That of course would be ridiculous, the fog of time and deprivation had clouded his mind, but in that moment canned peaches on oat bread tasted as good as anything he'd ever eaten before. Jake nodded at the girl, who shouldn't have been able to make him out as the light faded.
“Is that how you get by? Finding things?” Some people were good at it. If she was, they might have a place for her. A useful place. She'd gone out on her own and wasn't a homebody, that was for sure. Unarmed, so not a fighter, but that could be worked around if she were willing. She could go with a cleaning team for instance. Or maybe just with him. Possibly Dave too. It would be an excuse to kill things after all, so why not?
No reason the kid shouldn't get to do what made him happy.
The girl moved, a shrug or her hands flying up, he could feel it in the dark, from the way the otherwise still air shifted, but couldn't tell what exactly she'd done.
“Kind of. I know where things are, if I need them. It sounds crazy, but I do. I just think about it for a long time and I go to them. When I can, I mean. I won't go where they are if it's dangerous. Most of the time that keeps me safe. I move a lot. I keep my head down. I... got caught a few times... I thought I could trust them, even though everything inside said to run. I didn't listen. I don't do that now. If I have to, I run. It's how I know you're safe for me. You saved me from the cannibals, I think. All of us in the end. If I do the right things. That's... going to be hard. I'm really going to like you Jake. I'm really sorry.”
Jake blinked in the dark and took another bite of food. If the girl could back that up in practice it would be cool. Like a super-power. A crazy one and not the kind that could lift wood stoves, but they'd managed that between them. After a few minutes, when the food had been finished, the girl dug through her things, and pulled a well-worn pillow and a shabby but large blanket. There was a bed in the other room so she got up to go use it.
“I... we can share if you want.” She spoke so softly he almost didn't hear her. Jake shook his head, then realized he'd have to speak to be understood.
“Thanks, maybe when we get to the house later? Tonight, well, I won't be sleeping most likely. So, you know, no need to bug you. I'll move that chair over there around a bit, it looks comfy enough.” He made his voice friendly. He wouldn't sleep. Not in a new place like this.
Not with the chance of her gang coming.
“Oh, OK, I... I'm glad I met you, I think.”
“Good night.”
The chair was a lazy boy, a recliner, he just sat cross legged in it, upright and as aware as he could manage. No one charged in on them and he heard nothing until after first light when the girl, rumpled and a little bed headed, padded in from the other room. They ate more, some bread and a can of cherry pie filling, which reminded him of how different food really used to be. He nearly passed out while he ate, getting a real sugar rush, but smiled and told Heather thank you, several times. It was almost too much after all the bland and plain food, or no food at all, that he'd gotten used to. The girl smiled at him a lot, like they were friends or something.
Jake didn't trust it.
Women didn't like him and if he let her in as a friend, she'd probably use it against him. Pretend to like him, and then freak if he ever suggested anything more than him working with her. Still, if he didn't try, he wouldn't know. It was a dilemma. She wasn't with anyone, and hadn't slept with Holsom yet, so maybe he stood a chance? It would be nice if that could happen.
They got on the road early, which turned out to be a good thing, because the trip back took nearly ten hours, and as he'd predicted to himself, sucked. Halfway there he felt like giving up, but didn't mention it. Heather was light and didn't help much with the pulling. About the same as Holsom would have. The difference being that the girl actually tried, even dressed all wrong for the task. She also didn't whine about it.
It made it better. They pulled up to the drive just as everyone else looked to be getting the last load of wood out of the cart for the day. Burt saw them and jogged to the door of the house, went in and came out a half minute later with Nate and Tipper.
They waited, Tipper with her shotgun in hand, but not pointed at them, as they walked up. Burt didn't wait, just coming over as soon as he got that it was just Jake and a friend. Really, that would be the part that put them all off, no doubt. Him bringing someone else back. It happened sometimes, new people coming, but it had never been with him before. The older man wore a bright pink shirt and comfy looking tan shorts. Before he stopped walking he whooped, softly, but happily.
“Where did you find this beast? It's a four pot cook stove. I thought we'd be lucky to get a tin box with a slab of metal siding on the top for the kitchen. This is incredible. You brought the chimney pipe connections too? Brilliant.” He looked at the barrel and blinked. “Please tell me you found a full container of gas. Pretty please?”
“No, just used vegetable oil. I think we can clean it and use it for frying or whatever. I don't know. Didn't some celebrities run their cars on it or something? I mean if it's not good as food anymore?”
The man looked at it and then, as if realizing that they were still moving, if slowly, grabbed the handle and helped pull. Near the back door they stopped, Nate smiling big and Tipper looking like Jake had brought home a stray dog.
“This is Heather Morley. I told her she could have a shot here. She works hard and doesn't complain, not that I've seen so far, and what we did today, hauling this thing, sucked. Worse than a day of wood gathering. If she can be believed, she finds stuff.” Jake tried for a meaningful look, but everyone eyed the new girl like a plague carrier and didn't seem to be listening.
So normal that way.
Nate took her inside with him and a few others, to make sure she felt comfortable. Being as nice as he was, Nate could do that. Make someone new actually feel at home pretty quickly. Burt signaled a few people with a wave and a fairly happy expression and they all unloaded the giant wo
od stove in about a minute.
It had taken two hours to get it into place and a couple of minor injuries. Jake smiled a little and shook his head. The rest of the stuff was just odds and ends. Like the eight brand new bags of semi-clear tarp in the bottom. Each one folded out into a ten by twenty sheet, if the package was right. It might not be clear enough for a greenhouse, but the plastic should be useful, water proofing and stuff. Burt started laughing as Jake stumbled through his justification of having lugged the stuff from town. It was a gleeful and soft thing though, not meant to be hurtful.
“No, this will work just fine, we have enough here for a good sized greenhouse too. We should put it on the south side of the house, sharing the wall there, so that it gets sun and can use the warmth from the place too. If we build a small stove in there it will stay warm enough I think. We'll need more wood of course.” The man clapped his hands like it was Christmas morning and Jake was Santa Claus.
Jake wondered if they even had that anymore. They hadn't noted any other holidays, so probably not. Birthdays either. Everything had just been a scramble to survive. He'd have to make it happen if he could. Holidays were one of the nice things about life and it would be a shame to lose that.
They got the stuff offloaded from the shopping cart catastrophe Jake had invented and got a crew to help set up the new stove almost instantly. Mary and Lois came out with the kids, all smiling hugely. They'd been using an indoor grill system for everything. A kind of open topped metal box with a grating on it. This, Jake was told, would be a huge improvement, especially now that they wouldn't have to ration wood half as much.
“Not that we'll waste it, don't worry. This is also a lot safer, do we have some stones to put it on?” Lois addressed this to Burt, who was her “partner”. As close a thing as they had to a married couple in the place really.
Burt nodded and asked Jake to his shed.
“Fire brick for the inside, formed concrete slabs for underneath the feet and in front of the door, in case sparks or embers come out. We need to over build this part I think. A fire would not be good.”
Especially since the burners had made them all paranoid about the prospect of a house catching on fire. They'd lost seven people and a lot of gear when the fanatical Christians had set their first neighborhood ablaze in the middle of the night. Most of the remaining little kids and Sarah, the woman that watched them, had died in it. She'd survived at first, dying slowly from the horrid burns all over her body a day later. Jake should have just shot her and made it fast, but it had been too hard.
Not because they were close, but because even as she suffered, she did it silently. It was emotionally difficult to do, so he'd hesitated. His weakness made her last breath more painful than it should have been. He hadn't started the fire, but the day of agony she'd had was all on him. It... haunted him. Nearly as badly as anything he'd ever done.
Using fire to take out the zombies made sense, in an insane, end of the world, it just doesn't matter who gets hurt, kind of way. Like using a claymore mine on a mouse. It worked, but you destroyed a lot of other things in the process, too. They'd calmed down a little as far as Jake could tell, or maybe died when Jesus didn't come to save them.
Not that he had a problem with people being religious if that helped them get through. If Jesus was really telling these morons to burn the world down however, then Jake wanted to have a word with the man. At the end of a gun.
Somehow though, Jake couldn't see the guy ordering anyone to burn little kids to death. It didn't seem like what the stories said at all.
Without waiting he washed up and changed into his other set of clothes, cleaning the old and reeking pair worn into town at the same time. He made a tiny pile of seeds on the wood stump next to the outdoor wash stand before he scrubbed. They still had soap, somehow.
A few of the people had mentioned early on wanting to have some and the stores weren't looted of it back then, so they'd taken all they could get. That and toilet paper. That had been a lot harder to find, being the second or third thing to go.
Making sure to get them all Jake carefully took the seeds to Jose who showed him where they were being kept, complete with little tags or marks on the outside of the plastic food containers they were being stored in. Jake marked out apple and pear carefully and spread them all in separate containers very flat on the bottom, so they'd be able to dry. Jose couldn't tell him to do that, not with the language barrier, but the other containers were like that. It didn't take a genius to get the idea. For some reason they needed to dry, probably so they didn't rot. Some had probably died already, but if even a few could be turned into trees it would be worth it.
Dinner was simple enough, featuring more deer meat, which Carl had gone and gotten with his team the evening before. The man looked to be their best hunter by far, even if his team of cleaners shouldn't be doing it while they had guard duty. It could leave them too tired at night. Jake wondered at that. Should the man's group be sent hunting instead? They lost a person per month on that group, almost one every time they cleaned a place.
Hunting kept them all fed and maybe they could figure out other stuff if they had the time? Fishing and things like that? They were brave, no one denied that. Maybe braver than the other cleaning groups. Jake wouldn't have wanted to go and take on zombies if he thought that Dave or Tipper would die each time after all. Not even Molly, and face it, she'd be the one to buy it first.
They'd go and get the stuff done, too. Not lazy by any means. Nodding to himself he decided to get with Nate later and see about suggesting it. That meant more work for the other two squads, but the frequency of nests had been slowing a lot. Maybe two teams could handle it now? They could always get Carl's team to run backup if needed and do guard duty.
At dinner Heather found herself a place at one of the other tables early, sitting between Sammi and Ken, which was a good place for her. Cleaned up and closer to people he knew to be young he understood that she wasn't the nineteen or so he'd thought. Closer to sixteen. Maybe younger. Trying to make her feel welcome, he smiled and waved at her and got return waves from all three of them. That Ken bothered was a good sign. The silent boy even had a half smile on his face, his dark skin clear and eyes focused more than Jake had ever seen them. Maybe he liked Heather? Well... why not? It was the freaking zombie apocalypse for God's sake. Why shouldn't the guy get a girlfriend, even if he was a little young? Or a new sister if that's what he was after. Heather seemed all right. Insane maybe, but a survivable kind of nuts that wouldn't get them all killed.
It was a little disappointing that the girl didn't want him, but if she was going to pick someone else, Ken was a good guy. He worked hard and kept to hard line noise discipline all the time. What wasn't to like?
Taking a moment to think Jake grabbed the chair next to Tipper and pulled it out, which got a slightly nervous and hopeful look from the woman. Her hair had been trimmed somehow in the last days, so it looked short and sharp, nearly a military feeling to it, about two inches long all over. He'd look ridiculous with the same thing, but decided to try it anyway. After all, he wasn't there to look good, just kill things and maybe get firewood. That didn't take long hair. It wasn't like he was planning to be a rock star any time soon. He pulled the chair out and started to walk away with it, which made her face fall.
“Jake...” She said, sounding a little sad.
He looked at her and shook his head.
After all, if she didn't want him, that was fine, no one did, but she'd still lied to him about it. Not even a lie that would have left him any hope or anything, or leave a chance for her to change her mind later. She hadn't claimed that she had someone, or that she even just had her eye on another person, just that she didn't like men, when, apparently, she just didn't like him. Taking the chair he walked next to Nate, who sat next to Carl with Lois, Burt and Mary nearby. The important people.
“Hey, um, can I squeeze in between you and Carl for tonight? I have an idea.”
They a
ll looked surprised, but not displeased. Well, Mary looked displeased. The woman was in her late thirties and still had a slightly “survivalist” air to her. Smart in the kitchen and good at a lot of low powered things like collecting roots and saving food without industrial equipment. Still, she really disapproved of Jake.
Probably because he killed people. Her boyfriend being one of them, if Jake remembered correctly. That seemed fair enough, but the man had flipped back when doing so was nearly certain to bring the undead down on them. He had, actually. After Jake killed him, they'd had to fight off a small hoard. If the man had kept screaming it would have been a lot worse. Still, Mary had almost no use for him since then.
Her hair was dark and long, a little greasy looking and she wore an apron over her puffy plain shirts and pants most of the time. She didn't glare at him, showing her disapproval by not looking at all, focusing on passing bowls around for people to get food.
Their leader looked a little rougher that day than most, unshaved, eyes a little hard. On his hip he had the pistol he'd worn a few days before. That was a good sign, since he'd proven himself willing to shoot a man to protect the others. That had to leave them all feeling better, knowing that someone like Nate would back them up when it came to it. People trusted him.
They all shifted a little to let him move in, his chair, a heavy wooden thing that had come with the house, made a slight noise on the floor as he sat. A plate appeared in front him, from Lois, who gave him a dark smile. It seemed sad for some reason. Nate just grimaced.
“What's on your mind Jake?” He said softly, as if he thought he knew.
Jake looked at him and then the large and powerful black man beside him, a bit of gray showing in the beards and hair of both of them.
