Dead End Stories From the End of the World

by P. S. Power

  What he didn't feel was weak, not now that he got a chance to move around. Oh, his muscles didn't surge with power or anything, but he felt normal enough that way. A plate felt like a plate in weight, not an anvil that he might drop at any moment. Sammi watched him carefully, but everyone else just accepted that Jake was back. He'd been sick and then got better. A lot of them didn't seem to have noticed at all.

  Then Jake worked at pulling carrots and digging potatoes until noon, and decided to see if he could help with anything else once that finished. It felt nice to move around and not be in the dark. Justine saw him and ran over with her shotgun, looking relieved to see him for some reason. Or happy. That probably wasn't it. She smiled though.

  “Jake! Um, I didn't know what to do, so I just helped Burt while you were sick. No one said anything, so, is that all right?” She didn't seem that worried, so it obviously was. Well, if she'd kept busy, he wouldn't complain, he nodded and asked what she'd been doing.

  “A water tower, come see? It's pretty awesome.” She sounded pleased.

  It stood next to the windmill and was higher than the roof of the house, a true tower then. The pump was set up to fill the wooden slat barrel looking thing at the top, which must have held nearly two thousand gallons of water or more. They didn't have iron bands for it yet, so had to use rope until he built the forge.

  “Burt says that should be about two months? You need to hurry on that, but the wood stoves have to come first. We should have the wood at least, but we need to be able to make our own saws and stuff soon. If anything breaks now, we're going to feel it this winter.”

  That meant a trip into town or two soon. He needed a much better cart then, his little hybrid shopping cart thing was too much of a pain. As he mentioned it Burt walked up and waved him over to the white walled metal shed. Sitting just behind it was a wooden wagon. Smaller than the cart, but it had four wheels, all solid rubber so they wouldn't go flat, the kind from large lawn tractors, and a body made out of wood, it looked a bit rough, but it could be pulled by one or two people and was sturdy. Burt grinned.

  “You can load two or three thousand pounds on this baby and she'll roll just fine. We've used it for some of the longer logs already, no problem. Vickie and her crew are out tomorrow looking for wood stoves. They've seen some too. You don't get to go, doctor's orders.” He held up his hand, the right one and made noises, an “ut, ut, ut.” sound to keep Jake from speaking.

  Like he cared who got the wood stoves? As long as they had them, that's all that mattered. He could do other things for a while. Right now that would be listening to Burt, he realized, though the man seemed to be taking forever about getting to his point. Everything kept running in a perceptible slow motion. Kind of.

  “Nate and I think you should stay here for a few more days, build up a little. I know that it's probably a pain, but we can't afford to lose you to stupidity. You know what I'm saying, youthful arrogance, the belief that you're indestructible, all that kind of thing you young people like to indulge in.”

  Jake smiled and shook his head.

  “No one thinks like that. Not now. Not here at least.” No, here everyone knew they could die, and probably would soon.

  “OK, point taken, still, don't push yourself too hard. Carl is taking your place on Tipper's team for now and doing well. Only one job came up while you were out and it sounds like they did wonderfully.”

  Jake wondered if Carl would like the job forever? He could do something else then. Start his own team or... No, the man really needed to be out hunting or trapping, whatever he did. No one had tried trapping yet, he didn't think. Would it work? Jake had no clue how to do it. He could shoot things in the head, which should work well enough for hunting, but that was about all.

  They talked for a few more minutes, then Jake went off with the wood gathering team and helped use an axe to take down a tree. It seemed easy actually. The aching joints hurt less when he did it, rather than more. Cool. Maybe he just needed some exercise now? He did the next six trees by himself, making good enough time it seemed, since everyone stared at him after the first two instead of trimming the branches off. Then he helped load the trees on the cart, after Carley and Nate finally got them ready. They felt light. Well, heavy still, but like four hundred pounds, instead of a thousand or more. It still took eight people to do it, but the perception made it seem easier.

  After a few seconds he got it.

  As sick as he'd been, he'd gotten rest.

  A chance to heal a bit. Probably not all the way, but way more than he'd had in the six months before that. He'd been safe, locked in a little room and after the first five days, the only stress had been his strong desire to die to get away from how awful being sick felt. He'd just forgotten what only slightly cruddy was like, so it seemed way better than it should.

  Pacing would be important then, to prevent relapse. He took turns with the others taking trees after that and finished the day feeling a little sore, but not bad overall. His pants kept trying to fall down, but he dealt with it by making a belt out of a length of rope. All he needed was a straw hat and he could have his hillbilly Halloween costume ready.

  It occurred to him that no one would probably do that one anymore. Who needed fake monsters when real ones came knocking all the time anyway? Plus, no candy. Without that, what was the point?

  They still hadn't even managed that sing along Nate had talked about, everyone had gotten too busy. Maybe after the harvest? That would be in a few more weeks, less now. Not everything came in at once, they had pumpkins and squash for instance that would be later in the year. A lot of the two hundred odd acres would need picking in the coming month, with nearly full time work each day. Canning and drying too. They probably had a plan for all that, Jake wouldn't know. His job had been zombie killing and wood stoves.

  Dinner was a lot more interesting than it had been, because of the greater variety of vegetables and some berries that the kids had gotten with Justine a ways off, in the woods. Gutsy going there alone, but they'd lived. Really that was all that counted. At least with him. Lois thought differently, and wanted to ground them, but Dave just started laughing at her when she said it. It was nearly too loud, and the kid had to hold both hands over his mouth to keep the noise down.

  “Right, it's the end of the world and you want to put them on restriction because you got scared when you didn't need to? Ooh, I know, let's ground Jake for scaring us all by getting sick. Now if anyone deserves grounding...”

  Jake had to fight a smile and covered it with a bite of blackberries. They were nice and ripe. Juicy. He hadn't liked fruit or vegetables Back Before, but now they tasted incredible. Like candy almost. It seemed like others agreed with him from the murmurs in the kid's defense. Plus, they'd taken a guard with them. How safe were they supposed to be?

  Safer apparently, since the next day they grabbed him in the morning too, and went to hit an apple tree. The fruit was small, green and a little sour, but wasn't bad for all that, not crab apples, these had been planted by someone, they just weren't store quality. Juice apples probably. If they ever had flour and sugar again, they'd probably work well in a pie. They climbed into the tree, and ended up with three large sacks that were too much for the kids to carry alone. He took two of them and Sammi helped Ken get the third, each grabbing an upper corner of the cloth bag. That left one gun free with Justine if they needed it. They didn't, but better safe than moaning and trying to eat people.

  Then he worked for the rest of the day getting more wood. Not glamorous, but certainly needed. That was pretty much life now though, wasn't it? You worked and did what was required, without worrying what anyone else thought about you. The idea of someone being concerned about appearances nearly made him laugh.

  At about six they heard an odd sound. Two odd sounds really. The first was a car engine. Cars hadn't gone away or anything, but fuel had been hard to find for a while. Mainly because the police had hoarded it all in the first two weeks, before anyone else
had organized enough to defend more than a few token cans of it. The second was the horn. It blared from an old pick-up, a black thing with red spots in irregular places on it. The vehicle raced into the drive, nearly tipping into the turn, sliding on the gravel driveway, the people in the back screaming.

  That was Vickie, her young male screamer driving, she didn't stop making noise, but it was hard to understand her, as they got closer he made it out.

  “Incoming! Incoming hostiles! Three of them!”

  For Vickie to be yelling like that, she certainly didn't mean zombies. Or the police. If it was either of those things she'd have just killed them already. Jake reacted instantly, not knowing what to expect at all.

  “Inside! Get the weapons from the armory, arm... everyone. Go, run!” He yelled this loudly, which got everyone to move for some reason.

  Probably because he hadn't shot himself over it. That must mean an emergency, right?

  Pulling his side arm, the nine millimeter first, he triggered the safety to off with a quick flick of his thumb and searched the road, what he could see of it, for whatever Vickie thought was coming.

  Then, as the truck pulled in, tense and a bit excited, Jake exhaled and tried to remember to breathe. Without air fighting was a lot harder.

  Vickie kept screaming the whole time.

  “They're coming! I, Jake, I don't know what they are.”

  That much Jake could see with his own eyes as soon as they ran into view, moving at speeds that the truck had just barely been able to outdistance.

  They certainly weren't zombies.

  Chapter Five

  Jake did something then that he hadn't done for months, nearly five now. He froze in terror. The things moved fast, but that would have been fine, he tried to tell himself. The eerie part was the jumping. They went high into the air with each leap, oh, not super-hero fifty foot jumps or anything, but they easily had ten feet of air under them from time to time. They nearly flew when they did that, getting in jumps of forty feet or so regularly, more for one of them, a pale man that held his lips back in a rictus as he moved.

  The thing was... the terror... that felt really familiar. It was something known to him, for all that this was new and strange. These things were still just zombies. They just weren't slow, and they weren't rotting. Not that he could see or smell as they closed with the people still outside. Half the cleaners had stayed out, probably on instinct, hoping to just shoot these things and make it be over. When in doubt, aim for the head. Everyone knew that by now.

  So Jake did.

  The problem turned out to be the jumping, that infernal, annoying, and new effect. If they'd just run their heads would have stayed at the same height above the ground roughly. Then, as they rushed him, he could fire. These things flew up and down, forcing a new kind of tracking that no one had any time to learn. Jake wanted to soil himself, but didn't have the time, so he did the only thing he could think of as the first one started trying to move on Vickie's silent screamer, who was still trapped in the old black truck. Something else he hadn't done for months. Only done once actually, the very first time he saw a dead person coming for him.

  He ran toward the freaks and screamed like a little school girl on a roller coaster.

  They moved on him fast then, a lot faster than any zombie had before. One of them taking to the air, flying right at him. He waited until it nearly hit his outstretched gun arm and fired without stopping. It smashed into him and he felt it continue to move, but in a more subdued fashion, just reacting to stimulus of touch. This one was a girl. Had been a girl, a woman now. Jake's own age. He knew that for a fact because he recognized half her face as he rolled her off. A girl he'd known.

  Becks.

  Rachel.

  Fuck.

  Fucking hell.

  Jake nearly vomited. Nearly just fell down crying. She was dead. Had been dead too, from the look of things. And, worse, he'd just shot her in the head. She still moved, even as he stared at her, breathless.

  God.

  He didn't have time to reminisce as the other two were on him then, nearly at least. Jake finished emptying the clip into the first one, the really impressive jumping male who wore heavy clothes that looked familiar. The style did at least. Long sleeves, jeans. Layers to keep from having a bite taken out of you too easily. His left little finger was gone to a joint, the second one. Probably where the bite had happened, because it had that strange zombie black blood look that old wounds got when you turned.

  Jake missed the head and the things barely slowed if you missed, it seemed. He didn't have time to go for the forty-five even. Crap. Fist fighting wouldn't work either, he knew, in that slow-fast time of any good fight. They'd take him in less than a second. He went for the gun anyway. Might as well die trying. That had saved him more than once so far.

  A high pitched and awkward scream came then, from the clutch of people by the door. A few people had been left out and stood surrounded by weapons. No, they all had them. The screamer this time had a shotgun in her little hands and rushed the things, slow, awkward and fumbling. Sammi. She fired too soon by far, the spread of pellets almost missing the bigger man that flew at the group. She'd opened up with both barrels of the hunting weapon and had nothing left.

  Except a group of friends.

  They all opened fire too, and would have killed Sammi if she hadn't tripped in her panic to move away. Either that or the little girl had thrown herself down on purpose with a will that most people never managed even when their life depended on it. The creatures hit the group hard as bullets flew.

  These people weren't killers. All the cleaners had spread out, because bunching up meant you couldn't fight. They also screamed as they died. Cleaners would have tried to stay silent so their friends could get the zombies away.

  Vickie, her whole crew, Carl's old guy, they all tried screaming now, but it didn't work. Each of the new kind of dead things were already eating someone. The people still made noise, and that bait kept the things going, feasting instead of looking for prey. A meal at hand trumped a possible one. Jake ran and pulled the clunky larger weapon from the back of his waist, glad once again that he had it. Really he needed to carry a third backup, he decided. Get another nine, and wear it on his other hip. That, and work with everyone on good fighting protocol.

  This was new, sure, but the people dying on the porch shouldn't have been. Not most of them. He ran as fast as he could, feeling slow and clumsy. He didn't hesitate, but there were so many people just frozen in place he couldn't get a shot off. Not at a distance. He closed, knowing it was stupid, knowing it could get him killed if the zombies turned. On the porch he stuck the end of the barrel against the head of the better jumper who ate someone, a female someone, on the ground. He could hear the whimpering. Almost without noticing it, then, without knowing he fired, the gun in his hand jumped and the thing's head lolled to the side. Jake shot twice more, making sure it didn't get back up.

  A second roar came from his right, a shotgun by the sound. Someone had stuck the barrels against the smaller, faster man's head as he ate Marty the engineer. The blast ripped the head almost all the way off too. A good shot. That thing wasn't getting up.

  It took a second to realize who'd done it. The skin was dark, so his mind flashed to Carl, but Ken didn't have nearly that kind of bulk or muscle. The boy stood still, panting hard, the shotgun still smoking from the end. Everyone stared for a second. Except the two on the ground. They still groaned. Marty and the woman in front of him. Under him.

  Mary.

  Fuck.

  Jake didn't wait, he shot her in the head twice, instantly. He wouldn't leave her to suffer like Sarah just because he didn't know what to do. Or because he didn't want to be the one to make the decision. They couldn't save anyone that had been bitten. Even if they weren't infected, these two had too much damage. Maybe if they had a hospital to take them to, but with a few bandages made from boiled rags and some bread mold they didn't stand a chance. Before he c
ould move over to Marty, who begged for a second to be allowed to live, someone else stepped in and took his head off.

  It really was a mercy. The guy had to be in horrible pain, half his left arm gone and a large bite taken from his face already.

  Justine had done it. She shook, just standing, looking scared, shotgun still smoking from the blast.

  That made sense, the fear, because her right arm had long furrows on it. Scratches. She'd been in the clutch on the porch when the two had hit. Fuck. They couldn't afford to chance having her turn into one of those things, a regular zombie was a huge risk, but one of those...

  Screw it, he decided. He'd take her away for a couple of days, so that only he was at risk. If she turned, she died. That was the rule of course. But if he could save her he would. That was also a rule, even if no one else realized it yet.

  “Bandages. Now. Anyone hurt step up... now, we have to move you away for quarantine. I'll be damned if I'm putting super-whatever these things are in the middle of the house. Front and center. We'll move to...” He didn't know where to go. Somewhere close, but far enough away for safety. The next farm over? He didn't know what was there, Vickie's team had cleared it, scouting for a location when they'd first moved. This house had been picked mainly because it was larger. If they had a cellar, that would be good. He nodded and said this out loud.

  It took a while to get all the people to admit being hurt, two of them either didn't know they'd been scratched or were afraid to say so and one just had a bite. That was one of the guys that Jake didn't know, a homebody that hadn't even started being useful yet. Still, when it came to it he'd been one of the ones trying to fight, hadn't he? Not very well, but he'd been in the middle of it all. A lot of people had hidden indoors.