A Very Good Man (14 page)

  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, 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 walking 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 wood 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, then Jake wanted to have a word with the man however. 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 to 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 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 alright. 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.