A Very Good Man (23 page)

  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 bread mold they didn't stand a chance. Before he could 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 overly 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.

  Of course none of them had been bitten either, so Jake couldn't blame them. Just as well they stayed out of the way.

  The man had an old pistol in the right hand and clutched his arm with the other. Almost all bites happened to the hands or arms, the forearm being the most common place. The human jaw just wasn't designed for biting, not like zombies did it. That meant they rarely hit anything too thick. That left the lower leg, arms and hands, with the neck coming in there about fifth place or so.

  The man cried openly. Well, he knew the drill. Jake got ready to take him out, since it might be possible he'd decide to try and fight. He had a gun and panic did strange things to the mind. A bite like that always turned bad. Always. Everyone knew it too. Which was why they all stared at him.

  The guy with the bite didn't try to fight though, sobbing, tears tracking down his cheeks, he stuck the gun in his mouth bravely. Then he stopped. Hand on the trigger, he looked to be trying to squeeze, but nothing happened, his hand turned white, it shook, and the gun just didn't fire. After about three minutes of this, he pulled the weapon out, bent over and set it down, then started walking away from the house slowly.

  “God,” The moan came low, sincere and so scared it ripped at the heart. “Jake, I... help me. I can't do it. I'm too afraid.” The man cried softly as he walked.

   The single shot carried across the open fields, ripping loudly and echoing off the house, bouncing back and thudding into his chest. The man fell and wouldn't be getting back up. He may have been kind of useless in life, but a lot of people were a lot less brave when it came time to die. Jake liked to think he'd have done better and pulled the trigger himself, but who knew until the moment came? Everyone stared at him again.

  “Right, let's bandage the wounds, anyone with anything like a scratch comes with me, if anyone is bitten, well, freaking off yourselves will you?” He sighed knowing that they wouldn't. “Right... That won't work... Fine. Everyone strip. Now. Everyone.”

  It would be the only way to know for certain. The people on the porch all looked reluctant, but the cleaners moved fast enough. He did too, first in fact, holding his arms up and turning around. It made for an awkward ten minutes, but everyone else looked clear, thank god. They could take the three injured away, bury the dead and learn from this.

  Super-zombies.

  And one of them had been Becks.

  What the fuck? He walked over to them and stared, their blood was black and the limbs still moved, just like a regular one would have. The flesh though held a pristine look, almost undamaged, skin clear and free of rot. They'd all had little wounds on them, scratches and scrapes, but they just marred the body, a bit of black ichor leaking out and sealing the wound like blood would, but nothing else. No rot, no stench. It made seeing her worse. Rachel looked almost alive, but not, at the same time. He didn't get it, but collected the information for later. Who knew what would make the difference? If they had to keep fighting these things one thing was certain. He needed to become a better shot.

  That and they needed a whole lot of bullets fast.

  “Vickie, Carl, we need everyone to learn basic fighting techniques now. I'm taking the injured to the farm house, the one about three miles that way? For quarantine. Five or six days. Less if they all turn. Everyone needs to fight now. We still need wood and the harvest has to get in, don't let people slack off. They'll be afraid, but we still need to get everything done, worse now if this is what we're facing. If anything people need to work harder. Tell them that. Fear is fine, but we can't let this cripple us.”

  His voice was firm and a lot louder than it should have been, because the people inside needed to hear it too. Carl answered the same way, sounding bold, even though the whites of his eyes showed freely. Scared witless nearly, but he held together. It was enough.

  “Damn straight. Everyone will pull together, don't worry about that.”

  They didn't take much by way of supplies, no food, just some containers for water. It would suck to go that long without, still, he could hunt or scavenge for them. If any of them survived. Odds were, if they turned, they'd all die. He couldn't take three of those things by himself. If they started to turn, he'd have to kill them fast. No one spoke as they walked away, carefully moving past the field of okra.

  Justine carried her shotgun, but the other two, both men, were unarmed. They didn't complain about it. The older one looked scared, but the younger man just shook his head every now and then, disgusted. About what Jake couldn't tell and the man didn't say yet. Maybe later if they lived through this?

  The walk took an hour and a half, because they went cross country and didn't bother going fast. What was the point? No one would be turning for a while and getting there sooner wouldn't really help anything. When they reached the farm house it looked pretty good. Small compared to the other place, which was why they'd picked the one they were in.

  The space.

  This one had a good cellar though and three small rooms upstairs and two on the bottom floor. There was a pantry, which had been looted bare, by them, when they first scouted the place if he remembered correctly, and not one, but two wood stoves. Heh, everyone had forgotten about that. One of them was a nice sized too. He pulled out chairs around the kitchen table and gestured people into place.

  “OK. Hard truths. We can't just lock you all in the cellar, because if one of you turns in the dark like that, but the others don't, you'll all die. So we need to stay together, but where everyone can be watched. If you feel like you're turning, tell us and don't hide it. We can't afford anything stupid here. Everyone agreed?”

  The older man shook his head stubbornly.

  “I... How am I supposed to do this? I can't die now. It's not fair!” His voice rose at the end, but Jake didn't have to go for his weapon, the man just winced and covered his mouth.

  Good. Jake nodded and agreed with the man.

  “Yeah, it sucks and isn't fair at all. But we live in a world of unfair now. I don't want any of you to die, which is why we came here. If you turn into those things, well, at least I have a chance of taking you out. Back at the house, if something like that got loose inside, who knows how many we'd lose?”

  No one would be turning for a time, Jake didn't think, and though it was getting dark, they'd need water and food eventually. Water wasn't as convenient here, but there was a small stream a half mile away Vickie had assured him, it was just starting to turn dark when Jake got there, having left the others to try and find wood. He had a bucket with him, and nearly froze when he saw it. A deer.

  Food. Once upon a time that would have seemed an odd thought to him he realized as he very carefully pulled the nine out and aimed from not more than fifty feet away.       

  Food came in a wrapper, crinkly plastic or waxy paper from a fast-food place. It was ready to eat and didn't try to run away. Most of the time you didn't even have to cook it yourself. Just thinking about it made him remember the smell of Kings drive-in, a retro place in town that always smelled of grease and cooked beef, onion rings and the tang of vinegar from ketchup. His stomach growled softly, making the deer look over at him. He shot it in the head. Habit.

  It worked though, the thing fell instantly.

  Carl had told them about what to do if they got an animal, to keep the meet good, you hung it up and then slit the throat so it would bleed out. There were plenty of trees around for that and he had a knife, but no rope.

   OK, so he'd be clever. He found a boulder on the banks of the river and used that instead, kneeling on the back of the still warm body and reaching forward to make the cut, deep and hard. Blood came out, but it was getting dark, so it was hard to see. After about ten minutes enough had come out that he didn't think more would, letting him walk up stream to get some water in the bucket. Now for the fun part. He set the bucket down, picked the still warm doe up on his shoulders and tried to hold the feet in front with his left hand, then carefully bent and picked up the bucket. The deer was large, at least eighty percent of his own weight. He walked back slowly, trying not to fall. That would spill the water and while meat would be a treat, they had to drink.

  An hour later he got back to the house and knocked on the door carefully after setting everything down. No one answered it at first, but after he knocked again twice, the complicated signaling knock that everyone knew, “shave and a hair-cut” Burt had called it, the door opened, and Justine looked out at him. He couldn't read her face, not well, but the full moon gave him enough light to see by, it was her. She gestured him in to the scene. One man, the younger, sat at the table, hands on it, breathing hard. The other lay on the floor, dead. The older fellow. Jake just waited.

  “It... He tried to run Jake. He got scared and tried to just take off, we would have just let him, but he wanted to go back to the house first. But... if he turned they'd be in danger, I didn't know what to do, he wouldn't listen, so I shot him.” She had that panicked sound that meant they needed to watch her right now. One wrong step and she'd probably just open fire.

  “Alright, that was probably the right move. Did you find any firewood? I got a deer. We should cook it all tonight if we can. Not that I know how to skin it or anything, especially in the dark.”