A Very Good Man (28 page)

  Beautiful.

  The last holdouts, three of them, screamed and cried. They were scared and it showed in their voices. A few of their hunting crew weren't cleaners at all, just farm guys from the area. They'd learned not to make noise though. That and a bit of ducking made them nearly invisible to the police. Jake killed the whining cops in a few seconds, one right after the other.

  They searched for more in silence.

  If they existed they were good. Or too afraid to make a sound or move. Either way, it worked. They didn't see, hear or smell anyone else. The police did smell. These particular ones, not the entire classification, which had, at least back in the day, been a tidy group. It wasn't a feral scent or anything, but the kind of odor you got if you wore the same clothes too many days between washings in the summer heat. The sucky part was that this attack meant that they had to strip the bodies and bury them. That would wait for morning though. Right now they needed to dress the meat, the deer meat, and fix dinner. They were all too hungry to let a little killing stop them, weren't they? Jake knew he was at least.

  Half of them did that, the deer work, led by Carl, and Tipper had the others drag the bodies to the barn. They counted sixteen in all. They got beheaded by Jake, using a machete, dark or not. You didn't want to take chances after all. What had they been thinking? To steal the deer? They had sixteen men with them, all armed. Wouldn't hunting be simpler? More effective too?

  Well, obviously so. After all, they were dead now. Bringing three zombies in first to ambush them, that took some doing too. Blinking Jake wondered if they had a truck with them. They had most the fuel after all. Well, they could check in the morning. He wanted to sleep and really didn't care anyway. They could take the fuel, but the vehicle would have to vanish, or else the other cops would know where this group had disappeared from, and really, all things considered, Jake kind of liked the little house. It would be a good place to live if it didn't get burned downed or ruined.

  Tipper sat down on the floor next to him silently. At first he didn't realize who it was, being so dark, until she started whispering to him.

  “Jake, I... I wasn't trying to lie to you, I just don't feel that way about you. I didn't mean to hurt you... You have to see that, right? That sometimes people just don't want people that way. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you...”

  Jake nodded. Of course it did. That was kind of the point wasn't it? The real one she was making. He wasn't good enough for her, even though a whole lot of other people were? Pretty much everyone wasn't it? Was there any other way to look at it?

  “But you wouldn't let me explain, it's just that Holsom was so good looking and, you know there were no strings attached with it, I thought so at the time anyway. It wasn't about you though, I don't want you to think that.”

  Jake got up, or started too, but her hand on his arm stopped him. He glared at it, the contact, but realized that she wouldn't be able to see his eyes anyway.

  “Jake.” Her voice sounded imploring.

  “You know,” Jake's voice stayed low, feeling embarrassed already and not wanting everyone in the place to hear him. They would anyway he knew, any sound was magnified now, by the quiet they lived in. He winced and went ahead. “You were doing better with me before you started throwing off insults in a fake apology. You don't feel that way about me, but Holsom's alright, because you didn't feel that way about him either? Oh, no, wait, you just mean to say that I'm not good enough for you? That it doesn't matter if you lie to me, because everyone else in the world is so nice and good looking? Amazing. Funny, I already picked up on that all by myself. I must be a genius or something. Well, you know what? Why don't you go off and join up with your buddy Derrick? I'm sure he'd appreciate having you, since he probably can't survive the winter alone. Then you could be happy with your little friend and joke about what a loser I am to pass the time.” OK, so he sounded bitter. Well, too bad, he hadn't started the conversation. But in about five seconds he'd finish it if she didn't let go of his arm.

  He surged to his feet and moved. She did let go when he got most of the way up.

  “That's... I didn't mean it that way.”

  “Then why say it? Why go out of the way to push the issue? I get it, you don't think of me “that way” meaning I'm not good enough for you. I get it. You weren't exactly subtle about rubbing that in were you? Why make a point of pushing it now?”

  Maybe he could be on Carl's team instead and just go hunting? Or he could try cleaning on his own. He didn't need Tipper anymore. He never really had. Yeah, she'd saved his life, but they were at least even there. He'd saved her life first anyway. After that he got, “I'm a lesbian.” Right. Nothing he did counted. It didn't matter what he did, who he saved or how hard he worked. Derrick Holsom was better than he was, and so was everyone else in her mind. In the mind of women in general. It was the way things had always been and no changes he made would fix it.

  He went outside and curled up next to the side of the house to the left of the door. Yeah, he couldn't sleep that way, but no one would sneak up behind him either. There were some low bushes that he used for cover, the night cool enough that he was glad for the long sleeves he wore. No one came out looking for him. But then they wouldn't. If someone armed walked off to get away from you, chasing them was a bad plan. Definitely better to let cooler heads prevail in the morning.

  He didn't know if he'd have a cooler head then, but he'd at least be calm enough not to kill anyone over his hurt feelings. Probably.

  The time passed slowly and he dozed more than once, waking with a start when he did. The fourth time he woke from a dream where Heather, looking just like she had earlier in the day, yesterday now, whispered to him that they were coming and that he needed to wake up and kill them all now, she sounded urgent. It made him feel like cold water had been dashed into his face.

  Jake really didn't want dream Heather helping him just then. Really he didn't want to think of her at all, even if she was right. It was a bit much to ask of him, wasn't it?

  Only being behind the bushes saved him from detection. The men walked in the moonlight, wearing black and had night vision goggles on. There were four of them, that he could see at least. More cops, at least from the bullet proof vests and regulation boots they wore. They needed to steal their boots before burying them. In the old world that would have been incriminating evidence and it might be again someday. For now it just meant durable foot wear. It was that or make a point of finding a shoe store in town.

  He took out the weapon on his hip, since it was black and not too shiny, and fired up at the first one, hitting him in the head, then getting the second dead in the visor before he rolled out of the way, scrambling along the edge of the house.

  The third actually tripped over one of the fallen, and Jake aimed for the head instantly, used to taking things on the ground like that. It surprised him a little, because the weapon just moved into place and fired smoothly, almost as if on its own. Two more ran around the corner then. So there were three left still. Well, he had enough rounds. Two for each? He'd lost count. They could see at night, but so could he, if not as well. They didn't have infra-red though, or if they did their system sucked. Jake was still alive after all. He hid behind bushes and circled around them until a shot lined up. They were firing wildly, not knowing where he was yet. Thankfully they shot at where he'd been, not his current location.

  Jake got the next two as they spun in place trying to find him, but the flash marked his location too clearly, meaning the last man could open fire on him. Lying flat on the ground he just rolled to the left. No particular reason, it just felt right at the time. That might have been wrong, Jake considered, since something he rolled over started to bite or sting him. It hurt, the pain mainly on his stomach and right side, it moved under his arm and then bit his arm pit over and over again. He decided that as soon as he shot the guy in front of him that had just emptied his clip into the ground not ten feet away, he was going to freak out and start slapping himself there.

  Stupid bugs.

  The last shot rang out clearly, and he did slap at his arm pit, then reached under his shirt and grabbed at something that crunched under his fingers as he pulled it away. Ick. He hated bugs. They were everywhere and did things like this at inconvenient times. Then again, it was always an inconvenient time to be stung or whatever. Hopefully bites, since a stinger would mean poison. Not that he was allergic to anything, but it would still swell and hurt for days. It was just another thing he didn't need to deal with.

  Jake moved as quietly as he could behind a tree and crouched, reloading with a fresh clip. Then he started crawling, hoping not to be attacked again. By anything. He didn't have much luck. At least three more things, all of them buzzing, stung him as he moved. Hornets or wasps maybe? They didn't feel good whatever they were. He also found another black clad man who was doing exactly what he was, and crawling through the brush. The big difference being that he yelped when he got stung.

  It cost him his life.

  After that Jake didn't find anyone else, so they either ran away or all of them were gone. He kind of hoped for dead. It would be a pain to dig a pit big enough for all of them now. Stupid cops. Always messing things up for everyone else. Jake sighed. It wasn't fair of him to think that. The world probably still had some good ones left. These were a pain in the rear though.

  It was just supposed to be a relaxing hunting trip. Then, Tipper had made sure that wouldn't happen hadn't she? Honestly, what was her problem anyway? Maybe some of the other women could use the whole “Jake's a killer” thing as a reason not to like him, even though he'd kept a lot of them alive. Tip though, well, she was a killer too. For her to be playing games with him like that didn't make sense. She “didn't like him that way?” What the fuck?

  It was the freaking end of the world. He had a pulse and had even helped keep her alive. What wasn't to like? He even had good hygiene. That practically made him a rock star in the current world, didn't it? And...

  Honestly... personal low self-esteem aside...

  Holsom wasn't that good looking. That whole situation just didn't make sense at all. Tipper should have been putting a bullet in the louse's brain, not taking him up the behind in a crowded room.

  He stayed out until first light, then knocked on the door, four raps, then three, then four. Three came back, then four, then three more. So they were all them at least. Good. It was the agreed on field knocking pattern, so that no one would learn their secret knock for the house if they overheard. It got changed each week. Really, it wasn't that things were that dangerous, but a lot of people had time to make things like that up now. The door opened to find Carl and Dave standing there ready to fight, just in case Jake had been taken by the newcomers. He shook his head.

  Like that would happen. They might have killed him, but taking him prisoner wasn't ever in the cards, was it? If they had somehow, they wouldn't have gotten the knock from him. The best they'd have gotten would be a fake one so that the people inside would know to just start shooting.

  “Six or seven more I think. Night vision.”

  Tipper looked at him, a strange thing that seemed out of place. Kind of worried, as if she gave half a damn about him. Jake didn't bother acknowledging it, staring through her as if she wasn't there. He let the others handle the bodies. He'd done his bit for the team and besides, his back hurt, and the sore spots under his arm were less than fun too.