A Very Good Man (2 page)

  Ah, that would be it then. Jake nodded to himself a bit. Now it made sense.

  Molly, genius that she was, screamed. The runners headed straight for her. Well, it was her job, but a handgun wouldn't have been his first choice for trying to take these things out on the move and they hardly used rifles at all anymore, so he hadn't thought to bring one. These guys, both were men and had been young before they passed on, probably some of the first hunters from their heavy, torn and blood stained clothing, had been fit and strong when they went, which meant fast now.

  Lovely.

  Jake took aim and got the first one about fifteen feet away from Molly's throat.

  The two at the porch were still dealing with the threat from inside, and Molly still had one closing on her position fast. Like a freaking linebacker. It would have helped if she shut up, maybe, but that wouldn't happen. The girl wanted to die and apparently didn't mind taking her team along for the ride. Sweet of her really, always willing to share the treat. Except that she wasn't, not with Jake, was she? He nearly shot her first, to stop the noise, but managed to load three slugs into the charger's brain pan instead, stopping it no more than a foot outside its arms reach from its target. Molly kept screaming.

  Stupid cunt.

  Jake didn't like to use foul language as a rule, but the girl was going to get them all killed. Possibly today if she didn't shut it fast. Before he could shoot her Tipper cast him a worried look and spoke low, nearly the growl that Jake used most of the time himself.

  “Can it Molly. Stop now or we'll have to kill you.” She kept looking at Jake while she spoke.

  For some reason, ever since the beginning, whenever people had to be killed for the good of the group, everyone always looked at him. Probably because in the original group of eight, he'd been the only one willing to take out Gary when he'd freaked. It had been the eighth night when it happened. Zombies came toward organic noises, especially human voices, but they ignored gunfire. What Molly didn't ignore was the clatter of Dave's shotgun chambering a round. The kid wouldn't kill the girl, or at least Jake didn't think so, not yet. He really wanted to though. So did Jake at the moment.          

  That feeling stopped when the girl did, voice going dead instantly.

  “Good. Let's pull back and see what comes out now.” This again got muttered low and deep, Jake may not have had more than a mid-tone tenor for singing, but it went low for zombies. Nearly a croak. They liked high pitched voices better and higher tones carried better to zombie ears.

  They moved quietly then, weapons out, except for Molly, who glared at him when she thought he wasn't looking. Why him? Who knew. Jake would have killed her if she hadn't shut-up, sure, so would the others. They even all liked her well enough when she didn't freak out like that. He wondered what her problem with him could be? It had been her screwing up as far as he could tell. Even with that, when she moved wrong, he'd covered her and got the dump in time. It was annoying, but not something to carry around with them really.

  That, dumping a single zombie over, made a huge difference. The first hunters didn't know about it and ended up in vast open fights with undead climbing all over them. About half of them died each time they fought, because zombies don't stop unless you destroy a big chunk of the brain, which movies aside, was harder to do than it sounded. Or... if you provided food. Yeah, they could throw a living person to them too, that worked pretty well, overall. A bit hard on morale though. Dumping a zombie got the others to stop for about half a minute while they tried taking a bite of the downed form, just in case it was lunch. They didn't like the taste, but it could take them three or four bites to make sure.

  All of them stopped, most of the time, to check an already downed potential snack. Hence a guy at the door with a spear. Machetes and baseball bats had been tried too, and they kind of worked, but had drawbacks. Machetes let the creatures get too close and bats didn't get them on the ground fast enough. It could take a half dozen swings to down one and that just took too long most of the time.

  Shooting worked, but zombies rarely went down from anything less than a headshot and shooting them holding still and bent over a body trying to munch was much easier than doing the same thing as they were charging full blast. They didn't move all that fast as they aged, but the fresh ones were nearly as quick as live people. Anyone could take out slow shamblers. That was where the old movies had it wrong though, thinking that the old ones were all you'd have to ever face, and that they'd all look like they'd come out of the grave. They got that way after a while, but the fresh ones could sometimes pass as human. In looks at least.

  Except most people didn't try to eat you.

  They moved back a ways, quietly, waiting to see if anything else came out to play. Nothing did, thank god. Not that Jake believed anymore, if he ever really had. Not now. If there was a god he'd abandoned them all six months back and hadn't even sent a note to explain why. No backup or anything.

  Kind of a douche move, if it was really the case.

  Molly sat on the ground crying and glaring at him between sobs. At least she was muffling the noise now. Really, Jake felt like just getting a new screamer, or just doing it himself. He really couldn't though, his voice always stayed too soft now.

  The chubby girl would end up getting him killed and the way she'd been doing things, he'd come back as a zombie. That would suck.

  For one thing he really didn't think human flesh would be all that tasty, since zombies didn't even cook it first. Plus everyone was thin and stringy now. The other thing was the whole look they got going, pasty and torn up. The rotting didn't help either. Yeah, he was white, but finally had a little color to his face from all the hunting the team had done that summer, along with the farm work he'd put in. He'd hate to lose that now. It was the best tan he'd ever had.

  Nothing happened at all, not for hours. Finally, just about the time he was getting ready to call a halt to the day, a single form walked out of a house near the one they'd been working in. The form didn't shamble or run, just walked carefully, looking around. It could be one of the rare smart ones, or it could be a regular person. Not their problem if the later, the former was though. The intelligent zombies were the worst. No easy way to tell if it was a dead person for sure from there, or, well there was one, but it was kind of dangerous. After watching it for several minutes, still not able to tell, except that it seemed like a girl, or a woman... or a young man wearing a dress. Jake decided on the easy thing. First he signaled to Dave and Tipper, a single wave from him to the target, cupping his hands in front of his face to explain the plan. They both nodded back, ready to move if need be.

  “Hello!” Jake yelled, his voice still hoarse from all the whispering he'd been doing over the last months. Then he waited.

  The form didn't run toward them, instead it turned and ran away. Human then. Good. They could go. If the person had wanted to talk they would have either yelled back, or if they were sane, waved and waited to see what happened. Of course their hunting group were cleaners, the people that moved in and cleared neighborhoods of the undead, which meant, if not a safe group, at least one that probably wouldn't rape or rob you. Everyone knew that by now. Most groups were a little spottier than that.

  Really that wasn't exactly correct.

  Most groups were made of decent people that would as soon leave you alone as not, truth be told. Those groups hid and kept their heads down when they could. But some of the worst went out looking for victims a lot. There had been a biker gang that terrorized the area for the first two months for instance. That group had been a pretty rough and tumble lot.

  They didn't make it.

  What worked to intimidate good regular people Back Before didn't work very well on zombies at all, and people that hunted the already dead didn't just give up anymore because you looked a little scary or waved a gun. It was an attitude thing.

  The biggest problem they still had in Westwood was the police. The remaining piece of the police force that was. The fire department had held together for nearly three weeks scrambling to fight fires and protect people, even if they weren't armed for it at all and the EMTs held nearly as long after the announcement from the Center for Disease Control came over everyone's radios and television sets.

  The police had started breaking inside four days. They didn't just run, which could have been forgiven, Jake guessed. After all, they weren't trained for Armageddon any more than the next group of people. What they did though was use the taxpayer provided weapons and their badges to loot the town, then took over Castor's farm, which, thanks to crazy Mr. Castor's paranoia had a fence around the whole place topped with barbed wire. They made occasional raids still and had taken to stealing women for some reason, or so it was rumored. The reasons why varied depending on who you asked. Jake didn't know himself. He just kind of hoped it wasn't for food.

  All he knew for certain was that they didn't send out small groups like his. Any group over ten people had to be watched, just in case it turned out to be them. Luckily, the police were trained to be cowardly. They constantly feared everything, meaning they didn't go out too often. That worked for the rest of them at the moment, since it meant they could just walk back home before dark. It was only about five miles, which meant two hours, since they had Molly along. She couldn't keep up with even a slow jog and whined about a fast walk.

  If she did that today though, Jake was going to have to shoot her.

  It wasn't a rule that you had to go quickly or even that you couldn't whine, he'd just had enough of her for the day. Hopefully the others would back his story about how she'd turned into a zombie without warning and he'd had to “help her along” or they could claim she'd tripped and gotten lost... Or that gypsies had stolen her.

  No one would buy it, but that would be halfway funny at least.

  The journey went even slower than normal and Molly did, of course, start complaining about halfway there. Not loudly, but it still rankled. Mainly because she'd decided everything that had happened was his fault and harped on the idea without pause.

  “We agreed on left, that's what we practiced and then you moved right. How am I supposed to do anything about that? Those things nearly got me!” She said, her tone rather sincerely bitchy.

  Jake, thankfully didn't have to answer her, since Dave did.

  “You stupid cunt, you ran the wrong way. It's always your own left. You went to the right. Not doing that is how you're supposed to stop it. Yeah, Jake took the spear to the other side, scrambling not to stab your chunky ass. It nearly got him killed and you're trying to blame him for it? God. Look I know you're not exactly Mensa material, but you could at least learn to notice when you mess up that badly, can't you?”

  The girl, no make-up on a round face that actually looked better now than it had early on, having thinned a good bit due to reduced rations, looked to Tipper for some girl solidarity. Her big brown cow eyes were kind of imploring actually. Jake nearly felt bad for her but she wasn't trying for good will from him. Just Tipper.

  She didn't find it.

  One thing about Tip, she was all work in the field. Hardcore like a soldier or even special forces guy. Most of the rest of the time too. Freaking tough really. It meant she called things like she saw them, no matter who it might offend. Including him if he was the one screwing up, but this time that wasn't her reaction at all.