A Very Good Man (21 page)

  He made it to the kitchen before falling to his knees. Sinking slowly enough that the thump he made on the floor hardly seemed to hurt at all. Head spinning, he saw Lois first. The woman looked concerned, scared even and rushed to his side, holding him, her apron an old white piece of cloth, heavy and worn... smelled like soup. They weren't having any, but that's what he got from it. Clutching at her he tried to speak, tried to say what he thought was happening.

  The idea made him sick, well the actuality made him feel sick, but what it might be, if it wasn't just a regular infection. Yeah. Holsom would be the type of douche to do that, wasn't he?

  “Zombie infected bullets. Maybe. Infected wound maybe. Penicillin and quarantine.” He wretched, not losing any food, just a painful spasm that turned into cramps, locking his body in half, a tight, painful thing that didn't stop. Lois started yelling and people came then, carrying him off. Into the dark room. The place people went if they were turning. Or might be. He couldn't complain really, it had been his idea after all.

  They could only wait and see now. He had food, laced with the mold, the water was dosed too. If he got too sick to drink water he'd die, because no one would be opening the door until five days passed and he held a cogent conversation with someone for a while. OK, a few words. The last time he'd gotten out with, “I'm still me. I think.” So the bar wasn't that high.

  His head hurt and everything burned, too hot, he stripped his clothing off and stuffed it under his head. He really should have put a mattress in the tiny room, Jake realized, even if the cool floor, linoleum, felt good to him right now. In a day it wouldn't be as nice. If he turned that wouldn't matter though, would it? They hadn't left him a gun even, so one of the others would have to kill him if that was the case. Dave probably. He'd take the least damage from it mentally, but no one else would see it that way. Tipper might get it, or, if what Dave said turned out to be accurate, Sammi. Why her? She was an odd kid, but still, just a little girl. Jake wondered about it as the cramping started again, distracting him. This time on both sides of his body. The pain didn't stop, just came in waves.

  Whee.

  Like an amusement park of suck.

  It went on like this, until he slept, drank more water, and slept again twice. He didn't eat, not for a long time. He hallucinated a lot, for entertainment. Fever dreams that were disjointed and negative. Angry or just bizarre. Nothing nice in any of them at all. Really, it would be better if he could just relive an old television episode or something. Maybe a sit-com? Something with a cute actress would be good. If he wanted to see things rending and tearing like that, he could just go into town.

  Finally he heard a knock on the door, polite at first then a pounding.

  “What?” He croaked, still sick, lying on the floor, desperately hoping someone would come in and kill him finally. He tried again.

  “Who's there?”

  “Um, Jake, are you still you? Not a zombie Jake from Mars that can mimic a bit of human speech or something? If anyone could pull that off it would be you.” Dave then, the voice sounded funny stilted and slow, but he could make out the words if he tried. It took a lot of focus.

  “I just feel like crap I think. Should be alright, if someone will just pass a gun in, I can kill myself and end this. God this... sucks.” He cramped up again as the door opened, Tipper coming in first, no weapon pointed at him. He'd apparently passed the first test.

  Darn.

  “Five days, so you won't turn, but you look like hell. Really bad in fact.” She sounded like a person sugar coating her words, which didn't leave him with warm and fuzzy feelings for some reason. He still felt a bit pissed at her. Hidden under the... suck he felt right now, but still there.

  It did fit the way he felt at the moment so Jake decided not to call her on it. The phony voice she was using. Dave stood behind her, standing with Nate and Mary from the kitchen. The woman nodded to him firmly.

  “More penicillin. I don't know if it's going to help at all, but a full ten day course is better than half of one. Should we move him?” She said, sounding like that would be the kind thing to do.

  For his part, Jake couldn't care. Horribly uncomfortable and wishing for death right there was as good as being somewhere else. This way no one was gaping at him.

  His head still hurt, feeling like the inside of it had been set on fire and everyone was talking at two speeds, not an overlay, he heard them normally too but it felt like it took forever, their images danced and blurred as well, his eyes playing tricks having been in the dark too long? They talked about it forever, a minute maybe, and finally decided to close him back in only to check on him every few hours.

  Jake thought that sounded like a plan to him and nodded, then regretted doing that as he felt bile rise into his throat and try to escape captivity by burrowing through his nasal passage to freedom. It took six more days before he could stand on his own again. Whatever he'd had left him weak and aching, but not dead and not craving human flesh, so that would have to serve.

  Then he clothed himself, filthy from the prior days of sweat and lying on the floor, but not wanting to streak through the whole house, and made his way out to the men's bathing area. He couldn't find his clothes, but Heather saw him and got him something to wear, a loose pair of blue jeans and a shirt that fairly bagged on him, obviously meant for a far heavier person. They tried to fall down a little as he walked slowly back into the house, wearing the boots she'd brought him, which fit just fine. His boots...

  Actually, looking at them closely, as different as the colors seemed to him, sharper and more defined, he realized that the clothes were his too. Well, he hadn't really needed to lose weight, but there it was.

  The wood pile had kept growing, and a log floor had already started being put in the pit next to the house. They were splitting flat chunks from the edges of other logs for some reason. He got it after a second, those were to be the walls. Like giant Lincoln logs. Cool. It looked like it wouldn't take nearly as long as he'd thought. Jake had to like that. Good to know that no one really needed him after all. He thought about it without even a hint of bitterness, because it really was good. For a while there he'd felt like one of the very few getting things done, but now a lot more were pulling out the stops while he sat around. Lay around. He'd have rather been working. It would have been a lot more pleasant.

  Well, he was definitely up now. After breakfast he helped with the dishes, since that didn't take a lot of strength and getting back into things slowly made more than a little sense. He felt, well, alright didn't exactly work, but not bad either. Everything hurt, and he felt stiff, but that could have just been the lack of activity and lying on a floor for two weeks with frequent and painful whole body cramping.

  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 alright?” 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.