A Very Good Man (44 page)

  The square jawed man in front had tidy hair, longer than about half the others, but shorter than Jake's. The man stared at Jake, then the bodies on the ground for a moment, then back to him.

  “Nice shooting. They're ours. Sorry about leading them to you, they were doing some forward recon on the other side of town three days ago and something happened. They both had the vaccine, all the special forces types have, in all branches of the military. So they went type B on us when they turned. We were trying to lead them away from civilians, but they moved in here. Seems a mistake in judgment on their part.” He smiled.

  “Major Howard Cole. U.S. Army.”

  Jake shrugged, still angry from his fight with Heather. Not these people's fault of course so he took a deep breath and looked at the increasingly uneasy men around him.

  “There's still an Army? We've all seen the shows, sure you aren't some rogue unit of bikers that cut your hair and found some uniforms? I can't help but notice none of you match. Come to try and loot us and rape our sheep or something? Not that we have sheep. Just some cows. You get the point.” Jake didn't smile, but hadn't sounded completely like a crazy hill person yelling at someone to “Git off his property” either. He hoped not at least.

  The men actually relaxed though, a good sign in his mind, violent people didn't do that. Nate walked over slowly, hands out and empty, but not raised. They weren't surrendering here, the military had twelve men with them, if they counted the two on the ground. They had good weapons, but Jake stood right in the middle of them, a semi-circle around the bodies. If they'd come for a fight, they were doing it all wrong. Shooting him likely meant hitting their own people too.

  “Nothing like that, in fact the opposite.” He looked at Jake with confidence, head high and body straight. Military, not stiff.

  “What? You've come to give us stuff and brought us sheep to rape? Well, since none of the women around here will touch me that's a nice gesture. I'm not sure that I'm really ready for bestiality yet, but well, maybe we should meet anyway... I could bring them some hay or something, see if we hit it off... Roses maybe. What do sheep like anyway?”

  No one made a sound for a moment, then they laughed. The military a bit loud except one of the men in black who drew a weapon and pointed it at a clutch of other men. Jake had done the same instantly, before the military guy in fact. Everyone went quiet. Both the weapons went back at the same time and the man in black looked at him with dead eyes and nodded. He was vaguely different looking, Latino, maybe. If so he didn't have the dark skin Julio did. Pale. Somehow he looked a little familiar. How they'd gotten out of that without a gun fight he didn't know, but the other men just nodded.

  “Sorry,” Major Cole whispered.

  “We just haven't met many people with a sense of humor in a while. At all, on this trip to tell the truth. The compound on the other side of town looks tight, but they were... A bit reticent to come out and talk. A lot of people are, but they seem to have a lot of police with them. Their uniforms and vehicles at least. We kind of figured that meant a peaceful group.”

  Nate moved in then, hand out to shake smoothly, warmly, and spoke as if the men were expected. They made small talk for a while, the cleaners finally being called off by Nate and oddly, Heather, who walked into the group boldly, pregnant stomach sticking out obviously.

  “These aren't the cannibals. They seem alright, they're what they say mainly, some will be around later. Not here to hurt anyone. More scared than they seem, in the end, but then, who isn't anymore?” Then she walked off, making angry and hurt eyes at Jake.

  Nate smiled.

  “And who could ask for a better endorsement than that? We're going to have lunch soon, would you like to join us?”

  The Major smiled and looked like he might cry, tears actually coming to his eyes at the offer.

  “We'd love to. If it's not a hardship? We have food with us, enough to share, some staples, flour, sugar and some chocolate. We haven't found anyone willing to talk to us in this area for some reason, we've seen people, but they've all run when we tried to call out to them. Zombies would have run toward us, so they must be people. Any idea why?”

  Nate looked uneasy, but Jake shrugged. It wasn't their wrong doing that had caused it after all.

  “The police. The Westwood force, all turned into a violent looting gang on day four. They didn't even try to help anyone, took most of the town's supplies they could grab and hid in their compound. A lot of people won't differentiate between the cops and the military. Plus, you know, we've all have seen the movies Back Before. The military never comes to help you.”

  Cole nodded.

  “This time it's different. For maybe the first time in history we can say “We're from the government, we're here to help you” and really mean it.”

  Nate waved gently toward the house, Lois stood on the porch staring and so did Sammi. She looked... hard.

  Wrong. If she knew something he didn't, if they needed to be ready... Jake slowly eased his right hand toward his sidearm, watching the girl closely. She caught the movement and shook her head gently, making eye contact. Jake relaxed a bit, but stayed ready.

  As the group approached her nose twitched, the man in black that had a good sense of noise control smiled and walked forward relaxed and happy looking.

  Giving him a smile back the girl took two steps forward.

  “Uncle Robert?” Her voice sounded happy and questioning at the same time.

  The man laughed lightly.

  “Sammi? Samantha? Oh god, we all thought you were dead! Your parents, they're fine, with everyone at the lake, with... grandfather. When you didn't get there we worried...”

  Everyone stared again.

  At least this time it wasn't at Jake.

Chapter Nine

  Jake sat back and watched, listened and stayed ready while the military men ate lunch and talked to everyone at the table openly. At least the ones that talked to them. The homebodies were split as to what they did, half seemed to want to hide or run away, the others were excited, as if the military had come to save them. That wasn't really the case at all.

  “We fucked up, pardon the language ladies.” The Major said softly. Even the military insisted on that. One of the first things they'd mentioned was that each unit had a “silencer”, a guy that made sure that if someone went off the deep end they didn't do it for long. He waved at Robert when he said it, but his gaze took in Jake at the same time. The Major didn't ask any questions though. Not about that.

  “Early on the government panicked and put out a vaccine for the plague, virus really, they thought. Made from zombie blood cultures. Only it's not a virus. It's not anything we know how to deal with and the vaccine doesn't inoculate the body, it just infects a person slowly. If you had the shot, you turn, only going slow makes people stronger and faster. A second dose will do it too, faster, but the scientists think now that the apparent protection it gave initially only lasts about three months, then, eventually, you turn. Probably years though, or longer if you don't get infected again. No one really knows how long yet. It's why we all haven't just killed ourselves. There's some hope.”

  Nate took a bite of stew and had some savory corn pudding with it, then politely asked if the entire military had been exposed that way.

   Grimly the man nodded.

  “Yes, what was left of us. The losses have been... steep doesn't cover it. Four months ago we all got the shot, there were about a quarter million people under arms then. Now we're down to maybe half that. The groups with the highest survival rates are the veterans and special forces operatives. There functionally isn't an Air Force anymore... we have Captain Steve and his crew.” The military guys all laughed for some reason but the Major took a bite then and didn't explain until after he finished chewing.

  “This is really good. Deer meat? Anyway, we have a bit more than that, but not a lot, there is no Marine Corps anymore and no Navy or Coast Guard. Now it's all just the U.S. military. We all tend to use our old ranks or hell, half the time just make stuff up. It's not like we get paid anymore. The main base has a guy in charge that insists on being called “The Clown Prince”. That's not even a joke by the way. Honestly I don't even know if all these guys with me are military at all. Tough as nails though and disciplined, so I don't ask. If they learned to be like that in clown college, I just need to know for future recruiting purposes.”

  That got a laugh too.

  Jake smiled, a lot of things were like that now. The guys had two thousand pounds of flour with them and gave them half of it, plus three hundred pounds of sugar. Old surplus, but still good. Vacuum sealed in drums. If they weren't from the government now, they would be soon, if they kept doing that.

  It was certainly a hit at the house. They also had chocolate bars. A lot of them. Hershey's. Somehow, with the help of the government getting them supplies and protecting the town, they'd managed to stay in production. It made for great PR and was kind of a sign that people could manage anything if they tried. The wrappers were brown paper and the quality sucked according to the Major, but chocolate was good for morale.

  “Westwood... You clearly got hit, not a lot of people left, but we didn't see a single zombie going through town and we looked. Even checked out some houses. How did that happen? Did the police...” He looked at Nate who made a face and shook his head hard.

  “No, we cleaned the town out, the police hid. Later after their own people started turning they rounded up undead and even their own personnel and steered them at us. We haven't lost anyone from those since the first attack, they got two of us then. Bitten. We had to, um, make sure they didn't come back. We didn't know if a bite would make more of those, you called them type Bs?”

  That started a talk about tactics, led by Vickie, though the other cleaning team leaders chimed in. Jake didn't. They had it right and didn't need an extra voice to help them explain basic things. Besides, he wasn't happy right now.

  Maybe it wasn't fair that he thought at least some woman should sleep with him, but they didn't need to all come and try to tear him down about not wanting him later did they? Did they think he didn't have feelings or something? Probably. Was he being a sulky little pain in the ass? Also that one.

   The conversation had taken a turn, so he listened a bit harder, the Major spoke excitedly.

  “Can you teach other people to do that? We, well the tactics don't sound hard, but we basically don't do insertions into a house unless we have a solid crew of twelve with us. You use teams of four? And draw them out with screams? Freaking brilliant. We always go in silent. So many early groups just died or turned doing that we stopped and with the military compromised as we are, we can't risk it. Some places are still incredibly bad. This is the best I've seen and the only place that we've even heard of getting crops in for the winter like this. You must all be very proud of what you've accomplished here.”