A Very Good Man (5 page)

  Darn.

  Other people saw him go quiet too. Maybe if he asked the man to be loud again that would work? Jake tried to think of something fast, but Holsom just didn't do anything.

  Just then Nate walked out the back door of the house, the screen making a soft scritching sound that riveted everyone's attention pretty quickly. His brown eyes sized up the situation and stared at Derrick Holsom with a soft smile. He spoke so softly that Jake, only fifty feet away, could barely make out the words.

  “Got a little loud there Derrick? Now, let's see about helping get this windmill in place before dark, shall we?” The tenor of the words was calm. Relaxed even. Gentle.

  That quality made Nate seem weak to some people, but it meant that their house didn't have to get into a fight with everyone on the planet for each scrap of bread either. They managed to get along with most of the other groups, even the ones that feared and hated each other. Nate did something that Holsom just couldn't manage, he listened to people. Then, if he heard a good idea, he took action. Normally at least.

  The firewood thing was a bit odd, but Burt probably had that situation right. Nate really feared the zombies. He always had. That didn't make him a coward though. He walked past the group of armed men and walked toward the rope that Jose held in his leather work glove.

  Finally, one by one the men on the porch started to move. Jake didn't put his weapon away until Holsom started walking. Even then he watched the man, ready to draw if he had to. His decision to kill the man wasn't personal, but who would blame him for trying to take Jake out first? Probably no one at all. Jake just wasn't as popular with the ladies. Or the other men. The guy who'd shoot you for speaking too loud generally wasn't going to be your best bud. It was kind of a shame really.

  Once they had help it took less than three minutes to get the whole thing into place. Then they all held it while Burt ran around putting the braces up. The operation was finished about ten minutes later and everyone wondered off again. Everyone but Sammi, Lois and Ken.

  Sammi stood next to the nervous looking kitchen lady, who eyed Jake like he might molest the kids or something if she blinked too long. Or shoot them. Lois really didn't care for him for some reason. Maybe he needed to do more work in the kitchen? It could be that she thought he was freeloading like Holsom, since she did most of her work there, meaning she wouldn't see what he did at all. Food was important, so he nodded to himself. That was doable.

  The girl tilted her head at him just slightly, “would you have really killed him just for cursing?”

  Jake shook his head and spoke softly back to her, a small smile on his face.

  “It wasn't the bad language, use all the bad words you want. I don't even care if you want to use them to make fun of me. It was the sound level. If he wanted to complain about having to work like everyone else, but in a whisper, I wouldn't care at all. Especially if he did it while actually helping. Yelling right now puts everyone in danger still. It's just hard for people to control sometimes. Though no one should be complaining about work right now, there's way too much to do to waste time on things like whining.”

  Sammi grinned at him and patted his arm gently.

  “Right, so you can help Ken and I do the dishes after dinner? We really should have more people doing it, it takes hours, and we don't really get much light. More hands means we can get done without burning candles. We'll want those in the dark months.” The nod she gave him was terse, but her face looked only half serious. “So after dinner? We can put you in as low man, since you don't have experience yet. It will give Ken some experience being in charge of someone. We can give you a cute nickname like “hey you” or some such.”

  Lois, gray short hair and stained bland shirt over her well-worn work pants, a tan color that had probably once been nearly brown, blanched and tried to hush the girl, actually saying “hush”.

  “I'm sorry Jake, she didn't mean anything by it...” The woman said as if the suggestion would make him angry. Why that would be he didn't know at all. He never got mad over being asked to help out. Not since... Not since that day. The second day after the announcement.

  “Sure she did, she meant I should get off my lazy butt and help with the dishes. Fair enough. I'll be there. Ken's my boss. Got it.” Jake gave the girl a nod.

  Lois gave him a funny look, slightly baffled now instead of scared. That was an improvement. Had the woman always been scared of him? Jake wondered about that. Why? She never raised her voice and worked all the time, nearly from dawn to when she went to bed. Having a problem with her would be stupid. Maybe he really needed to be nicer to people? Work harder to pull his weight, like Burt and Lois did. Jose too. That man always worked.

  He sure as heck wanted to be more like them than Holsom. Except the getting laid all the time part. That he could deal with. That would be a really nice change in fact. Of course he hadn't gotten any before the man had come either, so just getting rid of him probably wouldn't fix that. On the good side it wouldn't make things worse that way either. Not even if all the women hated him for doing it.

  Dinner was good, fresh potatoes slow baked, and as he'd figured a deer meat stew. That had potatoes too. The servings weren't huge, but they were real enough, a full bowl of stew and two decent sized potatoes each and a slice of oat bread. During the end of the last winter they'd gotten by on less than that per day. The ones that survived at least. Of course that had mainly been scavenged food. This year it would all be about planning and farming. Everyone was doing it, all the other groups had some kind of farm going, except the police in their closed encampment. Morons.

  They probably thought that they'd just let the little people do the work then come and raid them. It would probably have worked before, but now everyone would fight to the death if they came. That made a much bigger difference than the likes of the cops were ready for, Jake bet. Back before they'd always had greater numbers to fall back on, or the people they faced were simply unarmed. If that didn't work, they could call in back-up and often did even if it hadn't been needed.

  The rules had changed.

  No one said much while they ate, just focusing on the food they had, enjoying it. The room was dark, except for a single candle. Everything was now at night, not that it was really that late, still dusk out. Even the candles were a luxury. The zombies didn't go toward the light or anything, but they'd need them for the winter, when it got dark at five each night. People could only sleep so much and they didn't functionally have entertainment.

  When the meal ended Holsom and his crew all glared at Jake, a few spending time looking hard at Nate too. Jake got it. They felt like he and Nate had shown them up or some macho bullshit like that. They had of course, but not in the way the men imagined.

  It wasn't some ego trip, or even that Jake was a better fighter than they were, which they should have gotten already. It just came down to the fact that they weren't nearly as important to everyone as they thought they should be and he'd pointed that out. Really, the only power they had as a group were their guns. Jake wondered if they should have them at all. The only other people that did were the cleaners.

  Ah. That was actually a good point. One he could use. If they wanted to be armed, they should earn the right. No one would argue that, would they?

  “So, Holsom,” Jake said firmly, but in a whisper, making it sound a little menacing.

  “I'm setting up a firewood collection detail that's going to run from now until we can't get any more wood for the winter. I'd like you and your friends to come along, we need all the able bodied people we can get that aren't afraid of the zombies. Since you all carry weapons all the time, I assume that means a few dead people won't bother any of you overly? Really, we probably won't have any problems that way, but it's important regardless.” Jake smiled. It wasn't a nice thing.

  “Fuck that. I'm not a lumberjack.” The man said, surly and as stupid as always.

  Like anyone would confuse him with someone that cut down trees for a living? Or worked? Jake had some negative thoughts about the Westwood police force in general, but he really couldn't fault them for not taking Holsom along with them.

  His buddies chimed in, all fingering weapons, but not drawing them. Jake got ready to kill them all, wondering if he'd survive it. Probably not, there were five of them and one of him. They didn't have to be good, just put out enough bullets.

  Oh well. Jake faced death several times a week, it would find him sometime, today might be the day. People shifted in the room but no one yelled or said anything.

  Quietly from the corner Nate cleared his throat, a soft and calm sound, “None of us are Derrick, but the simple fact is that without wood we won't make it through this next winter. Half the people that died so far did so from the cold six months ago and that was in the spring nearly.”

  Holsom laughed and thumbed the clip on his holster open, a menacing move that meant the man didn't get the situation at all. Tipper stood behind him with her shotgun pointed right at his head, tilted upward politely so that his brain would decorate the ceiling rather than take a chance of hitting someone on the floor. She always had perfect control of her weapon. And a cute butt. Jake tried not to think about that though, not just then.

  Chuckling lightly, standing almost invisibly behind one of Holsom's large friends, a man known only as Stan, Dave spoke. His voice was menacing, as if hoping they could kill all the lazy freeloaders right then and there. It was creepy really, half little kid, the rest grown up killer. Raspy and rough.

  “Look around cocksmokers.”

  Jake glanced himself, hoping that didn't mean he was a secret cocksmoker, and saw that each of the men had at least two weapons pointed at them. The other cleaners had apparently decided that they'd had enough too.

  Yay.

  It was about freaking time.

  “Let's do this civilly gentlemen, by you putting your weapons, all of them, on the ground, please.” Nate said.

  It took time for them to get the idea that their options were limited. One of them tried to draw and shoot Jake, and got shot three times for his trouble. Jake's hit just below the throat, a miss if the man had been a zombie. Lethal on a human. Vickie, the head of the other good cleaning team, removed the top of his head with her sawed off shotgun and much to Jake's surprise Nate both had a pistol out and had used it. A shot to the chest, off centered, but it hit. Since the man was a pacifist by nature and upbringing, that was a huge shock to everyone. The barrel didn't smoke visibly in the candle light, but just having fired it had an impact on the room.

  Everyone but Jake and a few of the cleaners looked like statues. Nate shook his head slowly.

  “No. We can't have people here plotting against us Derrick. You and your friends have been trying to take us down for too long. I'd hoped that you'd all see the error of your ways and learn to help out, but...” He didn't finish, because of the three women that ran into the room, throwing themselves in front of the man. Brave of them, but foolish.

  “No! You can't kill him... I love him.” Deborah said, her forty year old mouth saying what her equally old brain should have realized was a stupid thing to say given everything.