A Very Good Man (6 page)

  Erin said something similar, but she could be forgiven, Jake guessed. Still a bit overweight and pug nosed, along with not being overly bright and maybe seventeen. She'd probably felt lucky that Holsom had bothered to pay attention to her at all. She was probably right. As she spoke Sara, an older woman, the third in their little triumvirate of the yaya sisterhood or whatever, started screaming at Nate. Jake trained his handgun on her and spoke softly.

  “Quietly. Please.”

  She didn't seem to hear him. Jake sighed and shot her in the head. This time it wasn't a miss. He did manage to angle the shot at least, so no one else got hit. The room went silent as she fell. Everyone knew better than to scream now. That just got you killed. Jake half expected Molly to raise a fuss, just to make him kill her. She didn't though. She just stood back, her little twenty-two pointed at one of Holsom's buddies. The bearded one. Jake always thought of him as “Smelly” but that probably wouldn't turn out to be what his parents had named him. That was just the name he'd earned.

  Washing paid off.

  Turning back to Derrick as if nothing had happened, Jake grunted.

  “Weapons please. All of them. If you don't comply we kill you all in... Thirteen seconds. Starting... now.” No one moved. It would be the thirteen second thing, throwing them all off. It was why he'd said it after all, to try and get Holsom to hesitate long enough.

  “Ten.” He said, beginning to pull the trigger, nine millimeter pointed at Derrick's head. If he got to seven the man would die. Element of surprise and all that.

  “Eight.” He said two seconds later.

  Just as he was about to start killing people, Holsom pulled his gun with two fingers and started removing the other weapons he had hidden. He only had three, if the large knife got included, an oversized bowie that would only be good for intimidating people, not taking out zombies, at least not more than one. People had tried that in the beginning, using swords and machetes to take on the undead, because it had worked in video games or, as some had said, “swords don't run out of bullets” which was a good point on paper. It turned out to be a lot harder to behead a person than it seemed. Most of them were dead or had at least moved to firearms. Mainly the first one.

  Dave collected up the weapons quickly, without being asked and removed those to the side. Two bodies were on the floor and six people stood in the middle of the room that they just couldn't trust anymore. At least Jake couldn't trust them. Derrick started talking then, his voice low and urgent.

  “Whoa, this is getting way out of hand here. I just meant that, you understand, I think my time would be better spent leading instead of doing grunt work. We have people for that here, plenty of them. I...”

  Jake nearly capped the man right there, but Nate shook his head.

  “No, we all have to pull our weight now. If we don't we die. I'm going to go get wood in the morning and so is everyone else not on guard duty that can be spared. No one is too important for this.”

  Jake nearly shut his eyes. They were not going to let Holsom stay, were they? That would be so... suicidal. Thankfully Tipper mentioned it, which got a nod from Nate.

  “Agreed, these men haven't been holding up their end yet at all. More they looked to be about ready for violence when called on it. If they stay they can't be armed again. That's about the only thing that's been keeping me from mentioning their behavior so far. We can't have that. We'll put it to a vote, majority rules. Do they stay or not?”

  What the fuck was the point of having a leader, if Nate was just going to do crap like this, Jake wondered. No sane person would want people like this to stay would they?

  “Um, I think they should be allowed to stay.” One of the remaining female traitors said softly, looking at Jake as she did. Deborah, the older one.

  Proving Jake's point. No one who wasn't crazy...

  The debate started then.

  Quietly.

  After ten minutes Jake put his weapon away and started dragging the bodies out. He'd made a mess and dried blood stained. Then he washed up and followed Ken and Sammi into the kitchen to help with the dishes. They were already working, the light wouldn't wait after all. Those would be needed in the morning after all and people died all the time, it wasn't a good reason to skip out on the task.

  Just before they were done getting the dishes all onto the wooden drying racks, they used six of them, large things that Burt had made early on, another shot came from the living room. Jake motioned them to the floor as he turned to run in, crouched low. Trying not to get shot, he poked his nine millimeter, a dull black, held in his left hand, into the room and peeked in, only his brown left eye around the frame. He knelt close to the ground. One of Holsom's crew, Smelly, laid on the floor, wet glistening in the dull light from where the top of his head had been. He had a gun in his hand, and it seemed that Dave had taken exception to it. Good. Now he wouldn't ever have to bother learning the man's real name.

  That should have illustrated the point well enough, but most of the people wanted to give them another chance anyway. Throwing someone out into the night was... Harsh, and no one wanted it to happen to them later, so they argued against it as a precedence. In the end the three remaining men were allowed to stay. Jake would have fumed, but didn't bother. He'd probably still have to kill them all. The vote had been... instructive though. Not because of who voted for letting them stay, that was nearly everyone. No, it was the dozen people that had voted against it that caught his attention.

  Nearly half the cleaners did, right off the top. No hesitation even. Tipper and Dave led the way, and both the other team leaders, Vickie and Carl. Vickie's screamer, a fifteen year old boy named George did too and the old guy from Carl's team, Barry. At least thought that might be his name. The man was ancient, pushing fifty at least maybe older. He was good though. The rest voted with everyone else.

  The others that could see the problem for what it was made less sense.

  Lois, the older kitchen lady and Burt voted against letting the men stay. So did Carley, but since she hated all men, that kind of made sense. The other two... Sammi and Ken. They went last too, even knowing that the vote would be going against them and that doing it would make enemies. It was clear they were making a point. Jake got it at least. Sammi spoke for them both.

  “They're dangerous and lazy. If we let them stay it's going to come back and bite us later. We should take them out back and shoot them right now. If we don't, we're going to regret it. I'll do it myself if someone will lend me a firearm?” It was too dark to make out her facial expression and she whispered, but the tone didn't sound teasing.

  Jake didn't speak his mind, but that about summed it up. Maybe he could sneak the girl a shotgun later? No one would blame a little kid for executing the men, right?

  He, personally, would sleep easier if they were dead. It felt nice to know that at least a few other people could see that too. It worried him that more didn't.

  It worried him a lot.

Chapter Two

The screaming woke Jake up with a start, a flash of cold poured over him and he considered freezing even while his body moved, grabbing the sidearm under the mattress he slept on. It was trapped under the right edge, the handle of the forty-five sticking out. That meant the whole thing came clear of the holster easily. He rolled to the right so that his back would be to the wall. He'd done this often enough that the move was almost smooth now. Not really fluid, but pretty good for having been asleep. He brought the weapon up and automatically thumbed the safety, cradling the thing in both hands. Like on an old cop show.

  He whispered into the room, “I'm covering the door. Anyone know where that came from?”

  For a moment no one spoke, then finally a soft voice answered, female, though not someone he could recognize in the dark like this. So it could be any of nearly forty odd women then.

  “It was... uh, me. Nightmare. Sorry.” The woman sounded scared still. Jake exhaled slowly, not having realized he'd been holding his breath at all.

  That happened, everyone got scared sometimes and that meant yelling or screaming in their sleep. Carl's team had the night watch this week, and really, one or two screams shouldn't attract anything. Not unless it was already close. If that was the case they'd hear fighting from below soon. That or more screams. If that happened he'd go, but otherwise it would just take too long and invite being shot by the watchers on the ground floor. On night watch they didn't use candles, so anyone going down the stairs needed to be careful. You couldn't call out, but zombies didn't either sometimes. If you stubbed a toe and grunted you were probably going to die.

  “Alright. Happens to everyone. Can you go back to sleep? Do you have someone with you?”

  The voice said “no” so softly that Jake nearly winced, that also happened, a lot. The next bit that the speaker clearly knew was coming. You woke up screaming and then just had to lie in the dark, waiting for morning, hoping you didn't die before the light came back. He'd done it more times than he cared to remember himself. Less now, but at first it had happened almost every night.

  “Move over here then. I'll sit up so you can sleep.” It wouldn't guarantee anything, but sometimes if you acted like this was all normal it helped.

  There came a sound of movement, a rustling, then a subdued “hey” as someone else got stepped on or jostled. Finally nearly a minute later his mattress, a twin sized thing he'd dragged from town himself, moved as the weight of someone settled onto it. He still sat by the wall. He could just sit and doze if need be. He'd learned how. Jake kept the gun out, ready just in case.

  Not everyone did it, but sometimes dreams were prescient. At first he hadn't wanted to believe it himself, since it wasn't all that scientific, but over time he had to admit that some people could feel things like that. His own life had been saved more than once that way, so he'd pay attention to this too. Ignoring it would be stupid.

  That meant that he dozed off for a while, he thought, waking with the slight hint of change that came in the pre-dawn hours, about four something in the morning, maybe five. Jake didn't have a watch anymore. His had broken in the third week after things started and there'd been no reason to find another one yet. The door slowly opened which got his attention and the two crouching figures came in, a hint of silver in the fist of the first one, a knife. Jake waited for a second, the large weapon in his hand pointed at the man.

  The waiting was just to make sure he wasn't still asleep. He didn't want to kill someone for just coming back from the bathroom, and he really did just wake up with a gun in his hand sometimes. Crouching didn't help their case, but if he dreamed it, that could all be him.

  Then, if it were a dream, he wouldn't have a gun and they'd be moaning zombies trying to eat the people on the floor, wouldn't they? That or a group of women refusing to ever have sex with him. That probably wouldn't be in a bedroom though, being too close to actually getting some for his own mind to handle. The man finally looked over at Jake and froze.

  “Fuck!” The man yelled as the gun went off.