Silencer, p.1
Silencer, page 1
The New World: Book One
Silencer
P.S. Power
Orange Cat Publishing
Copyright 2023
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
Jake's middle ached horribly again. It was a sharp stabbing pain that made him think of cramping. As if he’d eaten something poisonous, that everything inside of him badly needed to reject.
It wasn't some big mystery as to why, of course. It even wasn't real pain, just... fear. Terror, really. A deep existential sort of horror that humanity had only just now discovered. That or had reawakened. It wasn’t only him that felt it, of course. Everyone did, when the situation arose. Now, at least.
He knew the feeling well. A primal tightening low in the belly that turned to cramps about the same time he had to go into a house. Every freaking time. Almost any house now, even when he wasn't out with the crew hunting, like they were now. That, the idea that it happened even when the place was empty was what told him it was only fear and not something more.
Not that the place he was going into at that moment was free of the dead. He could smell them. The rot. It wasn’t exactly like meat gone bad. Even uninfected corpses were different. There was an acrid tone to the walking dead that the living and even honestly rotting pieces of meat didn’t have.
So at least this time it was probably warranted. The place in front of him, a formerly nice enough house, only a little overgrown with ivy at the front, reeked.
Some people tried to claim that the fear was part of the zombies themselves, a side effect of whatever took someone from alive to dead, and turned them into an animated human shark, eating the living without end. Looking for food if they weren't actively consuming something.
Those people were lying to themselves. That was probably natural, of course. It was easier to claim that you were brave and strong. People slept better, believing in themselves that way. Even if it was a lie.
Jake didn’t bother with that one. Oh, he lied all the time. Just not about why his stomach was cramping up at the moment.
No, the fear was simply natural and an integral part of anyone still sane enough to realize what was going on, and a few people who honestly weren't. Jake knew that now. Admitted it fully and without reservation. Lying to yourself just got you killed. He was afraid, and it had settled deep into his bones, making him want to run away from what was hidden past the door in front of him. That couldn't stop him though. Not if they were all going to survive.
Someone had to make the zombies go away, and if they didn't do it, there was no one left who could.
Holding the spear he'd fashioned from an old rake handle, sharpened to a point but not one too sharp, so it would snap off too easily, Jake stood in the wide-open doorway of the cozy little white colored house. There had been red bricks used in making the sides of the porch. It was nice. Even standing there, waiting for trouble to start. In front of him, not too far away, he heard their bait screaming at the top of her lungs. That didn't help the fear at all. Molly doing her job the way she did was nearly as bad as anything he was going to experience that day. It always got to him.
Zombies came to human voices, like lazy moths to flame. That was for ordinary speaking if people got too loud about it. There was a bit of leeway for that, thankfully. You could carry on a conversation outside safely enough. As long as no one got shouty or started wailing. There were limits to that. The land sharks positively ran toward screaming, for instance.
Probably trying to get in on the free meal before the others ate it all. So when the cleaners hunted, they used a screamer. All of them did it. Someone, usually a woman since they screamed better than men, made some noise and got the undead going, headed toward their position, waiting for them outside, in relative safety and comfort. Today they were starting on the front porch but Molly had insisted on going inside. Alone.
Again.
Then, the girl was suicidal. It was clearly her plan to die one day, doing her job.
Most people just stuck a gun in their mouths if they wanted out that badly or slashed their wrists. Jake had seen at least two dozen people go out using both methods over the last months, even. It worked and he understood why they did it but Molly’s family had been Catholic when it all started. So she didn't believe in just killing herself like a normal person. No, she just courted death instead, hoping that Jesus would call her home, or whatever it was she foolishly believed.
Not that Jake didn’t think she could be religious if she wanted. Just that getting herself killed on purpose wasn’t going to trick God when she got to the pearly gates.
As a plan it might well work, of course. One day she would do the wrong thing, not look behind her at the wrong time, and buy the farm if she kept going into the houses alone. The problem there being that she'd probably end up a zombie, which would mean he'd have to cut her freaking head off himself. Jake really hated having to behead people he knew like that. It was much harder than just shooting them in the first place.
Taking a head always felt so personal. So final. Even if the person was a zombie. Plus that feeling, the pull of the knife on his hand while he cut, or the gristly texture of a machete on soft wet bone, stayed with you. Like it lived in your hands and arms, all the time. The fear didn’t go away while he did it, either. Or after. It was related, in part, to the smell of the undead, he thought. That and the fact that the dead didn’t stop moving. Even after being beheaded. That meant they couldn’t bite you as easily but they still tried.
Well, at least they weren't sleeping together. That would make it easier to take the slightly plump girl’s head, he supposed. Jake had asked, really politely, if she wanted to give it a try, figuring that someone who slept around as much as the chubby brunette did might give him a shot.
She did.
Shot right down. So fast that he’d barely gotten the request out at all.
The cow-eyed girl had claimed that he wasn't her type, of all things. That had been interesting, because until that moment Jake hadn't known she'd had a type, or even standards. It was the reason he'd asked.
A thing that sounded kind of mean, he supposed. The woman had moved from man to man, and a few times even women, so easily that it had seemed like she might just be friendly with everyone. Which was still the case, honestly.
Everyone except him. Why that was, he didn’t really know, to be honest. Jake wasn’t that great looking, while also not being ugly at all but he was clean, in a world where that was special, and bothered to groom himself past basic washing up. It should have helped but it hadn’t. Not with anyone, so far. It was probably funny if it wasn’t happening to you.
He'd started out a bit thin and rangy looking, and six months in the land of the dead hadn't helped much at all there. At the end of the world you kind of expected to get laid though. That factor was in all of the stories. It seemed to be working for almost everyone else. Even the ugly people were getting action, based mainly on the fact that they were still alive. The bar didn't seem as high anymore. Not for most people. Just him, Jake guessed, a little sourly.
Then, taking a breath, he let the idea go. It wasn’t that important. He was desperate but no one was going to care about that kind of thing. Not when the dead could come for you at any moment.
A shadowed form rushed him fast and hard. Out of the black interior of the single-story ranch style house, moving straight for him without stopping. Jake pulled the spear out of the way by reflex, since it was Molly, not something more dead yet. His job being sticker for this hunt, a position he'd invented, that all the groups used now, wasn't that hard. Not really, so he planned to move from there to shooting too if they needed the backup. They being the forty-something Tipper, who swore she was a lesbian, and the thirteen-year-old slightly chubby boy next to her, Dave.
Tipper looked the part she tried to sell him, at least but went off with a lot of guys too. Not that it was Jake's business, except that she was clearly lying about it to him, for some strange reason. That... hurt a bit. He might not be the best-looking guy in the world, he guessed but he wasn't deformed either. Plus, he'd never given her reason to be untruthful to him about something like that. Yeah, they were friends, and yes he'd asked her if she wanted to have sex, mainly because he didn't want to die a twenty-four-year-old virgin, which didn't seem that unreasonable to him. It had been a while ago when Jake had asked her. She still maintained she only liked women. Even after they'd saved each other's lives, like fifteen times.
She'd started out looking like a businesswoman butching her tan and brown hair off in the second week and dressing like a fighter after the third. More like a lumberjack than most of them did, in old red flannel long sleeves, two or three shirts under that and heavy jeans. An outfit, nearly a uniform, which was way too hot for August in the mid-west. All of them were dressed about the same.
Just thinking about it left Jake keenly aware of the sweat trickling down his back. Part of that was fear but only a portion.
Dave was in blue, jeans and oversized shirts tucked in and tied down so that nothing would catch if he had to run or fight. In the three months the boy had been on the team he'd gone from a real fatty, with actual rolls of plumpness around his middle and severa l chins, to merely a bit hefty. Honestly, if he'd looked like this before he probably would have been recruited for school sports teams. The guy handled himself well and built muscle pretty easily, even as they are all half-starved most of the time. Inside three more months the kid would probably be stripped down to lean.
Back Before they'd both been first person shooter fans, gaming all the time. A lot of the best hunters now had been. Dave was certainly that. One of the best. Kid or not.
He was also probably a psychopath.
A real one.
He loved killing. Zombies, animals for dinner, people who didn't do what he wanted. Pretty much anything that he didn't think would kill him first. The kid was also brave as fudge. Dave said he didn't feel fear at all and after everything, Jake kind of believed it. Watching him work was like looking at ice in a freezer. Cold and with no sign of melting anytime soon.
A state that had to be nice, lacking that sort of emotion. Jake was always afraid now. For instance, at that very moment he felt a deep and abiding fear that Molly was going to run straight up the spear he was holding. Staring directly into his face, panic over her own. That and sweat. They all had that going on. Except Tipper, who looked dry and a lot more comfortable than she had a right too in three layers of long-sleeved torment.
“Behind me!” The large girl bleated loudly, a panicked squeal that easily would have been enough to get any black blooded zombie going after her in search of lunch. Especially after screaming like she just had.
It took a full half second to get the spear down and he nearly missed the window for that, since the girl threw herself to the right again, instead of the left like they'd practiced. He would have called her a retard but that would be insulting to the good mentally challenged people of the world. If there were any of them left. So instead of an instant reaction, up and to his left, then down into the runner behind her, Jake had to jump back and stab desperately into the thing's middle like a half-panicked freak. It wasn’t the smooth and almost military move that he normally went with at all.
It was all he could do to try and keep his face seeming calm, not as if he thought he was about to die. Bitten by a dead man, then having to put a weapon in his own mouth, so that he wouldn’t return to harm his people. His friends, even if they didn’t all think of him in that capacity. Some did.
The rest were kind of afraid of him, he thought.
This particular zombie had worn a suit to work. That or the guy, knowing he was about to die from a bite, had dressed up in his finest clothes, so that he'd make a good impression later. Rather than take his own head off like he should have, if the option was available. Either way it was a pain in the ass now. The heavy suit jacket, once a nice gray coat, now covered with layers of dried blood and filth, caught the spear point, which would have hit in the center if things had gone like they should. An armor made of cloth and dried ichor. A thing that wouldn’t have stopped a real spear but it kind of thwarted his pointy stick, at the moment.
He wanted to penetrate the relatively soft middle, like a professional sticker but slid upward, so got ribs and heavy fabric instead. Jake stumbled back as the man, who'd been older when he died, looking to be in his mid-fifties or so, ran at him full speed. Meaning he floundered a bit before managing a kick to the middle, a stomp really, with his left foot, which gave him just enough distance to re-center and stab again. Barely. It was risky, trying to put a boot in the middle of a zombie like that but this time it worked, without any scratching or grabbing.
The spear rode up, the man impaling himself on it almost without notice. There was groaning but that happened all the time with the moving dead. It wasn't a sign of pain. At least not pain that Jake was causing. Once the slick wood was about a foot through, just outside of the zombie’s reach, Jake pushed upward, hard. Using the wooden handle as a lever.
The ichor dripping out slowly, and the stench of death suddenly magnified enough to make him gag a little. The blood of the zombie was black and thick as the guy finally overbalanced and fell back, thankfully into the front room of the house as planned. Fresh, newly created zombies, still had red blood. They did for the first weeks, even. So this one had been around for a while, even though it looked to be in good shape. It lacked the bites and missing flesh of most of the others. That indicated it had probably been trapped someplace alone for a while.
“Jesus fuck Molly...” Dave said quietly, menace pouring off his body strongly enough that Jake could feel it ten feet away. “If you want to kill Jake that badly, just grow a pair and shoot him. For now, just get the hell out of the way and stay down, we'll deal with this later.”
Tipper growled, a low sound that wouldn't attract any zombies that might be out and about that fine and sunny day. That, attracting a free roaming land shark was decently rare but it could happen. They'd all lived it at least once. Back about two weeks after things had started and every second person you saw was already gone. Now, in Westwood at least, it was still just about true but there were a lot fewer people, so it was harder to notice.
Tipper half snarled. Silently.
“Darn straight girl. It's one thing to get yourself killed...” The butch looking woman moved in alongside Dave, who made the first kill with the shotgun in his hand, a single stark blast to the thing's head.
Then Dave shot again, meaning there was another one in the room, even if Jake couldn’t see it. Dave rarely missed something already down. The boy jumped to his own left, and quickly he moved back, reloading as he did, smoothly and with an eerie dead eyed calm. Tipper took her turn, and two blasts later moved back too, doing the same thing, just like they’d practiced. Everyone moving their body was supposed to go to the left each time, their own left. It wasn't hard or confusing. They kept going like that, shoot and move back, letting their partner catch the next one as it came. Trusting each other. Like actual friends or partners.
Something set his nerves on edge suddenly. His gut still ached, so it was something different than that. It hurt though, inside of him. Like a buzzing pins and needles feeling, only it wasn’t that at all.
Jake didn't know why, he didn't see anything yet and only felt as scared as usual but... the situation wasn't right. He just knew something was very wrong. Without hesitation he pulled his black nine-millimeter from the holster on his belt and took aim at the door, waiting. Everyone was outside, which should be safe, roughly speaking. Something simply didn't work for him in the moment. The situation had gotten creepy. Dangerous. More deadly somehow, which shouldn't have really been possible.
Tipper and Dave had handled the four that came at them from the house easily enough, so he turned around just in time to see the other two, both runners, headed straight for them. Coming from the woods near the old service station.
Jake nodded to himself a bit. It would be that, the runners, that were messing with him.
Molly, genius that she was, screamed. The runners headed straight for her on hearing it, naturally. It was her job but a handgun wouldn't have been his first choice for trying to take these things out on the move if he had a choice. They hardly needed to use rifles at all anymore, so he hadn't thought to bring one. They were heavy and awkward to walk long distances with, after all. These guys, both were men and had been young before they passed on, were probably some of the first hunters, judging from their heavy, torn, and blood-stained clothing. They'd been fit and strong when they’d turned, which meant fast now.
Jake took aim and got the first one about fifteen feet away from Molly's throat. The bullet hit with a meaty thunk, hidden in the sound of the explosion that had propelled it. Jake heard it anyway. Inside his mind. It was nearly like a cartoon sound effect. A lot of things were like that for him now. After the fall of society.
He made his own entertainment, as often as not, any longer.
The two at the porch were still dealing with the no doubt very lethal threats from inside, and Molly still had death closing on her position fast. Like a freaking linebacker who hadn’t forgotten either leg day or the steroids his coach had gotten him.
It would have helped if she shut up, maybe but that truly wasn’t going to happen. The girl wanted to die, and apparently didn't mind taking her team along for the ride. It was sweet of her really, being always willing to share the treat like that. Except that she wasn't, not with Jake.
