Silencer, p.16
Silencer, page 16
He shrugged, it didn't hurt, which showed it was even more of a dream, since he wasn’t doing that while awake at the moment. Next to him Heather woke up and stared for a second. Jake pointed and explained.
“My Mom. I had to kill her and Dad. On the second day after the announcement. I guess Dad turned first and bit her but I was holed up in my room, being a selfish little prick, so I didn't know about it before they changed. They'd told me about the announcement but... even with the TV coverage I didn't believe it. Zombies? Am I right?” Everyone knew what that meant now, no need to explain more. It was when the world changed and the government basically used the word zombie for the first time in public. Before then it had just been talk of some nameless disease. Aggressive behavior and biting.
His mom smiled. It was grotesque, of course. Rotting and showing half her teeth, on the right. Directly through where her cheek should have been.
“Oh, is this your girlfriend? Such a nice-looking girl, and pregnant too. When are you due?” The tone was conversational, not accusing.
Heather smiled and brushed her hair, much longer and lighter in the dream out of her face, she sat up and patted her stomach.
“I think I'm just at about five months. It's hard to know, I was raped a few times at first. I didn't tell anyone about it but Jake yet, but just about every man I met did for a while... made me have sex with them, until I learned to avoid them. So, the timing could be a little vague.”
Zombie Mom stood over Jake and smiled her features starting to melt. Rot.
“I don't have a lot of time honey, sorry about the way I look but that's coming from your mind, not mine. I just wanted to let you know that I'm all right, so is your father. He couldn't make it but know this; we're both very proud of you and love you more than you know.” She spun on Heather and winked.
“Nice meeting you dear, sorry about the hard time you had. My son will look out for you now, don't worry. He's a very good man. It's why I was allowed to come back. Not everyone is being allowed that kind of privilege. Look out for him, too?”
“Of course. This... We can’t be together. I have to fake it, so that things will work out right. It’s going to be painful for him, but better for everyone in the end.” Heather spoke in a normal tone. Too loud. A factor that didn’t matter in a dream, truly. Besides the water pistol was empty, so shooting her with it wouldn't accomplish anything.
The lights went off and Jake woke up with a bit of a start. He didn't gasp though, locking his teeth down to stifle that instinctively.
It had been a strange dream but told him a lot about Heather. At least what he was subconsciously thinking about her. Himself, too. Why he’d been kissing his own mother he didn’t know.
Well, it beat having his face eaten, so he'd take it as being just one of those things. Really he felt better now about the way his parents died. Not good but that particular little ache faded just a bit. It felt like something deep inside that had been clenched for half a year relaxed just a little.
Sleepily, Heather hugged him closely. Too much so, given the sound of things.
“Your mom seems nice. I know you're a very good man, and that you'll look out for us, Hope, and me, even after everything. I'm sorry, it's the only way. The nicer ones didn't work. I tried. I tried them all. I wish they would.”
Then frustratingly she went back to sleep.
Real or not, he had a few more hours until morning. He closed his eyes and didn't dream again that night. The best sleep came when nothing happened, so he was pleased enough with that.
The next day came without warning, with other people actually being up and moving before he was, bright light coming through the window as he staggered to his feet. He felt drunk, disoriented, and hot. Too hot. Feverish. That couldn't stop him though. Not if he didn't let it. Unless he died of course. It was, he knew, time for some moldy bread.
Penicillin the old-fashioned way.
Mary had made it. She had a huge jar of the stuff now and was constantly culturing more on whatever leftover scraps they had that couldn't be reused for another meal. Jake made his way down the stairs, clutching the banister, a stained wood thing that had probably been there for sixty or seventy years. He nearly fell, halfway down, the world twisting about him, a sick feeling in his stomach. Holding the wall he walked slowly, carefully, no one stopping to talk to him, or help him. So, that part was normal. That's what always happened.
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, horrible 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 tasty 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. Okay, 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, by a factor that he couldn’t even begin to understand at the moment 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 at the moment. In a day it wouldn't be as nice. If he turned into a flesh-eating monster, then that wouldn't matter though.
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 that was, he couldn’t put a finger on. Certainly, she was a strange 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, it seemed, it just came in waves. Rocking his entire being each time.
Like an amusement park of suck.
It went on like that, pain following discomfort then more burning and shooting agony, until he slept. Then he drank more water and slept again twice. He didn't eat, not for a long time. He did, however, hallucinate 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. A sit-com would have been nice. Something with a cute actress would be really 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 special zombie Jake from Mars who 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. It should be all right. 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, with no handy weapon pointed at him. He'd apparently passed the first test.
Darn it all to heck.
“It’s been a full five days. That means 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 for lying to him. Also for touching Derrick with something other than a fist. 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... It wasn’t her. Still, it was clear she was trying to be gentle with him. Being a dick would help no one, so he held his tongue. Dave stood behind her, standing with Nate and Mary from the kitchen. The second kitchen 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 due to 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 miserable days before he could stand on his own again. Whatever he'd been ill with had left him weak and aching but not dead and not craving human flesh, so being barely able to stand would have to be enough for him.
Eventually he clothed himself, filthy and reeking 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, that being a loose pair of blue jeans and a shirt that fairly bagged on him, obviously meant for a far heavier person. The pants 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. 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. A thing he couldn’t help but feel he’d needed for himself as a child. Full sized logs in the back yard...
It looked like it wouldn't take nearly as long as he'd thought to get the basic space set up. Jake had to like that. It was also good to know that no one really needed him after all. He thought about that idea without even a hint of bitterness because it really was good. For a while there he'd felt like one of the very few people getting things done but now a lot more were pulling out the stops while he just sat around, being lazy. Lay around. He'd have rather been working. It would have been a lot more pleasant.
Regardless, he was definitely up now. Aching and sore, but awake and moving on his own.
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... all right 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 any longer, after a few hours of moving around, was weak. 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 rather carefully to make sure he wasn’t pushing himself too much 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, it seemed that the work had actually gotten done. He could have done without the awful parts of it, of course. Still, he felt slightly proud of everyone else, even if they hadn’t cared too much about him, in particular.
After that Jake worked at pulling carrots and digging potatoes until noon, and decided to see if he could help with anything else once that part was finished. It felt nice to move around and not be in the dark. Justine saw him and ran over with her shotgun, looking relieved for some reason. Or happy. That probably wasn't it.
She smiled though. A thing that even looked halfway real.
“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 all right?” She didn't seem that worried, so it obviously was. If she'd kept busy and had avoided any trouble of note he wouldn't complain.
So he looked around and noticed what was new. There actually was something. He pointed at the new structure, getting her to nod.
Her voice was slightly proud when she spoke.
“A water tower. Come see? It's pretty awesome.”
It stood next to the windmill and was higher than the roof of the house, a true tower, rising above them all. Only by about seven feet, at the base of the cistern, which was enough to get water into the house on the upper level. 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 Jake built the forge. He learned about that when Justine told him that was the plan.
Seeming to think it was official, not her teasing him.
“Burt says that should be done in about two months? You’ll need to hurry on that but the wood stoves have to come first. We should have the wood in at least but we need to be able to make our own saws and stuff soon. If anything breaks right now, we're going to feel it this winter.”
That meant they needed a trip into town or two soon. Meaning needed a much better cart then, his little hybrid shopping cart contraption was far too much of a pain to actually use regularly.
As he mentioned it Burt walked up, clearly having been eaves dropping, and waved him over to the white walled metal shed. Then the older man, his gray and white beard well-groomed and trimmed that day, pointed. His hand looking strong and sturdy.
Sitting just behind it, out of his prior view, 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 different cuts of wooden slats and beams, it looked a bit rough but it could be pulled by one or two people and when Jake pushed on it, felt sturdy. Smooth, too. As in, it rolled nicely, with only a bit of pressure.
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, with no problems. 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. The idea made him smile, a bit wider than normal, as he shook his head.
As long as they had them, that's all that mattered. He honestly could do other things for a while. Just then his task would be all about 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.
The man even looked away, which had Justine doing the same thing. Burt cleared his throat, gently.
“Nate and I think you should stay here for a few more days, to 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. Probably not anywhere.” No, here everyone knew they could die, and probably would soon.
Which got an expressive move of the hands from the older fellow.
“Okay, point taken, still, don't push yourself too hard. For a bit, at least. 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 other man really needed to be out hunting or trapping, whatever he did. No one had tried trapping yet, he didn't think. City kid that he was, he didn’t know if that was a real thing or not. Like fishing, which wasn’t a great way to get food at all. Using a net kind of worked, but just a line in water was an excuse to sit around all day, as far as he could tell. Jake had no clue how to do it, net fishing, or trapping.
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. His aching joints hurt less when he did it, rather than more. 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.
