Silencer, p.17
Silencer, page 17
After a few seconds he got it.
As sick as he'd been, he'd gotten rest.
A chance to heal a bit. Probably not all the way but way more than he'd had in the six months before that. He'd been safe, locked in a little room and after the first five days, the only stress had been his strong desire to die to get away from how awful being sick felt. He'd just forgotten what only slightly cruddy was like, so it seemed way better than it should.
Pacing would be important then, to prevent a relapse. That and more wearing down of his body. He took turns with the others taking trees after that and finished the day feeling a little sore but not bad overall. His pants kept trying to fall down but he dealt with it by making a belt out of a length of rope. All he needed was a straw hat and he could have his hillbilly Halloween costume ready.
It occurred to him that no one would probably do that one anymore. No one wanted or needed fake monsters when real ones came knocking all the time. Plus, there was no candy. Without that, the holiday didn’t have a real point.
They still hadn't even managed that sing along Nate had talked about, everyone had gotten too busy. It made sense, to him at least, to set that for when the harvest was done. That would be in a few more weeks, or less, now.
Not everything came in at once. They had pumpkins and squash for instance that would be ready later in the year. A lot of the two hundred odd acres would need picking in the coming month, with nearly full-time work taking place each day. Canning and drying, too. They probably had a plan for all that, Jake wouldn't know. His job had been zombie killing and wood stoves.
Dinner was a lot more interesting than it had been, because of the greater variety of vegetables and some berries that the kids had gotten with Justine a way off, in the woods. That had been pretty gutsy, going there alone but they'd lived. Really that was all that counted. At least with him.
Lois thought differently, and wanted to ground them but Dave just started laughing at her when she said it. It was nearly too loud, and the kid had to hold both hands over his mouth to keep the noise down.
“Right, it's the end of the world and you want to put them on restriction because you got scared when you didn't need to? Ooh, I know, let's ground Jake for scaring us all by getting sick. Now if anyone deserves grounding... I actually had a nightmare over that, you know. Me. Like a little kid, waking up in a pool of sweat. I’ve never dreamed of zombies, but you get locked in that room and my brain filled in all of us starving in the snow. So, yeah, you’re grounded. Don’t make me send you to your room, young man.” The younger guy sounded pretty serious about the whole matter.
Jake had to fight a smile and covered it with a bite of blackberries. They were nice and actually ripe. Juicy. He hadn't liked fruit or vegetables when he’d had pounds of white sugar and candy in a store less than two blocks away, but now they tasted incredible. Like that candy, almost. It seemed like others agreed with him from the murmurs in the kid's defense.
He shrugged.
“They took an armed guard with them. I mean, yeah, they should have been armed too, obviously, so next time see to that?” He glanced at Sammi, then Ken, giving them both a meaningful look. “Still, how safe are they supposed to be? We need to learn how to travel and not be house bound, as a group. I think that this is a good start. Next time, with the weapons, though?”
Several of the adults seemed scandalized by the idea. Like their kids couldn’t handle themselves. That was ridiculous.
Which, after a restful night on a soft mattress, they proved to him. A thing they did by grabbing him up in the morning, signing out weapons from the armory then went to hit an apple tree at the far side of the woodlot. The fruit was small, green and a little sour but wasn't bad for all that.
They weren’t just some crummy and sour wild crab apples, either. No, these had been planted by someone, on purpose. They just weren't old world grocery store quality. Juice apples, probably. If they ever had flour and sugar again, they'd probably work well in a pie.
They climbed into the tree, and ended up with three rather large sacks that were too much for the kids to carry alone. He took two of them and Sammi helped Ken get the third. Each grabbing an upper corner of the cloth bag. That left one gun free with Justine if they needed it. They didn't, but better safe than moaning and trying to eat people.
Then he worked for the rest of the day getting more wood with the crew going out that day. Carley was leading it, but they also had part of Carl’s hunting team taking part, since they weren’t out that day. Wood was a valid thing to work on, so he didn’t bring that part up at all, not as glamorous as hunting, but certainly needed.
That was pretty much life now though, you worked and did what was required, without worrying what anyone else thought about you. The idea of someone being concerned about appearances after all they’d been through nearly made him laugh. He managed to stifle that, since Barry the Vet was close enough to hear him do it and he didn’t really want to explain himself, if he could manage not to.
Mainly because he wasn’t certain his mind was working correctly, after being locked in the dark for eleven days straight. So he worked and kept going. Pacing himself. Using a decent bit of care, actually. Doing real work, but not pressing himself into pain or gasping.
At about six they heard a very odd sound. Two odd sounds really. The first was a car engine. Cars hadn't gone away or anything, the roads and driveways were filled with them in fact, but fuel had been hard to find for a while. Mainly because the police had hoarded it all in the first two weeks, before anyone else had organized enough to defend more than a few token cans of the liquid gold. The second strange sound was the car horn.
It blared, coming from an old pick-up truck. A Ford, but Jake didn’t know the exact model. It was a black thing with red spots in irregular places on it. The vehicle raced into the drive, nearly tipping into the turn, sliding on the gravel, the people in the back screaming.
That, it turned out was Vickie, her young male screamer was driving, as it turned out. She didn't stop making noise, either, which was odd all on its own, but it was incredibly hard to understand her. It sounded off. Military, and panicked, at the same time. Accented, as well. As they got closer he made it out.
“Incoming! Incoming hostiles! Three of them!”
For Vickie to be yelling like that, she certainly didn't mean zombies. Or the police. If it were either of those things she'd have just killed them already. Jake reacted instantly, not knowing what to expect at all.
“Inside! Get the weapons from the armory, arm... everyone. Go, run! Then... Bar the door. No one gets in once it’s locked.” He yelled this loudly, which got everyone to move for some reason.
Probably because he hadn't shot himself over it. That kind of indicated something different might be happening.
Pulling his side arm, the nine-millimeter first, he triggered the safety to off with a quick flick of his thumb, pressing it back, and searched the road. What he could see of it, for whatever Vickie thought was coming.
Then, as the truck pulled in, tense and a bit excited, Jake exhaled and tried to remember to breathe. Without air, fighting was a lot harder. In fact, he panted, hard, trying to build up some extra oxygen for whatever was coming.
Vickie kept screaming the whole time.
“They're coming! I, Jake, I don't know what they are.”
That much Jake could see with his own eyes as soon as they ran into view, moving at speeds that the truck had just barely been able to outdistance.
They... certainly weren't zombies.
Chapter Five
Jake did something then that he hadn't done for months, nearly five now. He froze in terror. The... things moved fast but that would have been fine. If they’d been running in a dead sprint or even faster than that, he could have accepted it. The eerie part was the jumping they were doing. Bounding, really. They went high into the air with each leap. Oh, sure, not super-hero fifty-foot jumps or anything but they easily each had ten full feet of air under them from time to time. They nearly flew when they did that, getting in jumps of forty feet or so regularly, more for one of them, a pale man who held his lips back in a rictus as he moved.
The thing was... the terror... that felt really familiar. It was something known to him, for all that this situation was new and strange. These things were still just zombies. Somehow. They just weren't slow, and they weren't rotting. Not that he could see or smell as they closed with the people still outside. Half the cleaners had stayed out, regardless of his orders, probably on instinct. Hoping to just shoot these things and make it be over. When in doubt, aim for the head. Everyone knew that by now.
So Jake did. Smiling, even as he fought to keep from wetting himself.
“Aim for the head!” For the second time in half a year, he raised his voice, calling the three creatures to him. Nearly freezing as he noticed the female in the group of leaping dead.
A thing he shut out totally. Focusing only on technique then.
The problem turned out to be the jumping, of course.
That infernal, annoying, and new bobbing effect. If they'd just run, their heads would have stayed at the same height above the ground roughly. Then, as they rushed him, he could have easily taken them, firing in a straight line. These infernal new monsters flew up and down, forcing a new kind of tracking that no one had any time to learn. Jake wanted to soil himself but didn't have the time, so he did the only thing he could think of as the first one started trying to move on Vickie's silent screamer, who was still trapped in the old black truck. Something else he hadn't done for months. He’d only managed it once actually, the very first time he had a dead person coming directly for him. That had been his father, who had been badly hurt already.
He ran toward the freaks and screamed like a little schoolgirl on a roller coaster.
They moved on him fast then, a lot faster than any zombie had before. One of them taking to the air, flying right at him. He waited until it nearly hit his outstretched gun arm and fired without stopping. It smashed into him and he felt it continue to move but in a more subdued fashion, just reacting to the stimulus of touch. This one was the girl. Had been a girl, a woman now. Jake's own age, within two weeks. He knew that for a fact because he recognized half her face as he rolled her off. A girl he'd known. The only person he’d ever loved.
Becks.
Rachel.
Jake nearly vomited, even having noticed it was her on some level a moment before. Then, as he stood, his legs went weak and he nearly just fell down crying. She was dead. Had been dead too, from the look of things. And, worse, he'd just shot her in the head. She still moved, even as he stared at her, breathless.
He didn't have time to reminisce as the other two were on him then, nearly at least. Jake finished emptying the magazine into the first man, the really impressive jumping male who wore heavy clothes that looked familiar. The style did at least. Long sleeves, jeans. Layers to keep from having a bite taken out of you too easily. His left little finger was gone to a joint, the second one. Probably where the bite had happened, because it had that strange zombie black blood look that old wounds got when people turned.
Jake missed the head and the things barely slowed if you missed, it seemed. He didn't have time to go for the forty-five on his back even. Fist fighting wouldn't work either, he knew, in that slow-fast time of any good fight. They'd take him in less than a second. He went for the gun anyway. After all, he might as well die trying. That had saved him more than once so far.
As all of this happened, he smiled. He felt it happening. A sense of peace, and even love taking him. Looking at his death coming, his hand behind him, he spoke.
“I forgive you.” He looked at the dead men, knowing it was the end. The last thing he had time to say. “I forgive you. It’s not your fault.”
He simply spoke the words.
A high pitched and awkward scream came then, from the clutch of people by the kitchen door. A few people had been left outside and stood surrounded by weapons. No... they all had them. The screamer this time had a shotgun in her little hands and rushed the leapers, slow, awkward, and fumbling. Sammi. She fired too soon by far, the spread of pellets almost missing the bigger man who flew at the group. She'd opened up with both barrels of the hunting weapon and had nothing left.
Except a group of friends.
They all opened fire too and would have killed Sammi if she hadn't tripped in her panic to move away. Either that or the little girl had thrown herself down on purpose with a will that most people never managed even when their life depended on it. The creatures hit the group hard as bullets flew.
These people weren't killers. All the cleaners had spread out because bunching up meant you couldn't fight. They also screamed as they died. Cleaners would have tried to stay silent so their friends could get the zombies away.
Vickie, her whole crew, plus Carl's old guy, they all tried screaming, to pull the zombies toward them but it didn't work. Each of the new kind of dead things were already eating someone. The people still made noise, and that bait kept the attacks going. Feasting instead of looking for prey. A meal at hand trumped a possible one. Jake ran and pulled the clunky larger weapon from the back of his waist, glad once again that he had it. Really he needed to carry a third backup, he decided. Get another nine, and wear it on his other hip, perhaps.
That, and work with everyone on good fighting protocol.
This threat was new, sure but the people dying on the porch shouldn't have been. Not most of them. He ran as fast as he could, feeling slow and clumsy. He didn't hesitate but there were so many people just frozen in place, in the way, that he couldn't get a clean shot off. Not at a distance. He closed, knowing it was stupid, knowing it could get him killed if the zombies turned. On the porch he stuck the end of the barrel against the head of the better jumper who ate someone, a female someone, on the ground. He could hear the whimpering. Almost without noticing it, then, without knowing he fired, the gun in his hand jumped and the thing's head lolled to the side. Jake shot twice more, making sure it didn't get back up.
A second roar came from his right, a shotgun by the sound. Someone had stuck the barrels against the smaller, faster man's head as he ate Marty the engineer. The blast ripped the head almost all the way off, too. It was a good shot. That thing wasn't getting up.
It took a second to realize who'd done it. The skin was dark, so his mind flashed to it being Carl but Ken didn't have nearly that kind of bulk or muscle. The boy stood still, panting hard, the shotgun still smoking from the end. Everyone stared for a second. Except the two on the ground. They still groaned. Marty and the woman in front of him. Under him.
Mary.
Jake didn't wait, he shot her in the head twice, instantly. He wouldn't leave her to suffer like Sarah just because he didn't know what to do. Or because he didn't want to be the one to make the decision. They couldn't save anyone that had been bitten. Even if they weren't infected, these two had too much damage. Maybe if they had a hospital to take them to, with a full emergency medical unit and the best doctors, with plenty of the right type of blood, but with only a few bandages made from boiled rags and some bread mold they didn't stand a chance. Before he could move over to Marty, who begged for a second to be allowed to live, someone else stepped in and took his head off.
It really was a mercy. The guy had to be in horrible pain, half his left arm gone and a large bite taken from his face already.
Justine had done it. She shook, just standing, looking scared, shotgun still smoking from the blast.
That made sense, the fear, because her right arm had long furrows on it. Scratches. She'd been in the clutch on the porch when the two had hit. His mind filled that in now, having time to reconstruct the scene. It lived in front of him, for the moment. They couldn't afford to chance having her turn into one of those things, a regular zombie was a huge risk but one of those...
“We aren’t losing anyone else. Not today. I’ll...” Everyone heard him, in the silence after the shotgun blast.
He'd take her away for a couple of days, so that only he was at risk. If she turned, she died. That was the rule of course. But if he could save her he would. That was also a rule, even if no one else realized it yet.
“Bandages. Now. Anyone hurt step up... now, we have to move you away for quarantine. I'll be damned if I'm putting super-whatever the fudge these things are in the middle of the house. Front and center. We'll move to...” He didn't know where to go. Somewhere close but far enough away for safety. The next farm over, came to mind. He didn't know what was there, since Vickie's team had cleared it, scouting for a second location when they'd first moved. The current house had been picked mainly because it was larger. If they had a cellar in the other location, that would be good.
He nodded.
“We’re going to the next place over. That should be far enough away.”
It took a while to get all the people to admit being hurt. Two of them either didn't know they'd been scratched or were afraid to say so and one just had a bite. That was one of the guys that Jake didn't know, a homebody who hadn't even started being useful yet. Still, when it came to it he'd been one of the ones trying to fight. Not very well but he'd been in the middle of it all. A lot of people had hidden indoors.
Like he’d ordered them to do.
Of course none of them had been bitten either, meaning it had worked. Given who had run on his say so, it was probably just as well that they stayed out of the way.
The bitten fellow had an old pistol in the right hand and clutched his injured arm with the other.
Almost all bites happened to the hands or arms, the forearm being the most common place. The human jaw just wasn't designed for biting, not like zombies tried to do it. That meant they rarely hit anything too thick. That left the lower leg, arms, and hands, with the neck coming in there about fifth place or so.
