Silencer, p.33
Silencer, page 33
He didn't expect much from people but they started grumbling instantly. Instead of taking the crumbs he’d offered, with his cool entertainment idea.
“We should have a vote...” A male voice came from the back.
“All right,” Jake said, smiling and pointing at the man. He didn't sound mean, or even annoyed but the guy shrank down, trying to hide suddenly. It was a good point. Since if what Jake was trying didn't work, shooting was probably the next step.
“We will. One vote, from the people doing the work, coming up.” Jake grinned a bit viciously.
Everyone stared at him for a moment. That really hadn't worked too well last time, since most people voted for their own comfort in the moment, not for what needed to be done for the greater good or to benefit others. Jake pointed that out gently, his voice firm, as if talking to small misbehaving children.
“From now on, you have to earn the right to vote. If you headed up a work team sometime in the last week or start a project that actually helps everyone else in some way in the same time frame. If you stop working, you lose your vote. Start again, being a leader and getting things done and boom, you’re one of the people in command here. Who's done that? Worked on something important or headed a team in the last week. Hands up please?” He raised his own since the forge had to count. Plus the scavenging he'd done.
“I’ve worked on the forge project and gone scavenging in town on my own. Done some cleaning work there, too. Not a lot of that, since things are pretty safe there, now.”
Slowly, other hands went up. Each person explains what they’d done.
They ended up with Carley, Lois, Burt, Julio and Ken, along with Nate, who led everything and a skinny birdlike woman who had only half raised her hand and seemed like she expected to be beaten for it.
She'd voted him out, he remembered. Softly, he asked her name, feeling bad for not knowing it. She was one of the homebodies. Not an ugly person but so quiet that he'd never paid much attention to her before. She had straight hair that hung to her shoulders, which was brown and pale skin like his own, only more so, since he still had a tan on his face and hands. Her voice was soft even for the new world, and he had to strain to listen.
“Um, Rita?” She said, looking even more scared.
Carley nodded, though.
“Making baby blankets and diapers. Some quilts and stuff too, also she does most of the clothing repair.”
Jake just nodded firmly.
“That counts for sure then... Anyone else?”
No one raised a hand so Jake got those people to the front and shifted everyone else around. Then vote went fast, with everyone but Ken voting with him.
Jake winked at the normally silent kid.
“You don’t like that plan?”
That got a shrug.
“It’s not that. The plans are solid. It’s just that you're pushing people.” He said, a longer sentence than most in the room had ever heard him say. “I understand why. It has to be done, even. At the same time people don't want to leave here. They want to be safe. It's easy to vote on stuff like this but you face your fears all the time. A lot of people here have a harder time with that. So they need someone to stand up for them.”
Jake nodded. The words were nearly brilliant. A thing that he hadn’t thought of the boy as being. Insightful and well spoken. Silence was a good trait too though. Probably also showing wisdom. Jake had always just thought he was traumatized into it. That might not really be the case.
Smiling, he winked at the kid.
“Good points. I know that, too. Still, we all have to work. We need things done and if people don't find work that's valuable to do, we all pay for it and in a lot of ways. If they don't want to go hunting or into town they need to get on the ball and find something to make themselves useful. Provably so. But I do hear what you're saying.”
Ken shrugged again.
“That’s fine. We had the vote. Everyone was heard. Hunting is fun, even. People need to know that you can be challenged and not flip out on them. That’s all.”
Everyone that thought he was a mute stared. That or it was the bit of polite sass being sent his way. Jake didn't blame them, just grinning at the kid. After all, someone had to stand up to the group, to show that it wasn't a trick, that they really had the right to vote the way they wanted, if they’d earned it. Even if that meant telling Jake to go soak his head. Especially then. It might be a stupid plan but it seemed to make everyone else happy after a bit. They could have a voice if they did useful things. They had to want it and earn it though. And keep earning it.
Which was kind of cool, and it made it harder for the lazy people to take over. Not that working meant they'd suddenly be smart about everything but at least it gave people a new goal. He spoke the words out loud, not caring if anyone got what he meant.
“If you want to be in charge, then work... If you don’t want to work... Well, too bad, we took a vote.” He smiled at the room. Oddly, several people, nearly twenty of them, smiled at the words. Not just the hard-working ones, but a lot of the men, and even a portion of the women. Not all, but a few of them were Holsom victims, he noticed.
It beat the hell out of him shooting someone to make an example which had been the next thing he'd planned to try if things hadn’t more or less turned out his way. Probably the guy that said they should take a vote.
Moron that he was.
Jake had to find space to sleep in, his old mattress having been taken the same night he left by Randy and Heather. At least they’d put it in the second room, so he didn't have to listen to them doing whatever it was they did. His corner was empty since there was more room now. Killing the bad people had really opened things back up. He had real bedding, the nice stuff he'd brought with him, instead of rags or a single thin blanket like he'd had before. This room didn't have a fireplace but the second room did, which meant all the pregnant women who were left had set up in there.
Like always he got up at first light, which wasn't nearly as early now at all. The charcoal making setup wasn't difficult to arrange, really. All they needed was a pit, the length of the logs, a little over ten feet for the ones he had, then they could roll in a decent pile, and bury them after setting the front end on fire really well for a while with dry wood, so that the green would catch and smolder. Then they just buried it and waited for several days. If they did it right they'd be able to scrape off charcoal to use in the forge.
If they didn't, then they'd try again. They'd need a lot, since they had to learn to make rod stock in order to make a lot of the tools. They had a book but the forge they had was a bit more ambitious than the little home-built idea the author had clearly intended. It worked, they'd fired it up with wood, and even heated some metal to glowing. They needed the charcoal to get it hotter though. However already burned wood did that. The book said it did.
He dug until breakfast, with no one else even coming outside, except Jose. Julio. Who made himself busy checking his greenhouse. The man waved, getting one in return from Jake, who tried to be nice. It wasn't easy with all the gloomy folk about but he smiled and had decided to actually talk to people when he could. Preferably while they all worked. He had a good start on the pit, which they didn't strictly need. What they needed was the dirt to bury the logs about ten inches deep. That meant at least a two-foot-deep hole in his experience. The measurements told him that should be more than enough but somehow things always needed just a little extra. Cutting corners almost always meant more work later, if not outright failure. Better to overdo it slightly in general.
After the meal, which today had bits of reconstituted meat in it, raccoon he thought, probably from the stuff he'd brought back with him from the bland and unsalted taste, along with a drizzle of syrup for flavor. Raspberry that day. They hadn't grown those but the kids had gone, found the bushes at another farm, and went out for a week straight to gather them. Dave had gone with them, even though none of them had been allowed weapons for protection, at the time. Lois had managed to can up twenty big pickle containers from what they'd gotten, which had to have been a huge effort on everyone's part. At least those who did any work on it.
The apples he'd gotten only made about that many containers after being cooked down to a concentrate. Everything that could be got concentrated. Even with the extra jars they needed the space in the cellar. Yvonne and Justine had helped with a lot of the work. Carley and the two guys he'd pushed into effort a long time ago helped too, amazingly.
He'd have to make a point of learning their names soon. If they were going to actually be useful, he might need them at some point. The woman from back then had been murdered while he was gone. Apparently for not servicing one of the guys who thought he should be allowed to just order women into bed. That act had brought about a second murder the next day, when Vickie killed him.
By beating him to death. With her fists.
That sounded fair to Jake. It also made him wonder why the woman hadn't just taken over. She couldn't have done any worse at that point. If Tipper had worked with her, they could have done it. They could probably have just told Nate to back them up and gotten a lot of support for the move.
After the meal no one moved and frankly he couldn't remember who exactly was on the charcoal crew. The Raptors. He was about to try and bluff his way through it when Carl stood, still obviously in pain from the shoulder wound, holding a list of the people in both groups.
Jake smiled. Organization ruled, clearly. He needed to start doing that as well.
“Hunters get with me in the living room please. Jake?”
The man sounded calm and polite the whole time, sweet, like Sammi had said. Jake had never noticed before. Probably because the man was freaking intimidating. Even after months of near starvation the guy could have won a bodybuilding contest. It wasn't just show muscle either. A few times when no one had been looking, Carl had casually loaded large logs by himself onto the carts. Some of those were things Jake couldn't even shift an end on, by himself.
They were totally going to have a talk about people not slacking off with the super-powers when everything stabilized a bit. Maybe before that, if he could swing it.
“Everyone else can come with me, for some fun digging first. Really, the first bit should be done in a few hours with this many people working on it. Maybe a lot less.”
That gave him seventeen bodies, not including him. He'd been offered the pregnant women too, which he took, because they needed something to do as well just like everyone else but he wouldn't make them dig. Most looked too far along already. The man honestly could have requested someone grab up a box of condoms from town.
Which was an idea. They had people sleeping with each other, so seeing to birth control was a great idea. They might need more babies, eventually, but only after they got the zombie problem under some form of control. Yet, here they were, with one man having four kids in one house. Honestly, they had six babies coming, and he wasn’t totally certain the other two weren’t Holsom children, too. The mother’s had claimed other men, and frankly, Jake was willing to back them up, if it was a lie.
If he ever found the lazy bastard Jake decided to punch him in the balls. Hard. After he shot him first, of course. He was still pretty sure the jerk had coated his bullets with something to make Jake sick. If not, the rest of the monster’s behavior was still enough to get the man killed.
And nut punched. Repeatedly.
Instead of seeing to that, since there was no handy Derrick to murder, once the first group made the seven shovels move, he pulled the baby makers away with some waving and signaled for Justine to come over, as well. She was working on her own windmill, one to turn a generator that Burt had already outfitted. They needed gears, metal ones, to transfer the power and hadn't found any yet. Nothing even close to such magical devices, in fact, but the large boned woman was working on the rest of it anyway. Most of it wouldn't be any easier when it got colder, after all.
A lot of their work was going to be like that, he feared.
The cool fall air already nipped at him a little, that day. Earlier his breath had made clouds of vapor in the air as he’d worked and stung his lungs just a bit.
“All right, pregnant ladies. Come with me.” He didn't sound happy with them but that was his issue, not theirs. Not until it endangered the rest of them.
“Half of you are going to work with Justine here on the windmill. Just do what she says for now. The rest are on kitchen duty with Lois. Get with Burt on how to run the smoke house too, since that's going to be your task when the hunting team gets back, hopefully loaded with more meat than we've ever seen. Any questions?”
He didn't expect any but Heather stepped forward so that she didn't have to speak too loudly. It was a common move now, especially when outdoors.
“Can I work with you? I think I'll be all right doing that. I want to talk about some things...” She looked hopeful but as far as he knew they didn't have anything to talk about. She'd made her choice. It was fine, really. Nothing to worry over, at the very least. Randy was a good guy and had worked with the cows the whole-time things had gone to hell, votes or no. He'd even gone out and found about forty more along with Heather and had opened up more pastureland for them. They'd have to slaughter some before winter, since they didn't have feed for them but until the snow came they had a lot of fenced land to keep them in, since no one cared if they were grazed on the joining properties now.
Jake looked at her and almost said no in an annoyed voice. She didn't even have Holsom's influence to explain her actions, after all, but he let it go. Randy was a good choice. Probably more stable than Jake was and was closer to her age. That she'd led him on and had obviously just used him hurt a little.
After a few seconds he shrugged.
“Make yourself useful then. We can talk while I take a turn digging. Can you get a few loads of kindling for us? And a pot of coals from the kitchen to light the fire?” That would save on matches. No one used matches anymore if they could help it. They were another thing worth more than gold now.
She smiled as if working with him were a treat, and even as he mildly dreaded her coming back, he knew that it couldn't be avoided. Whatever was coming would come. All he could do was shoot it.
The thought flowed easily into his mind. Too easily.
He clearly wasn't really planning to shoot anyone, not just for talking to him. The others worked silently, with only the rasp of shovel on damp dirt making any sound at all. By eleven they started rolling the logs in, making sure they were tight together but so that some small gaps for air still existed. They had to leave the far end partly uncovered so that air would work through like a chimney from the fire side, also left so air could get in. Not a lot, or they'd lose too much wood but too little and nothing would happen, it would just go out.
The kindling was dry and tiny, no more than slivers really, and the pot, metal handle held by a rag that had been folded over several times to protect the hand, held coals that looked white and didn't glow in the sunlight but held enough heat for their needs. Building the little tepee of kindling didn't take him long anymore, then Jake just put a few of the coals in the center and built around it. And then blew. And blew. The world started going black a bit when the thing finally took off and started burning merrily away. Then he added the rest of the kindling and a few lager pieces of wood before blowing again to get it as hot as possible. Half an hour later they had smoke pouring out the other side, thick and gray, which turned white. That was the signal to slowly choke the air off from the front. He worked the shovel himself as everyone watched. The scrutiny didn't make him happy, since the odds were he was going to mainly fail at this.
It seemed easy enough but the fact was, until he had some practice, it would probably go wrong somewhere. He left a lot of air going in for now, hoping too much was better than not enough. After it grew inside for a while he'd have to suck up the chance of failure and just bury it almost all the way. It actually left him feel nervous.
“There. So two-hour shifts for now. Two people at a time watching it, that means tonight too. I'll take the morning alone, so people can get enough sleep. Tomorrow I'm going into town. If you don't want to come with me, get your excuses around, and that means solid work here that needs to be done. Not complaints about sore muscles from shoveling. Of course you'll be sore.” He smiled and did a good enough job of it that a couple people even chuckled softly and two smiled. That was a much better reaction than he expected.
“Get with me after dinner on that.”
The first two to watch the fire were a man and woman he didn't know. She had that same shocky homebody look that most of them did but the man looked... slow. And new. They both looked new. They’d also volunteered instantly when he’d introduced the idea. He had to like that.
Heather didn't give him time to think about it overly, grabbing his arm then and leading him away. A bit more firmly than Jake had expected actually. Her eyes looked at him seriously for a minute after she spun him to face her, having taken him past the barn.
Her hands went to her sides then, but she actually seemed upset. As in angry, not weepy or contrite over her previous screw ups. She didn't have a weapon, at least. Jake felt his face go blank, since as far as he could tell he hadn't done anything to her. He even helped her out and saved her life, at least possibly.
