Silencer, p.4
Silencer, page 4
If that was the way she really thought. Jake felt himself slide, as far as his opinion of her again. Not because of her looks, it was just that he couldn't truly know her heart. They didn’t take time to chat, after all. She acted like a feminist and seemed to be pretending to be tough but that didn't mean it was what she was really thinking.
They had to kind of wedge themselves into place and found that they didn't have enough strength to raise the heavy metal pole, not with just the three of them. After a minute Jake just jogged into the house and stuck his head in the door.
“Hey, everyone, come quick and help set up the new wind turbine!” He said, urgent but soft. He never yelled anymore. Not unless he was ready to shoot someone. Even then it was rare. Just killing them tended to work well enough. Most people understood that they'd displeased him somehow, about then.
At first no one came but on seeing that, Lois, the main food person, did and she brought the two kids with her. Sammi, a fairly cute eleven-year-old girl and her brother Ken, who wasn't related to her at all. He had dark skin and hair, compared to her lily-white complexion and slightly Asian looking features. They were one of the new families that had sprung up in the days following... Matters.
Ken didn't talk at all, but he worked every single day.
Jake liked him. Sammi was pretty cool, too, come to that.
A few minutes later others started coming out, with Jose, the Mexican guy that ran the farm operations being first. He didn't speak much English, and only a few people there could talk to him at all. Nate mainly. Jose got things done by literally grabbing people, putting them where he wanted and pointing a lot. It worked. He didn't seem to get what they were going to do at first but the second they started working on it, he ran away.
It made the people on the porch watching laugh.
Holsom and his group. The Moron Crew. That or the Idiot Squad. Jake wasn’t certain which one worked best for them.
They were all men, all big enough to be helping lend some muscle and all nearly worthless, at least when the ex-cop was around. Jake didn't know for certain but the men may all have been ex-cops of one kind or another. Jail guards or something useless like that. They'd all had short hair to start with and seemed to have that narcissistic attitude that all police and prison guards projected as a rule. Well, the ones on television had. Real ones might be different. It wasn't fair to compare them all to Holsom, or even the Westwood force.
“Trust a wet back to avoid honest work.” Holsom said, getting a laugh from his buddies, none of them seeing the irony of the situation.
Freaking morons that they clearly were.
Less than a minute later Jose came back carrying a length of rope, which he tied quickly to the pole, wrapping it around once Jake saw, not tying it at all. So that it could be released easily by letting go of one side once they were done. An idea that was both smart and showed a great use of materials. Jose pointed at the men on the porch and pantomimed pulling on the rope. Holsom looked ready to shoot him for it, his hand actually going to his side, where he wore a gun.
“Fuck...” The words came clearly, and loudly, from the ex-cop. Too loud.
Jake didn't say anything, simply smiling as he drew, aimed, and started to pull the trigger. Being too loud was a good enough reason to take the man out. If he went for a weapon that would work, too. Jake had a good line on the man's head already, which got the larger man to freeze.
An unfortunate happening all the way around.
Other people saw him go quiet too. Jake tried to think of something fast, a reason to finish the move but Holsom just didn't do anything. Simply standing there, frozen in fear. The man didn’t even act angry, and his hand moved well away from his side. Silently. Meaning he understood the rules, even if he’d had a momentary lapse.
Which could happen to anyone.
Just then Nate, their leader, walked out the back door of the house, the screen making a soft scritching sound that riveted everyone's attention pretty quickly. His brown eyes sized up the situation and stared at Derrick Holsom with a soft smile. He spoke so softly that Jake, only fifty feet away, could barely make out the words.
“Got a little loud there, Derrick? It won’t happen again, I’m certain. Now, let's see about helping get this windmill in place before dark, shall we?” The tenor of the words was calm.
Relaxed even. Gentle.
That particular quality made Nate seem weak to some people but it meant that their house didn't have to get into a fight with everyone on the planet for each scrap of bread either. They managed to have a good relationship with most of the other groups, even the ones who feared and hated each other. Nate did something that Holsom just couldn't seem to manage. He listened to people. Then, if he heard a good idea, he acted on it. Normally at least.
The firewood thing was a bit odd given that but Burt probably had that situation correct. Nate really feared the zombies. He always had. The same thing that locked Jake into stomach pains was far more powerful for the other man. That didn't make him a coward, though. He moved past the hostile seeming group of armed men and walked toward the rope that Jose held in his leather work glove.
Finally, one by one, the men on the porch started to move. Slowly. Jake didn't put his weapon away until Holsom started walking. Even then he watched the man, ready to draw if he had to. His decision to kill the man wasn't personal on Jake’s part but no one would think it was too much if the man got what was coming and acted first. No one would blame him, even. Probably no one at all. Jake just wasn't as popular with the ladies. Or the other men. The guy who'd shoot you for speaking too loud generally wasn't going to be your best bud.
It was kind of a shame really. He was sweet as fudge, after all. Tasty, tasty, fudge. Which he recalled not liking all that much, once again.
Once they had help it took less than three minutes to get the whole thing into place. Then they all held it upright while Burt ran around a bit frantically, putting the braces up. The operation was finished about ten minutes later and everyone wondered off again. Everyone but Sammi, Lois, and Ken. The diligent workers.
Sammi stood next to the nervous looking kitchen lady, who eyed Jake like he might molest the kids or something if she blinked too long. That or, he supposed, shoot them. Lois really didn't seem to care for him for some reason. Meaning he probably needed to do more work in the kitchen. It could be that she thought he was freeloading like Holsom, since she did most of her work there, meaning she wouldn't see what he did at all. Food was important, so he nodded to himself. That was doable.
The girl tilted her head at him just slightly. “Would you have really killed him just for cursing? Because that’s pretty fucked up, if so.”
Jake shook his head and spoke softly back to her, a small smile on his face. The girl was funny, he had to admit. Also standing in front of an armed man, clearly challenging him, so that the others there would see that he wasn’t being insane.
“It wasn't the bad language. Use all the bad words you want. I don't even care if you want to use them to make fun of me. I mean, well, I do care. I won’t shoot a person over that, though. It was the sound level. If he wanted to complain about having to work like everyone else was doing but in a whisper, I wouldn't care much at all. Especially if he did it while actually helping. Yelling right now puts everyone in danger still. It's just hard for people to control sometimes. Though no one should be complaining about doing work right now, there's way too much to do to waste time on things like whining. Plus, what else is everyone going to do? Sit around and talk about donuts they used to like?”
Sammi grinned at him and patted his arm gently. Snorting slightly as she did it.
“Right... so you can help Ken and I do the dishes after dinner? We really should have more people doing it, it takes hours, and we don't really get much light. More hands means we can get it done without burning candles. We'll want those for the dark months.” The nod she gave him was terse but her face looked only half serious. Like she was teasing him, while also wanting help. “So after dinner? We can put you in as low man, since you don't have experience yet. Slowly, if you work hard and find others to aid us, you can work your way up the ladder. It will give Ken some experience being in charge of someone. We can give you a cute nickname like, Minion or Lacky, or some such. It will be charming.” The girl sounded so off, so strange, that Jake didn’t know what to think for a moment. Like an ancient person had spoken, not a child at all.
Lois, short gray hair and stained bland shirt over her well-worn work pants, a tan color that had probably once been nearly brown, blanched and tried to hush the girl, actually saying hush. It sounded half panicked.
“I'm sorry Jake, she didn't mean anything by it...” The woman said as if the suggestion would make him angry. Why that would be he didn't know at all. He never got mad over being asked to help out. Not since... Not since that day. The second day after the announcement.
He grinned.
“Sure she did. She meant I should get off my lazy butt and help with the dishes. Fair enough. I'll be there. Ken's my boss. Got it.” Jake gave the girl a nod. Ken got one too since he was in charge of Jake.
Lois gave him a funny look, seeming slightly baffled now, instead of scared. That was an improvement. The woman had always been scared of him, even if he didn’t understand why that was. Jake wondered about that for a moment. She never raised her voice and worked all the time, from nearly dawn to when she went to bed. Having a problem with her would be stupid. Meaning he really needed to be nicer to people, it seemed. Friendlier. Work harder to pull his weight, like Burt and Lois did. Jose, too. That man always worked.
He sure as heck wanted to be more like them than Holsom.
Except the getting laid all the time part. That one he could deal with. It would be a really nice change in fact. Of course he hadn't gotten any before the man had come either, so just getting rid of him probably wouldn't fix that. On the good side it wouldn't make things worse that way either. Not even if all the women hated him for doing it.
Dinner was good, being made of fresh potatoes, slowly baked, and as he'd figured, a deer meat stew. That had potatoes, too. The servings weren't huge but they were real enough, a full bowl of stew and two decent sized potatoes each, with a slice of oat bread. During the end of the last winter they'd gotten by on less than that per day. The ones who survived at least. Of course that had mainly been scavenged food. This year it would all be about planning and farming. Everyone was doing it. All the other groups had some kind of farm going, except the police in their closed encampment. Morons would be idjits, after all.
They probably thought that they'd just let the little people do the hard work then come and raid them. It would probably have worked before but now everyone would fight to the death if they came. That made a much bigger difference than the likes of the cops were ready for, Jake bet. Back before they'd always had greater numbers to fall back on, or the people they faced were simply unarmed. If that didn't work, they could call in back-up and often did, even if it hadn't been needed.
The rules had changed. Now they were facing people who understood that either the ex-cops died, or they did. Every fight was one for your life, and everyone would do what was needed to survive. If you weren’t willing to, then you probably weren’t there still. Except for Molly, for some reason.
No one said much while they ate, just focusing on the good food they had, enjoying it. The room was dark, except for a single candle. Everything was now, at night, not that it was really that late, still being dusk out. Even the candles were a luxury. The zombies didn't go toward light or anything but they'd honestly need them for the winter when it got dark at five each night. People could only sleep so much, and they didn't functionally have entertainment.
When the meal ended, Holsom and his crew all glared at Jake, a few spending time looking hard at Nate too. Jake got it. They felt like he and Nate had shown them up or some macho bullshit like that. They had of course but not in the way the men imagined.
It wasn't some ego trip, or even that Jake was a better fighter than they were, which they should have gotten already. It just came down to the fact that they weren't nearly as important to everyone as they thought they should be and he'd pointed that out. Really, the only power they had as a group were their guns. Jake wondered if they should have them at all. The only other people who did were the cleaners.
Which, smiling, he realized was actually a good point. One he could use. If they wanted to be armed, they should earn the right. No one would argue against that point. Honestly, if they earned their way, his biggest issue with them was gone.
“So, Holsom,” Jake said firmly but in a whisper, making it sound a little menacing. Even if he was holding a pleasant and polite expression. One that he didn’t feel at the moment. “I'm setting up a firewood collection detail that's going to run from now until we can't get any more wood for the winter. I'd like you and your friends to come along for that. We need all the able-bodied people we can get who aren't afraid of the zombies. Since you all carry weapons all the time, I assume that means a few dead people won't bother any of you much. Really, we probably won't have any problems that way but it's important regardless. Hard work but we’ll die in the winter if no one does it.” Jake smiled. It wasn't a nice thing.
Derrick positively sneered. Making it big enough to be seen in the dim light of the space they were in.
“Fuck that. I'm not a lumberjack.” The man said, surly and as stupid as always.
Like anyone would confuse him with someone who cut down trees for a living. Or worked. Jake had some negative thoughts about the Westwood police force in general but he really couldn't fault them for not taking Holsom along with them.
The rest of the Idiot Squad chimed in, all fingering weapons but not drawing them. Jake got ready to kill them all, wondering if he'd survive it. Probably not, being there were five of them and only one of him. They didn't have to be good, just put out enough bullets.
Then Jake faced death several times a week, so death would find him sometime. That day might be the right time for that. People shifted in the room but no one yelled or said anything.
Quietly from the corner Nate cleared his throat, a soft and calm sound.
“None of us are, Derrick but the simple fact is that without wood we honestly won't make it through this next winter. Half the people who died so far did so from the cold six months ago and that was in the spring nearly.”
Holsom laughed and thumbed the clip on his holster open, a menacing move that meant the man didn't have a solid take on the situation at all. Tipper stood behind him with her shotgun pointed right at his head, tilted upward politely so that his brain would decorate the ceiling rather than take a chance of hitting someone on the floor. She always had perfect control of her weapon. And a cute butt. Jake tried not to think about that though, not just then.
Chuckling lightly, standing almost invisibly behind one of Holsom's large friends, a man known only as Stan, Dave spoke. His voice was menacing, as if hoping they could kill all the lazy freeloaders right then and there. It was creepy really, half little kid, the rest grown up killer. Raspy and rough.
“Look around, cocksmokers.”
Jake glanced himself, hoping that didn't mean he was a secret cocksmoker, since that would ruin his reputation, and saw that each of the men had at least two weapons pointed at them. The other cleaners had apparently decided that they'd had enough, too.
Getting Jake to nod a bit.
It was about freaking time. Then, he hadn’t acted either, so he didn’t judge them too harshly for taking their time on the matter.
“Let's do this civilly gentlemen, by you putting your weapons, all of them, on the ground, please.” Nate said. His voice was... Odd. Not afraid. Angry. It wasn’t like the fellow at all.
It took time for them to get the idea that their options were limited. One of them tried to draw and shoot Jake and got shot three times for his trouble. Jake's round hit just below the throat, a miss if the man had been a zombie. Lethal on a human. Vickie, the head of the other good cleaning team, removed the top of his head with her sawed off shotgun and much to Jake's surprise Nate both had a pistol out and used it. A shot to the chest, off centered but it hit. Since the man was a pacifist by nature and upbringing, that was a huge shock to everyone. The barrel didn't smoke visibly in the candlelight but just having fired it had an impact on the room.
Everyone but Jake and a few of the cleaners looked like statues. Nate shook his head slowly.
“No. We can't have people here plotting against us Derrick. You and your friends have been trying to take us down for too long. I'd hoped that you'd all see the error of your ways and learn to help out but...” He didn't finish, because of the three women that ran into the room, throwing themselves in front of the man.
It was both brave of them and more than a little foolish. A lot more than a bit.
“No! You can't kill him... I love him.” Deborah said, her forty-year-old mouth saying what her equally old brain should have realized was a stupid thing to believe, given everything.
Erin said something similar but she could be forgiven, Jake guessed. Still being 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 even right. As she spoke, Sara, an older woman, the third in their little triumvirate of the yaya sisterhood or whatever they called it, 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 gently pulled the trigger. The shot hit her in the head, directly between the eyes. This time it wasn't a miss. He did manage to angle the shot at least, upward, so no one else got hit. That had meant ducking down to do it, bending at the knees as if dancing.
