A Very Good Man (32 page)

  “That's... horrible Jake. I, well, I can't really do anything about it, I knew you weren't that close to anyone, but I didn't know you were getting that kind of... disdain. I can talk to people, maybe...” The voice, a mellow tenor trembled a little at the end. Jake got it and said so.

  “But you and I both know that won't change anything. It's why I'm leaving.” Jake tried to smile at the other man, but he just felt tired of it already. Of everything. He didn't have anything left to live for and no one that mattered at all. Not really. It really didn't matter what he did, not anymore.

  Nate shook his head.

  “Really... you need to take at least someone, Carl maybe then, or Dave? Or, how about Molly?”

  Jake snorted and stared at the man hard, “She turned me down the night before she hopped into Holsom's bed. I'm not her type apparently. It's all of them, not just one or two. I... Nate, look... I'm leaving, probably in the spring next year, but I don't belong here. This isn't my place. I see the way they all look at me, hell, I don't blame them, but I think I can make it alone. I'd leave now if I could. Maybe get an accounting like you were going to do for Holsom and his women? Only, you know, remember that I was planning on voting for them to have a full share. I want to set a good precedent.” Jake sighed and followed it with a deep, slightly shuddering breath.

  “Right now I plan to wait, but you know, just in case? It won't be that different for me, I'll still be alone and I'll have a whole heck of a lot less pain. I don't like killing people you know. I hate it. Besides, everything is going well now, people are working and they won't go back now that they see how much better it is this way. You don't need me. More to the point, they don't want me here. I've taken enough now and I don't want to bother with it anymore.”

  If the other man understood at all, it didn't show on his face, he looked angry and perplexed, his breath puffed in and out a few times like a bull and he stalked off without saying anything more. In the six months they'd known each other, nearly seven now, that was the first time he'd done anything like that. Probably didn't want to yell at him for leaving, because that would get him shot. Being alone Jake wouldn't have to shoot anyone for stupid things like that at least. Well, unless he got too loud himself.

  The walls had to go up, but the roof should first he decided. Not that he knew about building things, but it just felt right. It would let him work without anything much in the way.

  The thing wasn't high, just enough to stand up straight without hitting your head, for the most part. About a seven foot clearance. A slant roof, like the greenhouse, for the same reason. Snow and rain. He had to cut a hole in the plywood for the chimney pipe, a nine inch circle. Actually that took longer than the roof itself, he had to wear through the wood with a chisel and it took time to do without leaving the whole thing ragged around the edges. He made it in about five hundred little cuts. Using a funny looking wooden mallet for it, which was round, so he didn't damage anything too much. Each layer of wood had to be cut and plywood had more of those than he'd figured at first. In the end the circle wasn't perfect, but it fit the pipe he had well enough. All he needed was to fix it into place, which he did with nails. He hammered them into the wood at an angle then pushed them against the pipe to hold it in place. He could have pulled it out, but only with force. It should serve for as long as anyone would want the building at least.

  As he struggled to get the roof in place one sheet of wood at a time, someone grabbed the other side and held it up. That made it a whole heck of a lot easier. Sometimes it really helped to have people around.

  Glancing over he saw that it was Jose. The man wasn't huge, but neither was the structure, so it worked pretty well. He kept it in place solidly while Jake ran around and hammered nails on the lower edge, then they did the other side. They had two ladders and one of them got used to get to the top, where he climbed along the roof beam in order to hammer that down and then the sides into place. It didn't wobble or anything, but then he'd used solid beams for everything. Eat your heart out four by fours, you can't beat a tree, not even a little one.

  The small man stood holding the ladder for him until he got all the way to the ground.

  “Gracias Mr. Jose.” Jake said simply.

  “It's nothing, Senor Jake.”

  Smiling happily, the man left him to work on the walls. It wouldn't be finished for a while, but the long walls were just a single sheet of plywood high, and two long. In twenty minutes he had them all up, making something that looked a lot like an old fashioned covered bridge, open still at either end.

   At dinner time he went in and sat where he always did. Dave next to him on one side and Tipper forcing her way in on the other.

  He didn't look at her.

  She kept staring at him, he could tell, but why didn't make any sense at all. Hadn't they pretty much already finished with all that crud? It was too much of a bother now. Why keep going over the fact that no one thought he was good enough?

  Jake ate quietly, but he normally did, so that wouldn't shock anyone. The people at the head table kept looking over at him though. Worried or something.

  Oh...

  Well fuck. He'd forgotten to mention to Nate not to tell everyone about his plans. Then again, did it matter? Gone was gone. He decided to just let things play out, since it was probably too late to change it anyway.

  The next morning he got up and left before most of the people were up at all. He took the smaller cart, the wooden one. Since he didn't want to inconvenience anyone and the large one was used to shift produce around still. He had a ten mile walk or so, and on main streets. There were a few cars to get around, but the whole thing was mainly open. Early on no one had tried to flee Westwood overly. In fact a lot of people had headed toward them. Small towns were safer than big ones. That was the theory at least.

  He didn't see anyone at all. The pickle plant was where he'd left it, and still locked up tight, the exterior looked solid, no holes or places for anything to get in at all. Grabbing a metal pry bar he'd brought, Jake worked on the padlock securing the front door for a while. That held, but the metal clasp gave out after only a few minutes of wrenching back and forth, which let the door open. It wasn't even that noisy, the screws just popping out of the wood on one side.

  The amazing thing about an empty pickle plant was the total lack of interior light. Or it should be. It didn't have windows and even during the day kind of dark. He didn't have a flashlight of course. Then neither did the zombies in their cages in the middle of the packing floor where the big conveyor belt used to be. Luckily they had lights overhead, so they could see.

  Separate things, the cages, ten in all. The look was odd, they were made of heavy metal grating that would have held under a lot of stress. Like what they used on bridges sometimes for cars to drive on. The lights over them were electric and the hum he heard was a generator, possibly in the basement. It wasn't loud at least and it gave him enough light to see by, which was handy. There was a single man, a police officer probably, who slept in a chair near the cells. Too close it seemed, for comfortable rest, out of possible arms reach, but inside two of the cages were other officers. They were turning, clearly, and moaned a little in discomfort. One of them saw him, delirium on his face, he implored with his eyes.

  “Kill me.” He whispered, a deep rasp that sounded pained.

  The regular zombies went crazy at the human sounds which made the guy in his chair wake up.

  “Shut the fuck up you freaks! Can't a guy get some sleep. Bad enough I have to be locked in here with you all. Mahoney better not be late this time. Three more fucking hours of this shit and I don't even get overtime. You either Roberts, you stupid fuck. You knew that the vaccine didn't work but you let that thing bite you anyway. So it's your own damn fault. Now the best thing you can do for us is help take out the resistance. Guerrilla warfare the Captain calls it. Ha! And you're the guerrilla, you sorry fuck.”

  That made some sense, they tried a vaccine and it failed? Making the problem even worse than it would have been without it. Brilliant. He should have expected it though.

  On the good side it didn't mean that every second new zombie would be like Roberts here. Or Rachel. Jake decided to help him, since he seemed to have a few hours and the other officer, the guard had shut his eyes again, even though the moaning and noise didn't stop at all.

  It made good cover for him, so he just walked over quickly and shot the man in the head. Then one by one the others, just through the mesh of the cages. It was much easier than fighting them out in the open, which was the obvious plan for them all otherwise. Roberts was last.

  “Hey, can you hear me? Was what he said about the vaccine true?”

  The man rallied after a minute, still sunk down in the middle of his cage, he nodded, and then growled.

  “Argh! Yes, sorry, god this hurts. Yeah, vaccine, if you have it and get bit, you turn into a vampire. Not a real one, just a fast zombie. The “B” form of the disease they call it on the radio.”

  “How many people have had the shot?” Jake had to ask, didn't he?

  The man shook his head and after a second it became clear that he meant to clear it, not say no about anything.

  “They promised a million doses, but I think they stopped, half that in the U.S.? The government guy didn't know a lot about it, other than what the effects were. Too late, the CDC men got here first. Three months in.” He groaned again and Jake stood.

  “Oh, well, um, thanks. Hey, have you seen any pickle jars around here?” It was worth asking right?

  “Back room, on the right, Lids along the far wall. Argh! Listen... kill me already will you?”

  Jake didn't ask any more questions. Just shot through the bars, the cage being stronger than all but two others. It took three bullets to make sure the man wouldn't come back. He'd been helpful after all. Unless he lied. But why would he bother?

  The jars were where he'd claimed they'd be. Lids too. So maybe Roberts was an OK guy after all, in the end. There were a lot of them. Way more than he could take in one trip. In large boxes of six too, so they'd be easy to stack, meaning he could take more than if they were loose and vulnerable.

  As he made his way back out of town, pulling the fully loaded wagon, filled with intact boxes of large jars and lids, he felt decent about himself. At least they knew where those new things had come from and that it was an actual attack. They were the resistance now? To what? The police department of Westwood's criminal empire? Zombies?

  Really he personally preferred the term “freedom fighter”, if it was all the same.

  That's one thing that sucked about the zombies, you couldn't even talk to yourself like a crazy person anymore. Those people were all gone, because they couldn't manage to keep quiet. A sassy internal monologue would have to do from now on. It just wasn't the same though.

  He made it in before dark, almost, the house was black already, so everyone but the guards would be in bed. Jake rapped the code out on the door carefully, softly so as to not scare the people upstairs. He just wanted in after all, not to startle anyone. The knock came back and a soft familiar voice came through the door.