A Very Good Man (54 page)

  No one did, which he took as a good sign.

  “Hi, I'm Jake.” He said, his voice nearly cheerful and not, he thought, creepy at all. “Um, you're with the police that keep attacking everyone? Anyone actually know why? We've all... kind of been wondering for a while now.”

  They stood dumbfounded at the casual question, that or the rocket launcher pointed at their heads. Eventually one of the women in front spoke, clearly and a bit harshly. She had long brown hair and a hooked nose that reminded him a lot of Tammy, the woman that had tried to kill him. She sounded like her too. Way past what could be coincidental. Jake didn't mention it. They were likely related, the area just wasn't that big to start with.

  “That was the chief. He told us that we had a right, a responsibility, to survive no matter what it took, and planned to take what everyone else had in order to do it. It was all about control and continuity of government he said. That's why they did it, turning all those people into walking dead and sending them at the other groups. There are no police here now. They're all dead.”

  He tried to figure out the math on that and winced a little. He'd help to kill most of them, and had taken out nearly twenty himself. More than that maybe. Closer to thirty? Wow... he killed a lot of people. No wonder no one wanted to sleep with him.

  He decided to keep that part to himself for now, just in case any of these people actually liked the police at all. Relatives or something.

  “I see, is it alright if we come in and talk? Peacefully I mean? We really aren't the bad guys and you did kind of surrender... but I think we can just assume that's a truce for now, alright? We really don't need prisoners or anything. We were just on our way to Clyde to see if the gun-smith there had anything left and weren't trying to come here at all, just use the road.”

  Jake let them put that together. The encampment wasn't the target and if an attack hadn't come from that corner, they'd be nearly to their destination now. The woman in front wrinkled her face and shook her head, brown eyes hard still.

  “Don't bother, we have all that stuff. No one knew how to use it though, so it's just sitting, do you want to look at it?” She sounded a bit... odd. Scared, but something else too. Like she wanted to make a deal to sell him a car suddenly. A used one.

  “Sure, that sounds great. Are you the leader here?”

  “If there is one, I guess I am now. Becky Fines. Here because my boyfriend at the time happened to be a cop when all this happened. I was about to break up with him too, real piece of work. Most of the men were, especially after the announcement. Um, here, come in I guess. With that thing you could anyway.”

  Oh, the launcher, he locked the safeties back into place, both of them, and walked to the gate, about an eighth of a mile down. They just all followed along, leaving the weapons on the ground, some looked at him curiously and a few eyed the others, especially Carl, who carried all that bulky muscle around still. Without a shirt he looked like a bodybuilder at their peak and as far as Jake knew he never so much as picked up a free weight in his life. Just genetically gifted that way. Calm and smooth, he rolled along, noticing the being noticed.

  Dave got a little attention too, but so did Vickie. Then, she had an obvious bullet wound to her stomach that had already dried, right in the center. Just a flesh wound after all. Who needs an intact spine, right? A lot of them looked at him too, probably because he was the one that had spoken first, so they assumed that meant in charge or something. He went with it, just because Carl might be shaken from the crash still, and he had been the front person so far. Vickie could take over if they responded better to a woman in charge. He didn't care. He just didn't want a huge fight to start. Just slaughtering all these women would suck, and he doubted that the ladies could win, even if they'd hidden weapons on themselves or had friends waiting to ambush them. They just didn't feel like fighters. Not even one of them.

  When they got in he stuck out his hand in his best imitation Nate fashion and shook with Becky, then the other women if they wanted too, about six of them did, and he got a rolling list of names he'd never remember. Jake didn't even try. They chatted for a bit, with him starting, telling them a bit about the house. Nate, Lois and Burt, some of the projects they had, his forge and Justine's new windmill. It was obvious stuff that anyone going there would notice right off, nothing secret or that would leave them vulnerable to later attack. It let them feel more comfortable though, he thought, since they relaxed a good bit when he mentioned some women being in charge too. The chief had led with an iron hand it seemed and really didn't like women to get above themselves. That meant doing anything but cooking and keeping his men “happy”.

  Their set-up was good too, except that everything they had was running out, and they hadn't even tried putting in crops, not even a small garden for greens, though they had the space for it. The place only had stored food for about two more months they admitted pretty openly. They chattered, quickly as if trying to buy their good will. One of the women, a dirty blond with freckles, reminded him of Becks from high school, but in miniature. She couldn't have been four-ten at the outside. He didn't mention it, because after a second he recognized her. Colleen Becks, Rachel's younger sister. She was talking and listed things off, looking at him the whole time. So she got who he was too. Not a surprise really. He'd been around a lot, back in the day.

  The generator was still up but they only ran it for a few hours per day to save fuel, which wouldn't last long either.

  “That was why the chief wanted to attack everyone. We couldn't support anything here. They took a bunch of stuff early on, but we just sat and waited for the government to come fix it for a long time. They came, but... they didn't fix anything, they made it worse.” Becky Fines spoke harshly again, her fallback move it seemed.

  “The vaccine?” Dave asked lightly, still cradling his left arm. It was probably broken, but it didn't hang at a funny angle and didn't bleed, so they had time to work on it.

  All the women nodded. Most of them looking down, almost as if they felt guilty about it.

  “Yep. So, um, if you're not going to rape us or take us prisoner, what's the plan here?” Becky Fines grimaced a little, but didn't shift or cower as she spoke. Brave enough then.

  Jake looked around and counted, “Twenty-one of you? We might be able to host you at the house, we don't have a lot of room but we have food and heat for the winter and if we can get bullets we might even outlast the cannibals that are coming.”

  One of the ladies in the back shook her head, she was a little older and a bit heavyset, Back Before heavy. A few of them were still.

   “Yeah we heard about that on the radio, Air America had a piece on it, awful. Horrible really. Especially the ones that have lost it and are moving out of the cities. Some of them... They sound worse than the walking dead.” She had on a nice blouse that didn't really say “I'm here to fight you to my last breath”. White and a little frilly it seemed more like it said, “pamper me please”. She had slightly brown skin, Indian, as in from India, and spoke with a slight British accent and looked about forty something, but it was hard to tell. Everyone looked a little older without make-up.

  Becky Fines sighed.

  “There aren't twenty-one of us, there's ninety-three. Here, wait...” She held her hands up and hollered through them to amplify the sound, Jake nearly shot her and everyone else with him winced. The police compound ladies didn't even seem to notice.

  It was going to be a problem, Jake knew, and wondered if he should explain first or just shoot the next one to do it as an example to the rest. It was a close decision, but explanation wouldn't hurt. They had a fence for now and that would help give them a little time to learn.

  “Everyone, come on out, it's OK, they're... friendly.”

  The hesitation was real, and Jake looked at her face, which was still in a frown and young as she was, under thirty, had lines that showed it might be her regular expression. They were friendly, but they'd also killed the last of the adult men in their group. Though not all the males. There were a lot of those, mainly under twelve or so by looks. And girls, though there were more teens in the mix there. Some didn't look too happy to see them, especially the more attractive girls. He had a feeling they weren't relatives of anyone here and had been grabbed for... amusement, at some point. It explained why the police had been taking women at least.

  Fuckers.

  It made Jake glad he'd already killed them.

  Vickie seemed to notice that too and stepped toward them. Weapons away for the moment, smiling warmly.

  “Well this is a surprise!” She said looking at the kids in front of her. They crowded around the core group of women. At the back there were a lot more women, more than the kids. Jake noticed that there weren't any young men.

  Kids under twelve, but no fifteen year old boys. Or twenty year olds. It didn't seem right. He didn't ask about it, but kind of wondered if some of them “slipped off” in the night, only to end up as zombies coming for the house or someplace else? Not all of those had been male, but a lot were, definitely more than fifty percent, which is what the mix normally was over time. It evened out.

  God. That was fucked up. If it was the case at least.

  One of the kids, a little girl of about seven or so stared at him openly for a long time, barely blinking, hardly moving. Finally, after nearly two or three minutes of staring while other people talked she stepped forward. Her eyes didn't leave him as she did.

  “Did you kill my daddy?” She didn't sound upset or fearful, just like she wanted to know. Some of the women looked fearful and tried to shush her, but the girl didn't back down even under that pressure. So brave enough there too, it wasn't just Becky Fines. That would help. They'd need that to survive now.

  Jake looked at her for a second, then just answered honestly, “I don't know. I may have, I won't lie to you. I... Personally killed a lot of the former police that were here. So if you have to be angry at someone over that, it might as well be me. If people attack you now, you have to fight as best you can out there now. In here it seems like the rules have been easier than what everyone else has to live with, but if you're going to be going out part of the time you'll have to learn some new things. We'll help you pick it all up, if we can.”

  The girl looked at him and just kept looking, until a woman came and took her by the shoulder, leading her away, muttering to the girl about not staring at men. That actually got a lot of the other women and girls to look away too. It was kind of telling as to what had been going on, inside the closed community where men used to not being questioned Back Before had total power. Jake nearly shook his head, but Becky Fines looked at him funny first.

  “Why would we leave?” A simple question, but one that she should have figured out on her own.

  It was a real fight to not frown at her and shake his head. Instead he looked into her brown eyes and held up two fingers.

  “Because you have two months of food and at least five months of hard weather after that runs out. Somehow we have to find you more food, but we're only going to be able to do so much. It took nearly five months to get food for about seventy people. You have a month to set up ninety and a lot of you are kids. All of you have to help if you want to live. That's one of the new rules almost everywhere, everybody works.” Though some less than others. He didn't add that. Might as well reset them to a high standard, right?