Dead End (Book 4): A Very Dark Place Read online

  It would have been funny if not for the fact that they were already causing trouble, not even having been there for six hours yet. Worse, they were losing valuable work time to this already.

  Jake gestured to the T'srith woman, not knowing her name. She winced as if he was going to beat her, but that wasn't likely. She could probably snap him like a twig. The Vals were about three times stronger than a strong Human man. One of her people was nearly twice that strong. A bit slow, but that was a relative thing. She was probably twice as fast as he was in a sprint.

  On the good side he didn't have to explain what he wanted.

  "Maitreya... This one," she gestured to the man that had been shot with an open palm. "suggested that I was a diseased Human woman. I was merely explaining that I was neither of those things. I believe that he would have understood after a few more moments. About the time I took his head from his neck..." She didn't seem pleased with the man at all yet.

  Before Jake could say anything or roll his eyes, Henry, the whiny forge kid took a deep breath, walked forward and slapped the larger man in the back of the head, hard. It got everyone in the room to stare at him, especially the Denari, but he spoke before anyone could stop him.

  "William apologize to the warrior." The boy smiled a little weakly and didn't sound sure of himself at all. "Also to these people for calling in a hoard to where they live."

  The man on the ground, sitting with his right leg bent, but in front of him lashed out with a very smooth long arm that should have slapped the younger man in the groin, but was blocked lazily with a knee.

  "I don't apologize to anyone. Ever. Why not just cut my manhood off you stupid waste of sperm!" He was too loud, which had Jake aiming at his head again.

  The guy didn't seem to take the hint though, not at all. He saw the weapon too, but it was like he couldn't understand what it meant, even though it had been explained to him already.

  "Some smelly cunt? That's who you want me to grovel too? Some bitch in heat that has the soul of a man? I'll kill her as soon as I can stand and-" The bang cut the words short.

  Denari were pretty tough, but a bullet to the head did the trick anyway. It did for most things really. The man slumped to the right, dead, everyone else silent for a bit. Finally Jake broke the quiet.

  "We have work to do and need to be a group now. One group. I shot him for being noisy, but if anyone does that again, acts on prejudice like that... I'll shoot them anyway, no matter how quiet they are about it. Spread the word. We don't do that anymore." He wondered for a second if the Denari would attack, if a major fight would be starting right then, but Henry stepped in front of him and shook his head. Other parts of him shook too, from fear and reaction to the murder that had taken place, but his voice was decently steady, if young sounding and breathy from trying to be so soft.

  "I'm sure we can do that. We should all get back to work."

  There was a roar though, along with chanting from several men, which got one of them killed instantly when Dave blew the back of his head off. After that things got more intense and confusing. Bodies flew across the room, mainly thrown. Women and a few kids ran, which was pretty sane of them, but a few grabbed weapons and started trying to hit the Denari. It was too close to use guns anymore, after the first few shots, so Jake had to try and kick the man that came at him. It was just sidestepped by a fraction of an inch and a fist flew straight for his throat. He couldn't doge it in time at all, but a skinny arm flew in front of him, as Henry engaged the taller man.

  Jake ducked to the side and pulled the nine again, trying to aim upward and toward the outside wall. After a second he took the top of the man's head off. Then he rolled, a sloppy and inexpert thing that actually took another of the tall men off guard, being so poorly executed. It worked though, and the boot that hit between the Denari's legs got him to shut the heck up.

  The rest of the fight was a scuffle as the men were pulled to the ground, being beaten until they didn't move anymore. But they were all alive, except for the ones that had been shot.

  All except for Henry and the bearded one. They were both alive and still standing.

  Jake cast a glance at the room, those left in it and wanted to scream, but didn't. Instead he just let the annoyance fade and stood ready to kill someone if he had too.

  "You..." He pointed at the bearded one who, if he hadn't been in charge minutes ago was now, as far as Jake was concerned.

  "Get these men out of here. They aren't welcome anymore. This is the worst that anyone has done so far. Six hours... I've seen zombies with better group coping skills." The sad part there was that he literally had. One at least.

  "Henry can stay here and you personally are welcome back, but these other men need to go and if you want replacements for them, bring people willing to follow the rules please. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Chanting? Here?"

  The bearded man didn't look happy about it, then his friends were dead, some of them at least. He turned to Henry and looked...

  Proud.

  "Henry will stay. It will be as you say Smith. How are we to go to our lands?"

  That, it turned out wasn't hard at all. Cam came from the kitchen along with Sammi. She looked at the men and arranged them carefully, clearly not wanting to be too near them at all. She made herself though and took the hand of the big wild looking man without saying anything, closed her eyes and after about three minutes had them all teleported away. She wasn't the fastest of her kind at it, but she was young and doing pretty well at learning it seemed. A month before she couldn't have taken them all in one trip and it would have been ten minutes of concentration, five per group. More than that with the return trip. This time she was back inside two minutes.

  Jake didn't say anything, really wanting to get out of the room he was in. It was too close inside the House, too many bodies all at once. It was shocking that they didn't have more problems too. These new people were the second fight that week, the first being two of the boys, both younger, having a dispute over a toy. That they had toys now was amazing, but instead of sharing they'd gone full combat too.

  Silently though.

  They'd even taken the spankings that Nate, the leader of the House, used to punish them without a whimper. Then they had all the toys taken away and were given jobs. They were both around nine or so, which meant that they were in charge of making sure the kitchen had a constant stream of kindling for the fire and that no one else ever had to get wood from outside for any of the spaces in the place. That was mainly just to keep them busy though.

  They needed to come up with more jobs like that.

  There was a school at least, for the youngest, where they learned to read and write, do basic math and all that. Useful things that kept them busy and out of the way.

  Jake moved back toward the forge though, since the fire had been left going unattended. Colleen and Henry followed him automatically. Colleen was his "buddy" for the day, since the others in their group were all in the kitchen. That worked well for Cam, who was used to the job and Sammi, who even though she was a princess managed to have top notch skills in that area, just due to the fact that she was something like a hundred sand thing like needing food came up, rich or not. She looked twelve though, so didn't seem all out of place that way, regardless of her true years.

  It didn't work that well for Heather however, who was really too pregnant for useful work, and too stubborn to just sit like a sensible person. Jake had actually forbidden her from the forge, claiming that the smoke would be bad for the baby she was having. The truth was that he just didn't want to keep moving around her all the time. It slowed things down too much and he didn't really think they had time for that.

  Neither did she, which was a bit scary, or would have been if he cared about fear anymore.

  They worked until dinner, Jake making a point of taking Colleen with him to sit at the head table with Nate and Burt. They had to rearrange some chairs for it, but no one acted like he didn't belong. The
y never really had, but he was close to the youngest person that was considered a leader really. Lois was the oldest regular Human in the place and Burt was second. Nate was in his mid-forties. Jake was still twenty-four. It made him feel like no one would listen to him, but they did, for some strange reason.

  Probably because they all kind of thought he really was The Very Good Man. It wasn't the case though. Not really. It was a fiction that Sammi had put together, even though she claimed that he really was the fabled savior of all the cousin races. Worse, it meant she was kind of claiming that he was the "second coming". No one had mentioned that part of things once it had been spoken about the first time, but some of the people looked at him funny now.

  Funnier.

  It wasn't just fear anymore though. Now there was something in their eyes that he hadn't seen in nearly a year, ten months at least, since the world ended and the dead started walking, contrary to all rules of physics or sense.

  They had hope.

  Not all of them and not all the time, but after Sue had told them that he, Jake the hardened killer, was the one that they'd all waited for, some of them had started to change for some reason. It didn't help him at all, but if it got people through the night, who was he to tell them to stop?

  They ate in silence and for once no one bickered at the other tables or lingered while others hung back waiting for a seat themselves. They had nearly twice the people they used to have and could only fit so many in the room. It pretty much broke down into two groups. The adults over thirty in the first one, then the younger people in the second.

  If he wanted to talk to the grown-ups, he had to be pushy though. Otherwise everyone would be off to bed after the meal and he wouldn't be able to find them at all.

  "I'd like to start a new push on the work front. We need supplies I hear and should get teams out and training for cleaning, as well as making weapons. A new forge and maybe a pottery kiln. I don't know how to do it, but glassworks too." He waited, expecting people to grumble and go on about the problems instead of finding ways around them, but Burt spoke first. He had a long gray beard and was thin for it, but was kind of the modern, post zombie world model for Santa Claus. Literally. He'd played the role for Christmas and everything.

  He was also pro-hard work for everyone, including himself and a certified genius. Definitely someone worth listening too.

  "Looms too, as well as working with Julio on expanding our ability to grow food. We have a lot of supplies now, thanks to our new friends bringing us things, but we should be self-sufficient if possible. Besides, too many people have been sitting around most of the day lately. That's Jake's fault, for not riding them to work constantly, of course." He grinned when he said it, knowing that it really wasn't all up to Jake at all, but rather that things had just gotten in the way. It happened, but the real culprit was fear, not laziness.

  Everyone was afraid to go outside because of the walking dead that wanted to eat them and staying inside was almost as scary now, after a group of cannibals had come in one day while all the fighters were gone and killed several people and kidnapped two more for food.

  Ken had killed three of them by himself, with a kitchen knife and probably would have gotten more of them if they hadn't had guns on them. Five of their people had died though. Jake had just kind of lucked into finding Sammi and Barb, the kidnapped ones, when they'd managed to work the cannibals toward his house. His old place. He lived here again. It wasn't fun, but it really made sense for everyone else. It was easier to guard everyone that way and even if it was all a fiction, the other groups really wanted to make sure that their Very Good Man stayed alive.

  Jake looked at Burt who kept smiling at him, teasing.

  "Right. We'll get on that now though. Colleen, you and Carl had a list of which people were supposed to be doing what, right?"

  She blinked, clearly not having thought he was going to speak to her at all. It wasn't like he ignored her, but she clearly wanted more from him than he was giving. He kept her with him, since Heather had insisted and it sounded important. It was hard though, because she constantly reminded him of Rachel. The only person he'd ever really loved. Just thinking the name caused him pain, but he tried not to let that show. Colleen was a good person after all, worth loving all on her own. She always had been and apparently had loved him for years. Nearly a decade.

  That had come as a shock to him when he'd found out and he hadn't really addressed it yet. Not just with her, but with himself. The sad thing there was that if she hadn't been Rachel's sister he'd have loved her pretty easily. It was insane not to, but then, they lived in a world that had gone so crazy no one would call him on it. Most likely.

  The short blond made a face, but nodded and looked at Carl, the vastly muscled dark skinned man who sat several places down, across the table.

  "Yes. Carl, do you know where that went?"

  He nodded, taking a small bite of something made of corn and meat strips.

  "Yeah, in my things. I can get it now." He started to move but Nate held out a hand stopping him.

  "After you finish eating. We'll have time during the second meal. It's a good idea. We need another building project soon too. I know it's hard in the snow, but we have to have the space. I'm pretty sure I had sex with someone last night that just kind of rolled into my bed. A woman too, I think, though it was hard to tell." He didn't seem to be joking either, from the worried expression on his face in the dim light.

  Lucky him. Except for the fact that he was gay and didn't really like the female half of the species for that kind of thing.

  Jake still hadn't gotten any at all.

  Next to him Colleen snorted, "and here I was going to make a big speech to Henry about how Human women weren't all loose and diseased."

  She didn't explain it, but no one asked her too. They also didn't talk about the Denari. That part was a little odd, but it was like they figured that Jake had already handled that or something, sending them away. He hadn't though, he was just insisting that they come back with a crew that could get along. They might not be able too, but if that was the case he was going to have to work something else out.

  Starting out by killing a bunch of them couldn't help though, could it?

  After dinner Jake moved into the kitchen to start on dishes with the first half of the after crew. They had to pack in tight at the sink and work together to get the job done by the light of a single candle. It wasn't easy to get things clean that way, but there was still cooking going on the whole time and that was even harder. He wasn't needed for anything else, so, less than fun job or not he did what he could. Most of the people with him were older this time, and surprisingly Nate was at the end, drying the plates and glasses with a cloth.

  No one spoke as they worked though, silence being the habit now.

  The funny thing about it all wasn't that Nate was working on dishes, but that so many people just kind of faded into the woodwork after each meal. Really, what else did they have to do? Listen to the radio? It was something that he hadn't had a chance to really do yet at all, being too busy, but apparently a lot of them snuck down to the radio room when they could and just sat for hours, listening to old music and earnest sounding military men and women talking about all that was being done to save not only the nation, but the world. They even had commercials for chocolate bars that no one could afford to buy.

  It was meant to prop up people's morale and probably worked to an extent. The other part of that was the regular promise they made, at least once a day. Make it to the House and everyone would have a place.

  This was policy it seemed. The President himself had signed off on it. Like they worked for the man? It would have been handy if they'd asked first. For all they knew the House wasn't there anymore at all. Especially since they were guiding not only the survivors of North America straight toward them, but also every insane cannibal within earshot of a radio. Because, of course, that made sense. Kind of concentrate all of them into one spot so that th
ey could be killed more easily without all the pesky hunting first.

  Jake thought he understood the reason, which was all about hope, but he didn't think that the Military was really paying attention to what people were willing to do now. They'd been getting a slow trickle of people already, even in the winter. Once things warmed up, there would be more. A lot more. Their facility couldn't easily hold anyone else though. If they wanted to be ready something was going to have to give.

  "Can we use explosives to dig through the frozen ground, do you think?" He just asked the room at large, the person next to him, Carley, jumping a little.

  "I..." She stopped for a second then shrugged.

  "Not my area, but it makes sense. Then if we have the wood ready and some of that earth moving equipment the Teleporters said they could bring in, yeah, it should work. Where do we get the explosives though? Make them?"

  Jake didn't know. The closest he'd ever come to making an explosive involved some duct tape and twenty sparklers when he was thirteen. Still, they had a lot of people around, someone had to know about that kind of thing, didn't they? If not, maybe they could find a book. That or get with one of the other groups. It had to be possible.

  The meeting after the meals was ended went quickly, with most of the new people surprised that they were being put to work, but not totally displeased by the idea. It seemed most of them had kind of felt at loose ends, like they weren't being take seriously. Jake asked about explosives and mentioned why they needed them, but no one volunteered either a special ability to make things explode or that they had their grandmother's secret plastic explosive recipe. It seemed odd to him, but Back Before most people didn't exactly have that kind of thing on tap, did they? How often did it come up?

  Jake got himself to bed after that, tucked into the cold third room next to Vicki. She didn't need heat, being a Valkyrie and he was young and healthy enough to just cuddle under a blanket next to her. She was his girlfriend after all, though she refused to do anything sexual with him in a crowded room. That was what she said at least. Other people did, for hours each night, but Jake had kind of learned to tune them out. It was a survival strategy. Otherwise he couldn't have taken the stress of it all. Colleen had taken to sharing the bed with them, even though she was thin and small enough to be in one of the warmer spaces. Most nights she was sleeping tucked between Vicki and him, at least until the Val got up in the middle of the night to start her day. She was working a half shift then making ammo.