The young man clicked. A sound that indicated a laugh that had been shut off hard, the throat closing on it without letting any air escape.
“I can do it. Where is it? I need a knife.”
While the other guy did that they got the body outside and shot it in the head again. Jake hated to waste the ammo, but they didn't have any tools to hand for beheading. The one knife he had was with the other man, who was using it on food. They couldn't leave the man intact, in case he turned, just being dead didn't mean that wouldn't still happen. The wood had been collected and the chimney checked, but the others didn't have matches with them. Jake did, five in a little plastic case that he always carried. Just in case. It took two of them to get the fire going and they had to cook everything as steaks, which took the whole night.
No one slept and they didn't talk much. The day had been a little too raw for that. Too close to death. The next day Jake went for more water and saw another deer, but had to leave it. He did notice something though, a small field with at least a dozen cows in it.
He couldn't carry a cow back. Not even a little one.
But they could walk, if they were alive, right? Jake had no clue how that worked, but if they lived, they'd try it. Cows could be useful. They made hamburger and milk. Somehow. Jake smiled at his own feigned ignorance. Oh, he couldn't milk a cow, but he had a general idea what part it came from. Mary had been in charge of animals, would have been, but with her dead, someone else would have to do it. All they could do was try.
He checked the other two every few hours, they buried the older man, taking him a good ways away and ate a lot more deer meat than they'd normally have gotten, the protein fairly seeping into his system. He actually felt full for once. Jake made himself stop eating then, because too much would make him slow and possibly sick. Wasting food wouldn't work well. Warm or not they kept the fire burning all the time, at least smoldering. That way they wouldn't have to waste any more matches.
No one changed into a super-z or even looked sick, though the other two started to smell by the third day, on the fourth they all went to the stream for a bath and to check the cows. The kid, Randy, smiled when he saw them.
“We can just walk them back when we're ready. One person in the back, one on each side, they'll try to move away from us, but with a little noise... Crap.” He grimaced. “Maybe if we hit wood together instead of yelling?”
That was a good idea, worth trying. Zombies didn't come to every odd click or anything. The man had coppery hair and freckles, pale skin from being inside most of the time lately, but had been raised on a farm not too far from where they stood. Jake considered it for a second and smiled.
“Right, well, you're in charge of livestock then. We need as much as we can get I think. Tell me what you need for it and we'll try to get it or do it.”
So two days later, sounding like a woodpecker gone insane the three of them walked back to the house driving fifteen cows in front of them. Randy found a section of barbed wire fence that made a huge square, filled with weeds and grass about a quarter mile from the main house to put them in. They'd need water, but this way they wouldn't eat Jose's fields. There were two huge silver stock tanks just sitting in the weeds, each could hold about five hundred gallons of water and the setup had an old spigot, but no water came out. They'd need a new well and probably a hand pump.
“Hey, Randy, will these cows need both tanks?” Jake pointed at the shiny galvanized metal, which got the man to shake his head.
“Not really, and pumping by hand we'll be lucky to keep one half filled all the time, why?”
“Hot water heaters. We need a tank.”
That they'd had something this close for so long made Jake wonder what else they were missing. They got back at about four in the afternoon, to find everyone outside working, though half of them, nicely spread out, stood holding weapons instead of doing anything useful. Fear would do that. At least they weren't all hiding inside. No one said anything as they walked up, but Sammi ran over and gave Jake a hug. A big tackling thing. Silent, but strange.
She'd never hugged him before. A little awkwardly he hugged her back. She'd saved his life after all. She needed to practice shooting, but her instincts had been nearly dead on given what little they'd known at the time. Get the thing's attention and shoot it in the head. Zombie protocol one-oh-one. That she'd been willing to move when everyone else had frozen was... amazing. That she'd done it for him. They didn't talk, just walking toward the house after that, Nate and Burt separating out to come see them. Nate spoke first.
“Larry turned?” He spoke grimly, but seemed happy to see the three of them back.
“No, he flipped out and tried to leave while I was gone to get water the first day. He wanted to come back here. Justine stopped him.” Jake shrugged and gave the girl a sidelong glance.
“It was the right call. Randy got fifteen cows too. We need to get water to them, but there are two giant stock tanks, Randy thinks we only need one out there. I put him in charge of them, but that can change if needed. He seems pretty solid though.”
That got Burt excited. He grabbed Jake by the arm and pulled him inside to show him a book, it described how to make a well just by pounding a few pipes into the ground. It was an instruction manual from the forties or fifties for the public works program back then. Once put in place, you primed it with a little water and pumped it with a simple hand unit.
“It only works to about thirty-two feet deep, but the water table here is only about twenty. If we pick the right place this should work no problem. We can have it up tomorrow. The day after latest.”
They spent the rest of the night collecting the sledgehammers, fence post drivers, pipes and a new hand pump that Burt had already been working on then loading it all on the wooden cart. Burt looked nervous, but didn't say why, not until the next morning, when he and seven others met Jake and Randy by the cart after breakfast.
Carley was there too, having decided that the group had too many men and needed someone to cut the testosterone. Her words made Jake smile, but if she wanted to help and had the wood gathering in hand, why not? How often did you get to pound a well into the ground after all?
Burt hadn't left the place since they'd gotten there, not even to go as far as the more distant fields. He was clearly shaken and walked unarmed, no one else did, but his pacifism wouldn't let him carry anything that could easily kill. Well, he had some knives and a sledgehammer, but that wouldn't do much for him if they were attacked. Still, everyone else could cover him, so it would be alright.
The only problem they had was the well itself, they had to hammer, drive it with fence post drivers mainly, so as to not damage the threads on the pipes where they hooked together and twist the pipes in a circle to drive them down and the bottom one had to have a special end on it. Burt had only made one of those, so if it failed, they'd have to find something else to do with the cows for a while. That would be a pain in the rear, so Jake kept hoping the little well trick would work. It took a lot longer to prime it than he figured and he'd about given up hope when the first tiny trickle of water came out as Randy worked the wooden pump handle madly.
Then, as he kept going the stream got larger until it worked nearly as well as the one at the house. Everyone looked relieved and Carley smiled and looked at Jake as if he'd had something to do with it. A bit misplaced, but better than being scowled at.
Then they had to dig out a hole for one of the stock tanks to sit in about a foot deep, right next to the spigot. Otherwise they couldn't get the water in without adding another joint to the pipe, which could lead to air leaks according to Burt. It took hours, because the hole had to actually be the right shape. Even standing there, taking turns pumping, the thirsty cows walked over and started drinking, taking the water out at least as fast as they could get it in. It was funny in a way.
While they pumped one at a time, the other stock tank had to be loaded onto the cart for the return trip. It couldn't sit on the cart flat, it was too big and the wagon had a wooden wall on it, about three feet high. So it rested at an angle, but seemed secure enough just sitting there. They could hold it in as they walked, the trip wasn't that long.
They ran the little hand pump for nearly three hours, even taking turns Jake's shoulders ached before they were done, a dull throbbing that everyone seemed to feel and no one talked about. They rubbed their shoulders and arms as they walked, Jake and Carley pulling the little wagon along, standing inside the little pulling area, both hands on the bar. It was a mistake for the two of them to be doing it, which got pointed out when the crawler came out of the brush and everyone else panicked. It could hardly move, both its legs gone already for some reason.
The men with them were all armed with guns, except Burt, and he turned out to be the only one that didn't freak out or freeze, just knocking the decaying thing's arms from under it with a sledgehammer as it moved toward them, over and over again. Jake didn't scramble as the others ran around, Carley did, fighting to get her side arm out and aimed as if it were a runner. That normally would be a good point, runners and shamblers tended to move toward the same stimuli, which is what made groups. Crawlers just got lost for the most part, but getting complacent wouldn't help.
“Calm every one. We can handle this. You three,” He pointed almost at random at the men.
“Make a square and get ready to shoot anything running up on us. Remember head shots if you can manage it. The rest of you come with me, except... Burt, um, could you watch the cart? Once we're in place I mean?” The old guy didn't kill, not even the dead. Jake could respect that. Not his way personally, but someday they'd be done with the zombie mess and need someone to remind them how to be people again. Otherwise that would leave people like Dave in charge and that wouldn't work well at all.
He almost just killed the rotting thing himself, but remembered what had worked before, so held his nine pointed up suddenly, turned and smiled a little.
“Alright, which of you is going to do this?” He looked around, ready to wait for someone to step forward. Carley didn't hesitate, just moving in and shooting the thing in the head, three times. She had a twenty-five, so that was about right. It took more bullets to make things happen with smaller weapons. The men all stood around looking shocked and Carley looked pale. Not ready to cry and not scared, just a little sick looking. No red blood came out of the zombie though, which made it easier. Seeing red blood always made people wonder if they'd killed the right thing or if they'd just murdered a crazy person. That only held with runners and shamblers though, normally only runners. No one lived through having both their legs shredded off like this thing had. It wasn't an issue this time at all.
Jake always figured that it never would be. After all, if someone ran up on you and tried to eat your face, shooting seemed a sensible course of action, didn't it? Crazy or zombie didn't matter that much when it happened.
Not to him.
Most people didn't see it that way though. Not even the other cleaners. They agonized over every bit of red they saw as if it meant something. That pain slowed them down. Not all of them. Not Dave or Tipper, or from what Jake had seen, Vickie. The others though, even Barry the veteran froze for a second when stuff like that happened.
Like how he'd frozen with Becks. The thought made him so sad he felt like crying for a few seconds, until he shut it all down. There was no time to worry over things he couldn't fix, and while it was really bad, it wasn't like they'd ever been more than friends. She'd made her reasons for that pretty clear, hadn't she? Jake couldn't be happy about it, but really, did he have a right to act like it was important? More important than anyone else or their problems at least?