Read Online A Very Good Man by P. S. Power - Free Book Online Page B

indicate the weapon on her hip.
  True, making fun of them wasn't a killing offense, but the man had been warned. He just didn't seem to get that the ice he walked on was quite as thin as it really was. Carley didn't draw down, she just smiled and nodded, suddenly happier.
  “Right you are. I forgot about that part. Silly me, thanks for the reminder.”
  Holsom stormed off, muttering something. Probably just as well he didn't let them hear it, Jake really wanted the guy gone and didn't trust him not to come back if they just kicked him out. That or getting a lot of the women to work against them. He collected his now dry clothing from the line and went to the men's washing area. He had just enough time to scrub, clean the now dirty outfit and get to dinner on time.
  Some of the people were going in filthy, but most of the ones he liked washed first. Molly did too, or at least she looked cleaner when they all sat. There was a different area for men and women, behind screens, for getting clean. A few of the guys had been caught peeking, but Jake hadn't bothered. Oh, he'd wanted to, but only jerks were doing it. Holsom and his old crew come to think of it. Now they were mainly all dead. Probably not a direct cause and effect situation. There had been a whole bunch of reasons to get rid of them.
  That night's dinner was more filling, heavier on vegetables, there not being any new meat. They really needed to get a crew out to scavenge supplies soon. They had a lot, but live animals would be good. That meant more wood for fencing though, and he still had to get the book on wood stoves and water heaters from Burt and read it. When that should happen he didn't know. During the day of course, when there was light. What time though? He'd managed to get himself pretty busy all of a sudden. Well, he'd get the book from Burt and make it happen. If nothing else he could carefully read at meals.
  The soft chatter from around the table made a relaxing wash of sound to him, kind of like the old family dinners from when he was a kid, before his parents decided that their son had been taken over by an incurably lazy alien body snatcher. It had been the depression, after the thing with Rachel, but, well, it was probably fair enough of them. He'd turned into a little whining waste of space for a long time. If they'd been alive they'd be pleased to know that the curse hadn't lasted at least. Jake didn't feel lazy at the moment anyway. Just a bit sore and tired.
  Nate looked across the table at Burt, one table over from the one he was at, the important persons table really, if unofficially. Technically Tipper and Vickie should have been there too, but they left that part of coordinating the teams to Carl. His cleaning crew sucked, even though Carl had some real skill for it personally. His people kept dying on him though. It happened, but Carl's team had three times the attrition rate that Vickie's did. Tipper's group used to have a man named Jay, but he didn't die on a mission. He'd passed early on, about a month into the cleaning work, when he started screaming one night and wouldn't stop. That had been the second time Jake had executed a still living person. He'd gotten about fifty dead ones by then, but they almost didn't count. Everyone had killed a lot of those. Not that they really died.
  Well, not everyone. About ten percent of the people? Twenty? Most people had just died. Jake blamed zombie movies for that really. Everyone really expected zombies to start out slow and stupid. They were stupid, mainly, but to start with they managed to be nearly as fast as a living person. They slowed down as they took damage and didn't heal from it, and from decay, kind of. To start though, they weren't slow. They also didn't always moan or chant about “braaaaiiins” like they were supposed to. Even after the CDC came out and flat said they were zombies, undead that couldn't functionally be killed, just beheaded and made safe, most