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

hands. Like on an old cop show.
  He whispered into the room, “I'm covering the door. Anyone know where that came from?”
  For a moment no one spoke, then finally a soft voice answered, female, though not someone he could recognize in the dark like this. So it could be any of nearly forty odd women then.
  “It was... uh, me. Nightmare. Sorry.” The woman sounded scared still. Jake exhaled slowly, not having realized he'd been holding his breath at all.
  That happened, everyone got scared sometimes and that meant yelling or screaming in their sleep. Carl's team had the night watch this week, and really, one or two screams shouldn't attract anything. Not unless it was already close. If that was the case they'd hear fighting from below soon. That or more screams. If that happened he'd go, but otherwise it would just take too long and invite being shot by the watchers on the ground floor. On night watch they didn't use candles, so anyone going down the stairs needed to be careful. You couldn't call out, but zombies didn't either sometimes. If you stubbed a toe and grunted you were probably going to die.
  “Alright. Happens to everyone. Can you go back to sleep? Do you have someone with you?”
  The voice said “no” so softly that Jake nearly winced, that also happened, a lot. The next bit that the speaker clearly knew was coming. You woke up screaming and then just had to lie in the dark, waiting for morning, hoping you didn't die before the light came back. He'd done it more times than he cared to remember himself. Less now, but at first it had happened almost every night.
  “Move over here then. I'll sit up so you can sleep.” It wouldn't guarantee anything, but sometimes if you acted like this was all normal it helped.
  There came a sound of movement, a rustling, then a subdued “hey” as someone else got stepped on or jostled. Finally nearly a minute later his mattress, a twin sized thing he'd dragged from town himself, moved as the weight of someone settled onto it. He still sat by the wall. He could just sit and doze if need be. He'd learned how. Jake kept the gun out, ready just in case.
  Not everyone did it, but sometimes dreams were prescient. At first he hadn't wanted to believe it himself, since it wasn't all that scientific, but over time he had to admit that some people could feel things like that. His own life had been saved more than once that way, so he'd pay attention to this too. Ignoring it would be stupid.
  That meant that he dozed off for a while, he thought, waking with the slight hint of change that came in the pre-dawn hours, about four something in the morning, maybe five. Jake didn't have a watch anymore. His had broken in the third week after things started and there'd been no reason to find another one yet. The door slowly opened which got his attention and the two crouching figures came in, a hint of silver in the fist of the first one, a knife. Jake waited for a second, the large weapon in his hand pointed at the man.
  The waiting was just to make sure he wasn't still asleep. He didn't want to kill someone for just coming back from the bathroom, and he really did just wake up with a gun in his hand sometimes. Crouching didn't help their case, but if he dreamed it, that could all be him.
  Then, if it were a dream, he wouldn't have a gun and they'd be moaning zombies trying to eat the people on the floor, wouldn't they? That or a group of women refusing to ever have sex with him. That probably wouldn't be in a bedroom though, being too close to actually getting some for his own mind to handle. The man finally looked over at Jake and froze.
  “Fuck!” The man yelled as the gun went off.
  He should have whispered Jake thought. If he'd whispered Jake might have paused for a bit. Yelling was a reason to shoot, dream or not.
  The bang caused a tumult, people couldn't help screaming being woken like that. The second man had a knife as well, so he got shot too. Now