Chapter 45
Nancy smiled in anticipation upon hearing Jimbo’s report: Nobody was home at Max's house. This could be a case of the wife and kids hiding really well, heck the doors were still shut and probably locked, or the bitch could simply have taken her brood over to her mom’s to hide out. Getting in and checking the garage would let them know they might have hiders, maybe not though. Max struck Nancy as a kind of family guy, the kind who worked to live, not lived to work. Probably he had bought a house in the same neighborhood either he or his wife grew up in, probably within walking distance of the nearest family member. Still they would check the house over good when they got inside and anyone left would be zombified.
“Is that all Jimbo?” Nancy asked him, as she and the girls stood around in a semi-circle listening to his report.
“Eh, well mostly. It looks like some zombies have kind of been through here already, I did not see any sign of life and plenty of signs of death. Max’s house looks pretty clean, like no one was there from the get-go.”
“Did you try the doors? Look in the garage?” pressed Nancy
“Ah forget it Nancy.” interrupted Veronica, “We told him not to do that stuff, I am just amazed that he got back to us so quickly at all, plus he is not your lackey, or mine, let him do his job as he thinks best. I still say we should have given him one of the ones we picked up along the way.”
“What? No, no, I don’t need any help right now, I think we need to make the ‘military’ as strong as possible first then, worry about getting the executive a helper, then me, then Julie.” said Jimbo.
Along the way to Max’s house the group had grown from a group of five, plus Jimbo’s hidden ‘agent’ Bobby to a group of eleven, plus Bobby. The four main players, Nancy, Jimbo, Veronica and Trish were the only ones huddled at this meeting, Julie had become a fair administrator of the ‘troops’ and took her orders from Veronica as planned. Trish had risen to the occasion and become a sort of helper to Nancy, a vice president. Jimbo kept Bobby as a hidden resource, rationalizing that he was a spy and the other powers did not need to know ‘how’ he got things done, only that he did so. Jimbo felt the bond between him and Bobby was growing stronger, it was to the point that he could reach into Bobby’s mind and tell him things without even having him in direct line of sight anymore. In fact he could even sense Bobby’s location now, he knew the boy was up on the roof half covered by the same pine tree that the rest of the group was clustered near, about eight houses down from Max’s place. Not that Bobby needed to be close to hear, as far as Jimbo could tell the communication went both ways, right now Jimbo kept the line between them open, broadcasting everything to the boy.
“Yeah I am kinda getting dicked around on the assistant thing, I mean we got six new recruits and the armed forces got them all? It seems to me the balance of power is getting out of whack here.” Nancy sent a barely perceptible scowl in Veronica’s direction.
“Look Nancy we discussed it, you agreed, fucking move on with the past and concentrate on the task at hand. We are here because of you, we are doing what you wanted us to do and even you agreed we needed to bump up the ground forces a bit to deal with the gangs and humans roaming around. I have the people I need to take down one well defended house, is it my fault there is no one to take down? We will learn from this experience and change our future responses accordingly.” This was a rather long statement from Veronica, who Jimbo thought, was becoming the next Nancy of the group. She had insisted that only she and Julie make all the new zombies, so in theory the new recruits were all controlled by the armed forces.
What Jimbo suspected was that Julie was really not a factor in any of this. Last night Jimbo had kept an eye, or an eye of Bobby’s, on Julie pretty much at all times, she seemed like the weakest link and his observations only strengthened his convictions. Julie did nothing but take orders, she did not give any. Watching Veronica wash over the issue told Jimbo what kind of leader she might become. If she handled it internally and replaced Julie as her right hand man, well that would be good. If she continued to gloss over Julie’s part in her ‘army’ and did not bring one of the new recruits up to fill the position, that would be bad. Frankly Jimbo didn’t think Julie cared either way, he had her pegged as a zombie with a conscious and that the idea of what she had become was starting to wear on her. Would she, could she, kill herself? All the more reason to keep a set of eyes on her. The whole recruiting formula did not bother Jimbo at all either, he already had given Bobby instructions to grab any stray kids he found and ‘make them his’. Kids worked better, you told them to do something, threw a video game at them and they did it. Of course no new video games were being made and eventually Jimbo would run out of gifts. He shrugged, ‘I don’t need to worry about what happens in three years, today is all that matters.’
“What’s that Jimbo?” asked Trish.
Jimbo, not realizing he had spoken out loud, quickly said, “I hope we are not close enough for anyone to hear and are we going to get to anything today that actually matters? C’mon, lets set up our crew, go in and deal with the reality and not re-fight old battles. Again.” Jimbo went on to curse himself quietly, he was going to have to watch that, his internal dialog was having a tendency to come out of his pie hole too damn often in the last twenty four hours. He quickly looked up to make sure he had not spoken anything else out loud.
Veronica nodded her agreement. “Yeah, yeah, smart man Jimbo, you are right we need to get set up and go in, it is what? Seven in the morning? As good a time as any to head in. I will have Julie take four of the troopers to cover the sides and rear of the house, I will go in the front with two others, when it is clear I will send one out to bring you guys in, fair enough?”
The other three leaders said yes or nodded their assent and Veronica went off to discuss things with Julie who started moving slowly into position around the sides and back of Max’s house.
“Julie is going to be a problem.” said Jimbo, not quite meaning to voice what he was thinking.
“No shit Sherlock, I guess you are a master spy after all. What can we do about it?” said Nancy.
“She is…apathetic. I think she was religious or something before, you know, before she changed. Not real religious, but kinda borderline, went to church sometimes and stuff. Now she can’t resolve her old life with her new one. I think somebody should put her out of her misery and out of Veronicas.” added Trish.
“Well traditionally the intelligence department was responsible for assassinations, or rumored to be. As the executive branch I guess it is within my authority to order you to take her out Jimbo, just do it in a way that suggests it was an accident, okay?”
Jimbo’s laughter, brought a fresh scowl to Nancy’s face in response. “No fucking way am I going against ‘V’, you dumb bitch. She saved my fucking life and I won’t cross her without a better reason than that. ‘V’ can handle the problem, and she has too, it is her person, her problem. You really want me removing one of your assistances if the rest of us say they they need to go? No?” both women shook their heads ‘no’, Nancy with what seemed like regret, “That’s what I thought. See? I am on board with Veronica’s new reality Nancy, we can make this work. You? You are lucky you got to stay around at all after the shit you were pulling. My advice to you deary is to start rowing with the team and making decisions to help us all out before there is say…a military coup.”