#zhparas

The work has been long and hard. Jess is relieved the weather isn’t staying as hot as it would be had they been doing this in the summer heat, but she’s still sweaty and filthy, dirt clings to her everywhere and she’s still going, still digging the hole even deeper, she had it about three feet deep, and five feet long, she still wanted to get it deeper but she was taking a break to re-hydrate and let her body relax for a moment. Next to the hole is a pile of make shift stakes, wood and a few sharp rusted metal pieces. When she gets the hole to the right depth she’ll start setting the bottom so if anything falls in it’s going to get stuck.

Taking a long pull of her water though it’s warm it’s not as hot as her body is, and it feels cool going down. Sweat makes her hair stick to her neck despite it being up in a bun, and she wipes a stray hair from her forehead. Sitting at the edge with her feet hanging in the hole Jess is happy to have gotten as far along as she has, there are still a few traps to set up but so far things are going on schedule, she does what work she can when she’s not on patrol, and others help when they can. While she takes her break, Jess pulls out her knife and grabs a piece of unsharpened wood and starts to make the tip a point, her back is to the fence and she keeps her sense trained to hear if someone or something comes around, the only sound she hears is the quiet of the woods and the scrape as her knife takes part of the wood off.

She’d spent the rest of her night working on the plans for Henry, she’d spent one run going around the fence and Jess made sure to look everywhere just to get the locations in mind. Jess had then spent the rest of her evening checking out all the spare supplies, listing them out for the traps and making a few crude drawings for each set off supplies. She’d had a few down but she wouldn’t know for sure which ones to use until Henry showed her what places he wanted the traps at. Night had fully fallen and the midnight patrol would be back soon, she was finishing up a few designs while she waiting for Henry.

The house was mostly quiet, everyone has worked their way upstairs. Sleep calling most of them for the night, Jess would normally be waiting for the patrol out front but Jess had a few more things to go over, and she’d spent a lot of her time seeing what she could use. The candlelight flickered and gave some light to the room, just enough for her to check over her work. She’s actually happy she was able to come up with a few ideas, things she thinks would work and others that are simply larger more deadly traps she’s made for smaller game, what would be good to have would be a few large claw traps, she never used them but she knew they were deadly and would mess up any leg that stepped on it.

Kai had barely left the yard since the last supply run - only returning to the house when she had scheduled herself to eat or grab another ration of water. She spent most of her time since that day walking laps around the fence and practicing her shot on trees or whatever small animal seemed to make it’s way close enough to the house to give her more of a challenge. She had already tirelessly made herself enough of a back-stock of arrows from various branches she would stumble across on her rounds that she had enough to refill any entire quiver if she needed to. 

For the first time since she had joined up with the group, Kai felt helpless. They had lost two members in just the past few weeks. Zombies were cropping up more and more often around the farm and she could feel Henry’s restlessness about it even when she wasn’t around him. The safe, homey feeling that she got in the confines of the farm’s fence were beginning to slip and fade and Kai was starting to realize that she had been looking at things with a soft filter. Sure, she knew how harsh the world was - had held a woman’s head in her lap as she mercy killed her - but Kai had stupidly gotten comfortable.

Now the comfort was gone and she wasn’t ready to adapt to the stress and anxiety and unrest that came with living in a world where death waited around every corner. She was losing people around her, people she couldn’t afford to lose, and because of that she found herself unable to leave the yard - to stop making rounds in an attempt to keep everyone else as safe as she could possibly manage. 

The air is cooler as the sun drops in the sky, evening is taking over for the day and Jess is grateful to be able to relax a bit after a busy day. She’s on the ground in front of the porch working on the traps she used with Jay the other day, trying to make sure her knots are the best they can and the fast she has them done the safer they’ll all be when heading out on a hunt. They’re going to need more twine though, she’s sure of that and she makes a note in her journal to add it to the list of supplies they’re going to need.

She has the sticks set and she sticks her hand through the loop and gives a small pull, the loop tightens around her wrist and she smiles and nods to herself, makes a note in her book and she goes back to work, seeing how better to make the trap work. If she can make them in almost one piece, it would be easy to have someone else help her set them up, and take them down, to better cut the time it would take to set and collect them. She knows they work since she got something out of them but there was always room for improvement.

Jess keeps working and she makes a small adjustment, and works to set the trap up again. She had picked up small pieces of wood and sticks as she worked around the farmhouse, no pieces that would really be needed for anything, she’d take some off the peach trees as well. She grabs one and starts to shave it a bit to make one end sharp enough to stake into the ground.

Jess knows that the area is mostly lacking in wildlife, with the amount of times she’s hunted and the loading of zulus coming in most have moved on to safer land. She can’t help but feel bothered that while the animals run, they stay. The wildlife knows this area is a threat now so there’s no reason for them to stay. She waits on the porch now, Jay should be here any minute for them to go out and hunt. Jess hopes to find something, anything and Jess plans to set a few snares, maybe get something small just to make sure her skills are up in that regard. She knows eventually that they’re going to be on their own, out there in the woods and Jess doesn’t want to set off gunshots all the time while hunting and bring some zulus their way. Trapping was quiet and clean, and would often gather plenty of kills if you knew what you were doing. It’s been a while since she’s done any, and she wishes she had thought of doing this earlier.

Sighing she plays with the roll of twine she found, feeling it in her hands, the one things he’s grateful for, having found the twine that was actually the kind she’d really need to use. She doesn’t really care if she finds enough to make a large meal out of it, she simply wants to see if she’s still decent at it and able to make a snare that would hold something.

Looking to the sky Jess breaths in deep, the air is cool due to the early morning and the sun has been steadily moving up in the sky, she’ll set the traps as they go, and check them as they come back. Gathering any and all snares she made that didn’t get her anything, she didn’t want to risk them getting anything later and leaving a trail of fresh kills leading to the house like breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel.

It’s been months since she even bothered doing any kind of work with wood. She didn’t have the kind of tools she would have liked but her leatherman helps well enough and she’s had some skill just using her pocket knife as well. The sun is close to going down and Jess sits on the porch steps working on the piece she found while on patrol. There are a few shavings on her lap and on the ground beneath her feet. She’s not full sure what she’s working on but as they have before she usually gets around to something. She often finds herself carving deer and other animals she finds in the woods. She used to have a small shelf where they ended up and it gives her something to do to relax her mind as the day came to an end and everyone made their way inside for the night.

Another shaving ended on the ground and Jess still kept attention on the world around her, mindlessly shaving small piece after small piece, falling to the ground, she takes a long look at the wood in her hand and gets to work on another part of the piece, the bark is mostly all gone, she’s glad to have found a good piece, it’s not too hard but it isn’t going to fall apart.

The early morning air was cooler than things had been in some time and for that Jess was thankful. She was wearing shorts and her tank top, as comfortable as she can be given the workout she’s about to have. Her pre-stretching is calming and she does it on the porch as she waits for Henry to arrive. She’s got her pistol and blade near her, she’ll take them out wherever Henry leads her so she can make sure to have protection just in case, she doesn’t trust this place anymore and she’s not going to go about unprotected.

Standing she bends to the side, stretching down to touch her toes and straightening to pop her back. She usually runs a bit, does push ups and sit ups to keep her body as good as she can. She tries to do as much as she can to keep things fit, her endurance is the most important to her and she’s not going to slack off, especially now. Growing up she’d been as into fitness as she was now, always getting up early for a morning run before work. Her brothers had been into sports so she always had a running buddy, and sometimes she could even get Josh to go with her, though those runs never lasted long, always ending up in him making a joke that would leave her too tired from laughing to continue.

She just wishes she’d had some sort of sneaker, her boots will do her well enough and she didn’t want to bother with wearing pants, she didn’t want to risk tearing anything, she only had the two pairs and she hardly wore these shorts. The sound of the door opening makes her stop her stretching for now and turn to see Henry.

The early morning sunlight warms her face despite the slight chill the evening brought, it won’t last much longer, the heat is going to come again. She wouldn’t call her mood totally foul. She’s had a day to sleep on the vote and she’s less angry than she was last time, now she’s just disappointed. Disappointed that yet again it was decided to stay, though she’s happy to know that more people seem to have gained some common sense and voted to get the fuck off this farm. She sits on the porch rocking back and forth in one of the chairs. Soon others will rise and they will all get back to work quickly, working to make this place safer, soon enough they will hopefully be going on a scouting mission again, and Jess hopes it brings better fortune than the last one.

Closing her eyes she leans her head back and continues to rock, slow and steady, there isn’t much activity just yet, and Jess is thankful for the quiet. The new additions to the house seem to be settling decently, getting into the rhythm of the house and being given chores. She’s still on the fence about how she feels about them, with Fallon things started off rough, the girl gave her and Jay attitude, but Jess didn’t really see her as a threat, more talk than anything else. But she was still going to keep an eye on both new additions, she wasn’t about to trust them easily, it wasn’t something she ever really did, and especially given how things started with Fallon, Jess wasn’t going to let her guard down near them both anytime soon.