Living With the Dead: Year One

by Joshua Guess

  Jamie was fine with the idea, as were the other scouts. They have been making runs with Dodger regularly since last week and have come to mostly trust his judgement on this type of thing. Ahh, but that qualifier has to be put in: mostly. See, by the time they actually found a group of undead, it was already pushing fifty-five degrees. Dangerously close to the temperature they wake up at. Indeed, a few of the hardier zombies were stirring even as the discussion was going on whether to stay or go.

  Dodger wanted to go, Jamie wanted to stay. As the disagreement grew more heated and some insults were hurled at Dodger, he decided to pull rank and make the call to come back home, at which point Jamie called him a coward and slugged him while wearing his armored gloves.

  That brings us up to right now, I guess. Rich, our arbiter for all legal situations, is having to judge the attack on Dodger based on what happened today. Problem is, all of us know how Jamie feels. As I came to find out while hearing about this whole scenario, Jamie has had it harder than most of us. He managed to get his immediate family safe, only to watch some of them die in a brutal zombie attack. Acting as the leader of his small group long before he met us, he found himself alone after a while. Every person he loved was killed, leaving him no one. Imagine how badly that must have scarred him, and the anger those deaths must have stoked.

  To give some perspective, let me share something about myself I'm not especially proud of. It's short and not so sweet.

  A few weeks ago some people were over at the house taking my combat class. One of them left a bar of chocolate out. They must have saved it from Halloween. Anyway, one of my dogs got into it and ate the damn thing. Made him sick enough that I thought he was going to die. I went from house to house looking for who had done such a thoughtless thing, totally ignoring the fact that it was an accident in my rage, and when I finally got to the right house, the lady who did it admitted the truth. I lost it, screamed at her, and while she seemed a little worried that I was going to attack her (reasonable, since I was yelling in her face) she also took my outburst with a fair amount of calm.

  Of course, I eventually apologized. I overreacted. My only defense is that I love my dogs and all my other animals almost as much as I do my family and more than I do most people. They are sweet and loyal and unconditional with their love for me. I don't take the illness or death of my pets very well.

  I was almost on the point of violence for the sake of my sick dog. Jamie lost his entire world to the plague of zombies, so who among us can blame him for his intense desire, bordering on a need, to kill them? No one.

  We are, however, a community built on the idea of peaceful cooperation. We can disagree all day long, but at the end of it we have to do so with each other non-violently. Else we risk so many of the same mistakes that society made before. We have laws and punishments for that reason. There have to be consequences to actions.

  I'm not the one who got punched. Dodger is. He's a pretty reasonable guy, but who would blame him for wanting to see Jamie punished for his actions? Jamie was in the wrong. It's a shitty situation.

  There's a famous quote whose source escapes me. It says something to the effect that to achieve real compromise, you have to make both parties feel as though each of them got the best deal they could get, but leave them wishing for something a bit better.

  I don't know if that sort of wanting satisfaction can be reached here, but I really hope so. Not for the sake of a fistfight that the two men will probably both grunt out an apology to each other for (because that's what we men do, in case you didn't know), but because all of us carry that fury around with us. All the damn time. We are bitter and frustrated animals struggling to fit within the cage we have built to contain us and keep us safe. We trust that our reason and self control will overcome the more impulsive and vengeful side of our nature.

  Not always possible. We all know that. This incident only underscores the truth that we are all capable of doing something stupid and destructive when our buttons are pushed. I hope that we can keep that sort of thing to a minimum, but I also hope that when outbursts do happen we can have some compassion and flexibility on both sides. A little understanding.

  It's personal for me.

  If my dog had died, I don't know if I would have had the self control not to lash out at that woman. Given how I feel about men who abuse women, that there is even a question in my heart about it is enough to make me worry about just how high my stress level has gotten. Again, not just me: all of us, at least every adult here, deals with similarly injured hearts. How do we deal? How can you heal the pain of a thousand cuts as this world of the dead continues to bleed us day after day?

  Help me out here, because I just don't know.

  at 11:01 AM

  Wednesday, November 10, 2010

  Obsession

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I wrote yesterday about the tension and anger built up in all of us. I guess it should be said that up until now that constant pressure built up inside wasn't too bad a problem. We had a common threat to make us get along better, and we fought almost constantly, which was sort of like flipping open a relief valve every other day or so.

  The constant threat of zombie attacks did a lot to keep that anger bubbling, though. It's hard to work through the emotional trauma of seeing your family and friends torn apart when you have to face creatures just like the ones that did the act every day.

  So, the current lack of large-scale violence is a blessing and a curse. We are people of strong wills and powerful self control. We might have occasional outbursts, but after thinking about it for a long time yesterday, I believe that in the end, we will manage to work through it all and be stronger for it.

  Will Price, though, is one person whose passions might overwhelm his capacity for logic. Oh, he isn't hostile to anyone. But he is still working on the defenses with obsessive and scary diligence. I don't think he sleeps in his room at Patrick's anymore, just curls up in his office between bouts of manic running across the compound.

  We have all tried to get him to pull back a little by inviting him over for dinner or a night of gaming, but nothing works. He comes over and eats or plays cards and then he misses sleep entirely to make up for lost time. So yeah, for his health we gave up on that. No one is going to physically try to stop him from making us safer, and if he burns himself out, then at least he has done so for good cause.

  I know that sounds callous, and it is. None of us can afford to lose his efforts, and short of tying him up we can't stop him. So best to look at realistically and admit the fact that he's a grown man who has to make his own choices.

  And now to completely contradict that statement...

  Patrick is back, and we aren't letting him leave. Not that he's really fighting us on that so much, but it does irk him that we won't let him go. He has to pass on his skills and knowledge as much as he can. It's way more important than him leading teams to the factory, which others can do in his place. Pat is the most skilled metalworker we have right now, and that means we can't risk him. I'll make up for the restrictions on his personal freedoms later, when we've spread around what he knows a bit. Silly libertarian.

  Part of why this is bugging him, as it turns out, is because he has wanted to make a run outside to look for his family for a long time. It isn't something many of us talk about, losing our loved ones and the constant pain of not knowing, but Pat got agitated enough to tell me this after I let him know he was basically grounded until further notice.

  Pat wasn't very close to his family. I mean, he loves them dearly. He went to visit as often as he could before The Fall, but when the drive takes fourteen hours, it's pretty hard to do so often. Phone calls and the internet were all he could manage most of the time, and I think that's why not knowing what has happened to them has been sawing away at him for so long.

  He hasn't said anything about it until now for many reasons, each of which just go to show you why Patrick is awesome. He felt important to our efforts here, which he
is, a key person that had responsibilities. He felt that going out with a team all the way to Florida would be selfish, so he refused to ask. He was almost to the point of asking to go out when my mom died, and after that I think he was too worried about me to leave me alone.

  Now, though, he wants to go. He is willing to wait, because he does want us to be safe and productive here. He will teach pretty much non-stop for the next few weeks, and then maybe he will get the OK to leave. I know that he will be back. We're a place he was integral in helping to build. The compound is his home just as much as it is anyone else's, and we are family to him just as much as his own.

  I think that when he does go, no matter what he finds, it will help him. Even if the worst should happen and he find them dead, he will be able to purge himself of that gnawing wonder in the back of his head.

  If only more of us could do that...

  at 6:55 AM

  Thursday, November 11, 2010

  Loss of Focus

  Posted by Josh Guess

  It's a bit of a slow news day for us. Not a lot is going on, although we've gotten reports of groups of survivors in Alaska and possibly Seattle, but the contact with the folks in Alaska is tenuous right now, and info is thin.

  We really thought there would be an attack yesterday. It was warm for a very long time, which most of us believed would awaken the hibernating zombies around here and bring them hunting. Fortune seems to favor us, however. No attack came.

  The dramatic shifts in the temperature throughout the day are sapping morale around the compound. It's hard for a person to go from a beautiful sunny day to freezing cold when the dark comes. Many of us are kind of walking around in an irritated daze, waiting for the constant gloom of winter. At least then we'll have some consistency and maybe be able to get used to it.

  I've been experiencing some odd symptoms the last few days, including a similar haziness to the folks unable to get used to the weather. I wake up exhausted every morning, with a bad headache, and have a really hard time concentrating and thinking clearly. My first concern was that Jess was dosing me with something again, slipping some kind of pharmaceutical into my meals like she did a few months back. I asked her, though, and she swears that's not the case.

  It's not like I would get angry at her about it at this point. We've suffered a lot together, so trying to medicate me for my own good is far down on my list of shit to rage about. I accept her answer at face value, because she really has no reason to lie.

  So, I talked to Evans. Time was, I would have asked my mom, but she's gone now. Strange how the weirdest things can open up those wounds and remind you what you've lost.

  At any rate, I asked Evans about it since my lifelong healthcare coach has moved on, and he says that I have probably developed sleep apnea. Jess did tell me not long ago that my snores have begun to evolve from merely cute and gentle zzz's into the mighty rasp of a saw on a hard knot of wood. So yeah, looks like sleep apnea.

  Last year, that would have been no problem. This year, I really have no options. I mean, I can't use a CPAP or anything like that, since we don't have any. Not to mention that we can't spare the power to run such a machine all night. And the other solutions such as changing sleeping position and whatnot don't work. I tried those years ago when I had a previous bout of heavy snoring and tiredness, though I had no idea at the time what sleep apnea was...

  It sounds like I'm just bitching about my problem and to a degree I am. It sucks to be tired all day and feel like nothing makes sense when you read it. It frustrates and irritates the hell out of me. Add to that the fact that I know there will be no easy relief, along with all the other stress of living in a world populated by hungry, walking corpses, and you get a cycle of exhaustion-fueled rage and despondence that goes nowhere good.

  That's one of my biggest fears. While I know from a lifetime of experience that I will always adapt and feel better regardless of how many times life kicks me in the balls, I don't know how many others around here can. We're a tougher lot than the average person who died in The Fall, surely, but everyone has their limits.

  Some folks are managing very well. They are eating regularly if not sumptuously. They are within the relative safety of our walls. They have tolerably warm places to live, decent and needed work to perform. All of that is to the good.

  But as you have read over the last week or so, not everyone's lie around here is so easy. Many people are dealing with the traumas in their lives, many so atrocious that they can't even talk about it. That constant stress I love to talk about, the daily fear of attacks and losing those we love is enough to test anyone.

  What concerns me is the thousand tiny details that add up over time. For me, today, it's a sleep disorder I can't do anything about that is going to effect the quality of my life. For another person, it could be finally remembering that we don't have a corkscrew when he wants to open that bottle of wine he snagged to celebrate his anniversary. The woman who comes home from a long day of patrol on the wall only to realize that she's starting her cycle and the compound has run out of sanitary items for her to use.

  Yeah, people hate that our medical facilities are limited, but that's a big thing that can be rationalized. It's the little bits we had become so used to that will bleed our minds a drop at a time. Can the adaptability that is the hallmark of the human animal work fast enough to get us used to the lack of so many things that eased our lives? I don't know.

  I have always been a resilient guy, and most of the survivors with us are tough as nails. Right now I feel distracted and tired, but I know that once I get a handle on it this problem, I will manage fine. I'd like to think that the rest of the people here are better than me. Maybe they will be able to brush off the little things and appreciate what is rather than wishing for what was.

  I hope so. The world that was is gone forever, and wishing will do us no good.

  at 9:36 AM

  Friday, November 12, 2010

  From Bullets to Words

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I got another bit of information from that guy in Alaska, but I have to admit that some of what he's saying sounds a bit dubious. We know how the disease spread here, and it can be hard to reconcile that with some of what he's saying...but that isn't really important right now, honestly, because the hard facts are that the people there are dealing with the same problems we are here. Just colder.

  Something very important happened yesterday, and I hope it bodes well for us. The mysterious group of people in Carterville, Illinois that shot at Steve and I from inside the walls of their own walled compound have finally contacted us. We have tried just about everything we could think of to form some kind of communication with them, to no avail.

  Now, though, we have that chance. I got an E-mail from one of the people there, who has asked me to keep his information secret. It turns out that these folks have been struggling pretty hard just to get by since The Fall. They have just recently gotten communications up, and are trying to find some help from other survivors. Courtney is very excited about this, since she and Steve are both from Carterville, and as our diplomat this is sort of her specialty.

  I don't have a lot that I can share about them at this point. They have asked for privacy for now, and we will naturally comply. If these folks turn out to be peaceable, then my hope is that we can build a good working relationship with them to strengthen us both.

  Other than that, no big news to report. There have been no sightings of military men, which is great. The longer we can go without having to fight the soldiers from Richmond, the better. Hopefully it will never happen.

  No zombies coming after us, which is just as good. It's finally gotten cold here again, and they have managed to hide themselves while hibernating so well that our scouts haven't found any big groups in the last day or two.

  It almost feels like we're paused between breaths here. So much possible good and bad on the horizon, yet everything seems to be standing still. I hate the feeling that we are
trying to plan our lives around fights that may never happen, and hopes that may never manifest. Patrick might be leaving soon to look for his family, Courtney and Steve might be heading back to Illinois to work on relations with the people in Carterville.

  I will remain here with Will and Dodger, doing what I can to help them finish the defensive upgrades around here as well as doing my own job. This is our home, and I intend to do what I can to keep it happy and running smoothly when any of our people have to leave, so that when they come home it seems as though they never left.

  at 8:11 AM

  Saturday, November 13, 2010

  The Maybes

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Nine times out of ten, your instinct is dead on. It's that ten percent chance that always gets you.