Living With the Dead: Year One

by Joshua Guess

  So, we made it. I'm frankly kind of shocked at how organized and ordered everything here is. Everyone has food and shelter, there are people on sentry duty here and there. It's nice to see people outside our group again. We had a hard time getting here between the constant snow and random groups of zombies drifting across our path. One thing that I really miss? Road crews. You never really think about what they did for society until you don't have them anymore. Driving along pretty much any road with five or six inches of snow on it and patches of ice sucks in ways that I can't even describe.

  I'm pretty exhausted from the trip. Getting here was frustratingly slow, and now that we've arrived I don't think we'll be going anywhere for a good long while. That is, we'll be staying as long as it's safe for us to do so. You might call me paranoid since I've seen no actual evidence that any of them have come after us at all, but I'm still worried about what would happen if the bastards that took our home from us figure out where we are.

  It's not that this town isn't fairly defensible or that we lack people willing to put up a fight if one is brought to us. It's just that right now we're not at full fighting strength and we need time build ourselves up a bit. We have canned and packaged food, but right now no long term solutions for growing our own. All of that was left behind. We've got ammo for our guns and handheld weapons, but the shop we set up back at the compound to cast bullets and make our own shells is lost to us.

  Right now, I'm thrilled to be around people, and ecstatic to be in a group that is big enough to ward off smaller threats. I love the safety and sense of community. It's just a fragile thing right now.

  I recognize, of course, that almost no community anyone builds in the world as it is now can be stable or safe in the ways that used to count. Look at the compound--we had a decent population, armed to the teeth and as prepared as it was possible to be. Sitting on a stockpile of food and weapons, ready to die or kill to preserve it.

  And all it took was one man to take it all away.

  As I walk around this place, assisting where I can with first aid needs, I keep that simple fact in mind. We're nowhere near as well protected as we were at the compound. We're in a delicate situation. Yes, we are alive and together, which is a beautiful thing. We can pool our resources to do more than any of us could individually. And all it would take to ruin what good we have here is one person telling the Richmond soldiers where we are. Or anyone that has a jones against us, for that matter.

  Hmmm. A parable just popped into my head that pretty accurately describes the situation:

  A man is hanging from the edge of a cliff. In his haste to catch himself, he grabbed on to the only thing he could--a strawberry plant. As he hung there watching the thin roots slowly come out of the ground, he realized that he wouldn't be able to pull himself up. He resigned himself to his fate, knowing that he would surely fall, and at that moment he noticed a delicious berry amid the leaves. So, he ate it.

  I've always loved that one. I don't think our situation is as bleak as the man in the story, but there is a ring of truth to it nonetheless. I'll enjoy what we have while we have it, and keep an eye out for anyone taking aim at the roots...

  at 9:44 AM

  Tuesday, December 28, 2010

  One Less Worry

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We're settling in pretty well here. Gabrielle, Evans and the other folks that found these hospitals chose a pretty good site to stay for an extended period of time. There are lots of empty rooms, and while we can't heat the place at least we are out of the wind and snow.

  The people that have come here for medical care and decided to stay are integrating with each other and the original groups very well. My group is still sparkling new, and it's going to take a while for us to get used to one another. I'm not worried about it, to be truthful--after listening to Gabby and her people talk about the compound and what we had there, having to run away from it, they are very interested in hearing how my people did the same. It's a start.

  With so many warm bodies to cover sentry duty, a lot of us have extra time on our hands. I've spent mine this morning trying to get in touch with some folks, mainly the groups that have been in and out of contact since we fled the compound. Aaron and his kids are hard to get hold of most of the time, and Patrick (god help him) is rarely in contact, as you might have read in his post. While I was sending out emails and making calls, though, I was given some interesting information that I'd like to share.

  It seems that our fear of the Richmond soldiers coming after us is mostly baseless. I'm getting this info from someone who managed to communicate with one of our people still in the compound, but given who I talked to (and no, I won't be sharing that) I think it's pretty reliable.

  See, I thought as many of us did, that the Richmond boys would get all manner of nervous with an enemy contingent (the refugees from the compound) moving freely about the countryside. The general wisdom was that as soon as they secured their power base in the home they took from us, they would be sending teams out to find us and gun us down.

  Apparently, that isn't the case. According to my source, the remaining citizens of the compound have been causing just enough trouble to keep the Richmond soldiers busy--things like sentries leaving their posts at random, refusing to do chores for them such as washing clothes or making food, all sorts of little inconveniences that add up to a lot of time spent working for the men who took our home away.

  I was worried at first that doing those kinds of things would basically incite a round of executions, but apparently the soldiers are dealing with pretty much every single person pulling little shit like this. They know they can't kill everyone, so they're trying different methods of controlling the folks we've left behind. None of the measures they've put into effect have done much good, so for the time being we refugees are safe.

  I'm proud of them, I will admit. Resisting an occupying force is ballsy, and resisting just enough to keep them from doing anything more than guard the walls and get irritated is brilliant. I'm going to do my best to get in touch with the source inside the compound directly. I'd like to get a first hand account of how things have been since we ran.

  One other contributing factor in how busy the Richmond soldiers are is the damn zombies. What started out as a small fraction of the total zombie population (which we called SnowTroopers) that are capable of functioning in the cold has now grown into a major problem. It seems that whatever mutation causes cold resistance in the zombie population spreads much easier and faster than the one that makes some of them smart. More and more of them have been popping up here, even in the last day, and word from the compound is that they are seeing daily numbers close to what we used to see in the fall. Dozens walking the walls at any given time, bursts of hundreds on bad days.

  They've got the improved defenses that Will worked on for weeks at their disposal, of course. As much as I hate that fucker for giving us up to his Richmond friends, I have to tip my hat once again to his evil genius when it comes to defensive measures.

  I'm taking a turn at sentry before long, so I need to wrap this up. One last thing I'd like to ask all of you out there--if you run in to anyone from the compound, try to help them get in touch with us. We want to try to get anyone and everyone who isn't currently either with Courtney and her group or trying to save his family (Patrick) here as soon as possible. We always seem to flourish as a group.

  at 9:31 AM

  Wednesday, December 29, 2010

  Unify

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Over the last day I've managed to get in touch with almost every refugee that managed to escape the compound. Since most of them are bunched together in groups, it wasn't that hard to contact at least one from each group. The only person who is still unaccounted for is Patrick, but he'll get in touch when he can. I'm pretty sure that everyone else is planning on heading this way, except for Courtney's group. They are still running their relief effort with a lot of momentum, so she wants to keep at it.


  Actually, talking to Courtney this morning is the whole reason for this post. She updated me on a lot of what she, Steve, and the others have been up to. Little David is still with them, slowly coming to terms with losing Darlene to the Richmond soldiers when they came to take the compound from us.

  Courtney passed on a lot of information to me, and I want to share it with you, because while the individual pieces might not be much alone, together they make a pretty interesting picture...

  First is that recently her convoy has been making trips north. They've been as far as South Dakota in their efforts to help survivors struggling to cope with the winter along with the plague of zombies. That far north, the cold isn't just awful; it's sometimes deadly. What she saw there was swarms of zombies, none of them seeming to suffer from the cold at all beyond a little stiffness as they moved. People from her convoy confirmed multiple sightings of active zombies pretty much everywhere they went. So it looks like whatever mutation is causing them to develop cold resistance has either spread or at least become active almost everywhere. We suspected this, since so many people have reported seeing or fighting zombies since winter began, but this brings us data from a dozen states in a period of only a few weeks.

  The second main thing we talked about was how successful her trip has been. At first she and her group left the compound to work with a coalition of volunteers from several other large survivor communities we had gotten in contact with. You'll recall that we managed to secure some awesome donations of manpower, vehicles, and supplies to make the trip possible. You might also remember that some of the large communities were reluctant to lend aid or supplies, but eventually gave in to help. The cool news here is that along their way, Courtney's people have discovered many more groups of survivors. Some of them have even joined the relief effort, giving fuel, people, vehicles, food...you name it. Many more of them decided to join with other groups to the south, bringing everything with them they could haul. This has resulted in a huge influx of people and needed materials to the south, swelling the number of people in the larger communities while also bolstering their supplies. Which, any way you cut it, is sweet.

  The last thing we talked about was pretty awesome.

  Most of the people that Courtney and the others talked to wanted to know what's been going on in the world, and how so many people had managed to get together so much to help those in need. So, she told them. She explained to every person who asked about how we at the compound had set up the relief effort, had managed to convince others to help us. Part of the reason that Courtney's efforts to help out have managed to go on this long is due to the assistance of some of the people she's been finding on the trip. People who have given much needed gas to keep the convoys running, or food to take on to the next stop. And pretty much every person who found out what the Richmond soldiers did to us is really, really pissed about it.

  So....

  The end result is that every single group of people she's run into or worked with has put an embargo on the compound for as long as the Richmond soldiers are in charge of it. Some of the smaller groups may have needed a little convincing from the larger ones, but in the end they all agreed. There will be no trading with the enemy. Since all of the groups that she's run into or worked with total more than six thousand people, the Richmond boys can't really do much about it. It's pretty great.

  The other awesome thing is that Courtney and her people will be heading here at some point in the future, or at least sending a little aid our way as well. It seems that the plight of the refugees from the compound has moved the hearts of a lot of the people we've helped, and they have appealed to all the big survivor groups to help us in return. All told, it's a pretty amazing display of what I've been hoping to see all along--human decency and a sense of community on a large scale.

  The dead walk the earth, hungry for the blood of the living. We have been damaged in every way by the zombie plague, and nothing can ever bring back what we've lost. After talking with Courtney, though, I am now certain beyond doubt that we can work together to remove the debris from the foundations of society, and unify to build something new atop them.

  When I first came up with what ended up being a personal motto, the words seemed simple and obvious. Protect. Survive. Hope.

  I mean, we protect each other as best we can, because no one can be on guard all the time. We watch out for one another not only in dangerous situations, but in every aspect of our lives--being there in whatever capacity is required of us. We survive as a baseline, every effort we make bent toward that effort. Hope was always more ephemeral to me, a bit of philosophy that had no real world application, other than it being better to hope fruitlessly than to despair.

  After this morning, despair just isn't an option for me. I've seen Hope with a capital H, and it's every one of you that has taken up the cause we helped start. All of you out there have done something amazing, not just for the people you have helped directly or indirectly, but for the human race itself. You've set an example for cooperative survival and betterment that no one will ever be able to ignore or dismiss. You are heroes. You're amazing.

  And you're all everyday people. That's the best part.

  Hope.

  You've made it real to me. Thank you.

  at 8:37 AM

  Friday, December 31, 2010

  Slammed

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I've been awake for thirty-six hours. In that time I have taken part in more than a dozen coordinated attacks, most of them from large groups of undead. The zombies, it seems, have more than a few smarties among them.

  For those of you just tuning in, smarties are my cute little nickname for the unusually intelligent zombies out there. Thank god that strain of the plague isn't as easily transmissible as the one for cold resistance is, or everyone here at the hospital would probably be dead. It also helps that we were already in the process of making sure the ground floor windows were all doubly secured with boards and steel, anything we could find to make them useless as means of entering our space.

  The great thing about hospitals in general is that the first floor of most of them tends to be taken up with the ER, lab spaces, radiology, and the like. At least, that's how it has been in my experience, and the one we're holed up in now is no exception. There aren't a lot of ways for the undead to get in, and given that the attached parking lot most of us were staying is walled, we're pretty safe.

  It was the sheer numbers that blew us away. We've killed at least a hundred of them over the last day and a half, most having gotten over the wall to the parking lot. We'd set up a defensive position at the door, though, so it wasn't that hard to hold them back. Given our currently limited supplies of ammunition, the majority of the work (see: killing) has by necessity been done with handheld weapons. I've been using an Iaito, one of the katana I took from home that is durable and very good for cutting. It's nicked and scratched all to hell now, but it still does the job.

  A few other people are using some interesting weapons. Jess is manning her rifle, of course--she took to that particular weapon much faster than she did to blades. Gabby even joined the fight at one point, using a brush hook. Have you ever seen one of those things at a Lowe's or Home Depot? It looks sort of like a four foot long halberd, with a wide, flat blade that has a curved end to it for yanking brush out after you cut it. It's fucking scary to see in action, especially when a tiny woman is furiously screaming while chopping into the skulls of walking corpses...

  There are a few other people using swords, but now that the main body of the zombie horde outside seems to have called it quits, they have put down their weapons in favor of sleep. I'm going to do the same before too long, but I felt the need to let everyone know what's been going on since I didn't have a chance to post yesterday due to the fighting.

  I think I'll start offering basic weapons instruction in the next few days. We lost a few people because of their lack of practice or familiarity with their weapons. At the compound
, we had the advantage of numbers and time, so that those of us who have spent years sweating it out in a dojo carefully learning how to use a blade could teach those who hadn't. I don't want to see another person get bitten and turn because they lost their grip on the hilt of their weapon, no one having prepared them for the sudden change in weight as the blade bit into the body of a man once-living.

  There's been talk about trying to put up extensions to the parking lot wall. If we can find some plywood or other large materials to raise up, it seems like a good idea. Of course, without a walkway of some kind or a support structure it would simply be a defense that would blind us, but if it stopped the undead from getting over, I'd be ok with that. At least then we could safely use the parking lot again, for cooking or what have you.

  OK, the level of sleepiness I'm feeling is beyond description. I need to catch some sleep while I can, and help with whatever search may go on for supplies in a few hours. Or, help defend if this place gets hit again before then...

  at 6:37 AM

  Saturday, January 1, 2011