Living With the Dead: Year One

by Joshua Guess

  That will be starting tomorrow. Today, as I said, will be a run to find building supplies and more insulation to make ourselves a cozy guest house from the steel building that we're going to all be staying in. It shouldn't be that hard--Jack's people raided a lumberyard for what they took to build their longhouse inside the factory, and they didn't take but a fraction of what was there.

  All told, we're pretty happy with the situation here. When Courtney and her big group reaches us, there won't be any concerns about the refugees pecking away at the food reserves here when the edibles we brought with us run out. It's also nice to have a place where my dogs can run around and stretch their legs, and the storage building is secure enough that my cats and ferrets can frolic about until the work of construction begins. It's actually been nice seeing the folks in our group play with them and laugh at how silly and uncoordinated the ferrets are. Feels a bit like home.

  Really, the only disappointing thing about this place (other than it not being our own compound, but it can't help that) is the lack of ammunition. There are just too damn many people here with too many large-scale conflicts at the walls with zombies. They ran out a while back. So it's melee weapons all around. At least everyone has something useful to use--one of the advantages of living in a building with a variety of steelworking tools and a fully functional machine shop. Easy to make weapons.

  Sort of related, but kind of sad--I've retired my Iaito for the foreseeable future. It was the one I took with me when we left the compound, the katana that served as my cutting blade over the last ten years of my training in marital arts. It has been a constant companion, and served me well in surviving...

  But she's damaged pretty badly. In our haste over the last weeks to stay alive, my sword took a lot of abuse. I've tried to take care of it, but the fact remains that it was never a weapon meant to cut into human bodies day after day. There are chips taken out of the edge, and what looks suspiciously like a crack in the blade. I've never seen steel crack before, but that's what it looks like.

  Jack's shop was nice enough to make me a replacement weapon. It lacks the elegance of a finished blade, but works all the same. It's heavier than my katana, but not so much that I'll have trouble using it. It's basically a machete, but longer and thicker than any I've ever seen. It also has a hilt long enough for me to hold it with two hands. I like it.

  Well, we leave out for our first scouting run in seven minutes, and I need to get running. Hoping to hear from Pat and Aaron soon, but for now I have to put my worries into the back of my head. Distractions can equal death.

  at 6:54 AM

  Tuesday, January 11, 2011

  Very Hot Rocks

  Posted by Josh Guess

  My scout run this morning was only an hour long, mainly due to the sudden and ridiculous snowfall. We wanted to ride out further to look for supplies, but all we manged to do was tag a couple likely places before being called back to Jack's.

  One of the great things about having a couple dozen people in our group with nothing do do other than scout is that things get done quickly. Jack's engineers have been working on plans to turn the storage building into a habitat for us since yesterday, and once we trucked in the construction materials we nabbed from the lumberyard they started to finalize designs. It helped that they made a shopping list for us, to help us take the types of lumber and other supplies they'd been using in their blueprints.

  So, our group is now heartily working on building a little home. It's pretty amazing what can be accomplished when people work together with plans laid out in front of them. I wish my brother Dave was here, but he and his family are out with Dodger and Jamie. I don't know how I missed out on telling you that. My own brother, and I forgot about him...

  At any rate, I was curious about how the heating system was going to work, so I asked one of the guys who designed the longhouse on the factory floor. He's also one of the people who have helped design our own little place. See, I wanted to know exactly how they got heat into the structures without suffocating anyone or running the factory into a brownout.

  The answer is in the title of this post: VERY hot rocks.

  This might seem like a silly thing to write about, but it's pretty fascinating to me for several reasons. There are huge fire pits spaced around the edges of the wall of dirt and debris that protects this place. Jack's compound is big, and it requires a little creativity to keep the watchers on the walls warm and safe. Ergo, fire pits. In which large chunks of rock are heated, and then brought into guard posts to be set into makeshift hearths and the occasional small grill. An easy and clever solution, given just how much wood is around here to burn. They're constantly felling trees to fuel the fires.

  As it turns out, the heated rocks also act as a handy weapon when zombies get too close to the wall. Some part of their instincts are still human, and recognize fire and extreme heat as a potential threat. So, when the undead get a little froggy, guardsmen dump buckets of burning gravel onto them. It's pretty brutal and scares the shit out of other zombies that happen to see the target get drenched. I've suggested they try the same thing with sand...

  Those same hot rocks are brought inside and shoveled into a densely insulated compartment underneath the longhouse on the factory floor. There's a blower set in there, running slowly to keep from cooling them down too quickly, and there are people designated to shovel out the cool rocks from half the space and load in freshly heated ones, once every hour. It isn't perfect, as in it isn't central heat, but it definitely keeps the sleeping folks comfortable.

  So why the post about it? Because to me, it's an encouraging sign of our adaptability. Mankind has been nearly wiped out with the coming of the zombie plague. Some people have pointed out that all of the real technological advances that matter have happened in the last century or so, and that we will be able to come back from this much faster, since we don't have to figure it all out the way our grandparents' generation did.

  I say to that, think about manpower and infrastructure.

  The reality we face is that there are just not enough of us left to make all the pieces and parts of modern society work again. At least, not in the way they did a year ago. We have tons of information on how to accomplish things, but most of us have no clue how a cell phone really works, or the best way to generate electricity on a large scale. The details of how most things are manufactured, as well as how they function, are all things we'll have to teach ourselves. That will take time.

  Not to mention people to do it all. Power plants need skilled operators to work, and three shifts running all the time. Think about that. How are less than ten thousand (that we know of) going to make even half the things that took millions before, work?

  We can't. Not yet. What we can do is innovate, and find ways to use the resources we have at our disposal that get the most from them. Heating up rocks to keep warm is a very simple, very old idea. Combine that with a creative ventilation system and the basic knowledge that heat rises, and you get a relatively simple but effective method of warming a medium sized space.

  Brilliant in its simplicity. For right now, simplicity and functionality are what we need. Reliable things. If or when we get our compound back, this will be one of the things that we'll try to implement. We tried something like it, but here I see how we can improve on our original designs.

  See? It's a perfect example of ingenuity, efficiency, cooperation, and functional adaptation. Exactly what we human beings need to do to not only continue to survive, but to thrive as the future unfolds. All of that from something as simple as very hot rocks.

  at 8:29 AM

  Wednesday, January 12, 2011

  Nowhere To Go

  Posted by Aaron

  So I'm alright. I suppose. If you can call being Held captive by some of the most desperate people I've seen since the fall, all right. It's my fault we're captive really. I should've been a tad bit more cautious rather than typing away and not keeping an Eye out. I figured we were safe. If ya remem
ber when last I left off writing, I mentioned some people had come up to the comp. What I didn't have time to write down was that they were armed and had taken one of the kids hostage. Me and the rest of the kids were ordered to throw down our weapons and well, honestly, I've seen too much death already. I'm not about to Let another one of my kids die. Not for anything, Plus I could see at least another dozen men around us all with guns aimed at us. It wouldn't have been much of a fight. So I've been captive for a few days now. This is what I can say.

  There's at least a dozen of them, maybe two. Apparently they're used to be more, but the winter has been really harsh to them. In fact, the harshness of the winter is why I'm in this predicament, and even have time to write at all. It's been consistently below freezing, I'd dare say even in the lower teens or upper single digits. Windchill's been bad too. Feels like it's -23 or so out their. Apparently, they've had access to the blog (indeed, they will likely read this one to make sure I don't screw up their plan) and recognized my group as one of the ones that fled Richmond. They've been low on food and fuel for quite some time, and quite honestly, they don't have much in the way of winter gear either. So, upon discovering my group they came up with a plan. They just needed to wait for our guard to be down, and then they'd ambush us and capture us, so that they could "sell" us back to Richmond. Well, apparently their plan has panned out. We started marching about three days ago and I could tell the group was in good spirits. Upon a bit of questioning, found out that not only Richmond agree to their request, but even invited them to come and stay with them at the Compound. Bastards.

  The upswing is that given their optimism, they've decided to let me back on the computer, though they will be monitoring rather heavily what I put up here so as to not give away their current position. Not like I would. We'd only be leaving in a day or so anyways.

  Anyways folks, don't worry about me or the kids. We might be captives, but we're safe. I wish the rest of you the best of luck.

  at 3:28 PM

  Thursday, January 13, 2011

  Story Time

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Today, I want to do something a bi different. I want to tell you a story. It goes something like this...

  Josh powered up his laptop and checked his mail. He had been hoping to hear something from Aaron or Patrick, since he had managed to stay in touch with all the other refugees from the compound save those two. As Gmail opened, he noted with sadness that there was still nothing.Damn, he thought, when are they going to contact me? Are either of them still alive?

  Josh went through his rounds, checking his voicemail and text messages, hoping that he had missed something. Nothing. More nothing.

  He was just giving up hope when his wife, Jess, handed her phone to him. "Look," she said, her eyes bright with excitement, "Aaron posted on the blog today. Pay attention to what he wrote..."

  Josh typed in the address of the blog, looking at the post left there by the friend so long out of touch. Something about it was off, but he just couldn't put his finger on it...

  Aha! Of course! Embedded into the post was a code, a simple numerical substitution that had been taught to various people from the compound as a way of sharing location without letting anyone who read the message know exactly how. Josh pored over the text, double checking each part of the code. He ran the converted digits through his GPS app, and got a location.

  Aaron and his kids were being held against their will, and not that far away. Maybe two hours if they took a vehicle capable of running down whatever obstacles might be in their way...

  ...and two hours later, a team of eleven people slowly worked their way behind Josh as he crept toward the lonely building, smoke barely rising from its decaying chimney. The neighborhood had clearly been prosperous and expensive at one point, but nearly a year of warring survivors and unchecked fires had decimated it, leaving a lone home standing amid a field of the blackened skeletons of what had once been homes.

  The house was large, perhaps 3,500 square feet, and guarded by two men on each side. So, Aaron had been at least in the ballpark about their numbers. No survivor would leave so many people outside for guard duty unless there were even more inside to watch the prisoners.

  The low mounds of rubble pushing up against the small wood Josh and his group were crouched in offered some cover, but the best advantages they had were the cover of darkness and the element of surprise. The men standing guard looked haggard but tough, and they were armed with small arms. No rifles among the ones that he could see.

  Behind him, the gentle crunch of snow stopped, and a warm gloved hand gently brushed his shoulder. It was the sign letting him know that his people were in position. Now, to wait for the signal from the other team...

  From the far side of the clearing that had once been a cul-de-sac in the ruined neighborhood, an angry chattering sound erupted. The guards nearest to Josh jolted with surprise but made no sound. Experienced men, obviously used to dealing with threats in the night.

  The raccoon scrabbled across the snow and ice, moving with the quiet desperation that only wild animals confronted by men are capable of. The guards, still away from their positions with their backs facing Josh and his team, never heard the sharp thrum of the bows, nor the whistle of the arrows that struck them. Instantly, six of the men were down, arrows transfixing them in various places. The men screamed, trying to go for their weapons, but the third team had already rushed in, slaughtering the downed guards in the confusion.

  Josh assumed that team four had done the same to the pair of remaining guards on the far side of the house. There was no chance that the men inside hadn't heard the racket, but that couldn't be avoided.

  Josh raised the bullhorn to his mouth. "You inside the house. You have some of my people captive. Let them go, now, and we will let you walk away from this. Harm them or take too long, and we'll kill every one of you."

  There was silence from inside. After thirty seconds or so, a scuffling sound could be heard, and a body came tumbling through the front door, a knife plunged into its neck. It wasn't anyone Josh recognized. There must have been an argument among the captors about how best to proceed.

  A man came out, his hands raised in surrender. "We're sending them out. Just don't start shooting."

  Josh nodded to the man, but kept the arrow nocked in his bow just the same. He was ready to drop the bullhorn, draw and fire in a heartbeat, and the dirty man with the raised hands in front of him could clearly see it.

  One by one, Aaron's kids came shuffling out. They joined the group behind Josh, and with the last of them came Aaron. Josh looked him over quickly, and didn't see anything seriously awry other than the obvious hunger and exhaustion on his face.

  Josh tipped his head toward the house, and spoke to the filthy man in front of him. "We're going. You and your men will stay here until we're gone. Try to follow us, and we'll kill you. Come after innocent people again and we catch you....and you'll wish the zombies got you first."

  The man's face darkened, but he gave Josh a terse nod all the same.

  The assault teams backed away from the house, guarding the retreat of Aaron and his kids as the man went back inside. The groups had all nearly reached the safety of the woods when a loud argument could be heard from the house. Screams filled the night air as someone was put through a window on the second floor, and the thundering blast of gunfire filled the night. Bullets winged into the earth nearby, causing Josh to duck and weave. Puffs of dust and ash sprang up wherever the bullets hit, coming closer to his party with every shot.

  Josh fell to his side behind a pile of rubble, and nearly knocked out some teeth when he slapped the bullhorn to his mouth.

  "TAKE IT DOWN!" he shrieked.

  A few moments later, small bright points could be seen from the edges of the cul-de-sac. The flaming bottles made shining arcs as they flew through the air, smashing to brilliant life against the siding. A few broke windows. It only took moments to set entire structure ablaze. Those that ran
through the doors were picked off one by one. There were no survivors. The End.

  Aaron and his kids are safe, and the people that took them no more than ashes on the wind. Such is the fate of anyone who comes for us or our people.

  Call it a parable. Learn the lesson it teaches.

  at 10:52 AM

  Friday, January 14, 2011

  Safeish

  Posted by Patrick

  I'm so sorry that I haven't posted or got in touch with any one in a while. Had a good reason though, was unconscious most of the time and getting no signal the rest of it. The pain and exhaustion both mental and physical finally caught up with me, that and I have been fighting infection from my impromptu amputation. Obviously the mundane infection and not the zombie kind or my typing would be much worse.