Living With the Dead: Year One

by Joshua Guess

  So, onward. The first part of the plan was getting every person still inside the compound (our people) to agree on a signal. When that signal came, everyone was to attack and subdue as many soldiers as possible. This was incredibly risky, as the general populace weren't allowed weapons. It was the first major hurdle to overcome, because many of our cohorts from NJ and almost all of the refugees (including me) were against letting the people who had lived under the thumb of the soldiers take such an enormous chance. We were convinced, eventually, but I still don't like that it was necessary.

  The conditions inside the compound have gotten steadily worse since I and the others left. The huge surplus of food we left here has been heavily depleted by the soldiers, who apparently ate all they could. This left the rest of the people, most already hungry, in a state of near starvation as the stores were kept under guard and meted out to them in dribbles. Five brave people, three men and two women, all of whom were very weak and hovering on the edge of death, volunteered for the next part of the plan.

  All five of those people sacrificed themselves for the freedom of the compound. The soldiers, being understandably paranoid about their safety while sleeping, constructed a rough barracks, guarded while occupied. Of course, my people were sent in to clean up and gather laundry and the like, so it wasn't actually all that hard to hide bodies in there while it was mostly empty. Three of my people went in there, and none of them came out alive. They carefully concealed themselves, you see, and then took overdoses of some medicines that were too common to be under lock and key--sleeping pills. The other two hid themselves near a popular gathering spot for off-duty soldiers and did the same.

  Let's put those five people to the back of our thoughts for right now. Don't forget them, but rather think about their bodies as I explain the rest. Their intact, dead bodies, waiting for a change to come...

  The other major aspect of the plan was weakening the defenses. I've dropped hints over the last few weeks, unable to contain my inner smart-ass, but I had to stop short of taunting the enemy, lest they figure out what we planned. This is a good point to tell you that Patrick wrote a lie the other day as well--he isn't heading for the east coast. He's with Dodger's group with Jamie and my brother Dave, right here. They beat us here by about twelve hours, and started clearing out the local zombie population from around the compound. How? You guessed it: ammonia. The guys carefully went about putting the stuff all around the far edges of the area we needed clear. It was risky, because we didn't want the smell to drift toward the compound and give up the fact that someone was out there spreading chemicals.

  We needed the area mostly clear of zombies to make the next part work. Pat, Dodger, and the rest of their group (which includes a lot of volunteers from other groups of survivors--that's what Dodger and Jamie have been doing all this time, gathering people to help us) underwent a pretty significant change. They were made up to look like zombies, caked in grime and some nasty stuff taken from actual zombies. It wasn't a perfect disguise, but given that they were only active at night when they'd cleared off the majority of the undead, it worked. It's very helpful that zombies are typically ignored if they aren't an active threat. The soldiers (and most folks nowadays) won't waste ammo or arrows on a zombie that's just scratching at the wall trying to get in. Or, for that matter, three dozen of them in a hundred-foot section. Those kinds of numbers just aren't a threat to a place as heavily fortified as the compound.

  Able to get close in relative safety, the boys worked to spread an interesting mix onto the wall that houses the main gate. It's a concoction made of various flammable materials, but mostly magnesium. After most of a night of people imitating zombies coming and going as they slathered the walls in powdered metal, that section was basically a tinderbox waiting for a spark.

  When the first screams came from the southern part of the compound, followed by gunfire, we gave it that spark. The bodies of those five people had reanimated, though not all at once. The source of the terrified shrieks was the barracks, where the darkness and locked doors allowed the chaos and bloodshed to really blossom. As a numbers game, it didn't do much to reduce the amount of soldiers in the compound. What it did do was cause a panic that sent soldiers flying from the walls to respond to the threat. After all, a few watchful men left at the northern wall could surely keep their eyes on a few dozen zombies. Right?

  Too bad for them, really. There were six of them left on the north wall, and even as Dodger was igniting the wall with a road flare, Mason was climbing an unwatched section of it, making his way toward the nearest guard. The wall went up with a fair gout of flame, and our faux zombies looked away as they pulled water guns, water balloons, and flasks from the places on their bodies where they'd been hidden. Water and magnesium makes a hell of a light show. It can blind you if you're looking right at it. Mason didn't need the stealth skills he'd picked up over years of service--those men literally couldn't see him coming.

  While Dodger and his men were taking the north wall, the other teams came out from hiding to storm it. The north wall was easy to scale and get over with no one left to defend it. Well, we thought there weren't any left, but apparently a few of the soldiers were keen enough to avoid the mob of people looking to pummel them and head that way. A group of about ten of them showed up while me and my crew were slapping thermite blocks onto all the artillery and heavy weapons located in the north section of the compound. We'd made the thermite packs to be simple to ignite--just push a button and run. It was awesome to see the stuff melt into the metal of those guns, though we were careful not to hit the ammo. Dangerous...

  It wasn't really a firefight when those soldiers showed up. They were armed, sure, but there were a lot more of us. Someone threw a lit thermite block at them, and that broke up their group. Mason himself picked off three of them with his pistol, and we swarmed on the last seven. Frankly, their fear and confusion kept them from spraying into us wildly, though five of our number were killed as we took them.

  Around the compound, counting the five who sacrificed themselves, we lost a total of twenty-four people. Seven of them were people I didn't have the pleasure of knowing, having come from NJ or with Dodger and Jamie. Five who killed themselves to cause the panic. Five in my group. Seven more from the group of people who fought like nine kinds of hell to subdue the main body of the Richmond soldiers. I'm actually surprised that the numbers were so low, but I'm told that most of the weapons discovered with the captured soldiers didn't have any bullets in them. Why risk the populace taking them by force and using them, eh?

  All told, thirty five soldiers died in the conflict, leaving forty-two of them alive. One of those was Will Price, who betrayed our trust and gave the compound to the enemy. Will is in a holding cell waiting on the pleasure of our justice. The rest of the soldiers have already been dealt with.

  In the spirit of renewed honesty, I have to tell you the truth here. I've wondered what we would do when and if we finally took our home back. What would be our course of action in dealing with the soldiers? The answer came in our democratic way, and it was overwhelming: death. Every one of those men have been killed. We offered them no chance to speak for themselves, no chance at life through exile. The simple fact is that they came here and took our home. There might have been room for leniency of one kind or another if they hadn't greedily hoarded the food, tearing through six months worth of edibles in less than three. They oppressed the people here, threatened them and debased them, and made them starve. Man, woman, and child, they kept them on the edge of death. We didn't even waste bullets on them. Knives work just as well. It took as many as six men to hold down a few of them, but each one got the same treatment--throat cut, head crushed right after. Brutal, awful, and necessary.

  I said it before, and for anyone out there who thinks of us as a target rather than as a potential ally: DO. NOT. FUCK. WITH. US.

  Will Price is going to be a bit more of a spectacle. The people here who had to suffer through months of watching him
walk freely along the roads of the home he had betrayed deserve to see his trial and punishment for themselves. Not today, though, because we have a lot of work to do. I do want to say one thing, something that unsettles me a little: My house, the home that Jess and I fled a few months ago, is untouched. It has been lived in, by Will himself from what I'm told, and it's been taken care of. I'm there now. Nothing taken other than food, nothing disturbed. Will's sleeping bag is in my living room with a small case for his toiletries. I don't know why he would live here or why he seemed to care what happened to my house, but there it is. Strange, but I'm thankful nonetheless. A small favor when placed before his betrayal, but I accept it anyway. My animals are certainly happy to see it, especially the cats.

  It's strange to be back here, but fighting for my home, going through the process of planning these events, has taught me something very valuable. When I was younger, I believed that most problems could be solved rationally and without violence. I thought that war was a last resort that should only be used when the stakes were too high for any other option. I was wrong. Even though the government is gone, I still identify myself as an American. Not because of where I was born geographically, but for the ideals for which the country was founded on. Never before have I understood that sense of community with my countrymen as I do now. The compound is its own community, and I feel as strongly about it as I do my identity as an American. We fought to take our home back, we did it in such a way that casualties were at a minimum, and we won.

  We killed the enemy because we had to. The risk of keeping the soldiers around for labor or sending them out to exile was just way too high. We did what was required to keep the people of this community safe along with any others they might have encountered in the future. It makes me feel sick inside when I relive the images of their deaths. But it also fills me with pride. We made the hard choice. It was also the right one.

  When there is time, we will mourn our fallen properly. Right now I'm too energized from victory and the chaos we're still trying to get under control to really touch on how deeply the last twenty four hours has affected us. There are a lot of fires both literal and figurative to put out, and many, many wounded to treat. That's part of the consequences that I just can't bring myself to get into: all the collateral damage. People being the largest part of that. It's almost too much for my brain to handle.

  Most important, the people here are free again. We refugees are home, and though there are a host of problems that need solutions, for now at least we can find some happiness in that.

  Once again, from my desk at last--I will be back tomorrow.

  at 10:52 AM

  Friday, February 25, 2011

  No Good Deed

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I haven't had much sleep in the last two days. I caught about a three hour nap tonight, but for the most part I've been restless. Most of yesterday was spent cleaning up and treating the injured--and there were a lot of them. Many people suffered minor burns trying to put out the fires, with a few more severe cases that need some careful TLC. Along with that, the soldiers fought like hell when the citizens took them down. There are some broken bones and a lot of black eyes, scrapes, and cuts.

  Gabby, Evans, and Phil worked along with their team through most of the day trying to treat all the injuries. Under normal circumstances, we'd be able to treat a dozen or so people with little fear for complication. As it is, there are more than fifty injured, and supplies are going to be thin by the time those treatments are done. There are reserves we can tap into down the road, but unless we find another big cache of medical supplies, the next year is going to be rough for anyone that gets injured.

  The single largest problem we're facing is the north wall. Our assault teams thought to bring as many extinguishers rated to put out metal fires as we could find, but by the time we got the blaze under control, the damage was done. There's a huge open section in the wall, and it's not going to be long before the zombies realize that they can come back this way now that the ammonia has cleared out. Teams have been working through the night to shore up the gap, packing it with cars and raw boards while others work on cutting new posts to rebuild. With the number of bodies we have working on it, the work will go quick. We've gotten extremely good at building walls efficiently.

  Though a big portion of our population is injured, and a smaller fraction dead, the surviving citizens of the compound, injured or not, seem happy. I can't imagine the frustration they dealt with, having to wait while they were gradually starved while those of us on the outside organized the attack. It's gratifying to see smiles on their faces...though some of them smiled while they were executing the Richmond soldiers.

  I feel a little callous saying this, but the thing that has bothered me the most since our victory yesterday is Will Price. Don't get me wrong, I feel awful that we had to lose any people, much less two dozen of them. I helped treat the wounded myself, and I winced in sympathy with their wounds, though they were earned honorably in defense of our home. It's just that I expected those things, and the last year has prepared me mentally to deal with them. What I didn't expect was to come home and learn that Will has been something of a positive force since his betrayal.

  I wanted to hate him, expected to come home and have a mob to deal with that would try to kill him at the first chance. I almost hoped for that, because it would have made it easy for me to accede to their demands and just let them have him. To be sure, if that had happened, I would have had doubts for the rest of my days about him. I would have let my thoughts wander, in odd moments, what the real story with Will Price had been. There would have been a guilty spot nestled firmly in my mind from then on out. But make no mistake--I would have let them do it in a heartbeat. They've earned their choice in justice.

  Several facts have come to my attention that begin to explain why that mob was nowhere to be found. When Will realized what was happening, he went down to the small theater my brother made, and sat there under the overhang in the dark. He just waited while the battles were fought, hidden in the small darkened corner. When all was said and done, he walked out and handed himself over.

  I mentioned yesterday that he stayed in my house, kept it safe. He did some things while I was gone that deserve to be looked into. Sharing his food with the hungry. Stopping some of the more deprived soldiers from having their way with women. Checking on people he was worried might be ill or injured if he hadn't seen them in a while.

  I want to hate him, I really do. He betrayed us to the soldiers, gave our home to the enemy. That's fact. Doing good deeds in the time his brother soldiers were here doesn't erase that crime. It does, for me at least, merit some investigation before we have his trial. I would have stood by as the people ripped him to shreds--but they didn't. His continued survival means that he will have a trial, and we'll do it right. All the facts will be taken into consideration.

  And what comes will come, as surely as the tides.

  at 6:18 AM

  Saturday, February 26, 2011

  Logistics

  Posted by Josh Guess

  There are a few trusted people looking into the facts about Will's actions over the last few months. I wanted to be a part of it, but old routines and responsibilities have resurfaced. As much as I'd like to learn the truth first hand, there are others who can do it. My skills are needed elsewhere.

  We had a lot of food stocked up here, enough canned goods and preserved foods to see us through the winter and spring. Not all of it is gone, but the majority is. If we were relying solely on the stores, we'd go hungry before any kind of harvest would be possible. Of course, that's ignoring flour and grain, rice and pastas. We've made a lot of pasta. It keeps forever and is easy to make. The soldiers ignored the huge reserves of it, choosing instead to eat what was easy. It's good they did, because with what we have left along with hunting for game and slaughtering some of the animals out on the farms, we'll manage. Not to mention that while we were gone, some of the more clever f
armers went out when they could and hunted for chickens. They've got a good number of them out there.

  We've got decent amounts of whole wheat, whole dent and table corn, and groats (the stuff that get smooshed into oats). That's awesome, because those things all last for...ever, really. We can make them into other foods, and though our flour will run out long before it can go bad, it's good to know we've got options.

  It's going to be tight, though. We should be okay until we can get some returns on the planting we're just starting. It helps that a lot of people have already started some food plants in their homes. I'm hoping that we can get enough yield of staple crops this year to ensure that we don't have to worry about coming up short next year.

  So, that's my morning. I'm trying to catch up with months of being away, gathering reports about how much of what things we have. I'm going to be heading out in a little bit to see the adjacent farms, find out what we can expect from them in on average. I hate to put the burden on the farmers, but they're the best at what we need--making food. It helps that most of them seem OK with this arrangement, but it feels a little weird expecting them to work so hard to feed others.