With Spring Comes the Fall

by Joshua Guess

  I want to believe him, really. He seems like an earnest guy that is in over his head, hopeful because he is alive and still amped up from the fact that he survived the fall of society and of his helicopter. But he's also scared as hell, and extremely cautious when he remembers to be. I can't blame him. Here he was, probably six or seven years into his military career, veteran of two foreign wars by his mid twenties. His expectation when he woke up and saw us was probably that most people around here would be just like the civilians he used to know before society crumbled. People who he would automatically be superior to in situations like the one we live in now. People with awe for a uniform hardwired into us. Blind followers. Sheep People.

  Or, as my wife likes to call them, Sheeple.

  Sorry, that one still makes me giggle every time I hear it, and I had to share.

  But Lt. Price is learning what we are. Farmers and builders, teachers and nurses, all of that for sure and we are proud to keep those skills alive and growing. But we are also the hard iron that had all of the chaff burned away in the crucible of Ragnarok. We are remnants of a society renowned among its own denizens for its brutality and cold calculation. We are killers when we are threatened, and most of us are willing to err on the side of caution. In our case, that means we'd kill the good lieutenant in a moment if we seriously thought it would make us safer.

  We'd feel bad about it, absolutely. Some among us with better souls, like Treesong and some of his students and friends, would openly protest such an action. (Don't let me give you the wrong idea, I deeply respect Tree and his friends, and any of them would and have defended this place multiple times. They just think that killing living people is an act only reserved for immediate defense of life, like someone holding a gun to your head.) But we would do it.

  To be even more crystal, I would do it. My pregnant wife? She would pull the trigger without hesitation.

  I say this not to intimidate or to give the wrong impression. Not too many out there who could be reading this would have trouble understanding what I am saying. All of you out there have almost certainly had to do similar things.

  My point is that if the good lieutenant is acting as a point man or a scout for a group that has malicious intent, they and he need to be very clear just what the stakes are.

  In other words, it would be a terrible idea to fuck with us. We are scarred and battle tested, well practiced at staying alive against stupidly unbalanced odds. We want that to be clear.

  We will listen to any peaceful proposal with open hearts and minds. If Will Price is what he says he is, and his trip here was just luck on his part, then all will be well. If not...well, we will cross that bridge when or if it comes.

  But if it is his intent to gain our trust, he will fail. Unless, that is, he begins to be honest with us to a much greater degree than he has been thus far. Maybe I will tell him in great detail about one of mine and Patrick's first escapades, when we burned a bunch of sleeping men to death for brutalizing and raping women.

  You know, just to give him a better idea who we are.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 11:50 AM

  Wednesday, August 18, 2010

  Balancing Priorities

  Lieutenant Price is still convalescing, and he will be for quite a while. He hasn't expressed any desire to leave, no urge to go back to his people. The soldiers at Richmond have no way to communicate with the rest of the world, no permanent electricity or landlines. I can see that, as we ourselves would be cut off without the foresight of the county government. They required that all cell towers raised in our county have sufficient solar collection and storage capacity to manage emergency communications.

  What that boils down to is that we have WAY more capacity than we currently need. Guess we're lucky that this is the capital and an example had to be set.

  So even if he wanted to talk to his base, he can't. Too bad this isn't a terrible Kevin Costner movie where the post office has one lone survivor determined to carry the mail. That would at least give some folks an avenue.

  And we certainly have zero desire to walk into Richmond without talking to the people that live there first. No surprises, no ambushes, no risk. If they want to come here and look for their men and chopper, they will be welcomed.

  And of course, we are still planning on going out to find medical supplies. We've narrowed the field of prospective places to raid down to several locations in a rough corridor that we hope to hit in a period of a few days. Sorry, not going to share any details on where, but we are planning to go out the day after tomorrow. It will be a small team, six of us. Three in each vehicle, two very well modified Cherokees. If the modifications hold up, we will be able to go offroad very easily, no need to move cars.

  Extra gas tanks added on to them, full length skid plates on the bottom, and my brother has added small trailers to them, welded to the hitch so we can't lose them if and when we offroad. He also added some bins to the tops of them to bring extra supplies in. We are going to pack anything and everything we can. I just hope we will have enough room. I would like to take something bigger, with more storage room, but we have to be able to move quickly.

  If it comes down to it, we might grab some other vehicles from one of our destinations. Or at least hide extra supplies in case we want to come back and get them later. It's exciting and scary to think that I will be going away from home again, but I am looking forward to it.

  So you probably see why the Lieutenant himself doesn't really worry me right now. Bigger concerns, bigger fish to fry.

  Have to finish up some inventories and a few project analyses before I stop for the day. Don't want to leave anything for my poor brother to do while I am gone.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 12:56 PM

  Thursday, August 19, 2010

  Sights to See

  Lieutenant Price has been getting a tour of the compound this morning via wheelchair. He woke up early and told Gabby that he needed to get out and about, that he was feeling suffocated. None of us could see a reason why not. After all, we aren't letting him check out the armory or anything of strategic importance, and it isn't as though a stranger with an armed escort will be conducive to citizens spilling secrets.

  I was walking with him as he rolled around for a few minutes. I am getting a better read on him as time goes by, catching more of the subtle tells that make a picture in my mind of who he really is. I saw the smile and approving nod when he saw our main watchtower and the others we have started. He tensed up some when he heard the shriek of some kids playing, and melted when he realized what the sound was. His eyes glistened as he watched them kick a soccer ball around. I think that struck a chord in him that nothing else could have. These are probably the first children he has seen since the world fell apart.

  I couldn't stick around, though. Too much to do before we head out tomorrow, and though we have had plenty of time to prepare, the team is double and triple checking everything. Every time a bunch of us go out into the world and come back alive, the odds against us surviving another trip outside rise. Consequently, all of us are being super cautious about our preparations. David has been testing the modifications he has made to the vehicles, making sure they will hold up.

  Oh, that's another change. Instead of two groups of three in two vehicles, we are going in three groups of two. The two SUV's will sort of be the escort vehicles, and the third vehicle will be a very nice F-250 someone found a few weeks ago. It was already about as modified as it needed to be, just requiring a few alterations for our specific needs. It was decided that the extra space would be worth the risk of splitting us up further. I think so. This configuration gives us great defensive capabilities, as well as the ability to risk less if one of us needs to scout ahead.

  Jess is not thrilled with the idea of us going out without her, but she understands the necessity of it. Gabby and Roger will be in one vehicle, Patrick and I in another, and Little David will be travelling with Darlene, his (girlfriend? Wife? whatever you want to call it) who
has been learning medicine from Gabby and Evans for the last month or so. She has gotten a crash course over the last week about medical supplies and technology, and has a great idea what to look for.

  Each pair has one of us (folks who have a decent medical knowledge) with a partner. The redundancy of it is beautiful: even if two groups get killed, one will be left to look for supplies. Not that we intend on dying, far from it.

  Lots of stuff to check on, and I want to spend as much time with my wife as I can before I go.

  We'll be geared up with all the weapons we could need and more, armored protected as well as possible. We've a lot of practice at planning for insanity and unexpected situations. The chances are good that we will survive our trip and make it back whole.

  Still, though, if you are the praying type, we won't turn them down. Any positive mojo will be greatly appreciated.

  A little more work to do, and one last check of my gear. Then the rest of the day with Jess. Can't think of a better way to spend it.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 9:12 AM

  Friday, August 20, 2010

  Potentiality

  We're out and about. Again.

  Our small convoy is on its way east to look for medical supplies and equipment. I hate to leave the compound while there is so much mystery surrounding our guest, but it has to be done. We've secured our borders as best we can, and now is the time to pile up as much extra stock as possible. It's when we don't need it that we should get it, after all. Won't do to be left wanting in a crunch.

  Patrick is driving, and I am typing this into my phone as we meander through some back roads. We keep hitting dead spots, a lot of them, where there is absolutely no cell service. The boys and girls at google have done a lot in taking control of the nation's power grids, rerouting electricity to groups of survivors around the nation, but the sad fact is that fuel is running out and those supplies aren't reaching where they need to simply because the power stations are going dark.

  There are places around Kentucky like Frankfort (where we live) that have solar and wind power running some of our towers. They are infrequent but they do exist, and it is our hope that since some of the places we intend on searching are pretty big and used to service hundreds of patients every day, they will have some sort of backup power that will allow us to communicate.

  I keep thinking that there is a lot of potential for long term survival if we can manage to join forces with Lieutenant Price's soldiers in Richmond. I really hope that we have in him a link that will help us forge a real connection with those people (if they are real, and not violent psychos). It has been suggested by a few people from other communities that we have a golden opportunity in front of us.

  The idea is that we at the compound would have the soldiers come and run the place administratively, as well as provide protection, while the rest of us become farmers and builders full time under their protection. I won't lie to you, the idea holds some small appeal to me despite my own fierce individualism. To be freed from the responsibility of deciding, to work a plot of land or drive nails and worry about nothing else...given the ludicrous stress we all deal with, it is not a concept without real merit.

  Call it pride or maybe just an overly suspicious nature, but the greater part of my brain screams that such a path would be insane. What we are as a group is something unique, many who have come together with common purpose and all as generalists, learning a little bit of everything. Each and every citizen of the compound is mixture of carpenter and soldier, farmer and nurse. We can all cook and sew, reason out a combat strategy and fire a gun with reasonable accuracy. It is partly this ability and indeed desire to learn about everything that makes us work. We can absorb serious casualties and continue on with little or no specialized knowledge lost.

  At first that was accidental, simply a result of boredom as men and women (and even some kids) stood around watched as others worked, listening as people like Roger gave impromptu lessons on metallurgy and smithing. But now it's an intentional act to preserve any and all knowledge, essentially a human version of the mass backups we do of every shred of data we can scour from what is left of the internet.

  I need to cut this short, but a last thought just occurred to me: how great would it be if we could access the library of congress? Or the data centers of wikipedia? There are a billion hard drives sitting out there right now, chock full of ideas and methods for everything we could possibly need. Similarly, there are hundreds of millions of my favorite objects: books.

  *sigh*

  I know that typing out a sigh is totally 1998, but that's how I feel. So much possibility out there, if we only had the resources to take advantage of it. But after so many months of slowly chipping away, we are now at a crossroads where we need to truly conserve what we have. Fuel is going to be scarce not too long from now, among other things...

  Kind of makes you understand why having someone else take the risks and make the calls is appealing, no?

  Onward...

  Posted by Josh Guess at 11:03 AM

  Saturday, August 21, 2010

  A Matter of Intent

  We are stopped for lunch, which normally we are reluctant to do. We prefer to eat on the road, but this rest area has a cell signal and I wanted to update. Besides, we made pretty good time yesterday, only having to stop and clear areas to drive through a few times. You would think that we could get anywhere pretty quickly in our own state, but we are going through areas that have been untouched since the plague started.

  Which means that there are zombies all over the place, and we have to be careful not to bash into them very quickly. An adult human weighs a lot, and enough of them over time will do a lot of damage to even an armored vehicle over time. So it goes slowly.

  We did manage to get to our first location today. It had already been ransacked but there was still some good stuff there. Whoever hit it didn't have much knowledge, only taking obvious things like tape and gauze, needles and medicines. They left a good load of supplies for making casts, surgical equipment, and various other things. Got to love urgent treatment centers.

  Weirdly there were about a dozen cases of ensure. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a brand name for a calorie dense drink intended to help the person drinking it gain weight. They are packed with vitamins and minerals, and make for excellent survival food. They taste like shit.

  I kind of like the strawberry ones.

  I want to get as many of them as possible, as well as tube feeding supplies--they are like giant ensures, and more bang for the buck.

  Most of what we got from the urgent treatment center was hardware. Not much medicine left or soft supplies like bandages, but all in all it was a pretty successful haul.

  Jess sent me some texts at some point last night telling me that Lieutenant Price was asking where we were going, wondering what happened to Gabby and the rest of us. No one told him anything of substance, of course, and he didn't press the issue. From what I could gather from her texts, he is growing impatient with sitting around and wants to become a part of the community, work on the wall, provide some use to the compound to make up for the food and supplies he is using up at the moment.

  I wish I could be there to ask him questions. I wonder if my friends will try and discern if this is a genuine desire on his part or some act put on for his own purposes. Did anyone ask him if he wanted to simply work off his debt and go home to Richmond, or is he choosing us over them? So many things I want to ask so that I might read his expressions and mannerisms, but it will have to wait. Until I get back home, I will do my best to put Will Price out of my brain. Plenty of time to worry about him later.

  Back on the road here in a minute. Going to head toward one of our larger targets, and hoping for some nice surprises. Maybe it will be untouched. Luck has been with us so far, maybe it will bless us a bit further...

  Posted by Josh Guess at 12:33 PM

  Monday, August 23, 2010

  Dim Prospects

&nbs
p; We are getting ready to head out for the day. We had to camp out last night after a long and tiring day. The place we searched yesterday was a total bust, cleaned out from top to bottom. The only thing left was large equipment, nothing that we could take with us.

  Looking the place over top to bottom was incredibly time consuming, and then we hit a trap on the way out. Our lead vehicle, one of the cherokees, hit some cleverly hidden spike strips and had all four of its tires shredded. So pretty much the rest of yesterday afternoon was spent wandering around in search of replacements.