With Spring Comes the Fall

by Joshua Guess

  We had no cell service at all, and we decided after we got the jeep up and moving that we would camp somewhere that did. All of us are tense from being away from the compound, and not having a line of communication only makes that worse. Of course, about all we had time for once we did find a spot to hunker down was to call and check in, make sure that everything was going alright, but it did make all of us feel a little better.

  We have two more places on our list to check. I thought this trip would be going faster, but experience has shown me that my expectations and reality almost never coincide. So I am guessing it will be Wednesday at the earliest before we can get home, giving us a full day at each of our last two targets. We are missing several critical items on our shopping list, and my fear is that the next one will be as empty as the last.

  There aren't a lot of zombies around here, and that worries me. If there is a large group somewhere near that is keeping their numbers down and using the local healthcare places for supplies, then we might have a problem.

  Jess told me last night that Lt. Price is doing well and apparently trying not to rock the boat, being a good boy and doing as his doctor tells him. He isn't asking too many awkward questions, but seems to be interested in getting to know the folks around the compound. She says that he likes to sit out on the porch of the clinic and talk to folks when they walk by. Maybe he's just lonely and wants to make some friends. Jess has been going by the clinic a lot to keep an eye on him for me. It actually works out well, since he finds her attractive and lowers his guard around her.

  Hey, her idea, not mine!

  I'm just glad he has no way to read this. If he proves to be trustworthy, I will apologize to him as much as needed. Though, if he turns out to be one of us, a real survivor and worthy of living at the compound permanently, he won't need or want an apology. He will understand why we are so cautious and have no hard feelings.

  Up and out, time to go. Hopefully we will have some type of signal later, and you will hear from me if we do. Everyone at home--we miss you.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 7:55 AM

  Tuesday, August 24, 2010

  Critical Strikes

  I killed a man this morning. Not a zombie, trying to devour me from base instinct, but a living, breathing human being. And right now, all of us are split up and hiding.

  I am in a room at the hospital we were searching, under a pile of bodies. To be extra careful, I won't be posting this until we are safe.

  So let me explain.

  Yesterday's search went well. We loaded up with hundreds of pounds of supplies, the medical pavilion we were at was pristine. There was a bit of everything; syringes and medicines, surgical supplies and isolation gear. Imagine the most obscure tool needed, the most uncommon supply, and one or another of the buildings we ransacked had it. We even took apart one of those chairs women deliver babies in and took that with us. It was a portable model anyway.

  So, I guess that made us cocky. Overconfident.

  Fast forward to this morning. We were searching our last scouted location, a large hospital in eastern Kentucky. Looking here was more of a bonus than anything; we had gotten almost everything on our shopping list at the pavilion, and could have gone home. But Gabrielle decided that sticking to the original plan was a good idea, if for no other reason than to move any useful supplies we couldn't take with us to a secure location and hide them. All of us agreed.

  But during our search, we came across a group of people apparently doing the same thing we were. I was lagging behind the others a bit and heard Gabby yell through an open door. I sidled up and took a very careful look through, only to see a man with a gun pointed at her. There were others in the room that must have been with him, three or four of them, but none of them had weapons drawn.

  Gabby was trying to talk to him, trying her damnedest to compromise, but she was getting nowhere. And I could see his trigger finger getting twitchy, the sweat beading on his forehead as he tried to muster up the courage to do something, anything.

  So I drew my pistol and stepped forward, and fired three times. It should scare me how easily my feet fell into perfect position, how ingrained it was in me to give that steady and consistent pull twice in his center mass before evenly raising the barrel and letting the third round find the smaller target of his face.

  Everyone else in our group did exactly as our pre-established plans required them to do. They ran like hell.

  The other people in the room reacted slowly, only one of them able to shake off the sudden and violent death of their teammate quickly enough to fire at us. He hit Darlene, though I can't be sure how badly she is hurt. All I managed to see was her stumble after the shot rang out, looking back at her over my shoulder, and I saw her stumble. I know she didn't get caught then, but as of right now I am not sure where anyone is. I hope our vehicles are well hidden enough to keep our attackers from finding them. We're screwed if that happens.

  *Update*

  Ok, the folks that attacked us are gone. I guess we just waited them out. We are back on the road, heading toward home. Darlene is hurt badly, she took the shot in one of her kidneys, and we have no idea how bad the damage is. Gabby is tending to her as we hustle back toward the compound, and I am hoping that we can make it home quickly. We need Evans and the clinic. It's the interstate for us if we can manage it, we can't afford the time that the back roads will take.

  I hope she makes it.

  I know I had no choice, but I feel bad about killing that guy, and not just because the consequences of my actions led to Darlene being hurt. He and his folks may not have been bad people, just scared and looking for stuff to keep themselves healthy, just like us. I hate that it had to be that way, and it is really bothering me.

  I feel bad about killing someone.

  I guess that's a good sign.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 9:57 AM

  Wednesday, August 25, 2010

  Pulling Through

  Darlene is in dire straits, and our medical personnel are overworked at the moment. Evans, assisted by Gabby, started work on Darlene as soon as we got in yesterday. Pretty much all of the regular folks at the clinic took part in helping out. Even Lieutenant Price helped, wheeling around the place gathering supplies and acting as a gopher.

  She's stable, but needs to be watched pretty much around the clock. That wasn't really a problem last night, but this morning we have had two moderately sized zombie attacks. The first one caught us off guard, taking a group of people coming back from the farms by surprise. Half a dozen of them were injured, and two of those bitten.

  From what we know about zombie bites, it's about even odds that those two will die. The bites are an inefficient way to transmit the vile colonies of bacteria in the mouths of the dead. We know that everybody is already infected by the zombie plague, and we know that the bites aren't always fatal...but even with meds, it doesn't look good. The other four were slashed with nails and bruised from getting pummeled by the zombies. Not too bad, but still requiring a lot of effort from people that have been working nonstop to keep one of our own alive since yesterday.

  Jess is glad to see us, of course, and especially me. She is still pretty pissed that she can't go out of the compound or even work sentry duty, and she is angry at me for going. Such is pregnancy, though, and she's not getting a lot of pity from me for being kept safe.

  She has used her free time lately very efficiently, though. She has been keeping tabs on how much food we are producing and using, and is trying to keep accurate track of how much of what types of food we need to eat to keep healthy. There is a lot of meat around, since the population of deer around here is so high ( I think I have mentioned that before) and of course there are tons of farms that have food just sitting around waiting to be harvested. Some we trade with Jack's people up north, some we eat, and a lot of it gets preserved for when we need it.

  She has also headed the effort to plant large swaths of land for another harvest if we can manage it before first frost
. Her passion for having hobbies also extends to horticulture and agriculture, so she is doing a pretty good job. She's busy right now trying to gather as many seed potatoes and other seed crops as she can. It's impressive to watch a pregnant woman scare a bunch of grown men into doing what she tells them.

  She did spend some time with Darlene this morning, her and Lt. Price. He volunteered to stay with our injured lady when others had to be elsewhere. It's decent of him, but Evans decided that at least one other person should be there just in case. I don't think the guy would do anything to hurt Darlene for several reasons, but realistically, he could be the most trustworthy person alive and not be fully able to help her if she needed it because of his own injuries.

  Jess likes to keep an eye on him. She gets a strange vibe from him, and I think it's sort of like a loose tooth that she can't stop messing with.

  I have to cut this off here. Work to do, people to talk to about some projects we need to work on. And I have to catch up with my brother about all of it. He's been doing this job without me for a week, and I am woefully behind.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 10:59 AM

  Thursday, August 26, 2010

  On His Shoulders...

  Darlene is doing better. She's short one kidney, but Evans thinks that she will pull through. I hope so, she is an awesome person and a fearless survivor, and she means the world to Little David.

  Today's post isn't about me. It's about Patrick.

  He has decided to keep an eye on Lt. Price for us. By keep an eye on him, I mean Pat is taking him in to his house (which he shares with two other people) and having the guy live with him. My Alaskan chum is going to take Will Price around with him wherever he goes. He figures that the only way we can really get to know the guy is to watch as he interacts and gets to know us. No one can keep up their defenses every minute of every day, and if there is some kind of ill intent in him toward us, Pat will see it.

  Pat has kind of taken it upon himself to be everywhere, to check up on all the little things that the rest of us might overlook. He's a genius for small details. Let me give you an example of what I mean:

  This morning, he walked the entire perimeter of the wall, spot checking welds and fasteners, making sure that no major damage has a chance to turn into an opening. At the same time he carried around a huge jug of water, giving out drinks to the folks doing patrol. On his way back he made it a point to stop and say hello to a few of our more isolated people, folks that spend a lot of time out at the farms and those who just tend to be loners. Pat has this amazing ability to make people smile, to get them to do what is right by being a great guy. It's pretty impressive.

  It's also very time consuming, because beside all of that, he has two full time occupations. Which leaves him little to no time for romance. Considering the horrible divorce he went through and his general nerdiness, meeting and getting to know women is not easy for him. It's a shame, because he is probably the best guy I know who isn't related to me.

  I am hoping to get him to go on what passes for a date in the near future, and that plan has now been frustrated by the fact that he intends to babysit our wayward soldier.

  It's like he's so great that his own good intentions hamstring him before he starts.

  If I have to beat him over the head and make him go out with someone (at least what passes for a date in a fortress surrounded by zombies...) and by god, he WILL be happy. He's my best friend, and I am sick and tired of watching him take on so much of the stress we all deal with by himself, with no one to go home to.

  I guess the one bit of solace he can take is that his ex-wife was eaten by zombies early on. I shouldn't smile when I write that, but I just can't help it.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 10:31 AM

  Friday, August 27, 2010

  Seeds of Doubt

  Evans says that Darlene is now past the most dangerous part of her injury. He believes that with enough rest and care, she will live. She lost a kidney and has some nerve damage on her left side, but she greets everyone with a sunny grin. She's got a tenacity of spirit that I can only envy.

  While we were gone, most of the folks here did one hell of a job streamlining the defenses. There were lots of small attacks by zombies, and one moderate sized assault by some smarties. Rather than simply defend and wait to be attacked again, our brave and brilliant citizens learned from each attack. Ideas have been passed around about making some modifications to the walls over time to make them better for defending against groups. Ideas that make it much more efficient for us to cut down the undead when they swarm us.

  Lt. Price has put in his two cents on this issue. He's a true military thinker, it seems, and spent a lot of his free time before the collapse learning about military history, methods of combat and warfare through history, all of that nerdy stuff that fantasy readers lap up. He took a good hard look at some of the ideas and made reasonable and logical cases for or against most of them, and improving on a few. Of course, we still aren't treating him as a citizen just yet, so he doesn't have more than an educated guess about our capabilities and resources, but I can safely say that most of what he thinks we should do, we can do.

  As I get to know the guy a little better every day, I trust him a little more. Not that I would want to hand him the keys to the armory or anything, but he genuinely seems to be putting in an effort to help however he can. I am still thrown off by the fact that he hasn't said word one about going back to his unit in Richmond, and that bugs the shit out of me. I mean, I could get behind the idea that he might hate those guys and the truly shitty conditions they must live in, but that doesn't seem to be the case. He speaks about them rarely but with real warmth and respect when he does. He tells us funny stories about the troops that he lived with there. He sounds like a guy who was doing very well, was as happy as he could be in these circumstances.

  And clearly, he's just not the deserter type. He loves the uniform, the idea of being a soldier. He isn't the type not to check in with his superiors if there were any chance he could, yet he hasn't said anything about going there since that first day after he woke up here. He's showed no further interest in leaving the compound, and that doesn't jibe with the sort of person he appears to be. Honorable, duty-bound.

  It might just be that he is very aware of his situation. No chance that we will be changing our minds anytime soon and taking him on a trip to Richmond, and unable to make a go of it on his own because of his injuries. Maybe he is just embracing his current circumstances and enjoying how things are for him at this time. He might choose to bring it up with us again down the road, when he feels we have more mutual trust. He might decide, once his bones have mended, to leave on his own two feet and try to get home. I guess only time will tell the truth of it.

  Still, it nags at me. I like the guy, and am starting to respect him. But there are still little things about him that throw me off.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 11:30 AM

  Saturday, August 28, 2010

  Lost For Words

  Today I was struck by a thought, and it made me realize the importance of stories. In this world where society has crumbled and the dead walk, sometimes they are all we have.

  I was looking through my large collection of books, trying to find something to read, when I came across a book I had completely forgotten about. It is 'The Gathering Storm' by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. The importance of this novel is probably lost on those of you who aren't fans of epic fantasy, but I will explain.

  This book was to be the last in the Wheel of Time series. The original author (Jordan) passed away in 2007 before he could finish the massive conclusion. Many of us as fans were heartbroken and worried that the story, so long a part of our nightly escapes into another world, would remain unfinished. But our fears were allayed--Jordan wanted more than almost anything to have his opus completed, because he knew what it meant to all of us, and of course, what it meant to him. Brandon Sanderson was chosen to complete the final book, which would eventually
be split into three. Guided by a partially written text and thousands of pages of notes, Mr. Sanderson eventually put out the volume that would be the first in a series of three final novels.

  I read it. I loved it.

  And slightly more than half a year later, zombies destroyed society.

  I hadn't thought about the Wheel of Time since the world started wearing apart at the seams, but as I stared at what would end up being the final book in the unfinished series, a sadness gripped me so deeply that I had trouble even looking away from the cover.