Living With the Dead: The Bitter Seasons

by Joshua Guess

  at 9:01 AM

  Sunday, September 26, 2010

  Big Pictures

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Today is a very important day, for several reasons.

  The harvest has started. The major one, anyway. We are gathering all of the food we can, preserving much of it for the coming winter. We have had to slow down work on the annex walls to accomplish this. The good news there is that the work on the annexes is coming along quickly, and the two adjoining neighborhoods should be safe enough to move into in a few weeks. The heat wave that we have been under seems to have finally broken this morning, and it's pretty damn cold out. That was what brought on the harvesting operations...

  In an unrelated note, my brother Dave and I are planning some stuff for the spring. We have so many projects that we want to get done, like our power stations, but with limited people to make them work, we have to pick and choose. It is our hope that we will find more survivors to bring here, and if we can, then we plan on annexing further and further from the compound, building on to it until it lies at the center of a much larger safe zone for what we hope will be thousands of residents. Planning for it, just in case...

  The sudden cold seems to have driven the zombies into hiding. The few that the patrols have seen while ferrying supplies back and forth have seemed slower than normal, almost tired. Maybe they are running out of energy and finally starving. That would be great. But even if it's just the cold slowing them down, at least that might give us a good long respite from fighting and killing them. One can hope.

  Probably the biggest news today is from Jack's compound up north. A small group of Smarties attacked in the night, probing the defenses. They were cut down, of course, but this means that their timetable for dealing with the threat has moved up immensely. We had a long meeting in council about it yesterday and again after getting the news last night, and some decisions were made.

  We will be sending a group to Michigan to aid Jack and his people in setting up defenses and running kill patrols against the smarties. They are already out hunting, trying to keep the numbers of converted zombies to a minimum. If they can prevent the spread of the strain of the zombie plague that enables them to become more intelligent for long enough to improve their defenses, they should be alright. We're sending forty people who have all had direct contact with smarties and know what they can do, led by Courtney, Steve, and Will Price.

  There were some people who thought that we shouldn't send Will, those folks who think that he isn't fully trustworthy. Treesong and some others made the point that he is tactically and strategically knowledgeable, more so than any of the rest of us. Tree pointed out that he's proven his loyalty to the satisfaction of most of us, gave the obvious examples. The good news is that the number of people that are still eying him with undue suspicion are dwindling. The bad news is that Courtney is still one of them. Not in a spiteful way or anything, just that her inquiring and critical nature makes her harder to convince in the short term than most people. It's one of the qualities I love most about her, and I think this experience will do a lot to either help her trust Will, or find some evidence that he isn't trustworthy. I'm just glad he's able to move about on his own now. His leg and arm still hurt him quite a lot, but he can at least use them now.

  They are leaving tomorrow. Not a lot of time to prepare, but there you have it. We are prepping several vehicles to move out, this time some hybrid cars we have managed to gather over the last few weeks. It's taken a while to get enough of them together, but it will help us save what we can of our limited supply of gas, which is becoming increasingly hard to find. We might have to start sending groups out looking for tankers and siphoning out whole parking lots of cars....

  Sort of rambling now, sorry. So much going on, so much to do. If we can go the day without being pelted by hungry zombies, we will have had time to make some headway on our efforts. With that in mind, I should go. Every hand helps.

  at 9:53 AM

  Monday, September 27, 2010

  Making the Best of it.

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Our taskforce left out a few minutes ago for Jack's compound in Michigan. It is our hope that with Will, Courtney, Steve and the others to help set up some more defenses and assist with running kill teams, we can help limit the possible casualties there. We also sent a lot of extra weapons with them, because Jack's folks don't have a lot of firearms. We're all in the south here, so guns are pretty easy to come by.

  But the bulk of today's post is about the group of people we sent out to the distant factory in search of turbines. Patrick is leading that group, and with today's departure of Courtney and Steve, my list of close friends that are still in the compound has been greatly reduced.

  Sorry, I think I am being whiny and self-absorbed.

  Pat and the folks with him contacted us again last night, letting us know that they are ok. He reports that everyone is well, but that the vast zombie swarm that surrounded the area that the factory is located in has returned. Where they are (which I won't be sharing, by the way) is bit warmer than it is here so there are many more active zombies, and the wind must have carried the scent of live prey to wherever it was they went.

  So Pat and the others are stuck at the factory. It turns out that the reason the damn things were crowded around it in the first place is because there were, at one point, quite a few people living there. Pat says that there is a lot of canned food and some camping gear, but no sign of anyone having been there for at least a few weeks. He goes on to explain that a large area of the fencing there was knocked down at some point and raised back up, and the area around it virtually soaked with blood.

  Patrick theorizes that a large number of the survivors there died in the effort to clear that area and get the fence back up, enough of them that the remainder must have decided that there weren't enough of them left to defend it properly. Leaving behind the canned food makes sense, if they had other, lighter foods to carry with them. You would be amazed at how often we find canned food abandoned places because people couldn't carry it anymore.

  So for the near future our folks are gonna be camping out, spending their days loading trucks with gear we need while others keep an eye out for danger. It will take a while, because they can only work for short periods when there aren't any zombies to see them. Pat is worried that the sight of humans will drive the hoard into a frenzy and make that fence come down all over again.

  But the good part of being stuck there is that they can load up a LOT of trucks with turbines, get them ready to be picked up on each trip there and back. There are some pretty large capacity units there, we're all pretty excited.

  Damn, it's cold. I need to go have a talk with some people about providing warmth indoors without killing anyone with carbon dioxide poisoning when it gets bad enough out that our houses start getting cold on the inside...

  at 10:06 AM

  Tuesday, September 28, 2010

  The Saviors Watching Over

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Even if you don't count the zombies that incessantly wander and swarm across the world, by any reasonable measure, I have killed a lot of people. We all have.

  I chalk this up to the fact that real tragedy and a lack of legal repercussions tends to strip away the thin veneer of humanity that coats some people. When you get attacked, you go Ender on them, and make sure they aren't a threat anymore. (For those of you who have never had the good luck to have read "Ender's Game", you have my sympathy.)

  I've felt a lot of ways about ending a life. Bad, mostly, that I have had to put an end to the potential each of them brought to the world. Happy at times, that an innocent person had been spared and a violent, hateful one ended. Recently, a mild discomfort.

  Welcome to my morning.

  We have spent a lot of time searching and exploring Frankfort and the surrounding areas. By no means have we managed a true house-to-house, but until today we were certain there were no Marauders left anywhere close, a
nd certainly no large groups of people.

  As I joined a group of half a dozen in a search for fuel, we had little concern for living people. We see so few anymore that aren't a part of the compound that it almost seems there aren't any. We were in a pretty relaxed mood (as relaxed as you can get nowadays when not in the safe confines of the compound or covered in body armor) when we got to a gas station in Shelbyville. We've stayed away from the town for the most part, not going too deep into it because of the constant swarm of zombies concentrated there. We know there are some people that have managed to survive, we've heard gunshots and seen people running across the roofs on rickety, homemade bridges. But we also know that there can't be many of them, and they certainly never seem to make it out of the town itself.

  When we found the gas station about three hundred yards into the town, we were completely shocked to see two gas tankers parked behind it. We cased the area as best we could, not finding any traps or obvious lookouts. So we moved in, hoping that the tanks were full...

  Not thirty seconds later, we hear footsteps rushing in toward us. The few glimpses we've caught of some of the Shelbyville survivors have been of people in ragged clothes, thin and underfed, and dwindling in numbers over the last few trips. The people that popped up out of nowhere were all clad in matching riot gear, visors down to cover faces. None of them looked like they had missed too many meals.

  Every one of them had on kevlar. I don't know where they got their gear, or where they came from, but all of us had a shared thought: we're fucked. Half of us had rifles easily capable of piercing body armor, but not one of us had more than a handgun ready to fire.

  My guess is that whoever these fucks are, they have been following the blog, and almost certainly watching us, and set a trap for us knowing we've been looking for deposits of fuel.

  Our group of people all raised our hands, slowly, as a dozen assault rifles and shotguns leveled at our chests. One of them moved toward us, and you could just see from the set of his shoulders that he was bracing himself for recoil. The way his feet planted, you knew he was ready for instant motion, pivoting to fire at a second target as soon as the first was down.

  Imagine my surprise when a dozen hard plastic helmets exploded like so many death stars, shards of black plastic and clear visor mixed with globs of brain and stark white chips of bone, all together in sprays of blood that washed over all of us from the compound.

  I don't know what made me do it, since we had clearly just had our lives by some people with rifles that we couldn't see, but the next thing I did was dive for our SUV to grab my shotgun.

  Glad I did. Just as I turned back to my companions, two more of those armored bastards came from around the building, weapons down. I guess they though we'd all been dropped. Both of them sort of froze when they saw the reality of the situation, but I didn't. The one on the right got two barrels of .00 buckshot to his visor. When the others with me saw me raise my weapon, all of them turned and saw the attackers, and fired just after me. The second guy got hit by dozens of rounds at once, and I think that vest stopped every one that hit his chest. But then, he didn't have much left in the way of arms, legs, or head, so I wouldn't call that a win for him.

  When our blood had cooled a little bit, we tried to look about for our saviors. It took a while, but finally one silhouette grew from the top of a building across the road. Walking to the edge of the roof he was on, we saw him wave at us. We shouted that he and his people could join us, but he shook his head and gestured around him with his arms wide. We pointed to the tankers (one full, the other half.), and he motioned for us to take them. Maybe they had all they could use. Maybe they were just being neighborly. I don't know.

  I wish I could tell you that we talked, and that those few (?) tenacious survivors in Shelbyville explained to us that they loved their home and had no plans to leave. That it was THEIR land, and those that came with hate would be treated like monsters. We didn't. We saw many others appear as the man walked away, at least twenty of them, all with long guns. Every one of them appeared to be Hispanic, which is interesting and sort of heartwarming to me all at once.

  They left without ever speaking a word, so I have my own theories to go on and little else. But I think that those people really did choose to make a stand of it there. That given how far many of them had come simply to live and work in this country, the trials and discrimination they had endured, they were unwilling to give up the place they had chosen to call home. They must have watched the armored men set up the alluring trap that caught us all, and stuck around or sent patrols to see what happened. Again, I don't know the facts or their motivation, but I can hope, and today I choose to make my theory positive.

  Funny that around here, so many people used to comment about how Shelbyville was going to the dogs because of all the Hispanic people coming there. I always wanted to smack the shit out of people who talked like that, but when you live in the south, you aren't surprised by stupid racism, or racist stupidity.

  It's just particularly funny to me that when all the other people either ran away or got killed, they were the ones to stay and be true to the place they call home. God bless them.

  at 2:39 PM

  Wednesday, September 29, 2010

  A Call to Arms

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I try to keep this blog personal, as close to a chronicle of our struggle--the victories as well as the failures--as I can make it. But today, I am going to ask every one of you out there for something, and I hope you will help.

  Yesterday's events have made a big impact on me. To know that there are probably a lot more people out there than we have any way to count is both uplifting and frightening. Patrick and the group of volunteers are still weathering the storm of zombies at the factory they are staying in, loading component after component into trucks that we might use them here to generate electricity. Are there people near him?

  Courtney, Steve, Will and dozens of others are now in Jack's compound in Michigan, leading kill teams to hunt down and eliminate the spreading plague of smart zombies, trying to slow the conversion rates and give Jack and his folks time to build more and better fortifications. Who knows if there are watchers camping out in safety, keeping an eye to help or hurt?

  There is the walled neighborhood in Carterville, Illinois that took shots at Steve and I a few months back, with which we have been totally unable to communicate. Who knows if there are survivors out there that know a way to contact them that we have been unable to discover.

  When I mentioned Patrick Rothfuss on my blog in a moment of reflection, I had no idea that it would bring a flood of people here for the first time, nor reveal that Mr. Rothfuss is indeed alive and safe.

  All too often lately, I have ignored the obvious. I have made it a point not to ask anyone that reads this to put out the word, because I know how dangerous it would be for some of them to go out and try to get in touch with people, or that those who can access computers may not know how to reach others that are still alive.

  But today, faced with friends far from home and in dangers we can't even imagine, that changes. If we are going to survive as a species, we need to unite and become aware of each other as far and wide as possible.

  I ask you to help me. To help us, all of us, everywhere. To give aid to each and every survivor that still lives.

  I want to make October the month that we contact more survivors than ever. So I beg you, share this blog with others. Post links on any website you can find that is still functional. Tell people, show people. Beg them to share it, to spread the word. It is my hope that on this blog we can begin to open the lines of communication between all survivors, to build a future of real hope based on the desire for mutual survival and improvement for all. But it's up to every one of you to help.

  I have done what I can, from here. The only way to reach as many people as possible is for every reader to help with the cause. Let's make the next month one for history: the month when mankind shook off the
oppression of the zombie plague to bring its brother and sister survivors together as one large community.

  With your help, we can do it.

  at 12:09 PM

  Thursday, September 30, 2010

  Cold Fronts

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I am very serious about spreading the word between as many survivors as possible about this blog, about the fact that there are others out there. I want to build a network of communication and cooperation from here, and October is the month to do it for very good reason.

  Around here, the weather is somewhat predictable. October will be relatively mild until the last week or so, and by halloween it will be in the forties for a high, just getting worse from there. It is my hope that by spreading the word and finding each other, we can build supply lines to help those survivors that may not be able to make it through the winter on what they have. We here at the compound can take in quite a few people ourselves. Just keep it in mind when it starts to get cold where live.

  As for heating, Roger has been working on solutions that won't kill all of us with waste gases from burning wood, corn husks and the like. He's settled on an easy and basic design. It won't heat an entire house to perfect comfort, but it will keep most homes from getting deadly cold at night. It involves cutting holes in the walls to vent the gases through duct we will have to install. That's fine since most of us are spending some of our free time bolstering the insulation in our homes. We don't really need windows, so they are getting blocked off.