Living With the Dead: Year One (Books 1-2, Bonus Material)

by Guess, Joshua; Ribken, Annetta; Ayers, Rachel; Whitwam, Lori

  Before the fall, we worried about our bills. Our children's grades. Whether or not our date last night went well. We were slaves to the details and red tape of everyday life. Most of those things are gone now, replaced instead with the harsh decisions and cold judgement needed to live in this new world.

  For those of you out there who have managed to survive away from the rest of the ruins of society, you may be shocked and disgusted at some of the things we have had to do in the name of safety and security. I urge you to consider the circumstances you have faced, the trials you have overcome, and think very hard about what you would have done in our place.

  As I have said before and will say again as often as needed, our doors and homes are open to you if you come to us with peace in your heart and with and open mind.

  If your intentions are not so pure, then I suggest you stay far away. We have lost all patience with would-be conquerors.

  Now, off to pack my gear for our sojourn into downtown...

  Posted by Josh Guess at 9:34 AM

  Tuesday, July 13, 2010

  Down In the Valley

  Downtown is turning out to be better than we thought. The DOT building right across from the big office building I talked about before is an absolute treasure trove of supplies. I guess the poor bastards that tried to make a stand there were using all the floorspace as a storage area, because there are literally tons of food, and a lot of survival gear that we can use for ourselves or trade to folks up north.

  We've got some people on top of the office building keeping a bird's eye on the zombies around us. The only real problem with this area is that it is big and open, and at the bottom of the Kentucky River valley, which means that the undead follow the path of least resistance. Which is downhill from all directions to roughly where I am standing.

  Fortunately, we have a lot of practice at clearing them out.

  There is a lot of room here for people to live, and of course the river provides water (we'd have to set up some sort of treatment system, but that's pretty simple on a small scale...). But there is not a lot of soil around, which means that should we end up housing a lot of people here, we would have to find a way to safely transport them to a place where they can grow their own food. It wouldn't be practical to break up all this concrete, nor to bring in enough dirt to farm on top of it. We'll discuss options when the time comes, but as far as pure living area, it's golden.

  The hotel is our next stop. When I went by there it was swarming with zombies, and it will take all of the teams we have down here working all day (probably two or three) to completely sweep the place, and we'll have to do it room by room. But the advantages are many--the entrances are all small and easy to block, it will hold a LOT of people, already has beds and a huge kitchen that is designed to make meals for dozens if not hundreds...

  If we end up in circumstances that force us to leave the compound, or we get a big group that wants to join us all at once, this area across the twin bridges down by the river is ideal.

  Cleanup begins in five minutes. I wish Jess could be here to get excited with me about the possibilities, but no matter how angry or hurt I might be with her at the moment, her safety and that of our unborn child are so much more important.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 8:19 AM

  Wednesday, July 14, 2010

  Letters From Penthouse

  So a word to the wise: when clearing a structure of zombies, especially when said structure is crammed with tons of rooms, do not get separated from your team.

  One of the men in my unit got too far ahead, got himself surrounded in a tight hallway. He was holding his own, clearing out the horde as it came for him, until a swarm came from a side hall. He got swamped, and all I could do was get their attention. They chased me around for a long time, and it was only because the elevator shaft was open that I survived. I guess some people pried the doors open to try and get out, because the cables have lengths of rope tied to them at intervals.

  So I climbed. I had to go up, the car was below me and covered with bodies. A glance was all I needed to know that there was no way I was getting out that way. I climbed my way up, made it to the penthouse, which was the only open door.

  So I'm stuck up here, too afraid to open the door. I will have to wait until the others clear out the place. It could be late tomorrow before they make it up this far. Hope I find some water.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 12:23 PM

  Thursday, July 15, 2010

  Roger, Roger

  I'm not stuck in the penthouse anymore, thank god. It only took the rest of the teams a few hours to fully clear the floor I escaped from, and I climbed back down. Roger, the guy who was being overwhelmed when I distracted the zombies, apparently led my team when I vanished. Patrick was with him when they cleared the floor, and he told me that Roger tore into the horde as if they'd killed his child. He wouldn't rest until he knew what had happened to me.

  Roger told me that he felt terrible. He thought I was dead and felt responsible. I tried to console him, but he still feels guilty.

  He's one of the transplants from up north. Roger is one of the few people with real technical expertise that decided to migrate south. He's a metallurgist, and has related sets of skills that would have made him invaluable to Jack and his folks, but he's also a family man. His wife and kids survived the fall with him, and together they all decided that plentiful food and tested defenses were more important than possible starvation and tentative safety.

  We're about done with the hotel. We have one full floor left and then we hit the penthouse levels. I know the one I was in is clear, which just leaves one to check. Might make a good vacation spot for me and the wife.

  Roger is sticking to me like he's fallen in love. He's jumping in front of my strikes when I go to cut down a zombie, taking all the risks for me and putting himself in danger of getting accidentally cut open by me every time he does it. It's getting a little old and a little annoying.

  Lunch break is almost over, and I need to have a talk to him about this. I won't have him treating me like some child. I took the risk of distracting the zombies all on my own, and whatever sense of guilt is pushing him to get in between me and danger has got to be set right. I don't know if maybe he's religious or follows some weird eastern philosophy about owing debts or whatever, but I really don't want to gut the guy while he is trying to save my life...

  On we go. Roger has a determined look on his face. God save me from his good intentions.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 12:28 PM

  Friday, July 16, 2010

  Civic Lesson

  It takes a lot for us to feel shocked nowadays. You think that you are prepared for anything, any sight, after you have watched family and friends be torn apart and eaten by the ravenous corpses of other family and friends. You think that nothing is left to surprise or disgust you, that nothing can frighten you, at least not in that bone-deep chilling way.

  Everyone with our teams learned today that we are never beyond that particular threshold.

  Our last big building here in the downtown area to tackle was the civic center. We didn't really have expectations when we went close to it. After all, if there were people in it, living ones anyway, wouldn't they have seen us moving around and cleaning up the area for the last few days? Seems logical to me that people living in fear would try to get help from the folks who are actively eliminating the threat they are hiding from.

  Wrong.

  We opened the front doors to the place, kicked away barricades that easily kept zombies from getting in, but weren't nearly enough to stop a thinking, live human being. We figured the place was empty, either abandoned or full of dead folks. Wrong again.

  Roger was just in front of me and to my right when the first shot caught him square in the chest. He dropped like a sack of bricks, and the rest of us ducked and jumped away. Several of them came through the inner doors, some with firearms but most holding knives or other similar weapons. All of us from the compound
kept moving as the inhabitants began to fire on us in earnest, all the while I shouted at them that we were there to help, that we had food and places for them to live.

  It didn't do any good. More of them came through the door, and we scattered. I know the civic center pretty well, and I ran up the ramp toward the top entrances. I kept on looking back, trying to judge the gunshots behind me and changing direction to avoid getting hit.

  They had blocked off the ramp at the second floor. The guy chasing me had to know it, and he took his time when he came for me at the dead end. We both had guns pointed at each other's faces, each of us daring the other to take the shot. I was terrified to do so, because I thought for sure he would see my finger tighten on the trigger and take his shot at the same time.

  So imagine my surprise when the guy's face disintegrates in front of me, spraying my face with chunks of flesh, bone, and brain.

  Roger, you wonderful bastard! He's got a big bruise dark as night over his sternum, but my self-appointed guardian angel is alive. He was smart enough to wear kevlar on this trip. Most of us are armored, which is a bit of practical thinking that has kept us from losing a lot of people on scouting missions as well as exploratory ones like this. It kept us from losing any this time as well.

  None of that was very shocking, though. Scary in the short term, of course, but what made us wretch was what we found on the main floor of the civic center itself.

  All in all we fought about twenty men. There were no women, and it seems that all of the people that lived there came at us together. Maybe that was how they hunted their prey, trying to use overwhelming force. We'll have to ask some of the prey.

  They were capturing people. Living ones. Keeping them alive by feeding them other people, fattening the prisoners up for slaughter like cattle. Given how few of them there were, I doubt that they had to kill many to survive, but apparently they enjoyed the work, because the prisoners we released told us that they killed someone every few days.

  I have never met most of the ten people we released, but I know one of them very well. He's a friend from high school, someone that I hung out with a lot, and though we drifted apart as we got older, I still consider him a great friend and one of the few people I can trust completely.

  His name is Neil. He's coming to live at the compound, and I can't tell you how glad I am that he's alive. You all will get to know him over time.

  We're almost at the end of our break. Funny, no one wanted to have any lunch, but all of us needed some time to sit and relax, shed some of the stress. Have to call the compound and get some folks down here with food and clothes, have Gabby come and give the prisoners a once-over.

  And we need some volunteers to help clean up this place. It's a fucking charnel house here, bones and blood and organs all over the place...jesus.

  Maybe we should just let some zombies in here to lick it clean for us. I don't know if anyone should see something like this. Fucking cannibals.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 9:31 AM

  Saturday, July 17, 2010

  Numbers Game

  My brother Dave and I are downtown again, after a good night's sleep in our own beds. I have already had a good look at the area, of course, but we need Dave's more experienced and critical eye to figure out what steps we will need to take to make this part of town safe. We're moving about on foot for the most part, though we drove down here in his old truck. I'm having to keep a sharp eye out for zombies, since they still filter down here from the hills.

  We have finished clearing out the three major buildings in this area, the ones we want to use, but it might be hoping for too much to think that we can make the streets in this relatively small piece of real estate secure. It's not that we couldn't build walls (we could) and it's not that we couldn't man them (we can, more on that shortly...) but the problem is that this area is at the bottom of a lot of hills, and all roads for the undead lead to it.

  To make it clear: Dave, Roger and I came down here this morning loaded with ammo and several firearms each. Between us all we've exhausted a hundred .40 caliber rounds, six clips of 9mm, pockets full of shotgun shells, and twenty or so shells for Dave's frighteningly powerful rifle. The zombies come in twos or threes right now, but they keep coming. And they don't do it mostly from one side of the place like at the compound, but from every direction. It's a logistical nightmare, and isn't looking pretty. At least we can use the buildings for storage and housing folks if we want to. But I would rather make it a permanent housing area, a place for people to live and grow.

  So, on to other news.

  No more power at all around here. The last vestiges of energy from outside of town petered out last night. We got in touch with the last few folks at the power station, and they tell us that they are on the way here. We have enough solar power and batteries to give us light and to power a few computers, and solar chargers for our phones, but the days of refrigeration and microwave ovens are over for a while.

  Really, we have a lot of available power, twenty kilowatts at least. That is enough to power about twenty houses, but we are stretching that across the entire compound. I am posting from my phone for the most part to save power, but we still need some computers for much of what we do to run our little community. You have no idea how hard it is to track all of the data that we have to watch, I can't imagine doing it by hand.

  The biggest news by magnitudes is that another large group of survivors has contacted us. They aren't very far from us, actually, though I have been asked not to mention the location, other than to say that it is in Kentucky somewhere. These folks have apparently been holed up in a large building, housed with dozens of tons of canned food. I can't tell too much about their situation without giving away where they are, but I can tell you that while they went through hell itself securing the shelter they live in, losing huge numbers of men and women, once they got there it was truly a prime location to hide in.

  But fortunately for all of us, long term thinking led them to come out of hiding. They still have a lot of food left, but no way to farm, no way to do anything really constructive. They found out about us when one enterprising member of their group went out in search of some way to look and see if others had survived in the outside world. Naturally, he found a computer, got on google, and through the huge set of links the folks at google have set up since the fall of society, got in touch with us.

  They want to come here, be a part of the community. They come with open arms and under reasonable terms, and we welcome them.

  All one hundred and fifty of them.

  They have no mass transit vehicles, so we will be the ones doing the transporting. It's going to be an exciting week, getting them here and getting to know them. Right now, all we know is that they are there and want to be here badly, and are willing to submit to any reasonable precautions on our part to make that happen.

  Signs are good right now, and hope is on the rise.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 12:09 PM

  Sunday, July 18, 2010

  Ferry Ride

  Not a lot of time to write today. We are on the way to pick up some of the people from the big group that contacted us. They have some folks with injuries, and since we have a few medical personnel, it makes sense. I need to take my turn on the platform on top of the bus very shortly, so I will make this update short.

  Dave and I think we have figured out a way to keep downtown relatively zombie free, or at least the small corner of it we want to occupy. It involves a lot of work, using the new folks coming in for the most part (since they will be the ones living there), a lot of large equipment (if we can find enough fuel not to deplete our reserves), and ludicrous amounts of explosives. That's actually the easy bit. What we can't find, we can make.

  Roger, Jess, and Patrick actually came up with an ingenious solution to the lack of arable land downtown. I will explain that when I have more time, but it's really neat and organized, and it looks as though it will make the residents of downtown self-sufficient if we
can implement it as designed. Thank go for the river being so close, literally less than a hundred feet away. It will solve all kinds of problems.

  Up I go. I have to keep a lookout for enemies and shoot if needed. Wish us luck.