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

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

  Another meeting in a few minutes to pick teams. I can promise you, I won't be one of them this go round. My wife will stab me in the face if I run off again this soon. But it is important, and I wish I could go. The scientist in me (well, the science nerd, anyway) relishes the idea of taking in so much new and interesting data first hand.

  Damn, the bell is ringing. Meeting time.

  Tomorrow, an appropriate tribute to our most recent fallen. I promise.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 11:17 AM

  Tuesday, July 27, 2010

  The Honored and Clever Dead

  Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday, but we have been too busy to do much else but worry. We sent out some groups to observe the new band of zombies, the smart ones. Most of them are still out, though a few came back when part of the band began to head this way yesterday.

  Since then, we have been dealing with these clever bastards non-stop.

  They have been testing our defenses all over the place. Some of them have taken to walking the perimeter of the compound, taking gunshots while another one farther away hides and watches. Some have managed to find weak spots in the wall, places where we haven't been able to close the place in all the way. They keep on coming, and from the early reports we've gotten, there are a fucking lot of them.

  That, we can deal with. Mounting extra patrols and keeping people who are off duty indoors pretty much manages the issue. It's annoying and definitely unnerving, but not an insurmountable problem. I can't say that I like the idea that these things are smart enough to try and figure out our weak spots, but when you think about it, it's really no more than some animals can do. It's just creepy watching a dead body do it.

  The bigger issue is that Evans seems to think that whatever it is that inhabits the bodies of people to make them rise is almost certainly bacterial, and like many bacteria and viruses, it can mutate and spread to already infected hosts. What that boils down to is that he thinks that even one of these things can effectively spread whatever it is that makes these zombies smarter to other, large populations of them. Since one of our stowaways got away from us the other day when our folks were in Lexington (I can tell you now that we have finished moving everything all the folks from the group there, and all of their supplies) we might be in trouble. The good news is that Evans is of the opinion that whatever is in these zombies to make them smarter also needs a host of a certain quality.

  So only fairly intact dead folks will do. That's good because if true (and I think it is due to the fact that none of the smarties have looked very run down) then it effectively limits their population to a much smaller percentage of the whole.

  It's really bad though, because that means that the smart zombies will also universally be those most capable of doing damage right back to us.

  Jesus, did I seriously refer to them as "smarties"? Oh well, works for me.

  And since we are busy, I will give you what I can about the six folks we lost when the convoy was attacked the other day. I wish I knew more and had time to be poetic, but the world we live in now means that any epitaph is a good one.

  Jenna Smith--mother of two, she was a constitutional lawyer who lost her entire family in the fall. She often made things for people, mostly out of fabrics. Society crumbled and she discovered a love of knitting, sewing, weaving...she was quiet, and brave.

  Justin Reilly--fifteen year old boy from Jack's group up north. Didn't know much about him, except that he and I shared a deep love of video games. We spent a good deal of time talking about how stoked we were when Fallout 3 hit the shelves. He was a nice kid with haunted eyes, but he never had a harsh word for anyone and helped where he could.

  Pete--never gave a last name. He was a big guy, looked like a football player. He usually worked cleanup outside the walls, gathering zombies up for burning. He said once that he used to work with metal, but never really said a lot about his past. He was grumpy at times, and spent a lot of his free time alone in the woods, hunting.

  Dana Schwartze--She was kind of a bitch. I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but that's the truth. She enjoyed arguing with people, belittling their thoughts and ideals, though she never went too far with it. She was pragmatic to a fault, and while she agreed with some of the folks who thought this place was a "haven of sin", she always stood by the fact that sometimes you have to take what you can get. I sort of wish I had known her better, if only to understand what made her the way she was. Anyway, I can't fault her bravery or sense of duty, and somehow I think she would approve of this paragraph.

  Parker D.--older guy, at least in his sixties. He was this little man, skinny as a rail but full of energy. He was the type to get excited about a project, any project, if he thought it would be good for the group. We found a huge pile of porn in his room when we went to clean it out. That might disgust some of you, but it only makes me smile. At least he was consistent; just as enthusiastic in play as he was in work.

  Finally, Mikey Driscoll--he was an outright racist who never could look me in the eye. He made it very clear that he thought my wife being black was a bad thing, but I have never been one to censor others for what they believe. He did his job and never complained, worked long hours when needed and never shirked his duty. He was someone that a lot of people avoided, but he took that social stigma with remarkable aplomb, as though he understood that his views made others dislike him and respected that feeling. Can't say that I liked him much, but he kept us safe just as well as anyone else, and better than some. I hope that if there's a heaven, he gets in and learns the error of his ways there.

  That's all we got. I hear the dulcet tones of alarm bells ringing, that's my cue.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 9:23 AM

  Wednesday, July 28, 2010

  Under Pressure

  The smarties (that name for the smart zombies caught on yesterday and now everyone around here is using it) have begun to attack us consistently. They're probing us, attacking differently every time and fighting harder with each hit.

  There are a lot of them. Our recon folks have reported witnessing zombies being converted by the smarties. It takes a while, and it works on very few of them, but those that catch whatever strain of the zombie disease these fuckers carry end up getting smarter. That small percentage ends up being hundreds that we have seen so far, because Frankfort has thousands of zombies at any given time.

  One good thing that our scouts saw during the time they were observing: it takes an effort for the smarties to stay focused. They aren't able to restrain their natures at all times, which is great news for us. If we can stake them out and place people where we know them to gather, chances are good that we can drastically reduce their population.

  The problem is, that place is at our walls right now.

  Roger has been working with Patrick at our makeshift forge to turn all the metal we can find into bracing for our weak and missing sections of wall. Patrols are out constantly, in fact I am about due for an hour of patrol myself.

  Jess is getting big with baby, and is feeling the frustration of not being able to go out with us. But that's the rule around here for pregnant women.

  Assuming that they keep the pressure on, I expect a major attack by tomorrow morning. Our remaining scout group is supposed to check in with us in a few hours, though given how hard they are hitting the gate it's unlikely we will be able to open it to let them in.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 8:44 AM

  Friday, July 30, 2010

  Fury of the Exiles

  I never thought I would be thankful for being attacked so often over the last few months. The constant danger made us plan for worst case scenarios, and we pretty much had that happen yesterday.

  I'm sitting on top of the tall state office building again, and this time it's not really by choice. I had no chance to write anything yesterday, because of the terrible increase in attacks by the smart breed of zombies. They started to hit us late yesterday morning at every weak point, every nook and cranny. We did al
l right for a while holding them off, but around noon the fat really hit the fire.

  Two or three thousand of them must have been moving very fast to get here from Lexington. Our single recon group was watching thirty or forty of the smarties while they were huddled next to the interstate. Our scouts called us when the horde came into view, and it became clear right then that we were in serious trouble.

  So we did what we had planned for and practiced, but never talked about to anyone outside our group.

  We left.

  Cars loaded with gas, food, weapons and any and all supplies to survive for as long as possible without any of the comforts of home. We had a prearranged signal, a loud old cattle bell we found at the farm next door, and when our recon team called in, we rang it. The retreat went smoothly enough, and almost all of us got out and made it downtown to our fallback point.

  Thank god someone had the foresight to mention it to our new folks, the majority of whom live in the buildings we cleared out down here. They've spent a lot of time setting up defenses and trying to work on the plans Dave and I came up with to make this chunk of Frankfort safer. They also knew that we might have to make this trip, and that all of us would have to hole up here at some point.

  We haven't lost anyone that I know of, but a small group stayed behind at the compound to keep us informed about what is going on there. They kill zombies when possible, but otherwise are using the crazy array of catwalks, stairs and ladders that move from walls to houses to ground. It's a great way for them to stay one step ahead...

  But the rest of us are stuck. I actually hope that the smarties make it down here so we can try to take them out in a big group. The bridges in front of this building and the hotel are a killing field, and my brother is out there making it even more dangerous. We are going to be ready when they do make it here, assuming that they don't catch us unawares. These damn things have driven us from our home.

  We are going to take it back.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 11:17 AM

  Saturday, July 31, 2010

  Discomfort

  The team that stayed behind at the compound to keep an eye on the zombies that overtook it have given us some strange news. Apparently these smart zombies are a little more focused than we originally estimated. They searched the compound pretty thoroughly, sniffing around for us, and when they realized that we were gone, they left as well.

  But not to come here. I mean, they have to know where we are, at least roughly. And if they are looking for us by scent, there just isn't any way they could be missing us. But no sign of them on the roads, and our teams can't find them anywhere close.

  We're using every minute until they appear to make every approach to this place a deathtrap. We have rather hastily managed to block off most of this area (the civic center, the office tower, and the hotel) from foot traffic. It'll be a bitch getting back out of here, but it should keep the smarties at bay well enough for us to kill them without being in too much danger ourselves. One very nice advantage is that the three buildings we are occupying are all pretty tall, so we have a dominating view around us. No sneaking up, and excellent sniper platforms.

  It's bad enough that we had to abandon our home, even temporarily, but worse is the fact that while we had prepared for such a contingency, we didn't plan on staying down here long term. Not in such numbers. The result is that most of us are sleeping on concrete floors, in sleeping bags. There isn't enough water storage for all of us, so we are constantly having to crank the big hand pumps we have running to the river. Of course, we have to boil the hell out of that water and filter it, which means that when you start to get thirsty, you have about thirty minutes before you can drink it. And forget about a bath or shower.

  We are having to do our cooking outside. We aren't lacking for fuel due to all of the trees and houses we've torn down or blown apart in the last day, but it does mean that you pretty much have to eat outside, and any southerner can tell you that midsummer next to a river is no fun for bugs. Most of us look like we've just been walking through a rain forest covered in honey.

  Now it's just a waiting game. We know better than to leave our easily defended square here in downtown to search the smarties out. They might be intelligent to some degree, but nothing so far leads us to believe that they will be able (or want) to subvert their very nature. Whatever disease it is that fills their nervous systems, brains, and muscles in order to mimic them got better at its job for one reason: to become a better predator.

  They will have to come for us soon. When they do, may the smartest killer win.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 12:06 PM

  No News

  If I didn't know better, I would think that the zombies were trying to starve us out, or at least lure us into a false sense of security. No news is good news as far as our defenses go, but I would rather be in the comfort of the compound rather than stuffed into a corner of this office building with no windows that open.

  All around me I hear the hollow crack of rifle shots as the watchers on the roofs pick off normal zombies. We've only seen two smarties so far, and they were damn careful about checking us out. Which is, of course, how we knew they were smarties.

  Otherwise all is the same. We're using our time to shore up every defense we can here in the fallback position, and hopefully they will be enough. We're deadlocked until we get attacked, because we don't plan on leaving a group of any size to follow us back home when we head that way.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 10:43 AM

  Tuesday, August 3, 2010

  Up In Flames

  I'm hoping that my posts can become a little less sporadic. Yesterday I ran out of power both on my laptop and my phone.

  I want to keep all of you out there informed, because things here have gotten extremely ugly. The smart zombies ("smarties") have been making appearances over the last two days. We spent a lot of time and effort taking out bridges, knocking down houses and trees, and moving all the rubble into a very large wall. We have enough people to keep a solid perimeter at all times, so we thought we were good.

  We were sure that the smarties would have to take the twin bridges to come at us in force, and we were partially right. In order to get big numbers in, they had to take the bridges. But they also managed to hit us from the one place we thought was impossible. They took so long to attack us because they were slowly scaling the enormous hill to the north, and about a hundred of them managed to get down to us in the dead of night.

  "Dead of night". I actually laughed out loud just then.

  Anyway, it was awful. The smarties drew enough of us from other parts of the defenses to make it possible for them to get all the way across the bridges in serious numbers. It was a very good thing for us that they are so very clever, because the extra time it took them to get up that hill made all the difference.

  Our traps took out a lot of them, no bones about it. We had tripwires strung all over, explosives on hair triggers, spikes and stakes that popped up, a lot of stuff. I feel rather proud of one of my own creations, which was a series of simple poles with sharpened lawnmower (and other) blades set up on them. Tripwire gets hit, the tension on the blades is released, several zombies hit by each one. Loved it.

  But by far, what really saved us was letting them get so close. While lots of us were running around killing the sneaky bastards that came down the hill, many more were along the edges of the wall pouring down fire.

  Have you ever seen a homemade cannon? I have, now. And we made napalm, flamethrowers, lots of different stuff. All of it rigged together hastily and insanely dangerous to use. Patrick was standing right next to a guy named Steve (not Courtney's Steve, this guy's last name was Pointer or Pointing, something like that) who came from Lexington recently when his flamethrower melted. He was using it at the time, and Pat couldn't do anything but watch as the guy burned to death.

  And worse, he came right back to life. While he was on fire.

  So Pat shot him in the head.

  Al
l told, we lost about a dozen people. We are certain that there are many more smarties left, probably at least twice the number that have hit us so far. As far as I know, none of the dead are people that I know very well. If this attack is indicative of what we are going to face, then I doubt that will remain the case.

  Fuck. I hear the alarm bell.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 9:49 AM

  Wednesday, August 4, 2010

  Pressure Cooker

  Hot and sweaty are usually terms that describe lots of my favorite activities. Today, they describe the minimum of what we are enduring here. There is no power other than what solar batteries we brought with us from the compound, so no air conditioning at all. I mentioned before that none of the windows at the hotel and tower open, and of course the civic center doesn't have any.