Living With the Dead: Year One (Books 1-2, Bonus Material)
Page 31
Stories are entertainment, and education, inspiration and fear. They are mirrors of us and distortions all in one, but above all they are unique to who and what we are as human beings. Stories are creations of man, the only animal that lies, and thereby telling the deepest truths.
Posted by Josh Guess at 9:17 AM
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Points
The last few days have been quiet ones. No big attacks, no new and mysterious strangers bothering us. Just digging up a lot of potatoes, much planning and hoping that our wills can match our ambition. There are so many of us now, and in two parts of town, that we are doing more than we ever thought possible. But with those large efforts comes the risk of failure. Many of the people that live downtown in our fallback zone are farming there, and the rest are either working here or out at the farms we are trying to cultivate out in the country.
Patrick seems to actually be having fun pushing Lt. Price around with him everywhere. Pat loves seeing the pleasant surprise on his face every time the younger guy sees something far beyond what he expected from a group of survivors with no real expertise in most things. I remember his shock when he realized the clinic had electricity all the time, and not from a generator. He still likes to make eyes at my wife, but that's ok. If seeing Jess will make him open up to us, it's a small price to pay.
Evans says that he might be able to start standing soon. The break in his leg was painful, but not terrible, not a complex break. I am torn on this--him being healthy is good because it means he can throw in his weight in more significant ways (like giving some of that intense military training to our people), but increased mobility also means he becomes a bigger threat should his intentions prove sinister.
I'll be honest, we are pretty hopeful that Will Price really wants to be here, to be one of us. Because he does know a great deal about combat, warfare, tactics, and many other tremendously useful areas we are somewhat lacking in. Or, at least always looking to learn more about...
My brother and I are planning a big project, something that will be an enormous boon to our communities if we can get it done. We are hoping that Roger and Patrick will be up to the task, as it will require a lot of metalworking and welding. We are keeping what the idea is under wraps until a few last supplies can be located, though we are almost certain that we will find them.
Before I go, a small note: It is possible bordering on likely that I will be taking some Sundays off from writing. There is a lot going on around here, and living relatively primitively means that doing the most mundane things takes longer. So a lot less free time, and I am making it a point that every sunday Jess and I will do something together. That will likely mean I will be too busy with her to write here. If so, and if that bothers you, then I apologize. But my wife is far better than this blog or taking my mind away from the walking dead beating at our walls.
Posted by Josh Guess at 10:28 AM
Monday, August 30, 2010
The World That Used to Be
Today is my two hundredth post on Living With the Dead, and it got me thinking about milestones.
It was only months ago that we measured the bends and forks in the road of our lives in many ways. For some of us, it was finally buying that first new car. Getting your first home. Maybe it was paying off that last bit of credit card debt. Almost all of us used birthdays as markers for the progress of our lives. Pick a big event anywhere in your past, and I am sure you will see what I am talking about. Our achievements were many and varied, but we loved them.
But I think back on those moments of victory, and I find that at least for me, they didn't define me.
So much of what I once equated to success simply existed as an outgrowth of the necessities of modern life. Paying my bills on time every time never said much about me. Yeah, it said I was responsible, but that is what all people should be. Nothing about it made me special.
So when I got on here today, lacking anything else to do at the moment (no zombie attacks and no work that needs urgent attention) I saw that this was to be post number 200, and it got me thinking.
Milestones. Achievements.
I ate some potatoes and (ugh) summer squash last night that Jess and I grew ourselves. I got a new belt buckle to replace a broken one, made for me by Roger, a man whose life I saved. I slept in my own house, armored and altered to survive the ceaseless waves of the undead in the early days of the downfall.
When I look around me, I see small victories everywhere. For all of us. Men, women and children who have passed through the crucible of violence and chaos the world has become. That we live here behind a wall built with our own hands, in homes that manage to contain the true warmth of humans living in peace with one another, is a testament to how fully we have been able to shed the baggage that weighed us down in the world that used to be.
We have done a lot, but I want to leave you with an image that all at once moved me, scared me, and made me proud.
I was walking over to the clinic about an hour ago, and I saw a bunch of kids playing. Black, white, and latino among them, every one of them totally oblivious to the differences others might perceive between them. They were mock swordfighting, a game we encourage since long blades are one of the best ways to defend yourself against zombies. One of the boys got a little too intense with one of the girls, and managed to whip her across the face with a thin length of birch.
The girl, about nine, didn't cry. The boy stopped in horror when he realized what he had done, and just stood there. Then the girl punched him in the face hard enough to knock him over.
Then she helped him up, and told him to be more careful.
If I have to be proud of anything, it has to be that. That little girl maintained her calm in the face of unexpected pain, assessed the situation, and judged that her attacker needed a lesson, short and sweet. Helping him up showed that she wasn't going to hold a grudge, and that she took action herself showed remarkable independence.
Can you see why I feel pride?
While some of us might be unhappy at the need for our young to learn violence as a solution, circumstances for the foreseeable future require it. I don't like it much myself, but my heart was singing to see the reasonable reactions, self control and self reliance in the child. She figured out a solution without waiting for an adult, and showed by example that actions have consequences at least equal to themselves.
That was a milestone for me. Maybe the most important one.
Today I saw proof that those who come after us, the ones who will lead and run this place or the ones they leave here to build, might be better at it and more capable people than us.
I couldn't be more satisfied right now. That's a feeling I will never forget.
Posted by Josh Guess at 9:29 AM
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
The Consequence of Words
Lieutenant Will Price, the wounded soldier we found in his crashed helicopter a few weeks ago, is in my back yard pulling up potatoes. He is having to lay down to do it because of his broken leg and arm, but he insisted.
Will has been following Patrick around for a few days, and lives with him now. That also means that he has been spending a lot of time around Roger, who works with Patrick in designing and making things out of metal. Apparently, in the course of watching Pat and Roger work, Will absorbed a lot of details about the people here, and quite a bit about me.
It didn't really occur to me that he would see my or anyone else's actions as anything spectacular. I mean, those of us that started the compound didn't do it because it was awesome or so we could eventually be looked at as something special. We did it because we wanted to live, and do so in the long term. And because there is more strength in numbers than any of us had ever thought.
When Will began to hear how the compound came to be, some of the drastic steps we took early on, and how much long term planning has gone on, Pat says he started to feel bad. Not for us, you understand, but because he realized how much effort we have
put in here, how much sacrifice, and he felt like he was mooching.
Which he was. I mean, let's just call it like it is. Not that he could really help it, injured as he is.
So he decided that anything he could do, he would. Which includes crawling around my back yard swearing loudly every time he has to move his broken limbs, which is almost constantly. He's harvesting because, in his words "If I am going to eat it, I should at least pick it."
I appreciate his determination, though I worry that he will injure himself further. I might have to talk to Evans about this, see if he can do the doctor thing and scare Will into sitting on his ass.
On a completely random and unrelated note, Patrick Rothfuss, one of my favorite authors and a person I mentioned in a blog a few days ago, is apparently alive. A few survivors in his neck of the woods read my blog that day and thought to go looking for him, and found him. Mr. Rothfuss is still writing his books, and living with his family in safety. I am glad to hear it, and I hope that one day I can read his finished works.
One interesting consequence of that post is that many more survivors have come to this website because of it. Fans of his work apparently still keep tabs on his infrequent blog posts, and he mentioned the whole situation on his blog, here. Check it out, he's a pretty awesome guy.
Lunch break's over. Time to look in on Pat and Roger, see if a few of the special parts I asked for are done...don't think I have forgotten about the secret project my brother and I are cooking up. Details soon.
Posted by Josh Guess at 11:51 AM
The Bitter Seasons
September 2010 to February 2011
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Engaging the Switch
Posted by Josh Guess
About three hundred zombies came at the walls today, the first big attack we've had in a while. The interesting part is that there were several smarties among them, and that they seem to have come from the direction of Louisville. We know they were smarties because they tried to climb the walls, which isn't behavior normal zombies ever exhibit.
It wasn't too rough a fight, and our defenses held up well. But an attack of this size has made a lot of us see the wisdom in taking some of Will's suggestions to make the walls even more effective. One of those is adding points to them that stick out at right angles to the wall, basically like the points of a star. This would give us the ability to fire at the enemy from multiple angles at once instead of having to lean of the edge to hit the ones at the base of the wall.
Jess pointed out to me last night after reading my post that some sort of mental switch has flicked in my brain, because I started calling Lieutenant Price by his first name. I guess seeing him on the ground outside my house digging for food, knowing that he wept openly when he learned of some of our tragedies...it made me see him more for the person he is than the threat he might be. He has been our guest here for what, two or three weeks now? And I have seen little to show me that he is planning anything dire. No soldiers have come, no attempts to communicate with his fellows in Richmond.
When he found out this morning about Jack's large group of survivors in Michigan, he didn't ask anything about them. No numbers or locations, he was just surprised to hear that we have a supplier for machined lengths of wall and hopefully new technologies. He didn't even ask how we pay them for it.
I really think that if he were planning something, he would be trying to learn some sort of details about our operations. But he isn't. At all. He's just following Pat around and getting to know people. I really hope that the way most of us are starting to feel-that he can be trusted-turns out to be true. Because he seems like a good man, someone that can fit in here. And we could certainly use his experience and knowledge, and hopefully one day he will help us connect (safely) with the rest of his unit in Richmond.
I think he's trustworthy, am almost certain of it at this point. If he proves to be, he will be a great boon to our group. If he proves not to be, he will be killed. While we haven't told him much in the way of operational data, what he has absorbed about us through his everyday interactions would still give an attacker a powerful advantage.
Off to find my brother. We are fine-tuning the details of our secret project, and hope to be able to tell everyone what it is tomorrow. Hopefully construction will begin in a few weeks, after we work out the kinks in some of the logistics with Jack and his folks up north.
Until then, be safe.
at 10:44 AM
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The Project
Posted by Josh Guess
OK, so anyone that lives in the compound or downtown in the fallback zone knows that we have a decent amount of power available. Between our solar arrays and a few wind turbines, we collect enough to run our lights and computers most of the time. Not enough for air conditioning, sadly, but we do alright. The main problem we have had is that while we have rigged together some large battery storage, it isn't nearly enough for what we would need if we managed to get power going full time.
Sooooo.....
My brother and I have been working on an idea, our special project. The folks up at Jack's compound have helped us enormously with the planning and math, and the engineers at Google have done the lion's share of drafting the plans to make the whole thing more efficient, as well as figuring out a way for us to get that grid-level storage.
Yes--we have figured out how to make enough electricity for all of our needs, and how to store it. It's actually a combination of methods. For production of energy, we are going to be building a solar-thermal plant using molten salt. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is, I assure you. It will be a huge pain in the ass getting to where we think there are some suitable turbines, but if we can get through the throngs of zombies that surround the area they should be in, the hardest part will have been done. The rest is simply construction.
The second part is all about manpower and gravity. Between where the compound is and downtown is a very, very steep and long hill. We are going to raise a series of heavy cables and a geared pulley system with guided tracks, hook up big cars to it, and run the cables through heavy flywheels to spin a turbine. If the math works out, one person will be able to ratchet the weight (the vehicle) back up the hill in about ten minutes to do the whole thing over again. If we manage to get enough cable, then we can have this system going pretty much constantly.
As for storing all that energy, we are planning on a flywheel based storage system. I won't go into the details of that, but suffice it to say that we need those turbines to make it work.
Fortunately, the boys and girls at Google seem to think that there is a manufacturing facility that used to make exactly what we need, and that it is untouched. They had to take over a few satellites to look in on the place, but hey, it's not like there is a government to get mad at them about it anymore.
The major issues will be building sufficient flywheels at a storage station to meet all our needs for the foreseeable future, and getting to this facility. Because it's apparently shrouded in zombies for about a thousand feet in every direction. I won't be telling you where it is, because frankly I don't want anyone getting there first. But it's a long pace away in a bigger city, and cities are always packed with the undead.
I cannot give enough thanks to Jack and our friends at Google for helping us manage this. It has been a priority for us since the very beginning, and teams have been working at both Mountain View and Jack's compound to figure out how we can realize this.
It will be a long time before we are up and running, and a lot of laborious effort, but it looks like we have a real shot at it.
at 8:30 AM
Friday, September 3, 2010
Foul Munchkin
Posted by Josh Guess
Trying to fix a computer is magnitudes more difficult in the world we live in now than the zombie-free one we lived in before. This is going to take a while. Will make up with a better post tomorrow.
(Sent from my phone.)
Saturday, September 4, 2010
The Annexing of Places and People
Posted by Josh Guess
As you may have guessed, my computer was seriously messed up yesterday. My laptop is old and actually in pretty good shape, but prone to some occasional system errors. Living in a world decimated by zombies and the fall of society makes it a pain in the ass to reinstall an operating system.
So much is going on around here, or at least that's the way it seems. Since we've finished the wall, only smaller projects have taken up our time. While the plans I announced yesterday are simply huge, the truth of the matter is that they will take a long time, possibly years if our luck is bad. But there is only so much farming to go around, only so many people needed for guard duty. This is a big problem lately, with all of the folks from Lexington living in the fallback area. The conditions there aren't terrible, but they are cramped and uncomfortable. There is enough area there to produce food for those that live there, but only just, and certainly not enough to save for the winter.