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

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

  It's not, of course. We keep track of duty rosters and numbers on the wall, never sending out more people than we can spare. It's just an irrational feeling. I know that. Our defenses and weapons improve all the time, cannibalized from those who have attacked us. We have some surprises in store for anyone who dreams about conquest, I guarantee that.

  Will is doing his part in that area. He assured me before I left that he would be working hard to build up our defenses. He knows a lot about military equipment, and our easy access to the national guard base across the road means that if we can move it and set it all up, we'll be ready for just about anything.

  Enough worrying about home. We have a job to do here, and Jess and I need to head toward Rachel's location. We have to start the work of coordinating a retreat from this place, designing a plan based on any and all of the info our lookouts gather over the next few days. If the marauders are working their way in a given direction, we need to know about it.

  I intend to get everyone out of here safely and efficiently. Can't think beyond that right now.

  at 10:39 AM

  Tuesday, October 26, 2010

  Stormwatch

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The winds are blowing, drops of rain patter harder and more frequently against the roof of our car, and on the not too distant horizon lightning flashes.

  It's all kinds of ominous, which pretty much fits the mood around here right now. The scouts we've brought with us have spent the last day studying the movements of the local marauders and the news isn't good. There are a good lot of them, and while they aren't moving toward us or Rachel's hideout, they are apparently settling in. Everything the scouts report seeing indicates a large number of them moving this way, gathering supplies and setting up base.

  We spent a lot of time with Rachel's people trying to work out a plan to escape. The large numbers of marauders moving toward this town are making it difficult to move about unseen. This storm is going to help, though. Very soon it will be over us, darkening the sky and obscuring us with rain. Then we can move out, getting some of the vehicles Rachel's group have prepared to take out of here set up a safe distance away. We'll also start moving her people out of the danger zone in small groups.

  If the storm can give us even two hours, we can manage a lot. The vehicles are far enough away from the main marauder camp that we feel safe moving them all at once under the cover of rain. The people are a lot closer, well within the area the marauders patrol. So on that front it's going to be a lot riskier.

  Time isn't on our side. The number of enemies will only increase right along with the danger.

  The storm is moving faster now. It's almost time.

  at 12:13 PM

  Wednesday, October 27, 2010

  Dual Shock

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We managed to get Rachel and her people out of their building yesterday thanks to the massive storm. It lasted for almost six hours, and was strong enough to make us worry about being blown over. The good news is that we managed to get them to our hiding spot, though not yet to their own vehicles. The bad news is that a few of us were seen, which caused the marauders to start looking around for us.

  I don't think they'll find us before we leave, but they are currently searching between us and the cache of RV's that we need to get our new friends to. There are several plans up for discussion right now as to how we can distract them long enough to get out of here.

  That's where we stand at the moment. As soon as this sweep is done, we'll sneak around them and create a diversion.

  Back at home, things are very bad. We received word very early this morning that a big zombie attack came yesterday. The storm reached even there, and the walls were hit hard under cover of rain. It wasn't the zombies that were the problem, however, but a second attack that came at the same time, using the undead as a distraction.

  I'm telling you what I have been told, and trying to keep myself calm while I do it. Bear with me.

  Ten men in military gear struck the southwestern wall of the compound yesterday, having come up through the farm located outside the walls. Somehow they managed to avoid being seen by any of the folks out there working. They came in two groups, both using heavily armored and modified hummers. They had to have crept toward the compound until they were close enough to take a strong run at us, the sound of the engines drowned out by the rain and thunder.

  They did come, though, and punched a hole in the wall fifteen feet across. We had several guards and lookouts in that direction, and every one of them were taken out from a distance before the soldiers made their rush. Suppressed rifles, if you can believe that.

  At any rate, they burst through the defenses and immediately spread out in two squads, trying to figure out where the armory and clinic were. We found this out by capturing the last surviving member of the squads, and...inducing him to explain.

  We were caught off guard, of course. We suffered a few serious blows, one of them Roger. He was shot several times, and is currently riding the line between life and death. It would have been so much worse without some very good thinking on Will's part.

  He knew that some day a group would try to take us over. The obvious targets were the armory, our clinic, our council hall...any place, basically, that holds items or people that we would have a hard time sacrificing for the greater good. Though in truth, it would be difficult bordering on impossible for us to give up anyone or anything without a fight.

  At any rate, Will has spent a good amount of time setting up some nice defenses for those weak points. He himself was on guard duty at the clinic when one of the squads came there. Will saw them coming, had just enough time to get to the hidden gun platform.

  Fifty cal machine gun -vs- five armored soldiers? No contest. They were cut down before they could fire a shot at the clinic. The other group was hit near the armory, two of them falling into a pit trap, two getting electrocuted from a trap I helped design, and the last one captured.

  The prisoner has told us a lot. Will has been able to verify a lot of what our people are being told, as he apparently knew all ten of the attackers. That didn't stop him from killing them, of course.

  Richmond's soldiers have finally made a move. That they dedicated ten percent of their numbers to this attack scares the shit out of me. It has to mean something bigger will come. And what if they have managed to gather more soldiers?

  It's something I will deal with when we are home and safe.

  at 9:45 AM

  Thursday, October 28, 2010

  Fallout

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Setting fire to things is occasionally super fun.

  We're about fifty miles into Missouri right now, and we left behind us a lot of confusion and burning buildings. The search for us and our new friends was getting pretty intense and uncomfortably close. So, like any good survivor, a few of us circled around the town and set fire to some of the buildings we knew the marauders were using. We barely got away unseen, but the vast clouds of smoke and panicking bad guys helped out with that.

  So, all in all not too bad a trip. No one hurt or killed, all of Rachel's people safely retrieved, and we're on our way home with little incident. It makes me happy to know that sometimes, things can go our way with only minor glitches in the programming.

  Back home is another story. The damage to the wall has been repaired quickly if with quite a bit of haste, but the mood around the compound is obviously pretty dark. People are furious that soldiers were so easily able to breach our defenses, and scared that they had clearly planned it for so long, just waiting for the right opportunity to come at us.

  Some people have been talking about a counter-attack. In fact, a whole lot of people. Will has done what he can to explain how suicidal such a move would be, and just how well prepared for us the soldiers in Richmond would have to be if they were willing to send out a force to attack in the first place. Courtney says that Will is so angry he can barely speak, and that he t
old her that if it weren't for the stark fact that there is no way we could win in a direct attack against them, he would lead the fight himself.

  I understand some of what he feels. It has to be tearing him apart knowing that those he used to consider brothers would attack his new home and the people in it, many of whom he considers family. I wish I could be there to comfort him and pick his brain, because I am living in constant fear that this was just a probe. We need to keep level heads and plan for a worst case scenario. Will is going to be vital for planning this and setting up our efforts to beef up the compound, since he is the most knowledgeable about military tactics and equipment.

  I think when we get home, we're going to have another vote for leadership. Roger is going to be out for a long time if he manages to survive his wounds, and we need someone guiding our movements that will be able to make the right decisions in what is sure to be a hard winter.

  That's all I have today. Hoping to make it home by tomorrow morning, assuming that the path we made to get here hasn't been messed up too badly by the storm or...other things.

  Keep safe, and watch outside closely. No amount of wariness will be enough right now. Be ready for anything.

  at 10:10 AM

  Friday, October 29, 2010

  Rationalization

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We're home. We got very lucky, switched drivers and drove all night. We pulled in a few hours ago, and as tired as I am from the pressure of this trip, I had to go out and see the damage for myself.

  Both to the wall and to our friends.

  My brother has done an admirable job getting the giant hole patched up. Though you can tell that it's different there, the repair work makes that section look just as strong and durable as any other stretch. I wish the same could be said about our people.

  Roger isn't doing well. His wounds are serious and Evans is doing everything he can to try and stave off infection. But the hard truth is that our resources, while plentiful, are still limited. There is only so much we can do here, and Evans says that limit has been reached. We can only watch and hope from here on out.

  I've gone around asking some of the people here who are from Richmond about the place, trying to gather some clue about what the layout of the army base there looks like. What I'm being told is fucking scary.

  I mean, I knew the place was a munitions depot. I knew from conversations with Will that there are somewhere around a hundred people living there, off the grid from the rest of the town. But I had no idea exactly what is kept there, until Will and some others got very detailed this morning. It's basically a WMD storage facility, along with many hundreds of giant repositories for pretty much every sort of ammunition you can think of, everything from bullets to rockets filled with chemical weapons.

  I guess this never seemed vitally important to me until now. After all, society has been ripped to shreds and left to die by the zombie plague, so who in their right mind would consider using any of that on the tattered remains of the human species? Right?

  No, apparently not. Though nobody from Richmond had any idea that there were even soldiers left on the base until Will's helicopter was discovered, certainly none of them would have guessed that they would attack anyone. But sadly, that's what we're dealing with. I have to imagine that there are other people in Richmond that are still unaware of the men huddled heavily armed within that 15,000 acre deathtrap for any unwary traveler.

  I want very much to believe that all we've worked for here is not at risk. Right now it's barely forty degrees outside, all the zombies elsewhere catatonic from the cold. The fury inside me at the idea that a new threat is on the horizon just when we have started to get a break from all the old ones is so strong that I can't even think straight. My passion is straining against my reason, pushing me to advocate the incredibly stupid idea that we should try and attack these fuckers, wipe them from the face of the earth.

  I can give you a lot of reasons why this is just as suicidal as Will suggests it is, and i trust his judgement given that he used to be one of those hundred soldiers. They're equipped with weapons that we can't match, armor we can't match, and an almost comical amount of ammo to throw at us. They are better trained and more experienced in combat, and the blunt truth is that had Will not set up hidden gun platforms and traps at our critical locations around the compound, those ten would probably have taken us.

  They are trained killers educated in how to disrupt, destroy, or capture larger forces. Every one of those men could probably take out ten of us, and the fact that they have been able to move like ghosts completely unobserved pretty much wherever they want to leads me to the inevitable conclusion that fighting them would kill us at best.

  Trying to live up to the spirit of an eye for an eye in this case just isn't in the list of options. Will is going around explaining to people, talking some of the more hotheaded ones down (myself included). It's hard for him, because he wants very badly to do something about this attack as well and everyone knows it. I think he will channel that energy into the defenses as he has done so often of late, and that will serve us well should his former friends choose to come calling again.

  Right now, I wish it were a little warmer. I want to kill something.

  at 7:58 AM

  Saturday, October 30, 2010

  Devil's Night

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I never get tired of watching new arrivals do the meet and greet. It's sort of like watching an experiment in microbiology, witnessing the seemingly random interactions between the individual parts of the whole, like cells having awkward encounters before finding some common ground to grow on.

  That's not my best work, but I'm tired right now. Sue me.

  I got to see Rachel and Elizabeth reunite this morning. They have been friends for almost as long as Rachel and I have been, and hearing the cries of joy from both of them at finally seeing the other alive and well did a world of good for my heart.

  Rachel has changed a lot from the girl I used to know. I say girl, though we are the same age, because she has always had this amazing blend of impish childlike glee at new knowledge and experience, and the moderately cynical edge of a person who is old beyond their years.

  I gave her the tour as soon as the sun came up, really showing her the details of the compound. I can see glimmers of the smart-ass in her eyes at times, almost hear the snarky comments she wants to say. It seems, though, that months of living in a small building with lots of other people, having to scrape for food and supplies while avoiding detection has given her a reserve that frankly makes me a little sad. I miss the incredibly bad puns and her ability to play on words. It seems much of the carefree joy that once nearly defined who she was in my mind has vanished. But really, who can blame her?

  What kind of person do I see before me now?

  She's still got a sense of humor. I have been an easy target for her to crack jokes at, and any laughs are welcome. She's clearly suffered from the events of the last few weeks, carrying faint lines around her eyes from the constant fear and stress. But along with that is a determined set to her face, body language that radiates a confidence and decisiveness that I never noticed before, or never existed until now. She's a bit jumpy as all new arrivals tend to be. It's hard to be plunged into a new situation so far from your comfort zone. She's dealing with it better than most.

  On our walk this morning, we moseyed over to the theater my brother built. He's been decorating it for Halloween in the hopes that we can manage to have some sort of party. Given that we all woke up to the first real frost of the season today, I don't know how comfortable such a gathering would be, but it's always been a favored holiday in my family, and was top on my mom's list. And of course, if there is any time in which we need to make fun of all the things that go bump in the night, it's now.

  Thank god it's cold enough that there is little to no chance of zombies hitting us.

  So while Rachel was checking out the theater, a few of the younger kid
s made their way over to us, to ask what we were planning for the weekend. Dave and I are still trying to work that out, and when the little ones asked us about trick-or-treating and candy, we both got a little frazzled. Candy isn't something we have much of, and what sugar we have needs to be rationed for cooking. The kids were looking sort of crestfallen, and I was trying to think of something reassuring to tell them when Rachel saved me the trouble of hurting my brain.

  She knelt down with them, beckoning the group of five to eight year olds close to her, circling her arms around them.

  Rachel proceeded to explain to those kids that while candy was all well and good, the best part of Halloween is the stories. She regaled them with a dozen titles to frighten and horrify, building up a sense of awe and dread that I found very impressive given the early dawn light and lack of anything scary about her as a person. She talked them into being excited to hear gruesome tales all night long, and to look forward to those stories on Devil's Night, far scarier than Halloween.