Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land (Book 3)

by Joshua Guess

Earthy Pride

  Posted by Josh Guess

  It's an exciting life I lead. Really. I've been thinking back on the madness of the last few months, and have come to the conclusion that for all the loss and pain we've endured, we're better for it. Life in a world overrun with the walking dead is hard and dangerous, but it has forced us to live. Really, truly live.

  Before The Fall, people used to seek thrills. I was never one for skydiving or bungee jumping. I had no desire to go on safari or surf on a tsunami. Roller coasters were about my limit, but even they gave me a thrill that seemed to amplify everything, made me feel every beat of my heart and really see the world around me.

  Now, every day is like that. Our trip down to the fallback point wasn't all that eventful as sojourns outside the walls go, but we still had to take down a dozen or so zombies before we could get the gate open. Will surprised me by killing three himself, even though he was chained and cuffed. It was impressive to watch, and the though occurred to me that he could just as easily have crushed my skull as that of the undead that were in our way.

  I like the effect that working for what we need to live has had on the people here. We can't go to the supermarket to get our food anymore, so we have to grow our own fruits and vegetables, raise our own livestock. Food used to be something that most people took for granted, a convenience like so many others. Choice and abundant supply made sustenance, one third of the things we need to live, an afterthought.

  Now, though...People are active and energetic about it. When you spend a good portion of your time hungry, you learn to absolutely love the practice of agriculture. I've talked to a few people about it, and all of them seemed surprised to realize how much they enjoyed working on their food gardens here inside the compound once I pointed it out to them. Jess and I have grown some of our own food for a while, long before The Fall, as have many others. All of us know that wonderful satisfaction in eating a thing that you grew yourself, knowing that you have provided for your needs with nothing more than dirt, water, seeds, and time. That feeling is even more pronounced now, since all of us work to provide for each other.

  I'm not saying it's easy, don't get me wrong here. It isn't. It's hard and demanding work, and while I don't have to put in as much time as others, I do about an hour a day of weeding and planting, not to mention bug patrol. We don't have pesticides, so all that is done by hand. Literally: we have to squish them. Gross, but effective.

  I know this isn't the most exciting subject to read about, but it is pretty exciting for us that do it. It keeps us busy, fulfills a need, and gives us a reason to feel pride. Now that the rain has given us a good break, our efforts will redouble to try and make up for lost time.

  Today will be another work day here in my office, but tomorrow Jess and I are heading north a ways to check on a lead. There's supposed to be a town in Indiana not too far across the river from Louisville that might have some canned food. We're trying to grab what we can when we find it, and the scout that went out to look for food is one of our own, so I trust this tip. He didn't get very close to the place we're going after since there was a fair-sized herd of zombies near it, but from the road he got the impression that the store had been locked up early on, no broken windows that he could see. Worth the trip to find out. Plus, Jess and I want to spend a bit more time outside the walls than we've been able to up to this point. Yesterday was nice, but we were only gone about two hours.

  We'll be gone all day tomorrow, so I probably won't post on here. It won't just be me and the wife, either. We'll be part of a team and under the Jamie's command. He's leading this one, and I want him to know that he has my full attention. So, no fiddling with my phone...

  Sunday, March 13, 2011

  Road Trip

  Posted by Treesong

  It seems like a lifetime has gone by since my last post here. Since Josh hasn't mentioned me in the interim, some of you wondered if I was even alive. Thankfully, I'm alive and well and living at the Compound again now that we've liberated it from the Richmond soldiers.

  The main reason why Josh hasn't mentioned me is that we hardly even saw each other during our time in exile. We parted ways shortly after leaving the fallback point, and though we've stayed in touch, I only spoke with him in person a few times over the past few months.

  First, a bit of personal news. Bridget and I got married! After the fall of the Compound, we had a several long talks about the future and ultimately agreed that it was now or never. So on February 2, we had a handfasting ritual at Lothlorien Nature Sanctuary in southern Indiana.

  That makes for a nice segue into the rest of my news.

  As you know from Josh's entries, the refugees from the Compound ended up going in several different directions. Once it was clear that we weren't going to retake the Compound anytime soon, Bridget and I went off to follow up on an unusual lead.

  Back in late Summer of last year, I got in touch with the Parliament of World Religions. Before the Fall, the Parliament was a simple networking group that organized a global conference every few years to promote interfaith dialog and understanding. After the Fall, a handful of surviving members revived the Parliament and turned it into a global effort to protect sacred sites and support faith-based communities of survivors. With the help of the folks at Google, they were able to contact hundreds of survivors around the world and organize several unique volunteer efforts.

  As a Wiccan priest, my first thoughts were with my fellow Pagans. But we were a small demographic even before the Fall, so the Parliament had no relief efforts in mind for Midwest Pagans. I was, however, happy to hear that some Pagans had gathered at Diana's Grove in southeast Missouri and Lothlorien Nature Sanctuary in southern Indiana. Bridget and I traveled to both of these communities and spent a few days sharing news and fellowship.

  While we were making our way toward North Jackson, the Parliament asked us to join a rescue effort in Chicago. I have surviving family in the area, so we were already planning on stopping there anyway.

  As you probably know by now, the Fall turned major cities into major disaster areas. Chicago is no exception. Travel through Chicago is possible, though, and we even encountered a few patrols of a security force that seems to be a mix of remnants of city police, National Guard, and volunteers. But there is no city government, obviously, and the city and suburbs are a hazardous mix of ad hoc survivor zones and vast abandoned zombie-infested ruins.

  Our mission while in Chicago was to help liberate Holy Name Cathedral. A group of heavily armed out-of-towners had driven out the Catholic community who were using it as a distribution center for humanitarian aid. The community had a lot of local support, but not a lot of weapons or ammo, so they sent out the call for help.

  In retrospect, I suppose it's ironic on some level for a Wiccan Priest and Priestess to help a bunch of Catholics get their church back. But that's exactly what Bridget and I volunteered to do. And so, in the dead of winter, a Mormon ex-Marine lead a force composed of about fifty Catholics, over a dozen Protestants, four Jews, one Hindu, and two Pagans to liberate Holy Name Cathedral. We had them outnumbered and outgunned, so we took the church quickly and easily, with only one casualty on our side. And since the Catholics still oppose the death penalty, the five surviving invaders are in custody and will probably end up being sentenced to a life of hard labor.

  Even though that battle was an easy victory, our whole experience of Chicago was depressing and exhausting. The Chicagoland area used to be filled with millions of people, and now there are only a few thousand survivors, most of whom are starving or fighting or both. I'm still in touch with the Parliament, but Bridget and I have decided to settle down here at the Compound again, especially since her pregnant belly is getting big now and she shouldn't be on combat duty! She's a wise woman, and it didn't take much convincing to get her to switch to light kitchen and first aid duties.

  Well, that's more than enough news for one post. I may not post again for a while since there's still so much to do her
e at the Compound. I'll also be hovering around Bridget more and more throughout her third trimester. Thank you Josh for keeping this wonderful resource going, and good luck to all of the survivors out there who are reading this. Together, we can regroup, rebuild, and maybe even live to see the day when the last zombie is finally dead.

  Monday, March 14, 2011

  Arrows and Numbers

  Posted by Josh Guess

  It was nice catching up with Treesong yesterday, wasn't it?

  I'm back now, and our trip was well worth the fuel we used. We stayed gone all of yesterday as well, because the cache we found was quite a lot richer than we thought. It was at an old country store, the kind that small towns still have. The kind that sell bulk goods, in this case a lot of it produced by the local Amish communities.

  Getting inside was a little tricky. Like most survivors, we've become very good at drawing crowds of zombies away from where we want to be. With the recent discovery of the affect of ammonia on the zombie population, that task got a lot easier. Even more so since someone had the bright idea to rig up a canister of the stuff with some pressurized air to make a little aerosol bomb. One of those cleared out the whole parking lot and lot the store sat on. All we had to do was wait for the wind to shift in the right direction.

  Of course, we don't have a lot of it to use. Most of what we brought with us from North Jackson has been used up, and it wasn't a lot. We can make more from urine, but we get a relatively small return on the volume needed.

  So, we got in to the store, and it was ideal. Someone had used it as a dump for a lot of supplies, then locked it up tight. I'm not really surprised that no one has raided it yet, given how deep in the country it is and the fact that it's hidden by a lot of trees. We were very, very lucky to get to it before someone else did.

  Inside we found a fair amount of dry goods; grain and rice, mostly, enough to give us a little breathing room back at the compound. The larger part of what was stored there were items that will be very, very useful--bows and arrows. I guess someone was thinking about using the store as a base and decided to stock up on whatever they could find. It's a godsend, really, because the few people we have that can make a decent bow and good arrows are overworked and can barely keep up with our need for them. The ones in the store were mostly compound bows with aluminum arrows, which will be a nice addition to the ones we already have.

  This means we can send hunting parties out in a larger area without jeopardizing the safety of the people at the compound by losing too many vital weapons needed to man the walls. That's a very good thing, since the hunting closes to the compound is scarce. I think that's a combination of the constant swarms of zombies that seem willing to attack animals now, and the fact that we hunt almost daily. Being able to cover a larger area is going to do wonders for our supplies of fresh meat to eat and make jerky with.

  It looks like our immediate concerns over food have been eased somewhat. We're still going to be running on short rations when possible, but no one will be starving by the time we've got veggies to harvest.

  Over the weekend, my brother started training a few new people in how to do the job he and I share at present. Like any skill, coordinating resources and planning projects isn't for everyone--Jess is running into this problem with teaching more people how to make chain mail and some of her other skills. Some folks just don't have the knack for it. Fortunately the people Dave brought in actively want to do the work I do, so they are really trying to learn all the aspects of the job. We're not getting a lot of time in with them just yet, since we're still running short on people to fill all the spots we need to get work done. The three trainees came on their own free time to learn--and that says a lot for them.

  I'm worried that we're going to have a rough time with the zombie population around here before very long. Things have been quiet here lately--at least, no big attacks--but I have to think that at least part of that is because so many of them have been slowed by the cold, which still hits us in fits and bursts. I'm not all that concerned about the compound itself, really, but more for the loads of people going back and forth between here and the farms, as well as the scouts. My experience at the rest area up north with that damn smiling zombie taught me a hard lesson--smarties will watch you, learn from you, and even (god help us) anticipate you. I'm certain that he was waiting under our car because he watched me staring at it, trying to figure out a way to get to it. He saw my desire to make it to the SUV and figured out that his best chance to get me would be to hide there.

  That's not just intelligence, it's actually clever. Clever zombies scare me, because a clever zombie will watch our activities, see the pattern in how we move people, and strike when the opportunity presents itself. I've seen the smarties in action before. I won't underestimate them.

  Still, I'm a living person with full possession of his faculties. I'm also smart and clever myself, so I think I can bend my efforts toward outfoxing a bunch of (relatively) smart dead people. I can anticipate them, too. My real worry is that they'll wait for some break in our routine as we ferry people back and forth, a broken axle or something, and then hit the group in force. At that point, there isn't a lot you can do. Though, I do have a few ideas...

  Mom always used to tell me to work on one problem at a time. I wish I could do that, but there are just too many of them. Our trainees might be able to help out a bit, though, which is nice. Problem solving is a huge part of this job, and if it isn't a skill they have, it might not be the right choice for them.

  Jeez, you know what? Tomorrow I'm gonna try to post something a little different. It's been so humdrum on here lately due to the hard time all of us have had. I haven't had much of a chance to write anything really interesting, or really had time to put thought toward things like I have before. Maybe tomorrow I can give you a different perspective. I like writing posts on here that use our daily lives to illustrate something important about us and how this last terrible year has changed us. I hate being so hungry, worn out, and tired that I can't do more than just relay the events that have transpired without giving you something deeper. Stupid zombies. Stupid soldiers. You've taken my friends, family, freedom, and home.

  Don't take my writing, too...

  Tuesday, March 15, 2011

  Man On A Mission

  Posted by Josh Guess

  You remember when I met Mason, I said he was scary? Yeah, he still is.

  He vanished on us yesterday just after I posted. It's not like we normally would have missed one person if they decided to take a stroll around the compound, but Mason didn't show up for the class he was supposed to be teaching--he's running small groups of people through advanced self defense and survival in their free time. When we sent some people out looking for him after it became clear he wasn't going to show up, one of my trainees informed me that he'd been talking to Mason about the Richmond soldiers and the base they came from.

  In Mason's room, a note was found. It explained that he was concerned about the base in Richmond, that there might be soldiers left there that might come after us again. I asked Will about that, but he told me what we've been fairly sure of for a while--there aren't any of them left there. That's not to say we haven't been concerned that others might go to the depot there and try to stock up for an assault against us, but Will is sure that no more than a few of his former brethren could still be alive.

  Mason came back this morning, and he told us the whole story.

  There was a small group of men camped out in the abandoned base, and Mason watched them for almost two hours as they picked there way across it. He watched as they tried to access the secure bunkers where some of the more dangerous stuff is locked up--chemical warheads and the like. He saw them round up the last of the ammo for the standard issue weapons. We knew there wasn't much of that left given how little the soldiers brought with them when they came here.

  A dozen men, and Mason avoided being seen by all of them. One person he made sure saw him was the woman they hel
d captive.

  It's a sad truth that when those survivors who've gone bad become marauders, women are usually their first targets. The fetters of law and order drop away from such men, and they tend to take what they want. We've got people here and there in the compound who have been freed from exactly that type of slavery. None of us have any pity for those kinds of men when justice finally catches up with them.

  Mason spent the better part of yesterday killing those worthless excuses for human beings. He gave me all the horrid details, and I won't paint a picture, mostly because I just don't have that many words for the color red. It was brutal and awful, and completely deserved. That's all I'll say about it.

  The last man alive had to suffer under Mason's knife for a few minutes as he was asked various questions about the intentions of his group. Turns out that they followed the blog intermittently when they could, and had planned on trying to gather a large enough force to attack us. Not to try and take over, but to raid our land and try to take what they wanted, from food to females.

  Mason tells me that it was lucky the group was so small, and that they decided to spread out and take individual rooms at the base. With them split up, it was relatively easy for someone with the intense military training and experience Mason has to sneak up on each of them one by one and kill them quietly. From his description, he's pretty efficient at it. Navy Seals are just badass, I guess.