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

by Joshua Guess

  We burned the bodies to keep the smell of blood from attracting too many zombies. We took the prisoners in, fed them, and are giving them time and space to deal with the new reality that no, they aren't going to eventually be dinner. For humans or zombies.

  They asked what the name of this place was, and I was there as one of the soldiers told them, "New Haven". The look on their faces was a priceless thing, as if they had died and gone to heaven itself, it was so hard for them to believe they'd found a refuge. A safe place.

  Little David would be proud.

  Friday, August 12, 2011

  The Eyes

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We're being watched. This has happened a few times before. Sometimes marauders observe us for a while before either attacking or deciding we're too strong to risk an assault. Once in a while it's just a group of survivors looking to join up with us, who want to get an idea of how we function before committing.

  My first thought when I heard one of our snipers caught a glimpse from our southern tower was of our exiles. We haven't heard anything since that first email, but no one around here has forgotten. Out there someplace, they've found a stronghold full of weapons, food, clothes, and other things. They're outfitted to fight.

  We didn't send anyone out to try and catch the person watching us. There's no point in risking the lives of New Haven's citizens to pursue someone that probably knows the area as well as we do. Some of the soldiers from North Jackson offered to go, but they've already done enough. The council doesn't want any of them away from the walls. If we're attacked, we'll take any help the NJ soldiers offer. Until and unless that happens, we'll sit tight.

  The only real concern we have is for supply runs. The crews from NJ have been resupplied twice by buses ferried between here and there. Another one is due tomorrow, and the concern right now is that someone out there waiting might see it as too good a target to pass up. That's totally ignoring the first round of trading we're about to do, which will involve us getting a massive shipment of food and sending out barrels of homemade antibiotic ointments and other supplies in return.

  Things are tense, but not overwhelming. Trade is going to be vital, and we've got to make sure everyone is safe. Steps are being taken.

  It's never comfortable knowing there are strange eyes watching. Privacy aside, it makes people uncomfortable because the innocence of observation is now gone. Every time we catch people watching New Haven, it's because they're measuring us. Judging something about this place. Most of the time, they're enemies.

  Maybe a larger part of why it's so unnerving is because zombies always watch. It's one of the creepier aspects of living in a world plagued by the living dead, and one we don't talk about often. It's bad enough to see the dumb ones out there beyond the wall, staring with almost no comprehension at our walls. They watch our sentries move back and forth. They stare at the guards on post. They see with hungry eyes.

  Worse are the smarties. It's one thing to see a mindless, hungry zombie gazing at you with one thing in mind. That's straightforward. Easy to predict and deal with. Smarties, though...you never know what they're planning. And they're scarily vicious. Regular zombies will kill you, sure. Smarties will kill you slowly, painfully. Keep you alive longer. I guess it improves our taste.

  Okay, well that was dark, wasn't it? I'm gonna go enjoy the amazing weather outside. One good thing about an epic struggle for survival is how much more you appreciate the little things.

  Saturday, August 13, 2011

  Seventeen Wheels

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The supplies from North Jackson got here about an hour ago. The delivery was successful, but not without incident. Since I'm about to head out with a group, I'll have to keep it short and simple.

  One of the truck's tires was shot out on its way in. We don't have any doubt at this point that it's our exiles, mainly because the truck took an alternate route through a bunch of back roads and rarely-used bypasses. No one outside New Haven and North Jackson knows it, except the exiles.

  Watching us is one thing, but shooting at an ally's vehicle (however ineptly) is another. We won't stand for that. So today, I go hunting with a group. If we run across game, all the better, but our main goal walks around on two legs.

  The exiles should have stayed away. They better hope zombies get them before we do.

  Monday, August 15, 2011

  Ghosts

  Posted by Josh Guess

  One thing about hunting people that used to live and work beside you: those fuckers are hard to find.

  We spent hours looking, but they stayed ahead of us the entire time. I don't know what their goal is, honestly, because I can't honestly believe our exiles expect to be able to force their way into New Haven. To take this place from us, they'd have to kill every citizen as well as all the people from North Jackson that are still here helping out.

  I guess the silver lining to the whole expedition was not being shot at. I remember a time in my life where it would have seemed out of place to consider a good day one where bullets weren't fired.

  We're certain the exiles are still out there, but we have no idea where. They're familiar with our search patterns and habits, which is endlessly frustrating. Bah.

  They haven't made any other strikes against us, but no one here thinks the shot they took at the supply truck was a one-off attack, either. We're making preparations to deal with an assault, though I can't imagine them being stupid enough to try a frontal assault on our walls. If there's any news on this, I'll let you know. On to other things.

  The second wall is coming along well, only slowed down by the need to manage our water supplies. Fortunately it rained like hell yesterday, and we had a lined trench ready to catch it.

  Fuck. I just heard gunshots. A lot of them.

  Tuesday, August 16, 2011

  Decoy Act

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I hate it when smart zombies (smarties) test our defenses. I've mentioned that recently. But you know, I hate it when live humans do it even more.

  Our construction crew and the visiting soldiers giving us protection were working on the north end of the wall yesterday, right by the main gate. The gunshots I heard came from the south, which conveniently wasn't surrounded by a group of well-trained and heavily armed and armored soldiers.

  Our sentries and guards caught a glimpse of the shooters as they fled. Apparently their entire purpose was to gauge our reaction to shots fired, then run. Again, I have to wonder if they're seriously gonna take a shot at New Haven, or if they're just playing with us in some childish revenge game because we kicked their asses to the curb.

  Either way, we're on the alert.

  I've been canvassing people as much as I'm able about the possibility of facing our own exiles in a fight. So far the response has been reassuring: most people are so pissed they've come back that they don't seem at all upset over maybe having to kill old friends.

  If it were up to me, I'd be spending my days right now hunting down wherever they're staying. I'd love nothing more than to definitively end the threat on our terms. I won't, because we already went looking for them the other day with zero success. Plus, they'd expect that. The exiles know how we work, and it would probably be impossible to catch them off guard.

  A piece of good news this morning, though: a medium-sized group of survivors from Pennsylvania are sending a convoy this way with some food and other supplies, as well as a carload of sick and injured people that need medical care. The food is coming in a refrigerated truck, so the mixture of meat and veggies will stay fresh on the trip. It's the other supplies I'm excited about, though. Food is wonderful, but our hunting goes well, and our gardens are producing better than expected. Not to mention the other caravans we're expecting soon...

  The other supplies are for a project I've been pondering for a long while now, but haven't had the time or materials to follow through on. The folks from Penn. have access to what I need, which came out during m
y talk with them. It's going to work out well, I think. I'll give details tomorrow.

  Today, I have to go out and get working on prepping the area I'll be using for my project. It's a mystery! Muahahahaha!

  Wednesday, August 17, 2011

  Cooldown

  Posted by Josh Guess

  It seems almost impossible, but for once Kentucky seems to be having a Fall season. Usually it's stupid hot day and night up until it starts dropping below freezing. The last few days have seen the mercury drop into the mid fifties after dark, and the highs during the day have become more manageable with the huge drop in humidity.

  Which is a strange sort of segue into the small project I'm going to be working on, assuming our exiles don't manage to kill me and the zombies don't eat me. It's good to know those options are out there if I ever get tired of this whole 'life' thing.

  The project itself isn't a huge deal, but it will be labor intensive. Fortunately I won't have a lot of work to do on the design front, because there's already a century of that laying around to work with.

  Still, building a functional refrigerator that doesn't use electricity won't be easy.

  It's not that the pieces and parts of it are that hard. Many people have designed and built them over the years. It's only that what I'm looking to build will have to be large to meet the needs of the community, and there will be a hundred details and problems to work out. Patrick and Becky are with me on this, so I won't have to deal with them alone, but it's still daunting.

  Even while worrying that the zombies will suddenly lost their fear of New Haven and return in numbers, and while living under the fear that the exiles roving around town have something terrible in store for us, I feel excited. It's been a strange few months, but I finally think I'm hitting my stride again.

  First I felt so overwhelmed by my job, coordinating the entire community, that I was given many people to help me do it. Then the homesteaders rose up as a faction and the huge zombie swarm attacked, and even after we exiled the homesteaders and managed survival I felt rudderless. Directionless.

  The council has spread the pieces and parts of my old job around to all those I trained. I still do some of it, but I have so much more free time now. I needed a project to grab hold of, if for no other reason than to give me focus.

  This whole refrigeration project is just the first step on what I'd like to do. Before The Fall, I was always a politics and policy nerd, with a focus on infrastructure. I always found it fascinating how the basic units of society like roads and the electrical grid all fit together to make commerce and just everyday life possible. I want to explore the possibilities of taking the hodgepodge systems we have here in New Haven and improving them. Make them more rugged and efficient. Instead of having electricity sometimes, all the time. Large storage capacity for it, too...

  It's a lot to think about, but I've had a long time to ponder. It may take years, but the recent troubles have proved something important to me.

  We saw this place almost razed to the ground by the zombie swarm. As a community we almost went extinct, but the compassion of good friends kept us from dying out. We hit rock bottom, and have begun recreating ourselves. No more half-assing it. If we're to have power, it will be accessible to all. If we're going to store food, it won't just be by canning and curing it.

  No more half-measures. Now is the time to set in motion how New Haven will grow and change from here on out. Our mistake before was accepting mere survival as a minimum level of existence. Now we have to aim higher. It's time to rebuild, but also to improve.

  In spirit, the compound has become a haven. We want to make New Haven one in reality. We will.

  Thursday, August 18, 2011

  The Human Question

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I can't help but notice the remarkable rebound we've been able to make in the last few weeks. It's strange to think we've come from the edge of destruction to a state of growth and strengthening. What's most surprising is that I'm surprised.

  The Fall gave us all the worst possible conditions to survive in. Indeed, the initial spread of the zombie plague killed most people and left behind a struggling and devastated population. We persevered, even prospered, in the wake of the near-extinction of the human race.

  Once the zombies had killed out most of humanity, what was left were people who for one reason or another had managed the impossible--survival. I ask myself every day if Darwin had a hand in this: that is to say, was it the strongest of us who survived, or the smartest? Do each of us have qualities that set us above those who perished in the terrible onslaught of the living dead? Or was it luck, plain and simple? Could that have been the major factor, just being in the right place at the right time?

  I don't know. Honestly, I don't think I want to. We're here, and we have suffered, and it's enough for most of us to enjoy the new energy flowing through New Haven. I used to read that people who've had brushes with death would find a new interest and zest for life. Each of us had been there before, but clearly the same works on a larger scale. Our community came as close to annihilation as it ever has, and we made it through. Damaged and starving, but we did it.

  Then this miraculous thing happened where people began to look at the long term in ways we've never really done before. Not just the basics of food, water, shelter. No, some of our number, spearheaded by Gabrielle and her work on making new medicines and items for wound treatment, have looked toward what we'll need to truly rebuild.

  I haven't had the energy of late to go off on one of my philosophical tangents, but today is a good day. I have this ever-changing view of people that occasionally needs an outlet, or my brain will explode, and nobody wants that.

  See, the strongest and smartest animals out there right now have managed to avoid the zombies that grow more and more hungry as time goes by. Not only that, but they've learned to avoid us. They are the best of their various breeds, no doubt about it. Evolution is getting a hard test right now, and from what we can see, many species are passing, even as they suffer tremendous losses.

  I think it says something amazing about my own species that any of us managed to live. The more I ponder, the more I believe it's not a matter of being strong or smart that did it. I think the baseline human, being self-aware and capable of rational thought, has what it takes to overcome most odds.

  Frankly, I think we got lucky the first time. The Fall should have been the curtain call for our species. With a bang and a whimper, we should have been consumed by ourselves, or at least the dead versions of ourselves, like an Ouroboros devouring its own tail. If the zombie plague is a thing made by us, as many believe, then The Fall should have been our suicide as a species.

  I say that not because I think humanity deserved such a fate, but by looking at the sheer numbers. There were almost seven billion people alive at the time of the outbreak. By our best estimates, the plague and the violence that followed left only one in a hundred alive. Think about that. Surrounded by such overwhelming odds, how in the world did we manage survival longer than a few days? It seems crazily impossible.

  So yeah, I think our initial survival borders on the miraculous. But since then, I chalk it up to good old human nature. We want to live. We have a tremendous capacity for ingenuity, creative thinking, and learning from our mistakes. We've taken the horrible shit we've been through and turned it over in our minds, extracting all the data we can from our experiences and turning it into ideas for better survival. We've become a society of experts on the subject by virtue of necessity.

  All that being said, I begin to see why we've begun such an upswing in our fortunes. With the help of friends and allies, we went from the worst conditions possible to better ones in small but fast improving increments. More than a dash of luck with out hunting helped out a lot there, I won't lie, but deciding on trading with others and innovating in the creation of new products has been a huge boost as well.

  Hmm. We've come so far, so fast, by doing what people have a
lways done: pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps and putting the work in. It's so simple, yet so amazing.

  People. Infinitely complex and always surprising.

  Friday, August 19, 2011

  A Moment in Time

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Have you ever felt like the world was holding its breath? Today's like that for me. Nothing is going on at present. No attacks by the exiles. Not even any sightings.

  Not that we don't have some excitement to look forward to. There are people headed here for trade from several places, and we're setting up a section of the residential area of New Haven for them. Sort of a bazaar using the gathering area where our tiny theater resides. There are many interesting items coming that will surely prove useful for us over the long term. I'm jazzed to explore the possibilities.