Living With the Dead: The Wild Country

by Joshua Guess

  I don't know how skillfully it was built, though I'd wager a good number of the folks here have had experience with masonry, but the thing keeps zombies out, that's certain. It's fifteen feet tall, and they're constantly expanding it. Once an outer section is completed, the inner section is dismantled and the stones reused.

  It's a decent sized community--about a hundred. Hunting and planting are enough to feed the whole place. They've also got communications, which leads me to my next bit of news...

  The captives are making a good show of fighting the marauders. The folks we left behind up north have chased a band of marauders all the way to a community New Haven has regular contact with. Drove them until the gas ran out, and when the marauders took a stand, the captives met them full-on. I haven't heard any casualty numbers yet, but I'm hoping the captives didn't suffer too many losses. I'm shocked they managed to get a group of the marauders peeled off from the main camp and chase them down. I'd have thought they'd need more time to regain their strength and come up with a game plan. I guess there's no accounting for the animal rage of a violated human being, huh?

  None of us wanted to leave them behind. I'm worried. I don't go ten minutes without imagining what would happen if the marauders captured them again. Sometimes it's too much.

  At any rate, we're going to be here for several days as we hammer out some details of the trade system. The larger problem we're running into is that there are few basic commodities people need, but the ones we have are important. Water and shelter aren't things we can really trade, but food is. Food is a huge concern for many with winter approaching. The folks that have stockpiles are mostly willing to trade, but every group of survivors we talk to has a group of dedicated hunters who are doing nothing but bringing in food day after day. It's sort of amazing the lengths people are going to. Some are even hoarding edible tree bark.

  Hunting is going to be the main way fresh food is come by during the winter months. While survivors all over the country (and the world) have done a pretty thorough job of population control in their local areas, the wider countrysides are virtually untouched. Zombies can't make a dent in animal populations that are breeding with no human intervention, and the land around us provides all the edible plants, insects, and small animals we could wish for.

  It's unappetizing, but no one should starve this year. No creature great or small is going to be off limits. Those of us capable of stocking up on food will trade freely with those who can't. And all the while we'll be moving things we don't necessarily need, like fabrics and manufactured goods, to people who trade for them.

  Because the next step after survival is building. For that, we have to get what we want. What we can use to accomplish goals.

  I've clearly been awake way too long. I'm starting to rant about the economics of the end of the world. I'm gonna go take a nap.

  Friday, September 30, 2011

  Lay of the Land

  Posted by Josh Guess

  After a thrilling day working out numbers and logistics for the transfer of a large amount of homemade medicines from New Haven to the Castle, I'm ready to take a break. Lucky for me, Steve is taking the reins in negotiating today. We're working a complex trade between multiple groups of survivors, since the stone so readily available here is too heavy to move far. Instead, it's going to be sent to a little town about fifty miles from here called Carlyle, who will trade with yet another group.

  Yes, it's complicated and gives me headaches. I'm almost glad I haven't heard any news about the status of the captives in their desperate fight against the marauders. I don't know if my poor brain could handle it.

  Carlyle has my attention today. I'm told it's a very prosperous and sprawling community, much larger in area than any I've heard of since The Fall. It's in a quasi-rural area, hilly and difficult to traverse on foot, so less zombies make it there than most places as well. It's also large in the sense of population, more than five hundred people from what I understand.

  I'm interesting in seeing it myself. I haven't got much more than the above to go on, as the people of Carlyle are very determined to keep their perimeter secure. Not many people are allowed in. I feel extraordinarily lucky that our group has been invited with open arms, provided I don't do something stupid like accidentally give away its location. I promise to keep all of that delightfully vague.

  The Castle is a neat place, and I've learned in the last day that part of what makes it a functional community is due to the residents here working out a trade system long before the rest of us did. This is a densely populated area of the country as survivors go: the Castle, Carlyle to the south, three other medium-large groups within sixty miles, and the town in which the Castle rests has a smattering of small groups that have copied the defenses here for their own homes.

  It's a more exciting area than any of us suspected, and the dynamic between the various groups is fascinating. At least in this town, people from the smaller groups are welcome at the Castle and vice versa. There is even a kind of 'emergency stash' that the groups in the area all contribute to, a hoard of food and supplies for hard times down the road. It's vibrant and interesting here. I'm enjoying it.

  -----

  I just got an email about the fight between the captives. This is something I didn't expect. The marauders chased down by the captives weren't a part of the larger group that the captives managed to isolate. They were all that was left of the larger group we left them to face. Apparently the tactics Mason was showing them, picking off easy targets over time, killing them in ones and twos, wasn't their thing.

  The captives started a goddamn forest fire.

  Developing...

  Saturday, October 1, 2011

  Wildfire

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The fire started by the captives is still raging. It has consumed a huge portion of the area the marauders were using as a gathering place. I've gotten a full report from the group the captives have taken refuge with.

  The survivors of that group have imprisoned them for endangering the entire area. I hate thinking those people, who've suffered so much, are back under lock and key. But if their desire for revenge drove them to such dangerous lengths, I can't see how they can be allowed to roam free. So far the fire hasn't spread to the nearby community of survivors thanks to strong winds blowing in helpful directions. The locals are doing what they can to build firebreaks. It's going to have to be enough.

  Every time I think I've got a handle on this insane fucking world we live in, something comes along and smacks us in the face. Zombies have spread like a plague across the earth? Check. Oh, then they started evolving in strange ways, forcing us to change tactics to match them. It's almost funny that the undead were the root cause of the destruction of human society, yet it's the dangerously unpredictable reactions of living people that threaten what we've managed to rebuild.

  I feel partially responsible, and so does my team. We were the ones who freed the captives, stayed with them for such a short time and encouraged them to fight. On the one hand I find it hard to blame them for changing their own tactics when they realized the methods of fighting the marauders they were using wouldn't be enough.

  On the other hand, they killed what I have been told was around fifty to sixty people just like them. Captives we hadn't been able to get to and free. Chained and shackled in trailers and shacks, unable even to run as the flames sucked the oxygen right out of their lungs before scorching every inch of them. The marauders didn't give their captured victims a second thought as they ran from the flames. What disturbs me is the fact that the freed captives who set the fires didn't either.

  The whole situation begs the larger question: how much consideration should we give to our interactions with people now? Hindsight is a tricky bitch, because she tells me now that maybe giving those men and women their freedom was the wrong thing to do. Yet at the time, it was the only right option.

  I'm not usually one to get overly worked up about the consequences of ot
her people's actions. If these had been healthy, undamaged human beings I would just be angry at them. They aren't. They're hurt and frightened, furious beyond comprehension, and they've got every right to be.

  My mistake, our mistake, might have been in not realizing how damaged they are. The captives have suffered through things that no living creature should ever know. We freed them like heroes out of some story, and we gave them a small portion of our time before pushing them in the direction of their enemies with a casual 'Go get 'em!'. We had tunnel vision about them. All we saw was the pain, and we missed what the pain caused.

  Some men are monsters waiting to happen. All it takes is the right context, the proper circumstances, for the shell to crack and fall away. That's what marauders are.

  The captives were made into monsters. They suffered, were broken, and when the healing began all the pieces fit together wrong. Bent on revenge with no consideration for the ramifications of their actions. No one to tell them no, no one to urge caution and restraint on them. Least of all me and mine. The marauders shattered them, but in the final analysis the facts can't be ignored.

  My people and I are the ones who set them in motion. We're the ones who put their feet on the path and stoked the embers of their rage into flames. We urged them forward with justice in mind.

  That makes us murderers every bit as much as they.

  Sunday, October 2, 2011

  Americana

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I'm not dealing with the events of the last few days very well. I'm worried about the captives (now captives again) and still mourning their actions for the lives they cost. I'm still feeling guilty and responsible. I say this because this morning, right now, I am in Carlyle, the secretive community in close quarters to the Castle. And being here, seeing what the people of Carlyle have accomplished, makes it damn hard to feel down. If my tone seems changed, it's due to the inevitable reaction any person has on a gloomy day when rays of sunlight peek through the clouds.

  The name Carlyle was adopted by the residents at random. They literally drew it out of a hat. Instead of keeping the same name, the people here decided that, for safety, a new one would be chosen. They're very particular about their security, and now it's obvious why.

  This town has no walls. And it is a town. It's really more of a village, but the streets are clean, the houses in good repair, and it has an air of normality that I hadn't realized I yearned for until I took a tour of the place.

  Sure, there are signs here and there that Carlyle has experienced fallout from the zombie plague. There are well-made outhouses behind most buildings, rain catchers that drain into cisterns all over the place. Not many vehicles to be found, though every one I did see was functional and clean. Every square foot of land that wasn't designed for travel is farmed. The houses all have foodstuffs growing inside them as well, some homes modified in ways to make use of their exteriors to grow food.

  Those are the visual clues that this place has changed to meet the needs of the times. The really strange and nostalgic part is how bizarrely normal life here is. Kids play in the streets. People amble down sidewalks. I saw a couple sitting together on a bench eating popcorn as the unseasonably cold wind tried to knife through the large coat they snuggled under. They were giggling at some unknown and doubtless inside joke. It made me miss Jess terribly.

  The terrain around these parts coupled with the general lack of undead in the area means they folks here never had to build a wall. We're in a rural area, one that's pretty far away from major highways. Not many people knew this whole region was here even before The Fall, now it's almost a complete unknown.

  For all the people in the various groups around Carlyle that could let something slip about the region's population and existence, no one has. Overall it's a pretty smooth setup, and this little hamlet is the heart of it all. There's a massive field adjacent to the south end of the town that is many times the area of the town itself. That field is the nexus of how the local economy functions. It's the governing factor that oils interactions between the many nearby groups.

  In it, a variety of animals live and die. Rabbit, deer, even duck. Mostly sheep. It's a really, really big pen. Wire fence seven feet high and three layers thick contains an assortment of livestock that could feed everyone here for a year if all the animals were slaughtered at once. I can't imagine the amount of effort it took to carefully remove every foot of fence they could find and relocate it here. The process took months, I'm told. Then having the patience to capture enough animals and sitting back to let them breed, even during the hungry times most of us went through during the winter? Amazing.

  To be frank, I thought Carlyle would be full of standoffish people with little love for outsiders. I imagined a place hostile to new things, mainly because of the almost neurotic emphasis our hosts have for security and secrecy. Being here, seeing what conditions they live in every day, I totally get it. If this were my home, I'd stab the first person to threaten it.

  Not one wall anywhere, and yet I don't see caches of weapons in strategic locations. New Haven is pocked with them. Carlyle isn't defenseless, of course--just outside the window of town hall, where I sit to type this, there's a group of ten young people, men and women, doing drills with spears. A few minutes ago it was knife practice. They're a part of the all-volunteer defense force. They look very comfortable and practiced with those weapons. Some of those kids have scars.

  They've fought enemies here. Living men and the hungry undead alike. They've taken many of the same steps other groups have used for survival, and have made them work. It's part of a pattern I'm finally starting to see. Like every group of human beings, survivors grade themselves on a bell curve of how well they're doing. My own people are probably about three quarters the way over. Carlyle is almost in the right corner.

  My naturally cynical nature combined with a lot of empirical data about how badly things can go is urging me to find some deep flaw here. Maybe the land isn't quite as forgiving as I've heard, and zombies could pour down from the hills at any moment. Or perhaps they kill anyone who reaches a certain age a la Logan's Run.

  I kid, of course. I've seen a few elderly people around, some of my first since The Fall pretty much guaranteed death for anyone incapable of defending themselves. I want to believe it's as wonderful here as it appears to be. I just don't know if I can take that leap of faith.

  I will say this much: though the houses are fairly new, and the whole place decidedly modern, Carlyle feels to me like the fifties. Or rather what movies and TV showed the fifties to be, since I was born in 1982. It feels safe in new (old) ways. It feels wholesome and pure. It feels like a small slice of Americana, something I haven't encountered. It feels like the world as it was, all thoughts of the world as it really is banished.

  Home. That's the closest I can get to nailing the sensation down.

  Tuesday, October 4, 2011

  Wild Justice

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Every one of the people we freed from the marauders, all the ones that stayed and fought them at least, have been executed. I'm told their deaths were as humane as possible. It's cold comfort.

  The fire they started made its way to the group of survivors that held them prisoner. Thankfully the weather in that area turned, storms drenching the blaze before it could reach their home. That's the only way the fire could have done more damage to them, if it had consumed the buildings they live in. As it is, the future of the group is in the air.

  The fire ravaged the entire area, killing game and destroying the late crops they'd been cultivating. The captives were being held until the final results of the forest fire they started could be fully appreciated. What started as a mission of justice against the worst kind of men ended with the destruction of livelihood for an entire group of peaceful survivors. I'm doing what I can to arrange food for them this winter to make up for this entire awful mess, but it may not be enough.

  I've called on the goodwill of other surv
ivors often. I've built a lot of personal credit with other groups, but those chips are running low. I've had emails from a lot of people telling me that I'm quickly becoming seen as a dangerous person to know. I've heard a lot of reasons. I made rash decisions. I act before I think. I involve myself in problems that aren't my own. I don't know how to keep my mouth shut.

  At first, as I struggled to find trades to help those poor, burned-out people, I was angry. Every call and message was harder than the last. Even as I talked to people, they began to contact each other to spread the word that I was asking for help. One of the few truly stalwart group of friends I have, the leadership in North Jackson, told me about it. The whole situation boils down to me causing chaos. People are tired of going out on a limb to clean up after me.

  The anger turned to depression. They're right. I've always seen myself as a good guy, but frankly everyone does that. No one is the villain in the story of their own lives. I've got a powerful sense of right and wrong, and the good I've done in saving others from the plague of zombies in no way makes up for every mistake I've made since.