by Joshua Guess
Let this serve as a warning to you. Tell everyone you know. The game has changed.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Epicenter
Posted by Josh Guess
Black Mesa is in the middle of a very dangerous wave of zombie activity. Though the kids and handful of adults that live here are pretty secure on their platform of rock and dirt, and the narrow strip of land that connects it to the field is easily defended, I don't think this a survivable location. Not for much longer.
They've done well with hunting and scavenging, even farming. The supplies the army left here are still holding out thanks to the forethought the people here have had to supplement them with other food. That said, the local zombies are more dangerous than any I've ever seen. In fact, my team and I have spent the last day doing nothing but working in the field in an attempt to learn as much about them as possible. What we've found is pretty grim.
Whatever mutation is allowing the local undead to eat their own is apparently spreading among them and is universal. I've had a long talk with New Haven this morning. Evans thinks the plague organism must put out spores or something similar for the changes to spread so rapidly. Every single local we saw eating was doing it at the expense of one of their own.
It didn't even dawn on me until this morning that the zombies I saw yesterday were working together to kill their fellow undead. Add that to the list. We saw smarties out there yesterday. We saw some of the ultra-tough zombies (who I refuse to call 'toughies'. One stupid name for a type of zombies is enough for me) outside as well, and one that we think might have all of those attributes.
The last one is the one that really worries us. We're not a hundred percent sure it's one of the smart zombies, but it for sure has the ashy, thickened skin of a tough one. It definitely works in a group, and can eat other zombies. It's fast and strong, and when it saw us, it did something I've never seen undead do before.
It ran away. The damn thing saw how well armed and armored my team was, gave us a calculating look, and took off. I tend to think it's a smarty for that reason alone, though the fact that his small group followed him rather than try to eat us helps.
That group was pretty fast, pretty coordinated. It worries me to death (maybe literally...) that the locals are right at the crossroads between evolutionary leaps. This place seems to be a busy intersection for undead from different areas. That means these attributes are likely to spread.
It also means the large number of them here are going to get smaller in number as others kill them off for food, but those others are going to be smarter, stronger, faster, and much harder to kill than anything we've faced. I don't like it at all. A zombie, even a smarty, that runs from a person strikes me as a very bad sign. I've got a feeling something is brewing here, what with the plateau acting as a large dinner plate, full of succulent people.
There's some bad mojo coming, I can feel it. Fortunately, I'm not the only one. The people of Black Mesa tell me attacks have gotten more frequent and harder to repel. The council at New Haven and every other person I've talked to about this place agrees that it's likely a large swarm is going to try to get to these kids. It's what zombies do, after all. And the ones here have every possible advantage except the high ground.
So, there are two options. Fight or run. We'll be spending the next day trying to figure out which will be the better option for the people here
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Leaving The Rock
Posted by Josh Guess
It's a hell of a thing to see people come together for a purpose. On a small scale, all survivor communities are examples of this. The last day, we've seen it on a large scale, and the willingness of people to go out of their way to help is pretty astounding.
I've got commitments from Sparta to provide fuel. Half a dozen communities within a reasonable distance have agreed to provide the manpower and vehicles for transport. No single community can absorb the sheer numbers of people from Black Mesa, so we're having to separate people into groups. I'm very proud to say my people at New Haven estimate that with the recent influx of trade goods and food, they can accommodate up to fifty Black Mesa residents.
It's a big undertaking, but the kids here and their small cadre of teachers are working through the details pretty quickly. I don't know if the other communities willing to take them in are going to do so permanently, but I've got promises to see them through the winter. That will give all of us time to work out something if needed.
Another piece of news that goes along with this: a group of marauders has offered to help. They claim they've never taken anyone captive, only killed when needed. I tend to believe them only because they openly admitted to stealing from others, hijacking caravans and the like. Their leader contacted me late yesterday, and we talked on the phone for a good long while. The name he gave me was Kincaid.
Kincaid has offered his help, and we'd be stupid to turn it down out of hand. I talked to my team, and Steve was the first to pipe up. He suggested that we put severe restrictions and security measures on Kincaid's group, so tight and restrictive that they'd have to be sincere to accept. I'm going to pose them to him this morning and see what he says.
His reasoning for wanting to help is sound and seems genuine. Kincaid told me he and his people were stunned by the news that a large group of kids was out here. He's tried to keep his crew from spiraling into something worse, closer to what other marauders are. I'm prepared to take a leap of faith. Partially because we need them. Partially because I want to believe there is hope for people like Kincaid and his crew.
That being said, we're not taking that leap blindly. Or without caution. We'll pose our demands and see what the response looks like. All there is to it.
We need every body and vehicle we can get. Since The Fall, I don't think anyone has tried to move so many people at one time. The local zombies are a greater threat than I think any of us can fully comprehend, and their numbers are slowly dwindling as the strong devour the weak. Observations lead me to believe they're planning something.
I really hoped there would never again be a point in my life where I was worried about zombies, re: dead human beings animated by an organism of unknown origin, actively using mental prowess to formulate a complex action. Now we're in that place again, much as New Haven was a few short months ago, where an unknown number of them could come down on us at any time, forcing us to fight.
Oh, and add to that the clearly spreading strains of mutation, making them stronger, tougher, smarter, and more cohesive as a unit.
Fun times, right? I wonder if this place has any whiskey...
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Unlikely Allies
Posted by Josh Guess
Well, I'll be damned.
Kincaid and his people accepted our terms wholly and without complaint. They're on the way. His group of marauders are going to be taking a large group of kids and two teachers all the way to New Haven. We made that one of the conditions, since New Haven's location is well known. I don't want to hand potential enemies the location of a group of survivors if I can help it.
Kincaid's bunch won't be going alone, of course. They'll be joined by a task force of our people heading this way even as I type this. There will also be some folks from Sparta and a few other places making that trip. Overall Kincaid's marauders will be outnumbered four to one if you include the people they're transporting. On top of that, his people won't have any guns, and only one in three will be allowed hand-held melee weapons. We aren't even letting them have bows and arrows.
Oh, and when Kincaid's group gets to New Haven, they're staying. It remains to be seen whether or not they'll be allowed to move about freely or given sentences for the crimes they've admitted to, but either way New Haven is going to have some interesting new residents aside from the kids we're sending there.
And we need to send them soon. Fleets of vehicles have been moving in and out over the last day taking kids to safe locations at nearby
communities. I feel a lot better about sending those young men and women to places I've been to live with people I've met. Time is a factor, however, and even if my team and I had to send them away with strangers, we'd do it.
The local zombies are already moving against the caravans leaving Black Mesa in groups of twelve to twenty. They're moving with purpose--fast, organized, and never attacking the same way twice. So far there haven't been any casualties, but we've only moved about forty people. Would be more, but we're trying to work all the logistics out while figuring ways to keep the zombies from doing any real damage.
Mason has been doing recon a few miles into the surrounding areas. He's the only person doing so, as he's not letting any of us join him. No matter how right that decision is, it never stops being irritating to be reminded he sees the rest of us as dead weight for things like this. Chalk it up to two decades of service, most of which were spent slipping into enemy territory undetected to gather intel.
He's a ghost. Comparatively, the rest of us are people with broken feet walking in very noisy armor. His recon trip yesterday wasn't enlightening as far as specifics go with the local zombies. He didn't see any of them drawing diagrams or anything, giving him some idea of what's in the works. In general terms, he thinks the local undead are building a strong force to assault the place. There's a lot of organization going on outside the limits of what we can see. Groups of three are systematically killing the weakest zombies, getting stronger. There's even a small copse of trees where, Mason swears, a small group of undead seem to be gathering the surviving trios for the purpose of deliberately spreading the mutations that are already so rampant here.
So, yeah. We think something just might be up. It's not a mystery. It's just going to make this especially dangerous. My people should be here in the next day. Kincaid and his early this evening. With luck we'll pull out before whatever is in the works can happen. Fingers crossed.
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Other Shoe
Posted by Josh Guess
We've been carefully evacuating the kids for two days now, only opening the way through long enough for a few vehicles at a time to cross onto the field. Tension has been ratcheting up the entire time, more so in the last several hours.
The local zombies, you see, have been watching us.
Not too close. Not near enough for us to waste the energy attacking them. They're arranged around Black Mesa, maybe a hundred of them, in a rough semicircle. None are within a hundred yards of the place. None of them have moved since they got here.
They're waiting for something. Word got back here about twenty minutes ago that the last caravan we sent out was attacked. Not unusual in itself, but this one had zombies drop into it from trees overhanging the road. Right into the back of a high-walled truck bed. Eleven kids, all of them sixteen years old, died. The four guards with them didn't make it either.
Three zombies did that. I'm told they displayed signs of the mutations all the locals have been passing to each other. Everyone here is upset, angry and hurt at the loss, but right now we can't afford to lose control. We have to focus on the job at hand, or it could all go off the rails. The absolute last thing we need is the place devolving into chaos.
The crew heading for New Haven is still here. That's a plus, anyway, as it will give us a good number of experienced fighters if the zombies outside are some kind of vanguard for a larger force. We're even letting Kincaid's crew have weapons.
Ah. Crap. I'm being told the zombies are moving toward us. No new ones have showed up yet, but it looks like they're going to attack. Thank god this rock is tall and overhangs almost all the way around. If they can climb trees, a sheer rock face might be doable.
I'm off to the gate. That's gonna be where they hit us. That's where we'll make a stand.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Tooth and Nail
Posted by Josh Guess
We lost more than fifty people in the assault yesterday. Survivors from New Haven, kids from Black Mesa, and members of three other communities. Kincaid lost three of his people as well.
We got tunnel vision, and it cost us. We underestimated the enemy.
The assault began pretty much as we imagined it would. About fifty of the mutated zombies came for the gate at once. It's been added to and improved in the year and a half since The Fall, but the basic structure of the gate is still the same--an expandable, mobile steel and aluminum structure left here by the military. With ladders built into it from the inside, the twelve-foot tall thing is easy to defend. Thankfully, the people here have added to the mesa a lot, including building a low wall about three feet from the edge of the rock face of the mesa.
Platforms built up behind the walls allowed many of us to fire weapons into the crowd of zombies. That worked pretty well until the second wave of them came from the woods. Another hundred of so followed the first wave not ten minutes after the fight started, and the second wave started hurling rocks at us.
Not huge ones, but a fist-sized chunk of stone can kill or incapacitate a person just as easily as a bullet. The excavated area around the shelf of rock we fight from is filled with hundreds of thousands of pieces of broken ground. More than enough missiles to kill all of us by sheer statistics if all of them were eventually thrown.
So we turtled up and protected ourselves. The only people not hiding under the protection of a shield or small structure were the people defending the gate, and even they were only popping their heads out to make sure no zombies managed to get over it.
None of us thought the hail of rocks was anything other than a straightforward, direct attack. We were shocked enough that the zombies were using weapons against us that we didn't consider the possibility it could be anything else. We were so wrong.
A hundred very strong undead throwing deadly projectiles at us was enough to make us take cover. I think the zombies knew that. They've watched us, seen how we as survivors go on the defensive more often than not. And why wouldn't we, you know? Zombies are dumb, lack creativity, and can be endured if the defenses hold up.
God, we're arrogant. No matter how hard we try to keep alert for new threats, we human beings have such a hard time predicting changes. We easily assimilate them when we see them, but the whole goddamn point of the assault was to keep us from watching.
They wanted us to focus on the gate, they wanted us to cower under the rain of stones. They wanted us to believe they'd hit us from a direction they've always attacked from.
Hiding under sheets of plywood, inside roughly built huts, we never saw the third wave coming. There were at least two hundred of them, and between them they carried five very long logs, covered with the stumps of branches. Five pieces of salvaged trees, tall enough when footed to a vertical position to lean against the lip of the mesa.
That was how they got up here. If we'd have faced them right at the edges, we'd have died. The stone throwers would have kept dropping missiles on us as we fought, collapsing our defenses. Will was the one who realized that, saw it almost immediately. He had Rachel and Steve running around, shields held over their heads, warning everyone to draw back to the center of the mesa. If the zombies started to crowd the rock, the throwers would have to stop their assault.
It was the only way.
I'll have to finish this tomorrow. There's far too much to do today for me to spend more time on it right now. We're here, and that's the important thing. We fought tooth and nail to survive, but it cost us. Tomorrow, then.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Bravehearts
Posted by Josh Guess
Now the rest of the story...
The attack wasn't going well for us. The worst part was having to allow enough zombies onto the mesa that the throwers would have to stop hurling rocks. We huddled and waited, drew back behind the low structures that dot Black Mesa in concentric rings, and whether the storm.
It took about ten minutes, but it was the longest six hundred seconds of my life. The zombie
s climbing the logs around the edge of the mesa were fast, so ten or twelve would come at us at a time. The kids were fighting alongside the rest of us, as there just weren't enough adults to cover all the holes.
By the time the stones stopped falling, at least twenty people were down. We fought back, as hard as we could. I saw Mason whipping his machete through zombie after zombie, but after a few minutes the blade broke. When I say this new breed is tough, I'm not kidding. Only about half of the ones he attacked were killed. The rest kept on fighting.
I couldn't tell you how many ended up on this rock with us. All I remember is the mindless rise and fall of my weapon, the terror of watching young men and women give their lives to protect others. The confines were too close, the numbers against us too many, and the enemy so much stronger than our expectations.
If it weren't for Becky and Rachel, we would have probably been overwhelmed. I remember with perfect clarity Becky's hand snatching my arm to get my attention. I saw a look of calm determination in her eyes as she spoke to me.
