Living With the Dead: The Wild Country

by Joshua Guess

  Kidding, kidding. But I'll admit, it's a little freeing to know I won't have to pay those credit cards back, you know?

  So today I'm getting to read a series of books I've managed to avoid over the years. Not intentionally, it just seemed there was always something else to read that was more important. I'm going to sit back, relax, and dive into a world of fantasy for a day. A little escapism is just what I need to get my head back in the game.

  I think everyone should find some time to do the same. In the long term, it's the only way to keep from losing perspective.

  Monday, October 31, 2011

  Holiday Spirit

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I realized when I woke up a few minutes ago that today is Halloween. There's certainly no candy out here, and we're hours away from any other survivors at the absolute best, so there's little chance of getting any celebration in. It's always been my favorite holiday, but this go round it doesn't look like I'll be putting on a costume and having any fun.

  I can't help but think about the zombies out there, deadly and hungry for our flesh, and giggle a bit. Today is Halloween, and that makes the undead seem just a shade silly to me. They're monsters that we used to make fun of, dressing up as them to scare kids. For all the reality that they're a threat to our very existence, something about today just makes it a little easier to remember the way we used to see them.

  Not that there are many undead out here. The area of the country we're traveling through at the moment is pretty empty. Of everything. Mostly just scrub and flatland, leading up to the edge of desert country. We've been on the road continuously for a good long while now, and we've gone very far. I'm told I slept right through a stop at one of the fuel depots to top off. Mason was supposed to wake me up to take a shift driving, but he let me sleep through.

  We've been passing the time trying to get Mason to spill to juicy details of his date with Jane. He refuses to call it a date, which is in itself suspicious. He's being gentle about it so far, but knowing me, Becky, Will, Rachel, and Steve, eventually we'll wear him down to the point where he either tells us, or shoots us to shut us up.

  I give either possibility a fifty percent chance.

  It's boring and lonely out here, but at least we've stopped long enough for me to write and talk to the folks at home. My former trainees back at New Haven are handling all the communications with other groups of survivors I usually manage since we can't stop often enough to be effective at passing important news. I've heard some interesting things this morning, but most of them are sensitive, so I have to leave you hanging.

  One I can tell you about is crazy to the point of suspicion, though. Kincaid and his people have, at the encouragement of the council at New Haven, been extending the olive branch of peace to other groups of marauders. As it turns out, resources out in the wild are getting harder to come by, which is part of why so many bands of marauders have started getting more violent. That's really bad for them, because one of the advantages of staying put in a compound is that you build up resources, defenses, and plans. The high ground is ours. That makes raiding a costly and dangerous affair for marauders.

  And it's cold as hell outside. Which means less people on the roads, less prey for marauders. I don't know if many (or any) of the groups Kincaid has talked to will give positive responses, but we can hope. Every person who isn't attacking others for their supplies (or worse, to capture people) is a victory for the rest of us. I don't know how the communities out there will deal with men and women who've done the terrible things many marauders have, but it seems like they can't all be really terrible. Not all of them are rapists, as Kincaid proves.

  It's a sticky situation, but potentially a very good thing. Damn, I've gone way over what I intended, and Will says it's time to move out again. Stupid time limits.

  At any rate, happy Halloween. Don't forget to eat something bad for you. Try not to get eaten.

  Ha.

  Tuesday, November 1, 2011

  True Grit

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Well, we might be in trouble. I wish the title of this post reflected our toughness or how truly hard we've had to fight to survive this long. Hell, I wish it was even about the movie of the same name. Nope. It's about fucking sand. And how it's done something very bad to us.

  We're stuck. Which, when you're out in the desert, is a total bitch. We're far away from any help, no one to come pull us out. We aren't even that far from the road. We had to pull off to avoid a large swarm of undead that would have caught us off guard if not for the endlessly flat road through this part of the country. We saw them from a long way off.

  There are a few small towns dotting the landscape along the way, but I can't imagine how so many zombies managed to survive out here for so long. There clearly isn't enough food to support even a handful of them, much less the fifty or sixty we saw.

  Then again, there were buildings in the area. The thought crossed my mind that maybe a group of survivors has (or had) somehow managed to make it for quite a while. Enough people could keep a small swarm like that going...

  It would take a lot of people, though. Even if there are or were people around, there isn't anything we could do for them. Our resources have to stretch for a long while, and we're only six people. Totally aside from that, we camped on the scrub and now we're mired in sand. The truck is stuck, and Mason is trying to figure out how to get us free. We couldn't go help even if there was a chance we could do any good.

  We're only about half a mile away from where we saw the swarm, so getting hit is a real concern. The zombies clearly heard us coming, but they must not be very good at tracking in this area, since none of them have found us yet. The wind is favoring us so far, so they haven't caught our scent. Again, that's obvious by the fact that we're still breathing.

  I'm sending out some emails with our location in them. If anyone has heard of a settlement here, get back to me. I don't think there's much chance anyone who might still be left alive would be able to help, but I'll grasp as any straw right now. If the zombies do find us, we'll be able to withstand an assault for a while, but eventually they'll beat through and get us.

  Or starve us out. Or make us die of thirst. We've got water to last a while. But not forever.

  I'm due for a watch. Time to perch up on the rocks and keep an eye out. If we get free today, I'll try to post something.

  Wednesday, November 2, 2011

  Sand Trap

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We're still stuck, which when you think about it is pretty ludicrous. Of all the possible threats and problems we could have been hit with, sand turns out to be the one that stops us cold.

  We've all tried to use the materials at hand, which are sparse by the way, to finagle a way to get the truck free. We gave up around nine last night. Mason set out on his own this morning to try to sneak into the nearby town, find something that might help, and get back as soon as possible. If the swarm of zombies there is still as cohesive as it was a few days ago, it may be a while before he can make it back.

  The rest of us have been spending our time making sure our weapons are sharp, our guns clean, our armor in good repair. That took about two hours. Fortunately, I've still got my Kindle, and Will brought one of those little pocket-sized travel games. Chess, checkers, and backgammon. I've learned some important facts during the boredom.

  Will is really good at all of these games. I'm really, really bad at them. Rachel will swipe my Kindle and start reading if I don't watch over it while I'm playing. I guess she misses books as much as I do. Becky and Steve, using those massive brains that have almost scary capacity, have been playing a game of their own creation against each other for weeks. The pieces and board, if their game has them, are in their heads alone.

  Mason tends to be the only one of us who doesn't really do things to enjoy himself. He's not anti-social or anything, just more focused. He talks to the rest of the team when we need to vent, but his eyes never stop scanning th
e horizon for threats. He's the one who takes the initiative on stuff like what he's doing today, going out into dangerous territory alone to gather information or supplies. It's not that we aren't willing, of course, but that the rest of us are possible dead weight to him, depending on the circumstances. He's the one with the insane training, not us.

  So, we sit around and pass the time. I'm on top of the trailer keeping watch as I type, which is why it's taken me an hour to write even this much. If Mason comes back trailing a swarm, we'll be ready to help. Enough zombies would make that help a symbolic gesture, but if death is staring me down either way, I prefer to fight. After so much time together, I'd kill or die for anyone here. My team has become family.

  Friday, November 4, 2011

  The Escape

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Some days it's easy to forget how human we all are. All of us expected Mason to get back fairly quickly, loaded with supplies to help us get out of the sand. It took him until nearly dark to finally make it to us.

  We saw him coming from a long way off. He was carrying a torch, crude and obviously improvised while he was in the nearby town. He was limping heavily and dragging a huge bundle of something wrapped in one of those cheap blue tarps you used to be able to find at Walmart. His armor was shredded--not surprising since he'd removed the heavier bits to move about more quickly.

  Behind him maybe a hundred feet were a dozen zombies. They were clearly following him, but the few times we saw him stop on the plain heading toward us the undead mimicked him. That's strange behavior, as most of you know. Usually the only thing besides the vomit of a very specific zombie or ammonia that will stop zombies in their tracks is a large fire. Say the size of a car. Certainly the guttering torch Mason held in front of him wasn't enough to slow one zombie, much less stop twelve of them.

  We made our way to him when he got within forty yards. We'd have gone to help sooner, but Mason was the one who established most of our safety procedures, and that was one of them. Never go farther from base to provide support than you can run at a dead sprint without stopping. I'm pretty sure we'd have ignored that rule if the zombies on his tail had been more aggressive, but they seemed to treat him with...I'd almost call it deference.

  Will gave Mason a shoulder to lean on as Steve and I hauled the tarp and its contents back to the truck. Mason is a big guy, and in great shape, but I don't know how he was pulling that thing along at all, much less with one arm. Steve and I nearly gave ourselves hernias.

  Mason waved off Will when they got within twenty feet of the truck. Tired as he was, the big guy turned and faced the oncoming zombies, torch in one hand and heavy knife in the other. Again, the undead stopped, this time about fifty feet away. They just stood there staring at him, motionless as only the dead can be.

  Mason watched them for a minute, then turned to the team. He told us to start working on getting the truck out, that he'd watch for attacks. When Will asked him about the curious zombies watching us, Mason just shook his head.

  He said, "They're not stupid enough to attack me again."

  Thoughts began to percolate through my head. Zombies, no matter how smart, are still base creatures. If one of them in a group knew we were there, then the rest did. All of them would be coming for us. That meant that those twelve were the only ones left of a horde of more than fifty. Had Mason killed all the rest?

  If so, I could see how the surviving undead might see him as a threat equal to fire, one of the most primal fears inscribed in the deep, dark parts of our brains.

  We got to work, and it didn't take very long. Mason had found some long tracks clearly taken from the back of a truck, the kind you use to load a car onto a trailer. Four of them together wedged under the tires, just long enough to reach the lip of the small depression it was stuck in. It took a few tries, but we managed to get the damn thing out. Then we used the truck's winch to haul the trailer up, using the tracks to make it go a little smoother.

  All through this, the zombies waited. They might have edged forward a bit, but Mason didn't seem worried. It took a little time to get everything ready to go, but when Will hopped into the cab and shouted for Mason to join us, the big guy just sighed and threw the torch to the ground. He started unbuckling his armor. He was remarkably efficient at it, so quick that most of us only got over our confusion enough to throw half-formed questions asking him what he was doing before he got his chest plate off and we saw the injuries.

  He'd done something to the damage on his left side to close the wounds. Becky guessed super glue. It was messy and obviously infected badly. The flesh around the gouges and tears, themselves barely held together and gaping in places, was dark. Parts were black.

  Zombies are riddled with bacteria. Even their claws can cause serious infection very quickly.

  He kept removing his gear, finally stripping down to just his boxers. He'd left everything in a neat pile on top of his chest plate, which he motioned to without looking away from the watching zombies. We could see other wounds, including what must have been six or seven bites, a few of them with chunks of flesh missing.

  Still facing away, he told us to leave. And here's where things got strange.

  We didn't argue. We didn't plead with him. We didn't promise stupidly that he would be alright. He knew just as the rest of the team did that his long term survival chances had finally reached zero. He might have made it days, maybe even weeks with a constitution as hardy as his. But Mason knew that to do so would be to risk the mission. He'd chew through our medical supplies like fire in a dry field, and in the end...

  In the end, we'd have to put him down.

  So Mason chose his own terms. Steve wordlessly picked up the bundle of armor and clothes, on top of which was the heavy combat knife Mason had carried with him through his military service and beyond. Steve tried to offer it back to him, but Mason smiled and told him to keep it.

  We asked him what he was going to do. He pointed to the dozen zombies, and said three words.

  "Fight the enemy."

  He bent down and picked up a rock, tossing it between his hands a few times to get a feel. He started to walk away, but turned for a moment and flashed me a grin I'll never forget. It was full of brightness and light, the face of a happy warrior who could see the final battle ahead of him. He met my eyes, and I could see laugh lines around his. How had I never noticed them before?

  "The date I had with Jane wasn't a date at all," He said. "I kept meaning to tell you. I'm gay."

  Then he laughed, and ran with a rolling, uneven gait toward the undead. I saw him strike down two of them in as many seconds before Will distracted me by screaming for me to get in the truck.

  As we escaped the sands that froze us by night and scorched us by day, so did he escape a world, a life, that had surely been full of pain and difficulty. He was a brave man, in ways great and small, obvious and subtle. That was how he lived.

  And that was how Mason died.

  Saturday, November 5, 2011

  Moving On

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Things within the team are strained right now. It's not that anyone is upset with anyone else, really, but more that none of us really knows how to deal with Mason's death. Steve seems to be handling it the best, seeming a bit quieter than usual but otherwise in good cheer. I notice him resting his hand on Mason's knife in those silent moments. The blade seems to have taken a permanent place on his belt.

  Rachel and Becky, as different as they are in personality, seem to be bonding over the whole thing. There haven't been lots of tender moments between them, at least not that the rest of us have noticed. Neither are really the weepy girl stereotype. It's nice to see them talking to each other about normal things, getting to know each other a little better. I hadn't even realized how little socializing the two of them did until now.

  Will is not handling it very well. He's angry, more so than I've ever seen him. His knuckles tighten on the steering wheel often and his eyes get tight wit
h rage. I've been there many times--playing the events over and over in his head, trying to imagine what we could have done differently. Wondering if maybe the big fella would have made it. If it would have been worth the risk to run through our medical supplies out here where the next batch might never come.

  And me? I'm crying a lot.

  I'm not a crier, usually. I've spent little time as an adult doing it. When I'm sad and overcome with it, crying is just not my go-to reaction. I get quiet, I think, I clench my teeth a lot. I can count the times I've openly wept in the last ten years on my fingers and have a few left over.

  Until the last few days. I find myself struck by bouts of uncontrollable tears at odd times. I suppose I should find it embarrassing, but I'm not. The others don't seem to mind. Steve is usually there with an arm around my shoulder when it hits me. He's always been there for me that way. When I met him all those years ago, my first impression of Steve was that he was a nerd (he was and is) and that he didn't let much bother him. He's a video game expert, a Star Wars fanatic, and not someone you'd expect to be an emotional rock for when the bad times strike you down.