Living With the Dead: The Wild Country

by Joshua Guess

  We took appropriate action.

  When we killed those zombies, the camp must have been empty. The people there probably wouldn't have used the spot again if they'd seen us so close. Dodger and I were being very quiet and very careful, so we weren't seen when we came back to investigate further. We came home, told the council what we'd seen, and dispatched a team out that way.

  Our team gave them every chance to surrender. They chose to fight. At first we thought this would be an end to the harassment. We now know for sure that this camp was one of several, because a few hours later the retribution came.

  The two bridges over the river that lead directly into the fallback position were destroyed. Explosives, obviously, as they left nothing but broken concrete jutting out over the water. We heard the blasts in New Haven, which is only a few miles away. Everything we'd stored at the fallback point is now lost to us, as I'm sure our enemies ransacked it before or just after they cut off quick access to it.

  We are at war again, and this time by an enemy that has numbers, powerful weaponry, and a clear knowledge of how we operate. I've got theories, but that's for another day.

  The second realization we gained from this excursion was that the New Breed zombies are much smarter than we thought them to be. Scouts this morning, having been ordered to search exhaustively for our attackers, report finding abandoned camps out in the county in several places. These people who've been shadowing New Haven's scouts are smart, too--they pick places where they see zombies gathering, knowing we probably won't go near it. They kill the zombies, pile the bodies together, and use it as a base. It's clever.

  And they've clearly been acting as population control for the new breed around here. There are a lot of dead zombies in those camps. We can't help but come to the conclusion that those new breed we killed so close to an enemy camp were sent there on purpose. To make us see and attack the living humans who've taken up arms against us.

  The world is growing into a complicated place.

  Monday, January 30, 2012

  Severance

  Posted by Josh Guess

  A day and a half has passed, and things have taken a definite turn for the worse. Every bridge leading across the river except for one has been demolished, the last one standing being just one of the two that carry interstate 64.

  We haven't been attacked directly, but that doesn't mean we haven't been damaged. All of our holdings on the east side of the river are now in the hands of the enemy. There are a lot of them, and we now know exactly who they are. Every hunting ground, fishing hole, supply dump, and the fallback point are all in the hands of a group of people made up by two of our worst enemies.

  Part of this group (and I'm going to have to come up with a name for them sometime soon) are made up of marauders. I should be very clear and say that they're some of the marauders that chose to ignore the amnesty, the worst of the worst. They're the most violent of all those who once plagued the trade routes (our fastest route to North Jackson was across the river, so that's something we'll have to deal with as well). While men like Kincaid and those who came with him have done what they can to choose a better way, these men and women were only made more brutal and merciless when the amnesty was offered. I imagine seeing so many of their peers give up the road and the madness that served as a daily routine didn't make them any more stable.

  I can even tell you why these marauders have chosen to band together against us: because New Haven infringed directly on their territory. When the team and I left many months ago, the food supplies were just starting to bounce back from the famine time we suffered not long before. I can say with certainty that we had exactly five locations off-site where excess supplies were stored.

  When we came back, there were more than thirty of those locations, and ten of them were nothing but long-term food storage. Things that last like rice and grains. How did New Haven manage to amass such wealth in a few short months? It shouldn't come as any shock. I should have figured it out sooner.

  Kincaid and his people are part of the scout teams that go out into the world and bring back supplies. Long-range trips, always. That's because Kincaid's folks know how to track other marauders, know where many of the groups within the region keep or kept their supply dumps and trading posts. New Haven's scouts have been pillaging those supplies nonstop almost since the first day Kincaid and his crew joined up. Worse, they were given the go-ahead by the leadership here to begin staging coordinated assaults on groups of marauders.

  So, yeah. LOTS of pissed-off psychopaths who are heavily armed, accustomed to fighting, and experienced with moving quickly and with perfect coordination want to kill us. That's always a good time.

  The other group that joined with them, the ones I haven't talked about yet but make up a significant number of the group now trying to cut the county in half? They're homesteaders. Our own people, exiled many months ago, have now joined with the enemy.

  The last we heard from the homesteaders, they'd found a base stocked with everything they needed, from food to weapons and medicines. There was even a satellite connection to the cell network Google uses to keep the internet going, which was how they contacted us.

  To sum up for anyone who is new or hasn't been paying attention: the worst kind of enemy we could ask for is apparently here and out for our blood for entirely understandable reasons. We picked the fight. They're the most dangerous sort of people, and they've been joined by those who know us well, who've lived with us and are aware of exactly how we operate. This is about as bad a development as I can imagine. The only thing that would make it worse? Giant zombie swarm.

  I should know better than to hand the universe an opening like that, or the next thing you know I'll be pausing to tell you the alarm bells are going off, and we really are being hit by a swarm. The removal of the bridges will make it a lot harder for zombies to get to us from the east, but by the same token they'll have nowhere to go if they come at us from the west. We're the nut sitting on the anvil, and any large force of undead coming for us will be the hammer.

  The bright spot here is that the enemy has made it difficult for themselves to get to us. We're fairly sure they want to consolidate their position before trying to make war on us, and want to be free from interference. That's what I'd do if I were them. They show no signs of coming after us yet--they seem content to take our fallback point, a lot of our supplies, and to wear us down over time. They might be crazy and sick with revenge, but they aren't stupid or inefficient.

  However this scenario plays out, we aren't going to win it by simply outfoxing the opposition. Nor can it be a win only by force of arms, as they're surely better outfitted than we are in that area. Pure defense isn't the way, as we'd have to hole up in New Haven for what could be months and from a logistical point of view that's plain impossible. We need to hunt, farm, and fish. Simple as that. And we can't stop brokering trades, either...

  Basically, we're in a huge mess with no clear way forward. No easy outs.

  But it's nice outside and getting nicer. So there's that.

  Tuesday, January 31, 2012

  Fair Warning

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Spent a good deal of time yesterday working on the computer. It's still very strange to me that I sit in one place to work, don't have to rush through because of fuel constraints on our generator, and can get up to pee pretty much whenever I want. Freedom to use the bathroom is one of the perks you forget about when you're on the road.

  I've been doing everything I can to get the word out to other communities about what's going on here. The marauders joined up with our own exiles can't be more than a fraction of the total number of them left out there. I'm certain beyond doubt that many more marauders will grow desperate and angry as time goes by, and that the conflict here is going to hasten that process. Better for the survivors we've made contact with to know the score and prepare themselves.

  Will is doing much better. He's obviously not up on his feet yet, and the man
date given to him by the council no longer serves a purpose now that hostilities are open between New Haven and the...

  Okay, I really need to call the enemy something. It's going to make life so much easier with a good noun to use here that differentiates this group from the others that we've faced. They're an alliance of marauders and homesteaders, so I could call them the allies, but that's confusing. I could call them the Axis of Evil, but that's melodramatic. I could call them something totally non-threatening like 'the bunnies', but that might serve to antagonize them.

  To hell with it. I'm just going to call them the Exiles, because that's easy and it fits. Marauders choose to exile themselves from what remains of society, and we kicked the homesteaders out.

  So: Will no longer has to worry about going out to find the Exiles. That doesn't mean he's not working on things. He is. Will's official pardon seems to have brought him fully back to life, and even as he sits in his bed at the clinic, he works on problem after problem. Not just defense issues, but other curious things that bug him. He's pretty sure, for example, that the people following us home from the south were probably trailing us for a long time. Scout reports indicate that the group we left trapped on the other side of a rockfall have joined with the Exiles. Will thinks they were sent to track our movements and make sure we came home, so all the New Haven fish would be in one barrel.

  When I mentioned to Will that I thought it was odd that no major zombie attacks have come this way lately, he reminded me that this place still reeks of dead zombies. Evans thinks that a dying zombie might release a potent pheromone or something like it to warn off others. Add to that the very likely scenario that for a few months now, the Exiles have been massing in hidden camps all around the area and clearing out the undead, and you've got a pretty good idea of why New Haven has had such an easy time with zombie attacks.

  Yeah, my people have been living in relative peace due to the efforts of an enemy that wants us all to themselves, but you have to take the bad with the good. That sounds sarcastic, but really think about it for a minute. Hard. The exiles have been staging around here for months, gathering materials and people quietly as they planned and prepared. They've been meticulous and detailed, minimizing risk as much as possible. I'm not arrogant enough to think they were only waiting for the team and I to get back--they've clearly been building up their forces for a while--but I think that factored into their time table.

  All of that is bad, but it's also good. Yes, the exiles have been careful, but that caution has allowed my people to make severe modifications to New Haven itself. The new walls were up long before the Exiles joined together (at least, I hope that's the case...) but much of the new work has been done since Kincaid and his people joined up here. In their urge to be as safe and quiet as possible, the Exiles allowed my people time to turn New Haven into a goddamn fortress. And I mean that in the truest sense of the word. There are defenses here that blow my mind.

  I'm not telling you what they are, but they go way beyond many of the ideas Will, Dodger, and I floated before the team and I left on our trip. Much of what I've seen has been augmented by supplies brought in by the scouts as they raided those marauder outposts. I've been curious about a lot of things since I came back, but this isn't one of them. I know why living, thinking people haven't tried to assault New Haven directly: because they recognize the suicidal nature of such an action.

  On that note, I should get going. I meant to mention in detail how I spent a smaller portion of my day going out to local communities, of which there are now several. I was pretty shocked to learn that, but in the last several months a few new groups have settled in the area. Not in the county, but still nearby as such things are counted. I did the rounds with them--to Shelbyville, where I invited the folks we rescued from Tennessee to come stay with us should the Exiles make their way east to threaten them. They accepted graciously. The other three small groups were a little less open, but as they'd never met me before, much less lived with me as the Tennessee folk had, I couldn't blame them. I'm hoping to hear more back this morning.

  I don't intend on leaving anyone out where the Exiles can terrorize them at will.

  Wednesday, February 1, 2012

  Waste

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Since the bridges came down, we haven't had any encounters with the Exiles. On the surface I want to say that's a good thing, but it also makes me very suspicious. Fortunately, I'm not the only one with that reaction, so I don't seem crazy.

  We've begun the process of hauling in all the stuff from the supply dumps we can still reach. The weather has become unseasonably warm, and there has been a corresponding increase in zombie activity. The council made the call to empty our storehouses, rather than face the possibility that we might have to fight our way through hordes of undead to get to our caches in the event the exiles went after the rest of our supplies.

  Looks like that was a good call, because the very first cache we went to had been tampered with. It was a food storage site, mostly grains we'd traded for, and the signs that someone had been there were subtle. It was a lucky thing that one of the scouts that went to empty the place had been there just a few hours before and remembered seeing a particular chair having been in one spot. When he got back, it'd been moved.

  Naturally we expect the worst, so the food has been destroyed. It wasn't a huge blow to our excess food supply, and thankfully the other suppl dumps left to us have been left untouched. Still, knowing the enemy had been there and left the food in place sends shivers down my spine. We took a sample to see if it had been poisoned, though our means for testing it here are pretty limited.

  Right now, our outlook is decent. All things considered, the immediate future doesn't look too dangerous. I know those are more famous last words, but they're the truth. The only quick access the Exiles have to this side of town is across the remaining bridge carrying the interstate, and we've got people watching that. There are other bridges farther away, of course, but steps have been taken to assure we get a lot of warning should the Exiles use any of the ones in adjacent counties.

  One of the good things about the new communities hereabouts choosing not to come stay inside New Haven's walls is that they have to keep a close eye out for any movement by the exiles. As things stand, it would be nearly impossible for the enemy to flank us with a large force. They might be able to get folks across the river somewhere else and circle around to the west, but we're going to see them coming if they do.

  The biggest worry right now is that they have boats. Or, god help us, some piece of military machinery that will throw a bridge across the river.

  But we can't focus on what might be. All we can do is prepare for what we expect to come, and deal with the rest when and if it happens.

  I'm hoping to get fully back into the groove today. I've talked to the council and there are several odd positions that need someone with experience in planning and logistics. All the people I trained are occupied doing their respective jobs, so I'll take on the hodgepodge of part-time positions that need me. One is in defense, one in meal planning, one in materials coordination...

  There's a surprising amount of structure and bureaucracy in New Haven's government now. From what I see, much of it is good and ensures that no piece or part of the system that makes sure the needs of all our citizens are met can threaten the whole by failing. It's not the system in place that bothers me--most of it was implemented by my trainees, and they have good heads on their shoulders--but rather a lot of policy set by the leadership. That is where we have to make inroads, because this new council seems to have some large blind spots.

  That's one more job I'll add to the pile.

  Thursday, February 2, 2012

  Priority Shift

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I'm a little disturbed by the way the council has shifted since I've been gone. I'll give you an example from this morning to shed some light on exactly what's happened to the leadership's outlook.

>   The weather continues to stay very warm for this time of year, and to the south a large swarm of zombies was spotted forming by our scouts. This was yesterday, when the scouts saw the swarm--zombies gathering together a few miles down the highway. New breed zombies at that, and they were doing their damnedest to convert the plain zombies that moved toward the group in steady streams. It wasn't a huge gathering, maybe a hundred and fifty at the time, but the threat alone was enough to send the council into emergency session.

  The call came down to our entire scout force as well as the auxiliary soldiers stationed here from North Jackson: this morning, we hit that swarm. Coordinated assault from multiple sides, swarm destroyed.

  That happened, sure. Our people are well-trained and experienced and managed to kill the entire swarm in about forty minutes. Nearly half the men and women who participated in the assault took injuries of one kind or another, and seven people died. Seems like a decent ratio if you look at it as an abstract, but those seven people are a loss we can't afford, not with so few people living in this part of the country. Not with the Exiles and the threat of attack hanging over our heads.