Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5)

by Joshua Guess

  The throwers worked in groups of two. The person in front held their bomb in one hand, over their shoulder. The person behind lit the fuse and gave the throw order. The volleys weren't simultaneous, but the results were awesome.

  Most of the bombs hit their targets. Almost none managed head shots, as our throwers were desperate to avoid accidents that might cause them to lose a hand. But from where I stood, shouting orders and firing arrows into the swarm around us, I saw many bombs splatter unlit into chests, legs, arms, necks. The act of the balloon compressing against a body was usually enough to cause the fuse to hit some small portion of the gel--igniting it.

  Even the bombs that hit the ground did damage, as the brief but intense flares of heat were impossible not to step on in the press. Zombies with suddenly useless feet and lower legs fell to the ground, their brothers tripping over them. As I stood on one of the small wooden boxes our archers carried into the field (to get a better view of our targets), I realized that we might actually win this one. Like, decisively win it. Not one of those insane wins that require us to lose a lot of people.

  I really thought that as I saw a hundred and fifty gel bombs fly in less than thirty seconds. As I fired arrow after arrow, saw the other archers do the same. Oh, I worried when the zombies in the front got desperate, too close for us to hit with gel bombs, and pushed super hard. Our defense was good, but not perfect--they got through in twos and threes. Our flying companies moved between the breeches, taking down stragglers. I saw a couple people go down. But overall, we held.

  Most of our gel bombs had been used when the fight really turned our way. We'd been heavily outnumbered at the beginning, at least three to one. My best guess was that after a scant few minutes, the number of undead left fully functional and attacking was even with our fighters. That was when someone threw a gel bomb that didn't quite make it. The thing bounced off a zombie close to the front line, disintegrating into a flare of white fire as it rebounded, and struck one of the diamonds.

  The people stationed near the flaming diamond recoiled from the wave of heat. It probably wasn't enough to hurt them, but the intense light forced the reflex. The zombies there pushed hard in their own terror, and they breached the line.

  For a double handful of seconds, chaos followed. Zombies beat our defenders even further back from their positions, widening the gap. I saw New Haven citizens and allies from Louisville fall as they fought to defend each other. In that brief space of time, a dozen people fell.

  We'd drilled for that eventuality, though. The person in charge of that wedge called for the fallback, and the defenders parted quickly to leave the invading zombies a path to the center.

  That was where our gunmen waited. Fully armed and armored, they surged forward. Each of them a soldier from North Jackson, they moved in careful lines, their weapons rattling in three-round bursts. No shot was wasted: each pull of the trigger took a New Breed in the head. For the dozen bodies the zombies had created, the gunmen paid them back with interest.

  They kept firing even as the zombies turned and ran. The sound of gunfire, combined with the profound beating we were handing them and the huge number of disabled undead littering the battlefield, was enough to do the trick.

  They turned. They ran. We fired arrows and bullets at them until they were too far gone to be a threat. Then we took stock of our losses, let our noncombatant medical personnel begin triage, and ordered men out to finish off the damaged undead moaning piteously across the scorched field.

  I had the men keep a few in reserve. I picked one new test subject.

  The lives lost in the fight were precious. Eleven of our allies from Louisville lost their lives. Seven of our own people died, though five times that took wounds ranging from a broken finger to a shattered pelvis. Thanks to my wife's work over the months in making lightweight armored sections, none of the survivors took deep claw wounds, and there were no bites.

  It seems like too high a price to pay, but most people I've talked to don't think so. We've stopped this group, basically right next door, from gathering enough momentum in recruiting other zombies to do us damage in the near future. That's a huge plus. Twice that number of New Breed hitting us at home would have been incredibly dangerous.

  That, and now we know that we can fight them in the open if need be. We're going to send Becky out with a small team of people to try and find more raw materials for thermite (or anything else she can find that will do the same job). This is clearly an effective weapon. Now that we've got some first-hand data on how these ideas work in practice, we can do the job of improving the portable defenses and gel bombs, and fixing the flaws. It was a tough fight. We paid a hard price for the information we gathered, and for the victory.

  But we got them.

  Friday, March 23, 2012

  Post-Modern Medicine

  Posted by Josh Guess

  It's a lucky thing our medical staff have a lot of experience handling massive numbers of injured. Rereading that sentence, I recognize just how weird a statement it is.

  We expected more casualties, so the numbers we have aren't stressing our resources to the limit or anything. Most of the injuries aren't serious--I'm shocked we didn't have any accidents with the gel bombs--and for the most part people were able to tend to their own wounds.

  Looks like a good number of the Louisville crew will be heading home today, but fourteen of them will be staying here. That's a mixed group; several of them are injured, and a couple are sick. Their group doesn't have access to the level of healthcare we do here, which is admittedly far above the average. We're lucky that way. The very least we can do to repay those folks for helping us out and for sacrificing for us is to take care of them when they need it.

  Not to downplay the importance of striking against the New Breed or the loss of life that occurred, but there are other things going on that I'd like to touch on.

  The most startling development came this morning: we got a message from the Exiles. We know it came from them because our scouts watched a couple of their sentries lob it over the river. Nice little plastic capsule with a hand-written letter in it. They've accepted the terms of the truce. They won't attack us or try to cross the river. They've agreed not to attack anyone. The only burr in the whole thing is their insistence that they accept any other group of marauders that want to settle with them in the fallback point.

  We're not idiots, nor do we easily forget. The Exiles are made up of some of our own people who betrayed the trust of New Haven as well as some of the worst and least repentant marauders out there. We know the kinds of things those people are capable of, and killing isn't the most terrible example I can give. We sent word back that we'd abide by those terms, but that if we learned they were keeping prisoners or even catch them preparing to break the truce, all bets are off. So far, no reply to that. We'll see how it works out.

  Still, it's breathing room. Communication is a step forward from the silence we've had so far from across the river. I'm not going to hold my breath that one day we won't have to deal with the Exiles again. I'd love for that to never happen, but it's hard to imagine a world where long-term coexistence with those people right next door is truly possible.

  On a similar note, we're taking steps to bolster New Haven's population in a similar way. Over the last year or so we've been on the ass end of some severe beatings. We've taken in most of the folks from the smaller communities nearby that have cropped up, but Will and the council want to shift gears and expand as much as possible. The New Breed represent a much more serious threat than old school zombies--despite our victory over them the other day, which they'll likely adapt tactics against--and over the long haul we can't afford to lose even an handful of people to those kinds of battles.

  There's a lot of work ahead for us in expanding New Haven's borders again, but with enough people it won't be an impossible goal. The Exiles have the advantage there, since the fallback point has a huge capacity for sheltering a population. We can cram in a lot m
ore people than we currently house, but expansion is going to happen. It has to. That means a new wall around the field on the west side of New Haven, which is our only real option for additional space. All new buildings inside it, which will be custom designed and built. No more adapting pre-Fall houses. My brother has ideas for the whole thing. It's going to be a huge undertaking.

  The scope of the project will be enormous. The materials required for construction, defense, infrastructure, and all the million tiny things...that's going to be a big order. We've got raw materials for a lot of it. Just going to take time and effort to make them into things.

  I'm doing a few hours in the clinic each day until the patient load goes back down. I'm going to do my best to find out what kinds of ideas the Louisville folks have about defense, farming, everything. Perspective is always good. Then I'm off to the cells to run a few tests on our New Breed captives. Then four hours helping Will work through some of the more important parts of planning the construction, as he has final say in what gets priority. I'm guessing the new wall will be first.

  Then home for a bit to eat dinner with the wife, and after a quick scout run. Damn I'm busy. I'll have to find some time to sleep. Some day.

  Saturday, March 24, 2012

  To Sow

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I've been especially wordy lately. It's not from a deep-seated desire to run my mouth, but springs instead from a need to cover a lot of continuing situations. From hated enemies to intra-community politics to new threats from the zombie swarms.

  Today, I will for once keep it short. I always say that, but I really mean it. Today is the seventh day in a row of temperatures above fifty degrees in the morning. Jessica made the call last night: today is the sowing.

  That's a big deal for us. Today (and we've been at it for hours. Lunch break for the win!) we plant the first round of crops. Well, the first serious round. These aren't clover seeds or other wild-growth foods. We're putting the seedlings Jess has been cultivating so carefully into the earth.

  It's one of the few times almost all of us are working together at the same time. It's not exactly a peaceful, hand-holding lovefest. There are people standing around the area with weapons. Guards patrol the repaired walls of the annex. The occasional shout can be heard, sometimes with the sharp hum of a bow firing, as zombies come too close.

  One of the biggest problems people have with the world is what should be easiest: getting along. Planting crops is a microcosm for the larger situation. We gather together to do as a unit what we can't accomplish alone. As we crawl across the rows of plowed dirt, we work next to people we may not know. May not like. There might even be harsh words or silent glares.

  So it goes with the work and with our lives. Despite rough edges, bad feelings, or any other factors, we come together. Idealized songs and stories about working together, love, and happiness always seemed empty to me, and far more so now. Not because the sentiment is empty, but because they always seemed to ignore the hard parts. Making things work is, well,work. And honestly, the effort is what makes the rewards truly satisfying.

  We aren't singing songs about togetherness. Instead, we're living them.

  Monday, March 26, 2012

  Course Correction

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I've spent what little free time I've had in the last several days (time when I haven't been scrambling across the dirt in the cold, planting food) at the clinic. I've put off my work with the captive New Breed for the time being. There are too many people in need of medical attention and too much agricultural work to justify spending any time on the undead captives.

  I've been trying to do what I can to help out around the clinic. Most of my time has been spent with the folks from the Louisville crew who have taken ill. One person can basically take care of all of them--they aren't helpless. They've got what looked like flu symptoms at first, but that has changed a little. Their fevers have gone down, but they still have the body aches and some difficulty breathing. Evans thinks it's pneumonia. I'm not a doctor, but I tend to agree.

  I spent a good portion of the early hours at the clinic. I woke up halfway through the night full of energy and decided to give whoever was on duty a break. The night shift isn't so rough and it gave me a chance to do necessary work that didn't occupy a lot of my brainpower.

  Ha. You know me. That shit never works.

  I sat there with our ill guests, and I was reminded of all the messages I've had from other survivors since I started this blog. Most of my interactions with people outside of New Haven are mundane: sharing information, planning trade routes, status updates, that kind of thing. A good number of them have been supportive of our efforts here. And then there are the ones that just...aren't any of those things.

  A few people have sent me messages pointing out that I sometimes use entire posts examining my motivations or those of my fellow citizens. They have a point, I guess--I could have used that space and my limited time in a better way, maybe. Like jotting down information that might be useful or giving accounts of tactics that work. I can see the point of those scattered critics. People can always do better.

  But as I sat there watching over people who were faceless contacts on an email list a week before, I realized a few things. Examining what drives me is important, as is looking at the direction we go as a community and a society as a whole. I've been told in those very same messages that I make some readers feel doubt about some of the hard choices we all have to make. That I make them hesitate.

  If that means I've made them think, then I say that's a great thing. In the world as it is now, being decisive is very important. But being aware that your actions may be a matter of choosing a lesser of two evils is equally vital, if not more so. Like ships on the open sea, our lives need course correction and feedback or we risk losing our way completely. If that means I take time now and then to dissect and analyze my actions (and usually feel bad about them) then that's what I'm going to do.

  I've said recently that the time to worry about the awful choices we make and actions that follow is when we no longer question them. It wasn't very far into The Fall that I started to lose perspective on what the stakes are. Survival is paramount, but I lost sight on what the limits of my behavior should be.

  How is this relevant to sitting in a room lit by a single lumpy homemade candle, keeping watch over sick people? Because I believe that if I hadn't been set straight by the people who care about me, I'd have turned into the kind of person that would have ignored the Louisville crew when they asked for help with their sick. Even now, a small voice whispers that we could be using the food, water, and medicine they're allotted for our own people. That caring for them weakens us ever so slightly.

  A small voice, but persistent. The rest of me recognizes the inherent truth in the situation: the Louisville team sacrificed some of their number to help us in the fight against the New Breed. They didn't shy away from danger, and that kind of friendship must be repaid.

  I talk about the Exiles sometimes as if they're almost a different kind of being than the rest of us. But those few hours alone in the quiet of the night were enough to remind me that it's not at all hard to slide into that kind of selfish barbarism. It's the same tribe mentality we have here, but on a smaller scale and without compassion for outsiders.

  Human beings are animals. That's not a judgment, simply fact. It's our nature to defend our close group and to be suspicious and violent toward others. Compassion, cooperation, gratitude, mutual aid...these things require effort of will. They are choices. And if we fail to assess our choices, to see the awful things as awful even as the need to do them is clear, then eventually we'll stop making the choice to work together. To trust.

  If I bore you or miss some piece of errata to make sure we're still questioning our motives, then I apologize. It's necessary and I have no plans to stop.

  Tuesday, March 27, 2012

  Shotgun Tactics

  Posted by Josh Guess


  The sowing is being halted this morning, as the temperature has taken a surprising turn toward freezing off the sensitive bits of every person working in the dirt. We haven't had another frost, but it's close. Jess doesn't want to risk putting anything else in the ground just yet--just in case the thirty seven degree reading outside right now is a harbinger of a deeper cold snap.

  So, I find myself with a little extra time to deal with the pile of work that's been slowly accumulating as I've been busy with planting and working in the clinic. One of the things about being Will's assistant is that the papers tend to build up quickly. There are several projects and reports that need multiple sets of eyes on them.

  I've been so busy with other things that I had no idea we were sending out groups of people to repeat our performance with the New Breed. Not on the same scale, of course, but no less surprising for that. The brilliant thing about my brother's portable defenses is that you only need three of them as a minimum to set up a working perimeter. Against groups of twenty or thirty New Breed, three of the defensive diamonds and ten solid fighters seem to be plenty.