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

by Joshua Guess

  Did we kill them all? No. Not even close. Even if we had managed to corral them into an escape-proof location, the sheer numbers would have overwhelmed us eventually. But we hurt them badly. We showed no fear even if we felt it. We taught the New Breed how fierce survivors can be.

  But that's not all of why I'm spending the day like this. In fact, yesterday I planned to spend this morning working like a mule. There are a lot of projects that need a little love. Instead, I'm drinking. I'm going to hop in my bed and take my time showing my wife some much needed love.

  It looks like soon enough there won't be time for much fun. It's going to be all duty and caring for the ill. Over the last day and a half, a full dozen have fallen ill. One day isn't going to make the difference as we are right now, but tomorrow could bring a landslide of difference.

  For now, joy and love. Tomorrow duty calls again.

  Wednesday, May 23, 2012

  Vector

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Today's entry comes very late due to my...active day off yesterday. I only woke up a few hours ago, and I wish I hadn't. Not only because Will and the rest of the people who regularly boss me around aren't happy I slept through half of today, but because of more bad news.

  The new plague has appeared in other places. I'm not naming names--most of the communities in question don't want a weakness broadcast for everyone to read--but containment is no longer an option, if it ever was one. Evans thinks the most likely vector for the spread of the illness is the undead themselves, and zombies move around constantly

  You would think the barrier stopping the undead from crossing the river here in Franklin county would have spared the Exiles from the worst of it, especially combined with the fact that they don't interact with many outsiders and usually kill zombies from long range, but you'd be wrong. I thought the same thing until I read the reports on my desk from the watchers at the river.

  Several Exile guards could be seen actively coughing and ill, exhibiting the obvious signs of infection by the plague. There was some question about whether that might have been a show put on by the Exiles to throw us off, but apparently almost all work at the fallback point has halted. No one is working their fields, no progress is being made on that boat they're building for whatever reason. Maybe some zombies worked their way north or south over a distant bridge and wandered down to infect the Exiles. Who knows how it happened.

  The thing is, it happened. Some people might think this would be a great time to break the truce and strike them down, but I'm a fan of Star Wars. If we did that, chances are that the universe would give us the finger for being warmongering, opportunistic assholes and make the exiles pull a Kenobi and rise up more powerful than we could ever imagine.

  Stupid, maybe, but in wholly practical terms it's just a bad idea. While we haven't had any more cases of the plague ourselves since yesterday, the ones we do have are starting to strain the resources of the clinic. The personnel over there have a lot of practice at efficiently caring for a lot of people at once, but no amount of work ethic or ability makes up for the reality of plain old hard work. There's only so much time in the day. Human beings doing work really is a resource, and we're running near capacity on that one.

  I know the people in charge aren't thrilled with me right now, but this is a problem I think we can address somewhat. A big part of the issue is that the clinic and its support buildings weren't meant to be medical facilities. There's too much work to do in the limited space available, making it highly problematic to be as efficient as our people can be. Also, with space rapidly filling up, we're at a point where we have to change the game in order to manage what will probably be even more cases of the plague in a short period of time.

  So I'm heading over to talk to Will. There are several empty nursing homes in town as well as some other similar facilities that might not hold as many people but are nicely appointed and really close. In fact, there's one literally a hundred feet outside of New Haven's wall. The only reason we haven't used it for anything yet is the extra work it would take to put a wall up around it. Oh, and repairing the damage done to the building when The Fall turned otherwise reasonable human beings into destructive pricks.

  Now that we have so many sick people to care for, fixing the place up isn't a bad idea. Might not have been worth the time before, but with so much floor space and individual bathrooms and whatnot (though those will take some work to modify, obviously) our medical staff will be able to do a lot more with what they have. I think it'll work beautifully.

  I don't know if other communities are facing the same problem, but it's clear that the plague is a problem all of us are going to be facing. If more can be done to mitigate the damage, we'll do it. We all live different places and have our own homes and friends to worry about, but in the end we're in this together.

  Thursday, May 24, 2012

  Deliberations

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Will and the council didn't outright approve my idea to set up shop in one of the abandoned nursing homes/assisted living facilities. They're going to give me an answer tonight, though I admit to some surprise they didn't give us a green light at once. Still, I'm taking the initiative and working on the meat of the problem, coming up with several options for places we can use and figuring the numbers for how we can fix them up and all the boring math that goes into manpower and resources.

  Boring, but important. We might not be dealing with zombies at the moment, but that doesn't mean we're out of the woods. God, I wish. The situation has become more grim since my late post yesterday. Another half dozen people have started showing symptoms. At the rate we're going it'll be less than a month before the majority of people fall ill. If we wait much longer before making the move to a larger care facility the choice is going to be taken from us. We won't have the numbers to manage that kind of transition.

  I'm not trying to minimize the danger we face from the New Breed, either. We dealt them a sharp blow the other day, but we also blew through a lot of weapons and ammo we can't easily replace. If we had managed to kill every single New Breed in the county it still wouldn't have been enough. They don't scare easily and sure as hell not permanently. The near constant stream of them coming in across the bridges over the Ohio means we'll probably never eliminate the threat.

  It also means that even when we grind up nearly all of them, we've got weeks at best before facing the threat all over again.

  In terms of our situation right now, that's vitally important. We're a sick community and getting more so every day. The new plague is an enemy we can't kill with a simple blow to the head or cleverly placed fire traps.

  Ah, I've just been called to the principal's office. Maybe Will and the council have made an early decision. I'll try to post later today to let you know what's up.

  Friday, May 25, 2012

  Unqualified

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Sorry I didn't post again yesterday. The messenger I received was from Will after all, but not about the nursing home situation. There were some problems over in the expansion that needed sorting out, and the process took most of the morning and early afternoon. Turns out when your building materials include shipping containers that you use for storage, it's really easy to lose things you store in them when the metal boxes get moved around.

  I did, however, get an answer from the council after all that was done: No. An unqualified negative. We won't be sparing the time and resources to secure and repair anything outside of New Haven at the moment. I understand their reasons--how much it would cost us in resources, the need to put guards all around, transporting people back and forth--but I'm still furious.

  I mean, this isn't something that's going to go away. We have too many people ill and more getting that way (three more since yesterday, though one of the other folks that was sick had one of those weird near-instant recoveries) all the time. The clinic has already had to set up tents outside to manage the overflow of patients. Thank god it hasn't d
ipped below fifty at night or those folks would suffer even more than they already do.

  What's worse is the council and Will won't even let volunteers use their free time to annex the place right next to New Haven. It's not our ideal choice as it doesn't have a lot of beds or rooms compared to a nursing home, but it would help alleviate the pressure a lot. It's close enough that getting there wouldn't be a terrible risk.

  Their reasoning is sound, but to me it's cowardly. Yeah, the New Breed have hurt us recently. We hurt them back. They're a threat, to be sure, and they're probably watching us and planning to attack any group regularly leaving New Haven. But what are the other options? We're past the point where our medical staff can manage care for all our people easily. It's getting worse. One night of unseasonably cold weather and some of the folks out in tents might not make it.

  For once, nothing I say or do is going to make a difference. I've made my case for this very strongly, twice, and I got shot down. Will knows me well and told me in no uncertain terms I'd be locked up if I did something stupid like trying to organize volunteers to do it anyway, regardless of what the council says.

  Haha. It's like he read my mind, you know?

  While the threat of being put in a cell doesn't hold much fear for me, I don't want to risk being put on the sidelines again. I want to be here if I'm needed--I'm already putting in volunteer time at the clinic whenever I can squeeze it in--and the amount of effort it would take to go against the council's wishes would eliminate every free moment I have. And that's if I managed to even get the place fixed up without getting caught.

  No, it's not a game I can win. I've obviously thought about it, and I think it would be a huge net positive for us, but if there's one thing I've learned through more than two years of fighting bad guys whether they be zombies, mother nature, starvation, or asshole human beings, is that you've got to know when you're beat. Taking a stand can be damn important, but survival is about weighing the risks and understanding when the odds are stacked high enough against you that success isn't likely no matter what you do.

  So this time I'm giving in. I had an idea, it was rejected, and we'll move on from there. I'd probably fight harder for it if there wasn't a lot of truth in the things Will and the council said to me. We are running low on manpower. We've got to be cautious of our supplies since we don't know how this plague is going to play out. There might be other solutions that, while not as elegant as mine, work out almost as well in the end. Now I've just got to come up with one, since no one else seems to be making any headway on it.

  In fact, I think I've just had an idea. It might take a little work, but I think the council will see the wisdom in it. Of course, I thought that before...

  Sunday, May 27, 2012

  A Simple Plan

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I can't help feeling a bit smug this morning. My first idea, that we annex the abandoned assisted living facility to better care for the folks hit by the plague, was shot down. If you're reading this, you know that. My second idea, however, has been accepted. In fact, it was so easy that we should be done with the lion's share of the work by the end of the day.

  Simply put, we're using some of the shipping containers that haven't yet been added to the structures in the expansion. They already open on one end, and cutting doors in the other end and slapping hinges on them isn't all that hard. Well, not easy according to my brother but since I'm not the one who has to cut through the metal, I can't speak as to how difficult it may be. So. Yeah. Easy.

  The plan is to line up two rows of three containers. That's 120 feet long per row. Certainly big enough for our current needs and beyond once we get them completely set up.

  That's the hard bit. Yesterday the actual movement of the containers and adding the doors happened. Today we're heading out to several of the places I mentioned--nursing homes, hospitals, and the like--to haul in beds and whatever supplies we need to get them ready for human use. That's going to be dangerous.

  The New Breed are out there in larger numbers than they've been averaging recently. Not a huge increase, but noticeable and worrying. Though we only have to travel a mile and a half at most, that's a risky seven and a half thousand feet given the number of hungry and possibly pissed-off undead bound to be moving around between here and there.

  But given the additional seven sick people since my last post, it's not a thing we can avoid. Frankly, we're now beyond the point where we're just trying to make caring for our ill more efficient for the people doing it. We truly need the room in a very bad way. It's getting crowded even in the tents now, which reminds me...

  We're not even the worst off of the communities we're aware of. The Exiles have started posting single guards instead of pairs at their outposts, and the ones they do leave out in the field by themselves aren't looking too healthy looking. We've received reports from most of the groups friendly to us that mirror what we're facing. The numbers fluctuate, of course, but the outlook isn't shiny pretty much anywhere you look. A few are still disease-free at the moment, but they're in remote locations that don't get much interaction with the undead or other people. They don't trade often.

  There's one community that probably won't survive this. They started seeing cases of the plague less than two weeks ago, yet now more than half their population is bed-bound and incapable of doing more than moaning and taking in just enough nourishment to survive. They've had deaths, many of them, and more fall prey every day. Even if not another of them fell ill from here on out, there aren't enough folks to man the defenses and still care for the ill, much less continue to farm and pursue other needs.

  And we can't do anything to help them. It's not an issue of wanting to, but the damage the plague is doing to everyone means our usual cooperative support efforts just aren't applicable. We're weak, and sending people out among the New Breed is too risky, for one. Two, we need our citizens here to care for our own people. It's the same all over: no one in positions to aide others can afford to. The people whose communities are so removed from civilization that they haven't been hit by the plague mostly don't have the resources to mount much of an effort to help. Even if they did, who would blame them for still choosing not to?

  I can't think of too many people willing to risk infection on such a minor chance to do any good. Not when the stakes are this bad. I mean, you can fight most threats. You have control over that.

  What's happening now, though...there's no way to resist it. It's a disease that can only be avoided, not combated. Most people's plan is to stay away from it if possible, and to suffer through it if not. Simple, but not easy.

  Monday, May 28, 2012

  Memorial Day

  Posted by Josh Guess

  My wife reminded me a little while ago that today is Memorial Day. In the America that was, today was the day we set aside to remember the fallen soldiers who bravely served our country. In my lifetime I saw the holiday evolve into more; a day of remembrance, a reason to gather and celebrate life, a reminder to thank those soldiers still living for their service, and a time to recall the stark reminders that not all heroes come home whole or healthy.

  I think about the day-long trip we made around town yesterday and I can't help but feel a bit of that same emotion for the people we have around us now.

  Places like North Jackson have actual US soldiers living with them. Those men and women never gave up their duty, though all else crumbled around them. For a long time they were wanderers who gathered supplies and weapons as they searched for a place to call home. They found such a place in North Jackson, and they defend it full-time, with all the honor and experience earned from months and years in combat. That's a little mind-blowing to me, if I'm going to be honest.

  To follow through with your oath after the world has fallen to pieces, that's something special. Knowing that no one would blame you for throwing in the towel and heading for home yet still choosing to fight the good fight for whatever citizens are left to protect...it takes something sp
ecial.

  And not to minimize those people or their character, but I see some of that same sense of honor and duty here in New Haven. The New Breed were thick in the hard-to-see spaces near the roads yesterday, and as soon as our small convoy left through the gates of New Haven they began to pace us outside of bow range.

  We weren't stupid, of course--we sent people out in 'tanks'--our modified zombie-killing vehicles--to harass and demoralize the zombie threat. Two people to a truck, one driving and one manning whatever weapons the thing had other than the spikes and blades attached to them. It was fascinating to watch those teams work, running diagonal lines through the swarm as they carefully executed maneuvers to slow down and damage as many undead as possible.

  Crafting that kind of attack and carrying it out is an exercise in controlled chaos. It's dangerous to the extreme. One blown tire, one too-sharp corner, and those men and women would have died. It was undoubtedly terrifying, but they clamped down on that fear and did the work. They kept the swarms from rolling over us in a crushing wave.

  To defend our lives, yes. But not because we were on a mission of goodwill or trying to reach an injured child or anything. We were after mattresses and long-term care equipment, for god's sake. Granted, those mattresses were going to allow our sick people to rest more comfortably and receive better care, but it's just not the kind of thing you think about risking your life for.