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

by Joshua Guess

  One of our guards died on the wall early yesterday morning. He was killed by zombies, but it wasn't an attack. The guard--Tim--had Othostatic Hypotension. It's basically a condition that causes blood pressure to drop, and in rare cases can cause Vasovagal Syncope, a very specific kind of fainting. Tim was a rare bird in many ways: having OH in the first place at his age (his thirties) and having a very, very rare symptom along with it. He knew about this problem, but he tried to be super careful about the onset of symptoms.

  In life, no one ever manages a perfect score. For some people, that means game over when the mistake comes at the wrong time.

  Tim passed out and fell right over the wall. The undead were on him in less than a minute. There was nothing anyone could do to save him. After the first few bites, one of the sentries ran close and put a few arrows in him. It was, I'm told, the most merciful gift for him.

  The sheer randomness of it made my mind spin and twirl the concept of death around for hours. I couldn't stop focusing on it, looking at it from different angles.

  Death is the ultimate mystery, right? Or it used to be. Some folks used to romanticize it in one way or another--sometimes through literature, or maybe television or movies. We've seen death happen so often and on such scale since The Fall that it's possible the event has lost some of its sharp edges for us.

  I've realized some truths that can't be ignored. Death is ugly. It's unpleasant. It's a terrible thing, yet as much as we hate it conceptually, we don't hesitate to deal it out when we need to. Sometimes when we don't. It can have meaning, can grant gifts to those left alive. I'm thinking of Mason here, and his last hurrah out in the sandy southwest, fighting off the zombies approaching our camp with his bare hands. Mason knew he was dying already, and he didn't go with a whimper. He fought and died with as much bravery as he lived with, and shouted with a lion's roar right to his last breath.

  Does that make his passing any better than Tim's? No. No, I don't think so. Sure, there are good ways to go out (I always imagined my own death happening during vigorous sex with identical busty redheaded twins, but I doubt that's really an option anymore. Oh, not because the zombie apocalypse happened. No. Because I got married), but the more I think about it, the more I realize we simply attach too much other meaning to the act. All of us will die, probably a lot sooner than we thought before the world fell apart. Many philosophers have said that the important thing is how you live, and I agree.

  My mom died in that fire. It was an accident, it was stupid, and instead of trying to repair the damage her loss did to me and others, I lost my shit completely. Death is many, many things. Random, brave, dumb, cowardly, romantic, beautiful, grotesque, meaningful, pointless. Like everything else in our lives, it depends completely on context. It could come for us at any time, for any reason or none.

  I guess that's why I feel so strongly that every day should be an effort to better ourselves. To live according to principles we define for ourselves as being good or positive. A bald eagle could fall from the sky and break my neck in ten minutes, which would be idiotic and pointless. But if there's an afterlife (or at least a few fleeting moments of consciousness before I Move On) I would want to look back at that moment of change and say, "Well, how I went was completely moronic, but why I was in that place at that time was good. I was on my way to do the right thing."

  We fail. In the end, we all fail. Death isn't the failure, of course. We try to be good, and at times we widely miss the mark. We fuck up royally, give in to our tempers, lash out when we don't mean to. We're shitty with people or reluctant to put forth an effort when we're needed. We fail in as many ways as there are to describe it. Maybe more, since I'm kind of bad at math.

  Any moment could be our last. Yeah, it's trite and definitely something you've heard at every funeral you've ever been to, but that doesn't make it any less true. Before The Fall, it could have been a car crash, food poisoning, or any number of factors that are much less likely now. Post-fall, it's probably going to be a zombie or something violent. The how just isn't important to me anymore. The why even less so.

  The end of the line for all of us is the same. We'll die. The length of the trip will vary, but it's far more important to worry about how we spend the journey.

  Like I said, just some thoughts.

  Sunday, June 17, 2012

  The Job

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Well, I'm in a bit of a pickle here. Let me explain some background on the community we're trying to help and their problem. That should help.

  I'm just going to call the place Clinton, because that's one of the most common names for a town in the US. Can't give away too much about it, but the crux of the problem is that Clinton is very, very secure because of its location. The community is located at the top of a large hill (I can say that because lots of places have those), but in a huge, shallow depression in that hill. Big enough to house hundreds of people and some farmland to boot. Think about some of the river valleys you've seen, or distant plateaus as you've driven down the highway and you'll get an idea of the scope. Clinton is pretty big.

  And because it's at the top of that big ass chain of hills, and the hills are covered in trees, and the town itself is basically fifteen feet below where the hilltop should be...well, Clinton is invisible from the road. You could walk around the hills and wouldn't know it was there until you were on it.

  The people there do a lot of mining. There's not a lot to be had in the rocks there, but a few natural caverns and a lot of broken rock gives them a ton of extra cool storage space and room to work metal without being seen or heard. Not too far away from Clinton is a cluster of abandoned factories and a good-size town where they regularly search for and gather materials of all kinds. Good number of zombies passing through there, though nothing like the numbers we deal with. The important factors to understand:

  The people of Clinton have been creating caches of things in the town to more easily transport them back when needed. They're very careful about not drawing any undead from the town back to the community itself, and because of its location and geography, zombies almost never come across the hidden town in the hills.

  The problem is simple. One-word simple. Marauders.

  I can write about this now without too much fear that the marauders in question will read this and figure something out. I've been watching them from a distance all morning, and this band of bad guys don't seem to have any mobile communications technology. There aren't any functional cell towers around here, and they don't have a transmitter.

  But the marauders definitely do know that people live around here. They've found several supply caches so far and have added them to their own plentiful supplies. More, they've begun a systematic search of the area for the people who left those caches sitting around, correctly guessing that they are recent rather than being left over from before The Fall.

  It's pretty clear why I was asked to do this. The marauders have been poking around this area for a few days. Eventually they'll exhaust all the obvious places and start looking at the less likely choices. They'll go into the hills and lead zombies that way, and chances are good they'll find Clinton.

  There are no walls to protect these people. They've got weapons and they can fight, having learned the hard way on supply runs into town. But they don't have defenses like we do or a barrier other than the terrain to slow down enemies. Building a wall where they are would be too obvious and noticeable. Leaving their hidden home right now is also too big a risk--what if someone saw them do it? Game over.

  They're trapped and in danger and can't do anything about it without exposing themselves. That alone is enough to get me to help. But it's the things they've been making in those caves, out of sight from the world above, that makes the place a vitally important resource we have to save if possible.

  But that's another post entirely.

  Monday, June 18, 2012

  A Fail

  Posted by Josh Guess

  You'd think th
at being outnumbered ten to one (at least) by the marauders would make it so stressful and busy here that I wouldn't have time to think about other things. You'd be wrong. Hell, even I thought there was a good chance I would put other concerns to the back of my mind given the enormity of the job at hand. Not that I could simply forget that Jess and the other people in my house are ill, but that I could at least save the worry for moments when I'm not in mortal danger.

  Nah.

  Turns out my two teammates and I couldn't forget or ignore the stuff going on at home. Instead of being a professional and gaining some kind of laser focus like a hero in a story, I found myself planning the best way to drive off or kill the marauders without wasting any more time than necessary. The idea was a simple one we've used many times: gather up a big trail of zombies and lead them right to the enemy.

  It seemed like a good idea at the time. The plan had the advantage of being tried and true, relatively easy to pull off, and minimally risky for us. Plus it wouldn't take a lot of time to engineer, so we could get back home quickly.

  Of course, we weren't going to actually have the zombies chase us. We didn't want to expose our presence any more than Clinton does. So my teammates went one way and I the other, and we started spraying small bursts of ammonia up and down the nearest highway where a number of zombies could be found. We brought a wide variety of stuff with us, packed tight into the back of our truck, since we had no game plan when we left New Haven.

  The ammonia wasn't super thick, just a dab here and there to corral the undead in the direction we wanted. I moved a bit faster than the others and brought my sprays closer to the road itself. By the time the zombies reached the town near Clinton, the passage they would be moving through was narrow and pointed right at the bad guys. Ammonia is wonderful stuff, and my teammates did an excellent job following the horde and spraying behind them to keep the stampede going.

  For the record, that part of the plan worked fine. We just didn't count on the marauders being as disciplined and responsive as they were. I'd say there were about a hundred zombies in the train we sent toward the rough marauder camp, but those thirty or so people reacted like something out of The Dark Tower. They moved into their armored vehicles with clockwork precision, gunners popping through hatches in the roof of each, and calmly fired round after round into the heads of the undead swarming them.

  We watched it all happen from a copse of trees. Gunners moving with practiced fluidity across the roofs of their vehicles, safely above the fray. Each of them made sure to regularly scan the battlefield to make sure their friends weren't being hauled down and killed. They watched out for each other. If they weren't so obviously marauders, I'd have felt pride watching them.

  We've got another idea, one we wouldn't have been able to come up with had the team and I not noticed something during the assault. It gives me chills to think about what I'm planning, but when you're against a wall and low on options you have to take the opportunities fate hands you.

  We're just waiting for cover of darkness now. Which is appropriate considering the terrible thing I'm about to do.

  Tuesday, June 19, 2012

  Murder

  Posted by Josh Guess

  That's what it was, no way around it.

  The marauders went to sleep last night, only protected by four guards keeping watch, and one of my teammates managed to get in close. The guy is a lifelong hunter, used to moving around silently, and the darkness gave him the edge he needed. We didn't have to get inside the boundaries of the camp, only up to the back of one truck.

  That was where the water was kept. Big old container of it, shared among the whole group. One of the things we brought with us was a powerful kind of poison. It's not something I plan on sharing with you, sorry to say. Some things have to stay secret in order to remain advantages. Suffice it to say that we make the stuff ourselves, it's in powder form, and it's water soluble.

  I acted as a distraction for the guards, making noises out in the darkness, while teammate number three covered us with a rifle from the trees. The truck with the water tank in it wasn't being watched closely anyway, and the tank itself had its collection funnel attached, as it was raining off and on all day yesterday. Our man slipped in close and dumped a few cups of the stuff in there. Not powerful enough to take a man off his feet in an instant, but definitely capable of making you wish you were dead with a little time to work.

  Within an hour of waking up, most of the marauders were sidelined. Half a dozen of them must have had canteens or something, as they didn't fall ill, but the rest were vomiting their guts out, some passed out from the severe nausea. In the confusion, our rifleman covered while teammate number two and I rushed the camp with our bows, firing arrows into the people still standing. Thank god most of the sick people were too out of it to realize that the sharp and short sounds they were hearing were muffled screams.

  The able-bodied went down first, right there in the middle of the camp. From there we moved inside the campers and RVs, and that was close-up work. Most of them died before they realized we were strangers, enemies. Their murderers.

  The worst part of it is that right now, all I can think about is going home. I feel bad that I had to do these things, I'm trying not to remember the hot gush of blood across my hands as I held mouths shut and swept my knife through windpipes and arteries. I got one guy through the kidney from behind, and as I slapped my hand over his mouth I saw the surprise on his face. He couldn't scream, though he tried. The wound was so painful his throat constricted hard enough to make sound impossible.

  We murdered them. Coldly. Weirdly, it doesn't make me feel any better to have seen the evidence of the abuses they'd heaped on people. There were old chains and old stains in those vehicles. One had a cage with human hair still jammed in bloody clumps in the corners of the bars. Those men did terrible things to people at one time or another. But it didn't ease my conscience.

  Not that it feels very heavy. Maybe I'm just distancing myself from the horrible reality of it, but I don't feel the soul-deep revulsion I expected to have. They're dead, I'm alive, and they had it coming. They were Bad Guys, right?

  Yeah, they were. But if we're being honest, and I try to encourage that by example...well, being bad guys was pretty much immaterial to this. Their past deeds weren't the issue. They could have been a band of house-building, zombie-slaying missionaries up until they showed up near Clinton. Once they became a threat, once they started looking with greedy eyes toward that community, their status as human beings didn't matter. They were as much a threat to be eliminated as the zombies themselves.

  I'm not saying that's right or moral. I'm just saying it's math. It was either kill them, all thirty of them, or watch them come into conflict with allies and possibly threaten many times that number. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

  I'm going home. Let's focus on that.

  Thursday, June 21, 2012

  Inquiry

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The team and I are home. After a very brief stay in Clinton, during which we confirmed some of the information they'd sent us before accepting the job, we headed back. Fortunately there were fewer zombies on the roads and bridges, and the trip was uneventful.

  Once I got here, however, I found myself beset with messages from people all over the country. Some congratulatory on our decisive victory over the marauders, but many more questioning my team's actions on this trip. Why were we so sure they were marauders beforehand? Yes, we discovered proof of their previous crimes in the middle of killing the lot of them, but why hadn't I published any proof beforehand? Did we really know they were a threat to Clinton

  I want to answer, even though I face no consequences at home from my actions. The team, who remain nameless for now, acted on my instructions. I made the calls. I was the one who made the decision to commit wholesale murder. I don't feel good about it, but honestly, I don't feel bad either. That alone is enough to make me lose sleep. There should be guilt or self
-hatred orsomething inside me that marks my psyche the same way their blood marred my clothes.

  There isn't.

  How did we know what they were before we went? When the marauders appeared in the town near Clinton, they had a prisoner. A woman. She escaped as they were trying to transfer her from one vehicle to another. She didn't suffer the perversions that many victims of marauders have historically, but she definitely was a captive. A few of Clinton's scouts caught her as she made her way through the woods and brought her back since she was such a security risk. The chance existed that she was a spy, after all.

  I couldn't mention it before mainly because if the marauders actually did have some means of reading the blog, they would have known for certain that they were close to the potential victims they were searching for. The woman and I had a long conversation, and I'm convinced of her sincerity. Unless she's had some in-depth acting classes, I think she's honest. And the things she overheard about the marauders' plan when they found Clinton were not at all kind.

  So, yes, we had some admittedly questionable proof beforehand, but given her starved and bedraggled appearance I can understand why the leadership of Clinton asked us to act. They had every reason to believe they were in imminent danger, and the marauders weren't acting in an open and communicative manner as most decent survivors would.