by Joshua Guess
A lot of them did die in the initial approach, compound bows and crossbows thrumming out arrows and bolts at the enemy with clockwork regularity. A dozen of our best defenders stood their ground against the onslaught even as the undead breasted the wall, while others rang the bells and called for a retreat.
Even running from a fight, I can't help being damn proud of our people. Able-bodied adults either moved toward the breach or oversaw the evacuation depending on their assignment. Older kids did their duty in helping the younger ones get to safety while the adults covered them. It was orderly and went mostly to plan.
It cost us lives, though. Only two of the twelve at the wall managed to pull back in time to get behind the lines of defenders that rushed in to help. Ten souls gone, just like that.
But hundreds saved. That's a big fucking deal to me. To all of us.
New Haven hasn't been totally abandoned, of course. There are still folks in the watchtowers feeding us reports by walkie-talkie every few minutes. There are still guards and sentries running the walls and using some of the individual house defensive positions. We've got eyes on the enemy, no doubt, and we've been long prepared for something like this. Caches of arrows and bolts ready to be used. I'm told someone is camping on the top of my own house, picking off the zombies still roaming around and eating the truly ancient beef jerky I made and stored on the roof for just such an occasion. My apologies to that guy's intestines.
The latest estimate has the remaining number of zombies somewhere around a hundred. We haven't been able to totally shut off the flow of them over the wall, but we've got people out in tanks dispersing large groups and mowing down smaller clusters. Our people walking the streets of New Haven itself are engaging zombies pretty much constantly, but they're being careful about it. I've got a round of that duty myself in about an hour.
We're uncomfortable, cramped, and out of sorts. But we're alive. I wanted to share my big news today, but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow at least. I want to dedicate the proper time and space to it, not leave you with a footnote and a ton of other questions.
I want to spend some time with our sick people, too. Kincaid's simple yet brilliant solution to the new plague is working, but it isn't perfect. A good number of the people who were too sick to do anything for themselves weren't allowed to do the treatment because Evans and Gabby didn't think they could survive it. Also, people are still getting ill. It's much more manageable, but still terrifying to deal with. Especially since Phil, one of our two doctors, got sick day before last. I had no idea until this morning. It's easy to minimize one problem in the face of another (or several, as the case may be) but the new plague is still here, still hurting us.
At least behind the steel walls we're in now, the New Breed can only hem us in and not actually get to us. Small comfort, but with everything going on it's one we'll happily take.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Divergent Evolution
Posted by Josh Guess
The cleanup is almost done. Really, it's done but Will is adamant that we do one last detailed sweep of the main section before we move everyone back in. Other than that, local news is thin on the ground. The old adage is true--no news is good news.
So I don't feel bad about taking today to share the news we've been sitting on for a while now. All the agreements have been made, all the plans finalized. I can now happily tell you that in the next few months, New Haven and Franklin county are going to be getting some upgrades. Also, visitors. Well, not really visitors. Permanent citizens.
Two thousand of them.
It's going to take some explaining, I know. You may have noticed that I haven't been talking about North Jackson very much lately. That's an intentional thing, because we were asked by the leadership not to draw any attention to NJ. The reason was simple: where New Haven has stagnated under a plethora of awful situations, NJ has been expanding in every way imaginable. We started out as similar kinds of places, but things change over time. New Haven has done well, but North Jackson has truly bloomed.
There are almost five thousand people there now. That's an insane number, it really is. So much work has been done around the place that I'm told it's almost unrecognizable from my last trip there. The heart of the place is still the factory complex, but very few people live inside it now. Over the last year the complex has been converted almost completely back into a place that makes things. North Jackson might be the last true industrial center in the country. Much of the machinery there is old-school hand equipment, but there is more reliable electricity being generated there than any place I know of. That's in part because they've been producing solar panels and wind turbines. I understand that making them from scratch, by hand, is very difficult.
There are many hundreds of acres of farmland being cultivated around NJ now, and tiny dwellings dot the landscape. They've been busy up there, hauling things from all over the state to use in their expansion. Rabbits are pretty much the best source of meat they could come up with. It hasn't been a flawless trip, though. There have been bumps along the way, hungry times and everything from discomfort while living outdoors as homes were being planned to severe danger as swarms of zombies have menaced the area.
How does this apply to us? Why does it matter? I'm getting there, calm yourselves.
The constant stream of people migrating to NJ brings with it a huge labor pool, loads of supplies, and the most important commodity in the world: information. This part of the country is filled with resources that just need to be located.
NJ hasn't been turning people away, but they've reached a point where the population is almost too much to deal with. So over the next few months slightly less than half of those folks are going to be coming here. We aren't going into this blind, of course. They're bringing food of all kinds, supplies, and the like. They're coming in groups and will be hauling in trucks carrying shipping containers to further expand New Haven. As you can imagine, we're going to need to make this place a lot bigger. Plans have been laid out for more farming, the kind we can secure, so that next year when the supplies start to run low we won't have food riots. The million details we've had to work out have all been considered and dealt with. I won't go over all of them here.
Yes, it's a ton of work. Yes, it's risky for us to expand so much so quickly. But in return for taking the pressure from NJ, we're getting the gift of new citizens. And they're doing the work of making their settlement here workable. Oh. And NJ is hooking us up with a ton of new power generation equipment. More solar panels, more turbines, and the tools and knowledge to make the stuff ourselves. We'll become an industrial community ourselves even if it is on a much smaller scale.
As you can imagine, the new plague has slowed down this process. NJ has been very careful about the plague and caught some lucky breaks with the rate of infection. We feel confident now that we can begin the process. New Haven has struggled through a lot of shit over the last few years, but we're happy to take this as a win. In one stroke we'll become the largest community in the area and magnitudes stronger than we've ever been. It's scary and exciting.
It kind of feels like the future is right around the corner.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
...But Before We Begin...
Posted by Josh Guess
There's a lot of risk involved in this huge project. We're going to expand our population by a factor of ten. The sheer logistics of the situation are dangerous by themselves. We'll be tapping every source of fuel we have and can locate to make transporting people and materials possible. Moving so openly is going to invite attack, that's a foregone conclusion.
That's totally ignoring natural disasters out there, zombie attacks at home, or old enemies making moves against us.
It's going to be a process. Long, grueling, and probably pretty fucking boring most of the time. We're choosing to be slow and methodical because careful people have much less chance of being shot in the face or getting their intestines ripped apart for an app
etizer. The only reason the whole process has a shot at working is because we aren't going to have to divert our people to make it happen. In fact, our own workforce will be bolstered by the folks coming here while a dedicated group of them work on expanding New Haven. It's a mutually beneficial situation; we get more security and a chance to grow in ways we couldn't have dreamed of a year ago, and they get away from North Jackson's cramped quarters into a place that desperately needs them, with tons of room to expand.
Everyone is really excited and super hopeful. I feel the need to be the voice of caution here. Growth is good, and we don't face much risk of unknowns here. NJ is very similar to New Haven in how they handle rules and laws as well as the expectation we have for each other. But growth is often difficult and painful. It's not going to be sunshine and rainbows shooting out of everyone's asses nonstop. No two wholly different groups of people, total strangers, can just meet up and mix perfectly with no friction. We've taken in enough people here to know the drill and to prepare for it. I just don't want anyone getting so excited they make avoidable mistakes.
It's going to be a while before the big work can start. There are some minor details to work out, like securing enough extra fuel to cover any unforeseen problems in the transport process. There are also a lot of dangerous cargoes that need to be hauled first and with minimal staff before the main construction here can begin.
AHHHH! This is a problem! Too many damn details and every time I go to write anything about this grand plan I start to go off on tangents. Can't afford to do that too often since we've got enough things to worry about here.
Food shouldn't be too much of an issue. I know that sounds insane but our transplants are bringing literally tons of preserved foods with them. Many, many tons. But that doesn't mean we can last forever, and this brutal heat wave is hurting our crops. We've got cisterns all over the place but no amount of water can stop the sun from damaging our food...and we're going to need every scrap to keep up with the new mouths to feed.
We've got options, but they require some risk and travel. And while the zombies are less obviously threatening during the hotter parts of the day, the sight of them wandering around inside New Haven has all of us a little on edge. The kind of on edge that makes people shoot first and apologize later. The Exiles don't seem to be moving toward threatening behavior at the moment, but none of us trust them at all. I don't know that a decade living across the river from them would be enough for that to happen. It might be stupid and overly cautious, but we've got to plan every move on the assumption that they're just biding their time in order to hit us at exactly the right moment.
The one bright spot at the moment is that we're pulling ahead in the race against the new plague. It's not a done deal by any stretch, but it looks like most of the people that were going to get sick have done, and better than half of the ill folks are healthy enough for the sauna. Most of the rest of them want to try it, but Evans and Phil are still worried over how the insanely hot air will affect their already very bad breathing.
I always try to end on a note that sums up how I feel or gives some small portion of context to the post, but today I can't do that. We're at a crossroads of such vast importance that I'm having a hard time pinning down any part of it. So many things can go wrong, so many plans and hopes ride on this working out, and there are so many situations we're currently dealing with that it seems completely fucking crazy to even try this.
So instead of some parting line that might or might not be moving, seem wise, or appear insightful, I just want to say that I'm hopeful this all works out. I'm equally scared that it won't, and things here will stagnate and begin to fall apart, and that it will. Because then everything will change. I still see New Haven as my place, a small home that I helped found and design. What will it be when and if it covers five times the area and there are teams of people doing the jobs I've done? Who will I be when I'm a redundant part in a larger machine, no longer a loud voice among a small group.
Honestly, I really am terrified at both possibilities, but I lean toward seeing the changes happen. They're frightening but exciting, and I think ultimately positive.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Herd Thinners
Posted by Josh Guess
Later today we'll be meeting the first group of settlers from North Jackson. This is an advance unit composed of soldiers that want to migrate south and folks who don't have proper homes due to the overcrowding at NJ. They won't be working to bring resources here. That comes next, the official first step in our huge expansion. Before we can break ground, haul in thousands of gallons of fuel, tons of food, and frightening amounts of propane, we have to clear the way.
A hundred people will be coming in today, all armed to the teeth and experienced with on-the-ground survival against overwhelming forces of zombies. This will be the only set of immigrants that will be wholly composed of adults. No kiddos allowed for this one given how dangerous it's going to be.
A hundred people whose only purpose is killing zombies. Who will bring with them armor, vehicles, and weapons built toward that end. It gives me a little chill thinking about it.
While we certainly need to thin the number of zombies around here down as much as possible to begin work on the expansion, it's going to be awesome for us in general. People are still really nervous about the New Breed incursion, and the constant bustle of zombies has made it difficult to manage the simplest trips outside. Now that we're getting people well by slightly cooking them alive (I feel like a supervillain typing that...) the situation isn't quite as bad, though we're not anywhere near full strength.
So, yeah. Armed group of people dedicated to relentlessly slaughtering the undead irritating us like sand in a wound? Total win. We're thrilled at the prospect of not having that pressure on us.
We're going to send some of our own people out with them, naturally. We know the area best. The newcomers will be doing the lion's share of the fighting, but we'll have some skin in the game as well. Not just fighters, but also planning the strategies and tactics the fighters will be using against the undead. I'll be organizing all the logistics--fuel allocation, food and water, schedule rotations. Basically my normal job, but while the teams are operating, this will be my only responsibility.
Ah. Will just sent me a message. He wants me to have an outline of everything I just described ready by morning. That's going to take a lot of time and work. Guess it's a good thing we're in another calm spot and I don't have much news to share, isn't it? I love that Will sees me as being capable of doing just about anything he asks, but I begin to wonder if he thinks I'm a miracle worker. This must be how Scotty on Star Trek felt.
I was planning on going outside the walls today with a few scouts to get an idea of how the zombies are moving so I could develop a strategy, but that will have to wait.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Errata
Posted by Josh Guess
This is going to be one of those weird and scattered posts, mainly because I've been awake all night. I'm really not sure how I keep managing to do that without caffeine but somehow I'm not exhausted and dumb. I've been busy as hell since my post yesterday, first with the outline for our plan of attack, then catching up on replying to a ton of messages from people, then making a late run out with a scout team to check out the layout of the zombies in the area.
After all that was said and done, I came home to edit and revise the plan of attack. Will had a meeting with the team leaders from North Jackson that arrived yesterday, along with Dodger and the people from here that will be going with them. Everyone had ideas on how to make the trip safer and more efficient, so I decided to skip sleep in order to get ahead of the curve on our game plan.
That took me until about four this morning, which was right when a small but strong group of New Breed hit the wall right where the annex and the east wall meet. Fortunately we've moved back to full compliments of guards and sentries, or things could have been messy. Fully half of the ne
w arrivals ran like hell from the expansion (the one made of shipping containers, not the large expansion we'll be starting soon. Duh. They aren't time travelers.) and surprised our guards on duty by running about thirty feet north and jumping off the catwalks and over the wall.
The numbers were about even: fifty people to fifty New Breed. Not that there was any sort of competition, mind you--those people know their business and have a lot of practice working as a unit. They sleep with their weapons right next to them and don't hesitate.
The front rank, ten of them, had shields and bashed the closest zombies in backward with them. The folks behind them had long catchpoles, basically just a big fork with two tines that they used to trip any zombies close enough. To the sides were ten archers, two teams composed of three bowmen and two crossbowmen. The remaining twenty in the back rushed through the middle as the zombies were bashed, tripped, and transfixed on arrows, and waded into the crowd. Those folks all wear armor of one kind or another and they're damn efficient at what they do. Our guards were so shocked by the ferocity of the newcomers that a few of them forgot to fire their arrows.
