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

by Joshua Guess

  It was pretty amazing, I have to tell you. I got a case of the warm fuzzies just seeing the last few minutes of the fight.

  Also, I'm a lot more comfortable knowing just how terribly good these people are at this kind of thing. I knew they had practice since they helped clear the undead from the environs near NJ, but seeing them in action was a bit like watching fifty Masons cut loose. Mason was scary dangerous and never showed a trace of fear, but he was just one man.

  And like Mason, these people are mortal. They're citizens of New Haven now, part of our community. Their lives are as important as anyone's and losing any of them as we lost Mason would be awful. I guess that's part of why I'm so happy they seem to have their shit together. Being an army of one is fantastic, but being part of an actual army is way better.

  The last few hours of this morning I spent finishing up some odds and ends, one of which was looking over comments on the blog. One struck me as particularly relevant to current events: a reader out there, probably a survivor who has been out of the loop for a while as many are, asking about survivors outside of the US. Basically they wanted to know what we know about who may be alive out there, and where.

  I've touched on this before, but it bears repeating and updating from time to time.

  We have a hard time getting in direct contact with other continents. We have allies in southern Canada and some acquaintances farther north. Mexico is a bit of a no-man's land, mostly avoided due to a serious glut of Marauders in the very far south of the US. We know from Becky--who made her way here through ten kinds of hell and across an ocean--that there are plenty of folks left alive in Europe and the middle east. From third and forth-hand sources we know that there are some strong communities of survivors in northern Africa and probably spread all over that continent, though as with most of the world communication with them is almost impossible. I've heard that India is essentially a dead country, which shouldn't surprise anyone. The population density there was a worst-case scenario for the zombie plague.

  Asia I have no solid or believable news about, though the Chinese and the Russians have long histories of surviving against ridiculous odds and overcoming impossible foes. I wouldn't be surprised if someone rolled up into Moscow and just ran into a group of old Russian women sitting around a campfire made of zombie corpses, drinking good vodka and telling dirty jokes.

  Most of the eastern hemisphere is out of touch with us, and the lovely people at Google can only do so much. Few cell towers work on that side of the world, and the ones that do don't necessarily communicate with the satellites Google uses to keep us all talking to each other.

  I wish that weren't the case, I wish it very badly. Just as the people who've moved from North Jackson are our brothers and sisters, people worthy of our support, respect, and concern, so are those nameless people struggling half a world away. Some of those folks helped Becky survive and get closer to home, so I owe them an endless debt for returning a person I love to me. I wish I could tell them myself what that means, but I can't.

  Maybe someday, but all things in their time. That just isn't right now.

  Tuesday, July 10, 2012

  Resurgence

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Bad news this morning. We were going to send out our hundred new arrivals with our teams of people that will be working with them on a practice run this morning. You know, shake down the moves, learn how each group thinks, figure out the best way to integrate forces.

  That's on hold for a day or two, because we had a fairly large setback. Ten of the new arrivals woke up sick with the new plague, along with five of our own people. Since Kincaid's brilliant idea to overheat the sickness using a sauna, the plague has become more of a nuisance, a sort of background problem, rather than the main attraction it was even a few weeks ago.

  People who come down with the sickness can be cured now but that doesn't mean everyone is at full strength right away. Even folks that haven't been under the influence of the new plague for very long need at least a day to recover. North Jackson has been extremely careful about the illness (though that didn't stop them from suffering some casualties, albeit a smaller percentage than most places) and we didn't really consider the fact that the new arrivals may not have even been exposed.

  Then there's the high possibility that the new plague itself evolves. We've seen ample evidence that the zombie plague takes many forms and mutates at a rate to make evolution theorists faint. Could be that whatever strain these people may have been exposed to is so different than ours that they've got no defenses against it. Doesn't really matter, I guess. The old hot box does the trick.

  Honestly, I'm kind of glad it happened this way. I don't want anyone sick, and I certainly wouldn't say this if anyone had died, but it's good to have reminders now and then that many things are out of our control. We're on the precipice of a huge change. We're at a point where caution is second nature, so it's not that I'm afraid that we'll suddenly forget how dangerous the world is. We just have too much at stake to plan this expansion without leaving some breathing room in there for what we don't expect.

  I'll keep an eye on the situation, as all of us are, and we'll move forward from there. I'd love to write a longer post, but frankly there just isn't time today. Need to make sure no one else is coming down ill. Mainly because the thought just occurred to me that if our new plague is a different strain, maybe the newcomers brought a strain of their own. That's a chilling thought.

  Maybe I'll check a couple times. Can't let the plague catch us off guard again, not when we have means to fight it.

  Thursday, July 12, 2012

  Atmosphere

  Posted by Josh Guess

  As we feared, more people on the team of newcomers have fallen ill since the first group showed symptoms. More at one time than our sauna was really capable of dealing with, so my Dave and his workers took one of the shipping containers and made us a much larger version.

  It works, no doubt about it. We can treat ten people at a time in there. It would be more than that but Gabby, Evans, and Phil want a 1:1 ratio for all patients in the sauna. One caregiver for each of them just in case the heat (or the violent death of the plague in their lungs) causes problems. It's faster than what we had, but not perfect. Then again, what is? What ever was even before The Fall?

  There's a sense of careful hope in the air unlike anything I've seen since founding New Haven. We've always been a relatively positive group of people, especially given the awful circumstances we've had to work in. What many of us are feeling now is the kind of restrained wild optimism that most of us have refused to allow in our hearts since The Fall. The atmosphere of this place has changed. People discuss the future much more easily now, planning for the huge expansion we're on the cusp of and beyond. The idea that we'll have electricity to spare is mind-boggling to most people, and that's just one example of the changes that are coming.

  What surprises me is how scared people are, including myself. Fear has been a part of our lives for a long time, but the very slow changes in New Haven over time because of our many setbacks has had a dampening effect on it. Strange, I know, but the constant strife and serious danger made the sometimes terrible conditions we live in seem somehow normal.

  Not that New Haven isn't one hell of an accomplishment in its own right, but we're a lot more worried now because of what we stand to gain. Not long from now might be a time when we don't have to worry about being outnumbered by the zombies outside the wall. There will be enough people here to have a dedicated force of protectors large enough that we can stop requiring the majority of people to do time defending the place. We've built a lot here, preserved a piece of civilization and nurtured it as best we could.

  Soon, though, we'll be magnitudes larger and more complex. We'll have the numbers we need to allow some people to specialize in things, to gain the skills and knowledge we'll need to go beyond wood-fires and candlelight. We'll have enough people to do Big Things again, at least compared to what New
Haven has managed until now.

  It's cautious hope, but it still comes with a zeal and fervor I haven't seen before. It excites me because we're being handed the chance to shine, to grow quickly. I've said before that fast growth can be painful, and I stand by that. We're tossing the dice by bringing in ten times our current population. That's hard to wrap my head around, really. The citizens of New Haven, tough and strident survivors all, will in one stroke become the minority population.

  We could live in fear of that, but I think we've grown enough as people to choose trust. We've got enough to worry about--the undead pecking away at our defenses, the new plague tenaciously hanging on among our people, the Exiles possibly double-dealing and planning something sinister--that it would be suicidal at worst to screw this opportunity up. New Haven's current population won't be swallowed by the people joining us, it will be integrated. We'll doubtlessly face problems as that integration happens, but we'll deal with them. We'll work things out. We'll heal whatever ills may rise between the two groups, just as we've put so much effort into healing the plague in the people who have already joined us.

  Hope and worry go hand in hand nowadays. But unlike the world that was, we can no longer afford to let fear stop us from trying in the first place.

  Friday, July 13, 2012

  Making Time

  Posted by Josh Guess

  More than ever I'm trying to make time for little things. Jess getting sick and coming so close to disaster--hell, all of New Haven doing the same thing from time to time--makes those small moments together all the more important. As we treat the new arrivals and our own ill people I try to remember to enjoy the breaks when they come.

  This whole expansion process is going to consume a lot of time and resources, and chances are that none of us will get a full night's sleep until it's done. Yeah, most of the physical work is going to be done by the people coming here, but that doesn't leave the rest of us off the hook. We aren't just expecting them to build a community for themselves and let that be the end of it. They're joining us and will be doing one hell of a lot of work that benefits everyone. We have to show willing. Do the groundwork and fill in the gaps. We're all in it together.

  But it really is a lot of work. And time will be short. That's why I took some extra time this morning to give Jess a massage after we woke up and had breakfast. A little thing, maybe fifteen minutes, but it started her day off right. We'll be starting the cleanup around New Haven tomorrow afternoon if the number of ill newcomers stays where it is or drops. We weren't planning on sending them all out at once anyway, so at least starting the project is feasible.

  Once we do, time for back rubs and shared meals might be hard to come by. Not only will we be dealing with managing the cleanup of the New Breed and other zombies around New Haven, but also the consequences of that. I'm to be in charge of constantly monitoring the cleanup reports and allotting resources for the teams, making their schedules and the like, but that's only half the problem. What happens when we send our people into the field and deliberately poke the undead with a stick? We've faced the New Breed before, and we've had to change tactics to fight them often. They watch us, they learn.

  They figured out that hemming us in here while the new plague ravaged our people was a safe play. They seemed to know that while our home might not be an easy target, at the very least we couldn't manage any serious assaults on them.

  The scout trip I took was quick and dirty, but it doesn't give us any idea how many of them are out there. We still have farmland in this county and a few of the surrounding ones that we haven't been able to tend. What if another huge mass of zombies has accumulated in Shelby county, for example? We're gunning for them on purpose, but it's not crazy to say that doing so is probably going to invite retaliation. To accomplish our goal of reducing the local population of undead to manageable levels so the real work can begin, we almost need them to do it. Flush them out, and hope to god we can deal with the flood.

  So, yeah. Probably going to be a busy guy for a while. Even if everything goes as planned I'll still have to help oversee the expansion and the migration, right along with all the details that come with them. I think we have the food issues hammered out, but there are so many others...

  I don't even want to think about how rough things will get if there are way more New Breed out there than we estimate. Doing all that and having to fight at the walls or in the field? Ugh. Just like old times.

  I think I'll see if Jess wants to take a walk or something. I get the funny feeling we won't be doing normal things like that very much in the days ahead.

  Saturday, July 14, 2012

  Prep Time

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Just a fast note here to let everyone know that today is the day. We're sending out our first teams on a shakedown run outside. I intended to get into detail here, but we've got some last-minute details to deal with. Mostly in the form of a whole mess of zombies gathering close. Guess they've been following our scouts around. Maybe they know something's up.

  Whatever it is, we have to strike out at them. Too many for the teams to break through. We'll make a space and then see what the teams can do.

  Long post tomorrow, sorry.

  Sunday, July 15, 2012

  Combined Attack

  Posted by Josh Guess

  No matter how many times you go out to face the undead, there's still that moment of cold fear when the violence is about to start. Deep down, you know there's a chance that when the fray begins everything could be over for you in a matter of seconds. Something as simple as a misaligned piece of armor or missing piece of thick cloth around your neck, and lights out. We're fragile creatures, and there's no time I become more aware of that than when I'm facing down a vicious, hungry zombie.

  That's why we cheated like crazy.

  It felt nice to let the mixed teams sit behind the north gate while we cleared a path for them. Not being stupid, we've spent much time and effort on prep work for things like this. Nothing like showing the new guys what we can do with some ammonia, thermite, and a willingness to jump the wall at the right time.

  One team of thirty people can pack a hell of a lot of punch when the enemy is running away in a scatter. And on fire. I wasn't one of the folks who took to the field, but I did manage to take down two New Breed before the gas was released. When our people had pushed the swarm back across the road, the gates opened and the assault team took over.

  I'd love to say it was perfect, but it wasn't. Taking two groups of people, essentially strangers to each other, and only giving them a short time to practice means there are going to be kinks. I think of it like cutting wood: you can use an ax or a chainsaw to get the result you want, but the process is completely different. Our people have used a variety of methods to fight the undead, while the folks from up north have practiced the same efficient techniques over and over again until they had a strong and deadly routine to use.

  Generally I'm against set patterns, but these people know what they're doing. Flexibility in their tactics, keen instincts for when things go bad, and a willingness to take orders when they see things getting dicey. I watched from the walls as the combined force harried the undead running away, and how they dealt with the zombies that turned back to fight. Given the short time the groups had to integrate, I'm surprised it worked out as well as it did. No deaths, a few injuries, and a kill ratio of 3-1.

  Going forward we'll try to smooth things out and get that ratio higher. Taking down three zombies for every person we put on the field isn't going to be enough to cut down the numbers fast enough to get the expansion well under way by winter. We're cutting it close by starting this late in the year. Damn plague made things much harder than they should have been, but we'll soldier on. If we can treat and release everyone who is sick right now in the next week (and manage not to have a huge wave of new people come down ill) then we'll be on track to start construction in the next month.

  That's making a lot of assumption
s, the main one being that no more mass migrations of zombies come across the bridges in Louisville and head this way. If we could manage river crossings without them, I'd suggest blocking them permanently to cease the flood of zombies hitting us and Louisville.

  As a shakedown run, things went well. Teams are out even now--in fact, at all times when there's light enough to see by--and the process really is underway. A lot of it is scouting and engaging when they have to. Getting a detailed look at where concentrations of zombies have formed and what patterns they move in is crucial to the overall campaign. We have to manage killing them in large numbers without pushing them to attack here out of desperation.

  Ah, I almost forgot to mention that another group of people arrive today. This is a much smaller unit of specialists, only twenty of them. We've got soldiers and people damn capable of waging a war on the undead, but to move forward we need more than just strength of arms. When you build something new, you need people who understand the foundations of things, the roots of civilization.