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

by Joshua Guess

  Yesterday's post brought on the expected onslaught of comments and messages. Most of you out there aren't happy with the leadership's position on how we should deal with the people from Louisville. I understand your anger. I get that many of you think that in our position you would do the 'right' thing, and set up some kind of quarantine at the least. Denying help to our friends is not a thing that sits well with any of us.

  But let me set some things straight for you so there is absolutely zero confusion as to why we've come to this decision. And why as of this morning only a handful of people have volunteered to go help.

  First: the Louisville crew aren't being hit with some mutation of the new plague. Or, rather, if they are it isn't susceptible to heat the way the versions we've dealt with have been. It's either something new and more resilient than any form of the plague we have experience with, or it's a plain old vanilla disease taking advantage of our weakened immune systems. Do you people really think that if a solution was available like using our saunas that we wouldn't at least help them set something like that up? It was the very first thing they tried. It failed.

  Second: as fast and hard as this disease has hit, coming into contact with the Louisville group is almost a guaranteed vector for the illness they carry. Seven or eight people from here volunteered to help after I posted yesterday, and they rode out together. Those people can't come back here for a long time, and that was their choice. So, please, all of you out there who're haranguing us for making a heart-wrenching decisions that you don't have to make, allowing you an easy moral high ground: would you abandon your friends and family for months to go help people whose illness stands a three in four chance of infecting and maybe killing you? If you helped and somehow managed not to get sick, would you be willing to stay away long enough to show that you were no longer a carrier?

  I don't know that I could. And I still wish I could go help.

  Third: I do logistics, and this isn't just a matter of isolating people and giving them, food. Sure, we could set up a quarantine area and feed people, even send in a very small group of dedicated people in hazmat suits to carry in goods.

  If that were it, I'd be the first to say hell yeah and bring people in. If you think it's that easy and you're judging us harshly, then it only goes to show that you don't have enough information. I hate sounding like a condescending prick, but you've made your negative statements about our choice as if you know all the factors. Instead of trusting the fact that we've always tried to help people in the past, that we've been stalwart friends to those in need, you assume we've changed.

  Here's the deal, people: there are more than two hundred sick people in Louisville. They need constant, round-the-clock care. They need to be fed, have fluids constantly pushed on them. They're vomiting, nauseous, and what little nourishment they keep down comes out of them in liquid form, meaning they need to be cleaned up.

  And they don't have much in the way of resources. We do, but we're also feeding a larger number of extra mouths than normal and keeping much of what we grow in the form of preserves. You may or may not recall that there are a few thousand people moving here soon, and while they have a good reserve of food saved up, well, as Ned Stark said in Martin's classic work, "Winter is coming." We can't spare the huge amount of food it would take to care for all those sick people. We're already gonna be skirting the edge of starvation and making an enormous dent in the local edible critter population by Spring.

  I get why you're all so angry. I get why you think we're being cold and heartless. You think we're being selfish by choosing to protect our own people and the huge positive change we're working on. You think we're choosing to go the safe route and continue on toward the expansion and migration rather than risk everything we've built to save human lives.

  And you're right.

  But do you seriously think we would just say no without measuring the risks? We fucking want to help, but the resources and manpower required would take half of all the people we have to manage it. Yes, I've done the math. Even with caregivers running with fifteen people apiece to care for--which is way too many for one person to handle when they're all total care--you've still got three shifts of people working nonstop in support positions, doing everything from preparing food to providing safety. Limiting the number of people contacting the sick people only reduces the exposure risk, it wouldn't eliminate it.

  As for you specifically, Aaron...we haven't changed. We've had to make hard decisions before, as all survivors have. You might be glossing over the fact that all of us are killers. We've taken human lives before. None of us are innocent, fluffy little bunnies. You damn well know we're pragmatic and will ultimately protect ourselves. I don't want to hurt anyone if it can be helped, but the risks are too high. You don't run into a fully engulfed building with no fire gear on to rescue a person.

  Yeah, it seems heroic and amazing, and it might be. But it's also suicidal and stupid. Risk assessment is a daily part of our lives, now. If the odds were even that we could pull this off without the Louisville sickness rampaging through here and risking everything and maybe killing more of us than we'd save in Louisville...well, I'd do it. We have to operate on what we can observe. This sickness seems to hit the majority of people it touches. Tackling it would weaken us and almost certainly kill a large number of the people trying to help.

  So any of you out there who want to keep on being pissed, I sincerely support you in that. I'm mad at us about it too, and at the universe for putting us in this position. I don't blame you in the least for being angry.

  But you know what? I don't see any of you running away from your families and communities to head to Louisville to practice what you preach, either. What, we should risk nearly certain destruction because we're close? If it's so wrong that we want to live and don't see any way to help and survive, then maybe you shouldn't let mere geography stop you.

  No? Yeah, I noticed that yesterday. You're allies and friends, and I don't want to say these things. But you judge us, yet you don't suggest traveling here to do anything to help yourselves. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. I know this has gone on long as a post, but we are here. We're in the thick of the situation. It's our call to make. It sucks, no two ways about it.

  And one last note, again to Aaron. You say if you weren't 600 miles away you'd volunteer to go to Louisville and help in a second. Funny how you accuse us of being selfish when you abandoned the people who saved your life, your community, for a wholly personal road trip. You were an integral part of New Haven. We saved you from death by zombie, and you left us to pursue your curiosity. Get off your goddamned high horse, because if you were here you might have a different perspective. But don't be a hypocrite.

  All roads fork. We had two paths before us and we chose one, for better or worse.

  Saturday, August 4, 2012

  Interceptor

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The first comment on yesterday's post, which was a rant on my part and fairly long, began with a question. I was asked if I felt better. No. I don't. I don't feel at all good about this situation or the hard call we as a community have made to protect ourselves from near-certain calamity.

  Then again, that choice ultimately seems to have been the right one, because people are dying in Louisville despite the best efforts of the healthy folks there to prevent it. And they're coming back as zombies, right there in the crowded rooms where the rest of the defenseless sick people are located. Not after a few hours, either. We've seen it before in isolated cases, but the people in Louisville dying from whatever disease is ravaging their population are coming back in minutes, sometimes much faster.

  Maybe it has to do with how weak they become as they fail, their immune systems no longer able to fend off control by the plague thoroughly rooted in every system of their bodies. I don't know any facts, there. I'd have to study it to have any idea at all.

  What I do know is the sudden onslaught of dying people rising up to consume their neighbors has put L
ouisville in a panic. Just as we feared, they've begun following through on their threat to come here. It's a last gasp effort on their part, because it's going to take the last of their resources to load everything up and head this way. They expended much of what they'd saved up moving to the place they all live now--a sports arena, I can now say without fear of bringing enemies down on them--and what little is left in fuel and food will come east with them. Toward us.

  Those New Haven citizens that went there to help are trying to convince them not to do it, as I understand. Faced with the impending certainty of their arrival, the council met this morning. For the record, I fought hard for a compromise that might save us from having to do something we'd regret for years to come. I wanted to set up a rough quarantine zone a few hundred yards west of New Haven that we could put wide patrols around. We could drop off water there, or rig up a crude gravity system to supply the area with water without having to come close. Food would be a bit more tricky but ideas were floated.

  We wouldn't provide any manpower inside. The amount of effort required to do this would/will take away from our expansion efforts pretty drastically. We're already behind schedule due to all the recent storms, but faced with no other option than to fight, we decided that doing something to help no matter how minimal on our part would be infinitely better than having to do violence to friends.

  Make no mistake: our position hasn't changed. Our goal here is to prevent risk to New Haven, plain and simple. The Louisville people have forced us into a corner here, and we've pulled half the assault teams from zombie cleanup duty to help our scouts out in watching for the convoys we know will be coming. We are doing the bare minimum to ensure there is little to no contact between the two groups. If that means losing some days of work and using up some supplies to keep them from coming closer to us, then that's what we'll have to do. The only other option is to fight them, as I said, and we want to avoid that if at all possible.

  The council agreed to a modified version of my idea, hinging on agreement from the Louisville crew themselves. So far there hasn't been a response from them. Our volunteers there say that every time they try to talk to the remaining leadership about it, they get sent to do other work after being told it's under discussion.

  For us, the priority is not allowing a known infectious agent to enter New Haven. If a person or a family, or even a huge group like the migrants that will be here all too soon, happen to come here to live and bring some unknown disease with them, we can't stop that. If people aren't aware of what's happening then there isn't any way to stop it. That's the difference here. The Louisville group knows exactly what's happening to them, and they've forced us into making concessions to help them. But they aren't coming through our gates, it's as simple as that. If things work out, they won't come within fifty feet of another New Haven citizen until the sickness in them has run its course.

  We'll risk a quiet, lurking illness when bringing people here to live. We can't turn away everyone because of what might happen. Rather a lot of you have made that point: will we turn away a person who shows up looking for a safe place away from the wandering dead? Of course not. We wouldn't even turn away a sick person. We'd isolate them and treat them. Again, we'll take in a lot of people even knowing that some of them may carry bugs in with them.

  But if you can't understand the difference between those scenarios and a group of people actively wasting away and dying from an incredibly virulent illness with an insanely high transmission rate, then there's something wrong with you. I will risk being burned to help a person, but I won't risk the lives of others to do it. Sorry for the roughness, but I just don't get how people can't see the difference. To me, the Louisville crew coming here isn't much different than a terrorist ransoming a city with the threat of a biological weapon.

  I know they're desperate and afraid. I would be too. Hell, I am. As much as I hate the tactic they're using, I get that it's the only thing they can do. It's a last-ditch effort to get help, because the Louisville crew are desperately trying to protect and save their people as all survivors do. If it weren't my home they were coming for, I'd applaud the balls it takes to risk so much.

  But they are a threat, regardless of any other facts. One we can hopefully manage peacefully when our scouts intercept them on the way here. I don't pray much, but this morning I really am praying for that.

  Sunday, August 5, 2012

  Standoff

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I've been going on at length the last few days; this post is by necessity much shorter. Our scouts did manage to intercept the caravans from Louisville yesterday and stopped them from getting closer than a few miles away. The team, composed of four scouts and an eight-man squad pulled from the assault teams, gave them our terms. Accept quarantine with no contact or direct aid, with food and water provided, or turn around and go home.

  The Louisville folks knew the unspoken third option was force. Instead they opted for option four. They pointed guns at our people and took them captive.

  It's a desperate gambit, one made with the idea that we'd have to take our own people in, and logic would follow that since we'd be exposing ourselves in the process we might as well take in the rest of them.

  The reason I'm keeping it short is that the council has been in session off and on for the last twelve hours trying to decide what our next move is going to be. There are several ways forward on the table, but Will insisted that all of them--none of them pleasant--be put up for a community-wide majority vote. Four plans, four actions to take. We'll pair them off and take two votes. One will end up winning.

  I should point out in the limited time I have to write this post that yes, one of the options is full acceptance of the Louisville group into New Haven. They'd become full citizens and receive as much treatment and care as we can provide. As bad an idea as that is, I can't fault Will or the council for making it an option. We've had enough heartache dealing with enemies. No one wants to leave any option off the table. If we're going to get sick and die, no matter how stupid or wasteful that may be, then we'll choose to do it as a majority.

  I'm not going to lie: if that option is picked, I'm out. If the people around me want to expose themselves to a very infectious and deadly illness, I can't stop them. This is my home, but it's theirs as well. I can't fault people for doing something I consider suicidal in its altruism, but just like any citizen of New Haven I have the right to leave at any time. I'll risk a lot, but I won't accept near certain death (especially a slow and painful one) because other people tell me I should. If the vote goes that way then I'll leave. Jess has already said the same.

  The votes begin in less than half an hour, and I'm helping run things. I have to go. Keep us in your thoughts.

  Tuesday, August 7, 2012

  The History of the World

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Many thousands of years ago, the first intelligent human beings discovered fire. Then tools. Before long they started herding animals and building civilizations, transitioning from roving bands of nomads into stable societies with centralized locations.

  It's been pretty much downhill since then.

  There are days when I have a lot of hope for the future, but I'm always brought back to earth by some inescapable facts. Back before The Fall, before the zombie plague wiped out everything humankind spent those thousands of years creating, I bought a smartphone. I used it to surf the web and whatnot, but I always came back to my clunky laptop to write and play games. Because of the simple limit of how small a screen my eyes could use for some tasks. Like gravity or electromagnetism, it was a simple fact that writing was easier and way more efficient on a large screen with a physical keyboard. Nothing the makers of my phone could do about that.

  Similarly, there are some things about human nature that no amount of positive thinking or social structure can override. When your people are sick and dying, you'll do anything to save them. When your back is against that wall you don't think about the conse
quences to others. We're the only species on the planet that worries for the welfare of all, not just our immediate social group. It's when the immediate social group is facing an existential threat that the scope of your concern narrows to them.

  It's about love and family, you see. Doing everything you can to save the folks who've been by your side each day, suffering as you have suffered and sharing in the hundred little joys. We are a strange bunch; violent at times yet equally compassionate before or after. Rarely we feel both at once, a deeply morose sense of dark necessity, heartbreaking, even as we commit to terrible acts.

  Sorry I'm taking so long to get to the point, but I don't want to type the words that are on my mind. It's stupid, I know, but the part of me that's still a scared and hopeful kid feels like not putting it out there for everyone to read somehow keeps it from being real.

  About half the Louisville people that came here, which was more than three-fourths of their total population, are dead. We killed them. There wasn't much choice.

  They released our captive scouts and fighters. I guess the assumption was that once they were exposed to the disease, our boys and girls would try to come back home. And that we would let them. Neither of those things happened. A lot of people seem to forget it, but we aren't stupid. All the people that went out to intercept the Louisville people were volunteers who agreed that if exposed they would stay out of New Haven for sixty days. We even set up supply caches for them just in case.