American Recovery

by Joshua Guess

  Worse, the loss of that child pushed Will and the council into action, ordering a comprehensive sweep of all the old bolt-holes and passages, which meant putting a lot of our people in the roughs outside the walls. The few undead that are brave enough to wander about made it a point to harass our folks. They kept at it even when archers started putting arrows through their eye sockets. Persistent fuckers actually got two people before we could cut them down.

  On top of that we've had some indications that the tactics and behavior of the New Breed are changing again. The weather has not been kind to them so far, them being less able to deal with temperature extremes than their slower and less dangerous cousins. The New Breed hereabouts have begun to disengage from the swarms, moving in small groups as they did when we first encountered them. They move at night, walking from place to place on the wall, trying to climb in quietly. We've had to triple the number of guards just to make sure none slip by.

  We've had good and bad both in the last several days, and with it being so ungodly cold lately, I can't help but feel somewhat negative. I worry that the hard times we've been through aren't over. It's probably the Strangers making me feel that way, ineffective and relatively harmless as they appear to be. They're an unknown, and I hate questions I don't know the answer to. Especially when not knowing the answer is potentially fatal.

  God, I need sleep. I'm still not wholly recovered from the flurry of activity over the last several days.

  Sunday, December 2, 2012

  The Bunker Redux

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We know for sure that the Strangers read the blog. I mentioned our long-range scouts in the general area of their home base the other day, and very soon thereafter patrols came out of nowhere to look for them. No worries; we asked the scouts first if it was alright to test the waters that way. They agreed. Our people are too good and have far too much experience to get snagged by these amateurs.

  And they are amateurs. Someone commented on a post recently, suggesting that the Strangers might be the people we left alone in that bunker to fend for themselves. While I can say for sure that these aren't the same people, we're now certain beyond doubt that the Strangers have a similar story. The short of it is this: the scouts got close enough to see their home base with their own eyes.

  It's what was called a "Three-year" bunker. I have a passing familiarity with them from a lot of research that came up mostly empty. Many large bunkers were built over the years for a lot of reasons. Some were intended to allow people to survive nuclear war. Others were more general-purpose. Some were private, some made by government.

  This one was a gift from Uncle Sam, as far as we can tell. It has to be absolutely enormous given the number of people and vehicles we've seen entering and exiting, all of them hauling fuel. I guess the whole "self-sufficient for three years with no outside contact" thing didn't exactly work out for these people. It's hard to gauge how many people live there but Dodger thinks some of the larger bunkers could handle as many as five or six thousand people. When you're building on a budget that doesn't have much in the way of limits and doing it in a salt cavern that might span miles, you can do that kind of thing.

  It's hard not to get a little angry at the thought, to be honest with you. We're still fighting the undead every day and planning how to maximize our crops to avert mass starvation by this time next year. I don't have anything against those people for riding out the worst parts of The Fall in safety; how could they know what we face up here, and why would they choose to do the same? No sane person would.

  However: my brain can't stop imagining what we could have done with those resources, how far we could have stretched them. The Strangers probably have (or had) seeds in their safe little box in addition to the massive stores of preserved food they've been living on. They have vehicles and fuel and new, clean clothes. I'm not jealous of what they have by any means, but it pisses me off that such wealth has been mismanaged and wasted.

  And how do we know that? Because it's called a "three-year" bunker for a reason. Those folks shouldn't have had to open their doors until March at the very earliest, yet they've been out here operating for months at least. They clearly have run short of fuels, but the larger question is this: what else do they need? If they're getting hungry, we're in trouble. There's no fight more desperate than the one you're having with a starving person.

  Look at the zombies nibbling away at humanity if you need proof.

  This situation with the Strangers isn't as dire as it could be. There seem to be a lot of them, they travel as they please, and they're heavily outfitted, but appearances can throw off an honest assessment. Because they're undisciplined, frightened, and don't coordinate as a single force. They don't want to fight us and have little experience (or so it seems) dealing with threats.

  It's almost sixty degrees outside right now, warmer than it was this time yesterday morning. New Breed have decided to be sneaky again, sidling up to our walls in the darkness, spending time carefully worming through the buffer. One of them actually got over the wall--here in Central, at that, which is the safest and mist secure part of New Haven--last night. It watched our patrols and sentries until it found a weak point that wasn't being watched closely enough, then moved.

  It killed a woman, a guard who had just come off duty. The poor thing had only stepped out of her house to let the cat in when the zombie struck out at her from the darkness. Her son, only eight, killed the New Breed with a knife to the soft palate even as it went to take another bite.

  That's our life in a nutshell. The Strangers don't know what it's like to be thankful for a cold snap because it might mean a few days or weeks without fear of a zombie attack. They don't know how hard you have to make yourself to live through the constant attacks from undead and human beings, from nature, from disease and death and war and every other thing that tries to take you down. Stuck in their hole and living better than anyone on the surface, they can't understand the mindset all of us are in after nearly three years of it.

  It's going to truly become winter soon, or that's what we hope for at any rate. When the cold finally does decide to stay a while, the Strangers will go back to their cave and turn on the central heat. They'll curse the need to stop gathering supplies but be thankful for the warmth and safety of their bunker. We, on the other hand, will begin moving outside more and hope that it stays below freezing. Both in the world and in our hearts, I'm beginning to believe that a cold place is best for the work we have to do.

  Monday, December 3, 2012

  Brian

  Posted by Josh Guess

  There has been another zombie attack within the walls. It's a sad truth, but our strongest hope against them has always been that they tend to attack in numbers. No defense is perfect, and it's much easier for one of them to get in unnoticed than for any large group to succeed in an attack on the walls. The New Breed are damn clever when they set their minds to something, and this decision to work individually goes against every behavior we have seen in them. Without a doubt, they're the most dangerous zombies we've ever seen.

  This attack wasn't fatal. People are being a lot more cautious inside the walls since Brianna--the first guard who was attacked--died. This go round it was a bite on the arm rather than a neck shot, and the citizen (a leatherworker named Matt) still had his apron on. The one with all the tools. Nothing like losing a couple fingers to put you in the mood to drive a leather punch through the skull of a zombie, I guess. Phil had to cut off Matt's hand, of course, but it could have been worse. At least it was his left hand, Matt being a righty.

  Which reminds me about Brian. He's Brianna's son, and for right now he's homeless. He can't stay alone so soon after losing his mother...twice.

  Brian had to kill the zombie that killed his mother, driving his blade into its mouth and upward even as the thing tried to chew the wet meat it had torn from Brianna's neck. On top of that, he knew as all children here do that you can't leave someone in her condition alone
. She bled out fast, and Brian...

  He did what he had to do. That poor little boy made sure to tell the people who ran too late to his mother's screams that he cleaned the blade of his knife off first. More than anything, he wanted them to know that he didn't put five inches of steel into her brain without removing the gore from the zombie first.

  Kids think in ways that defy logic, or at least operate on a level that we puny adults can't understand. Hearing that nearly broke my heart, and I've offered to let him stay with us as much as needed. Right now he's not here. He's under observation at the clinic to make sure he's stable (as much as he can be, all things considered) for a little while, but after that he'll crash here if he wants to. I know as much about dealing with that kind of trauma as anyone.

  I won't lie to you. I feel a lot of things right now. Proud of Brian for doing as he did no matter how hard it was, angry and upset and sad that his mother was taken from him. Disgusted that a child not even ten years old did something that the Strangers seem unwilling or unable to do themselves: face the enemy head-on.

  It makes me sick, all of it. But maybe I can do a little good for the kid, if he decides to stay here. We aren't forcing him, he gets to choose where. There's no shortage of folks willing to take him in. So long as he's comfortable, I can't complain.

  Tuesday, December 4, 2012

  A Child's View

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I spent hours with Brian yesterday. I'm not trying to influence him to come stay with us, but I really did want to check in on him regardless of where he chooses to go. He's doing well. I don't mean he's putting a brave face on. I really don't think that's the case. I mean he actually seems to be coping with the death of his mother much better than a kid his age should be.

  It isn't preternatural or weird if that's what you're thinking. Brian is, in my estimation, simply a product of his environment and genetics. I've mentioned before how long it seems we've been living in this new world, and it struck me yesterday that to a child, the time since The Fall has to seem like forever. Lifetimes. For adults the change from a world ordered by law and government, regulated by a structured society and an abundance of resources, was stark but understandable. For Brian and many of the younger kids, the world that was has to seem like a distant dream barely remembered upon waking.

  Some of this is directly lifted from a discussion he and I had that spanned nearly an hour. He misses his mom, but he went to great lengths to explain that he really was dealing with it. His eyes were not the eyes of a little boy, but the weary (and wary) gaze of a young man who has no childish illusions about the world.

  Chalk it up to education--where else but here and when else but now to kids learn long division and how to disable an adult opponent with a pocketknife?--and a lot of time spent watching bad things happen. Brian isn't far off the peak of the bell curve for New Haven kids. He's an outstanding boy in that he is cautious and realistic, but I don't think it's some special quality that gives him his resilience. The grief is there, and real, but it isn't crippling.

  I think back to my days at the nursing home, on those occasions when family had the rare chance to sit the deathwatch for one of our residents. Hell, I sat it myself more times than I can recall, waiting calmly for the person in front of me to reach the clearing at the end of the path, as Stephen King would say. We all get there in the end, and while the transition is sad and painful for us, we intellectualize it. We can wrap our minds around it. Adults, anyway.

  But Brian is showing us that our perception of what makes a child in the world today is probably wrong in most ways. He saw his family die except for Brianna. He has seen the attacks we've endured just as clearly as anyone. He's not fearless or numb. Brianna made sure to explain to him that in her job as a guard, she was in a position of danger more than most people. Having had the experiences all of us have dealt with over the last few years, her words were no empty lesson to her son.

  In fact, the only time I saw him visibly upset was when the alarm bells went off near the end of our chat. He had cried a little when he spoke of his mother, but mostly they were good tears. Memories of all the little ways she loved him, the thousand small kindnesses and whims she catered to. The most vivid, he said, was the day his dad and brothers were killed. Brianna snatched him up and fought through a group of eleven zombies to save her last remaining child.

  He remembered how brave she was, and if there was any guilt to be found it was that he became frightened when the bells rang. It was an attack, and the trauma of losing his mother to a zombie made him a little more sensitive than normal to the sound of the bells. He actually said he felt ashamed to not be as brave as she was. I told him that real bravery isn't being fearless, but to feel great fear and to overcome it anyway in order to do the right thing.

  He smiled at me and said that Brianna used to tell him the same thing.

  Brian is hurting and will be for a long time, but he's not despondent or lost. My heart ached for him, so small and alone for the first time in his life, but I told him how proud I was that he could give his mother such a fitting memorial; to live for her and as she would have wanted him to live. He didn't want pity or to hear how sad we all were for him, and who can blame the kid? No matter how his situation may pluck at our heartstrings, it isn't even in the same universe as the pain he's going through.

  He's strong, and made of sterner stuff than any adult I know. If Brian is an example of what the next generation has to offer New Haven and the world, then I'm pretty sure we can't be screwing up completely. I think we'll be in good hands a few short years from now. I hadn't realized how dim my hope for the future had become until Brian shined his light on me.

  Thursday, December 6, 2012

  The Union

  Posted by Josh Guess

  When The Fall began--and let's face it, in many ways it's still happening around us--every possible scenario I'd ever envisioned ran through my head. Though it has been a long time since I've mentioned it, the fact bears repeating that I saw the zombie plague coming because I was a nerd fascinated with zombie fiction. I don't say that to make myself sound awesome or anything; many people saw the horrors on the news and realized something was wrong, that the rapidly expanding violence heralded some enormous change, even if it had nothing to do with the undead.

  No, the point I want to make is that while I saw The Fall coming, one thing I could never have predicted was living long enough to see so many people beat my expectations and come through the worst to create something resembling a cooperative society.

  There are many groups in our collection of allies. We're mostly friendly toward each other, and what differences we have are mostly rendered moot by the distance between us all. We're in agreement about a great many things, though. We all share knowledge freely, from the contents of the Ark to the more immediate kinds of information like weather patterns and zombie migrations. When the undead begin to behave in a way we haven't seen, we all ask questions back and forth to see if others have a better grasp than we do.

  You might say that the larger situation--living in a world dominated by the undead--creates a set of conditions that strongly encourage cooperation. We are many, but in all the important ways we're also one. Humanity has been brought low by the zombie plague and even at the hands of our fellow man in the ensuing years, but I admit a lot of pleasant surprise in our progress as a people. Turns out those better angels of our nature Lincoln mentioned outweigh the angry, jealous devils so many cartoons implied (correctly) we all have inside us.

  There have been other zombie attacks over the last few days, both by large groups and by single members. We've had no losses, thankfully, but it matters. The fear is there, the worry that at any moment the New Breed will do some clever thing we aren't expecting and kill one of us. Or many. Or all. That gut-wrenching worry is balanced by the fierce dedication we have to each other, especially visible in the heat of combat.

  All of that you know. It's stuff I've been talking about for a l
ong time. New Haven isn't unique in this: our allies are just as protective of their own citizens. But now, as of this morning, I can officially tell you that the ink is dry, the treaties sealed, and a new era has begun that's so much bigger and more powerful than anything I could have imagined when The Fall began.

  We're keeping it simple and calling the collaborative effort of our allied communities The Union. That's what we are, after all. A group of individual peoples uniting together toward common goals. The Strangers (or whatever they call themselves) weren't the catalyst for this decision, but they helped speed the process along nicely. The idea is that we've all been dealing with threats in a reactive manner and as separate groups for too long. The structure of The Union is designed to make us more efficient and supportive, capable of striking early and at will should a threat rise up.

  There are other positive aspects of the deal, but the ability to work as one in light of the activities of the Strangers is a powerful one. Our hope is that simply being a cohesive single group will make the point that none of us are to be fucked with. Before, the Strangers may have thought they could do as the Hunters did and pick off weaker groups or raid with impunity.

  So let's be clear: No. Not a bit of it. If any member of the group suffers at the hands of an enemy, then we all react as one. Simple. Easy. And in case you're wondering, Strangers, we take the Israel stance on retribution: repay every act many times over, to discourage you from doing it again.

  Years of dealing with marauders have taught us to stop being nice about it. If you want to treat your fellow humans like animals, we'll do the same right back to you. I can't wait for a more stable and peaceful time so we can push the potential of The Union to its fullest limits in ways that don't involve killing people. Hopefully this announcement will help bring that day closer.