American Recovery

by Joshua Guess

  More than all that, it's a council that will be composed of the leaders from each community, and there happen to be an even number of them. Which means the leader of that council, a person voted into the position by the others on it, gets two votes to break ties. Want to guess who got the job?

  Will Price is sitting on my couch right now, shaking his head. He has been there for the last hour, totally dumbfounded by how much his life has changed over the last few years. I offered to make him a congratulatory breakfast, but he said maybe being put in charge of this grand experiment wasn't a good thing. So I offered to make him a breakfast of commiseration instead. It's the same breakfast either way, but I don't smile with the sad version.

  I want to go into all the details, explain how the higher-ups are planning on integrating us into a single people, but not today. Let's keep it short and sweet and leave it there. I like taking my day off on a positive note, and it doesn't get much better than this.

  Saturday, January 5, 2013

  The Last Man

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I stopped by the clinic yesterday (well, one of the several we have now) to interview Henry, the last surviving Exile from the fallback point. His recovery has been coming along better than expected, though he will never be a healthy man again. Whatever poison was in that water did permanent damage to his respiratory system from the lungs up to his throat and mouth. You can hear him breathe from the next room, a rattle that always seems on the edge of being a cough but doesn't quite get there. The act of getting out of bed winds him, turning his breath to harsh rasps.

  His voice is the worst part. I haven't the slightest idea what he sounded like before, but Henry talking is like listening to a cancer patient trying to squeak out his last words around a mouthful of stones. I've spent time with enough dying people to have a fair ear for the sound of it. Except Henry isn't dying. He's getting better. His ordeal has left a mark on him, reminders that come with every inhalation.

  Still, he's remarkably tough. The older man is trying to do everything for himself no matter how difficult. I'm told he has been heard sobbing at night, almost certainly from the memories of all the dead left behind when he somehow survived.

  I didn't see much of that in my interview with him. I wasn't there to learn secrets about the cowardly attack that took the lives of his loved ones. I wanted his story, a piece of the larger tapestry that is our story as a people. I yearn to understand what drives even the worst of us, how the motivations of normal people can twist and turn them into Exiles or marauders.

  Or even into people like the UAS.

  Henry isn't like Kincaid. He wasn't a good, or even neutral, man before The Fall. Henry was kind of a bad guy. Not in the twirling-my-mustache way. He didn't rob nuns at gunpoint or sacrifice children. He was a con artist, a thief, and even before The Fall, a rapist.

  I write that word and find myself surprised that I'm not enraged. The two things that have always bypassed every barrier I've developed for self-control are people that hit kids or women (call me a sexist, whatever. It's instinct) and rapists. Even before the world fell apart I'd have felt the righteous urge to kill a man for that act.

  Maybe it was the honesty that softened the news. It may have been the genuine self-loathing I saw in his eyes, heard in his broken voice. Henry once committed an act beyond forgiveness, and years in a cell later, in a world fallen to ruin, it still haunted him. That's how he came to live with the Exiles.

  Before the marauders joined up with the Exiles to form a permanent community, Henry was a marauder. He joined a group made up of people like him; men who took from others without conscience. He says it was because he couldn't bring himself to be around any other kind of person. That he didn't deserve it. He took me off guard by admitting that he worried survivors like me would make him pay for the things he'd done before The Fall if they were discovered. He's probably not wrong.

  Though he didn't participate in further such acts against women, he didn't stop those in his group that did. His conscience at him over the long months on the road. He was too frightened to say anything, or to even strike out on his own. He told me that cowardice and a desire to live kept him from voicing the objections he felt.

  He quoted Tolstoy (or Edmund Burke, depending on your version of history) to me. It's a famous old line:

  "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

  "But," he followed up, "people forget that bad men come in grades. And we can let worse people get by with evil by choosing not to act."

  Eventually Henry did leave his group at one of the rare trade gatherings among the marauders. He searched for a new home among them, some group that might have been thieves and maybe even killers, but didn't do the awful things he'd seen too much of. There were a few such caravans, women freely living among them unharmed. Which is who he joined up with and eventually settled in the fallback point with many months later.

  Henry admitted to me that at times when he lived among the darkest remnants of humanity, he considered suicide. There wasn't any lack of opportunity, not with so many zombies constantly hounding marauder groups. Henry wasn't afraid to fight, so in that sense he wasn't a coward. But he was afraid to stand up. And too much self-preservation lived inside him to let the undead take him.

  It took him a long while, but Henry eventually chose a different way. The truly awful thing I realized by the end of the interview is that he really seems to think he deserves this. That the lives of every single person he held dear was taken while he lived, as a punishment. He wants this pain. He feels he deserves it.

  Hmm. Maybe that's why I can't summon up that killing anger. Death would be a release for him. There aren't any punishments for him that I can think of worse than living.

  Sunday, January 6, 2013

  Across The Line

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Over the last week twelve of the communities that make up the Union have sent out long-term settlers to man the more populated areas of the border with the UAS. Up this far north (which is relative, of course) there isn't as much concern. Closer to the UAS central holdings in the far south, however, a Union presence needs to be seen.

  And, in this case, felt.

  I don't have a lot of information, but I understand those twelve groups have set up an equal number of outposts covering nearly two hundred and fifty miles of border. The patrols between those stations are both regularly timed and sometimes at odd hours just to keep people from figuring out when they'll be happening for sure. It was during one of the random patrols that our people caught a truckload of UAS members trying to sneak across the border.

  Now, we aren't considering this an act of war. I've been told that I have free reign to remind everyone as often as I like that the Union isn't going to fight unless we absolutely have to. That's not showing our hand or acting like cowards. Just fact. We won't attack just because a hummer full of women made their way a few miles into our territory.

  But in the spirit of keeping things short and to the point, I'll just skip ahead and say this: they aren't coming back. They're alive, of course, but not free. They came straight into our land at nearly a right angle to the line of the border. It was intentional. So, they're prisoners.

  There's not much else in the way of news (that I'm free to share) but then, given we now have UAS prisoners, I imagine a short post will be all the news anyone can handle. Some will call for a fight on both sides. People will let themselves get riled up. No matter how insistent those voices become, the Union will not blink. If disaster follows this, it won't be because we started it.

  Monday, January 7, 2013

  Clumsy

  Posted by Josh Guess

  As expected, we got a lot of messages from the UAS yesterday. Most of them were filled with the headache-inducing bullshit legalese we thought was left behind when the dead rose up to devour the living. Stuff about their charter (a sort of constitution that they use like politicians before used the US c
onstitution--in any way that benefits them at the moment) and how according to their rules we were keeping their citizens unlawfully. There are actually a few lawyers here, since the apocalypse apparently couldn't wipe them all out, and their opinion is that the UAS sees us as a rogue state and that they have zero recognition of us in a legal sense.

  In other words, we're outlaws who kidnapped their people. I also get the sense that they're flooding our inbox with such a volume of ponderous rhetorical bullshit because they're embarrassed their people got caught crossing the border. They knew the deal and sent untrained women into danger.

  I know that last bit might come off as sexist, but it really isn't. The frank biological truth of the world as it is now is that women are more important to the human race than men. I've got no problem with females fighting or doing any job a man can do, but without enough women our species is pretty much fucked. So why risk them on something like this? It was doomed to fail at some point. The direction they were heading was right into the heart of Union territory. Chances are good that they would have kept to the roads clear enough to travel on, which are the same ones we use to shuffle goods from one place to another.

  We'd have caught them eventually. Which is why it's wasteful and stupid. These weren't trained soldiers, mind you. The six of them in that Hummer were only a few months removed from living safely underground. Before The Fall, two of them were congressional aides, one a business manager, one a park ranger, and the other two accountants from some big agency. All of them friends from the same area, which makes sense given how localized the evacuations for the bunkers must have been. You can only take so many, after all.

  They can't tell us what the mission was. Not because they don't want to, but because they don't have any idea. They were given a location to drive to and instructions to wait for a set amount of time for some kind of signal, then to return home. My guess is another agent like the bastards that killed the Exiles, but the ladies in the truck have no idea who it was.

  All told it was a badly planned and clumsy idea. If nothing else it cost the UAS a carload of citizens who were wives and mothers to people they left behind and useful members of their community in their respective jobs. I have a problem with suicide missions, which this would have been if we were as barbaric as the UAS seems to think we are. And my mother, may she rest in peace, raised me to believe that women were the superior gender. Right or wrong that attitude made me protective toward the fairer sex, and this...idiocy is infuriating.

  They will be relocated far from the border. These ladies will be kept together and moved to a community that can use extra hands. Treatment will be fair and they won't be imprisoned unless they try to escape, but they aren't coming home.

  If you are a member of the UAS and can read this, perhaps you should have a talk with your leadership about testing border security this way. I can't imagine this having any other motive. Next time it could be your loved one who gets treated as expendable. Just something to think about.

  Tuesday, January 8, 2013

  Cleaning House

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I should mention off the bat that the UAS sent us another round of elegantly written bullshit following yesterday's post. The long and short of it is simple: all bluster and no action. We're certainly not upset that they don't plan on starting a war over their captives, but I can't help but laugh at their angry, empty words. Basically they threatened to keep any of our people found in their territory captive should they be found alone. I have to wonder exactly what they consider their territory since the entire Union is supposed to be some rogue nation, but I'm not too worried. Our folks are careful and won't stray far from safe areas.

  Closer to home, New Haven participated in a sort of winter tradition. The temperature dropped below twenty last night--which is why I'm still awake at the moment--and five hundred of us took the opportunity to go out and find as many of the undead as possible. The wind was blowing, chilling their flesh even more. We've been planning it for a while now, and with the Box finally producing custom pieces of machinery and weapons, we have the means to do real damage to the local zombie population. Best to hit them when they're weakest.

  There's no great strategy or mystery to it. We set up barriers the folks over at the Box made for us, a sort of extendable, spiky bike-rack looking thing, and went hunting. Most of the old school zombies were too frozen to offer much resistance as we attacked them.

  The New Breed are as adaptable as always. They're slowly becoming acclimated to the cold, though they have a long way to go before they're a serious threat during winter. It's strange that so many of the old school zombies are resistant to cold down to the low thirties, high twenties, yet the New Breed seem to have persistent issues adapting to it.

  Total number of nests found: eleven. Total zombies killed: 438. No casualties on our side.

  I mention this both because it's the only real news around these parts to speak of, and because it illustrates a huge difference between the Union and the UAS. Our people head out there and cut down the undead like farmers threshing so much wheat. Long-range scouts report that the UAS has barely made an effort to clear out their newly settled areas. The little bit of extermination they've done has been unpracticed and badly done. All gunshots and being ill-prepared. Messy.

  Just a warning to anyone who might be thinking of joining up with the UAS. They can't even handle their own zombies. Doesn't fill me with confidence that they'll be able to take care of you.

  Thursday, January 10, 2013

  Pinwheels

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I spent my day off from the blog working with Jess. Yesterday was one of those rare, carefree times when what I was doing was more important than anything else in the world. My wife has made great strides in getting the greenhouse going, and I was glad to help her team start their planting for this year. I admit to having my doubts about the idea, but I should have realized that if anyone was going to be able to overcome the technical hurdles, it would be Jess.

  The place is freaking huge. It's made up of several large former business, of course, so that's not really a shock. What truly struck me when I walked into the main greenhouse, which used to be a Lowe's and is at least forty feet from floor to ceiling, was how hot it was in there. Sweltering enough that I had to strip my jacket off and get down to a tank top. In January.

  Compost makes its own heat, and Jess was not sparing with the stuff. There are piles of it everywhere, set in a pattern around the tables and shelves our newly-planted veggies will occupy. She told me that the compost will heat all the time, and with so many tons of it constantly radiating, the buildings are fairly easy to keep warm. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't felt the sweat-inducing warmth myself.

  The roof of the place is being fitted with water catchers to feed the sprinkler system, which will in turn feed the hoses that water the plants and provide drinking water. There's something awe-inspiring about watching Jess order people around and carry this huge, crazy design in her head. Seeing her not only be in charge but actually taking charge is so far from who she was when we started dating that I can barely reconcile the two versions of her.

  Hell, she even ordered me around. I spent a good chunk of the day with my hands in dirt, planting seeds. Some of that time was taken up with helping relocated truckloads of compost from New Haven proper and creating the huge piles according to Jess's plan. The last bit few hours I was over at the Box watching one of the production lines build wind turbines.

  Food is a necessity, and one my wife is becoming more clever and creative in managing. Her work is impressive to say the very least, but the turbines that will go on the roof will be the icing on the cake. They will power grow lights to supplement the natural sunlight coming through the new skylights. They'll be powered by batteries (some homemade ones, now that we have people making them) that will charge any time the wind blows hard enough to make the blades spin. Thanks to the wonder of compact fluorescent bulbs, the t
hings will sip power. Should work out well.

  And that, kids, is just the beginning. Thanks to an abundance of copper laying around the country--already in wire form--we can make a lot of generator engines, for windmills or whatever other kinds of power generation we can think of.

  Ha. I just noticed that this whole post has been without mention of my two least favorite things: the UAS and zombies. Funny how a few projects that would have been utterly mundane several years ago now capture my imagination and hope as if they were magic. Plentiful food and the ability to turn on a light at our convenience may not seem like much, and in truth they really aren't in comparison to what we've lost. But it's important to remember that agriculture and the light of fire propelled mankind out of nomadic wandering and into an era that created modern society.

  Now we just have to repeat the greenhouse strategy over again a few times and we will have enough food going by spring to keep people from getting too hungry. Sometimes I forget hos many of us there are now. We've planned for it, but maybe my small brain can't wrap around how this is going to translate into feeding so many. Jess tells me it will work, though, so I believe that it will.

  That's hope. More important, it's a start. A first step toward the future we've been planning to build.

  Friday, January 11, 2013

  Opposing Voice

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Today I want to post two comments made by the same anonymous member of the UAS. I don't agree with their view on most things, but I do believe it's only fair to give voice to reasonable discussion. Each comment is very long. I present them without comment of my own.

  The first was made in response to "Will Of The People", posted on December 31:

  "I want it clear I don’t speak for the UAS or its policies. I’ll likely be reprimanded for commenting here as we shouldn’t stoop to engaging internet pundits, but I cannot continue to let the comments on this blog, which is truly a public service, go unanswered.