American Recovery

by Joshua Guess

  Due to the dead, marauders, and other issues, Pittsburgh became unlivable for me, so I decided to move to New Haven. The Kentucky one. This was during the amnesty for marauders thing they did a while back. I figured I could get amnesty in case my past tried to catch up with me, and I’d have a new place to live. So I started walking. And walking. I missed the amnesty deadline, so I just kept walking. I walked for days, weeks, months. I was like a zombie myself. Just shuffling across states, dragging my baseball bat behind me.

  And that’s when I came across my salvation. I want you to fully understand how lost I was. I’d spend the adulthood of my young life caring for others. And now I had no one, no purpose. I wanted to die, but I just wouldn’t. Somehow the zombies never managed a bite, no matter how sloppy or reckless my bat and I got. One time I put a revolver in my mouth with the full intention of pulling the trigger. I ended up sobbing myself to sleep and waking up with the muzzle still in my mouth and this horrible taste of metal that stuck with me for days. Finally I found people. I think I was halfway hoping they’d kill me, but they welcomed me. And that’s when I discovered the miracle. These people had a central government. Not only was it a government, but it wasthe government. A piece of America had survived. My family, friends, fellow survivors, they were all dead, but here was something that endured. I was a convert from that moment.

  I needed the UAS, needed to know that things were going to be ok. That things were going back to the way they were. I was pissed when people didn’t want to join and actively opposed the new order. You were a bunch of spoiled, ungrateful children. So I told you all off on this blog. But on some level, I think I knew I was pining for a reality that could never exist again. And I knew that the UAS was not the blameless force for good I desperately wanted them to be. I got word from above that the UAS wanted me to start spamming the blog with propaganda. A dick move to be sure, and one that I refused. That’s when I was told they wanted the online confusion to cover for upcoming action. The implication of breaking the peace was too much for me to justify. I got out.

  And now there are these attacks. These wasteful, cowardly attacks. What was served by that? I even posted a few comments about that too, blasting the UAS for destroying resources. All anonymous, of course. Internet sockpuppeting after the apocalypse. It’s how I roll.

  So that’s me in a nutshell. I want to end this long rambling post with a plea to the UAS: Stop. Seriously, just stop. You have skills and resources that would be a boon to the human race. But what are you doing with that potential? You’re killing people and you’re destroying the infrastructure you claim you want to create. Both human and industrial potential is wasted by your grab for power. Look, I don’t know what’s going on at the highest levels of government. Maybe you realize you’ve gone too far. Maybe you’re just angry and afraid. But nothing is served by the extreme nature of these attacks. Attempting to poison an entire city? Bombing greenhouses and crops? There’s no justification for this. Not when we need each other to survive. At the end of the day, those shambling corpses are our common enemy. You are not the American government. You never will be. The US government is dead. So is your family. So are your friends. All we have is each other, and this shitty excuse of a world overrun by the dead. Society is already torn down. Are you really going to burn the rubble just so you can rule over ashes?

  Please. We can talk this out. Just stop. Please.

  Wednesday, February 20, 2013

  On Beckley

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Look, I realize a lot of you out there are kind of weirded out that Beckley is posting on the blog, and that he's no longer a part of the UAS. It trips your finely honed bullshit sensors and makes you want to know what he has done to earn my trust, etc. I get that, I really do. But the flood of worry and anger over the last day has made me realize something really important. Well, two things, actually.

  The first is that while your concern is truly appreciated and it does warm my heart, it's between Beckley and those of us who've spent time learning about him to know how he has earned our trust enough to allow him space here. It's that simple. In this situation, I get that I'm Dumbledore and he's Snape, and all of you out there are the Order of the Phoenix, questioning my judgment. That's okay, it really is. You have every right to do so, and I'm actually glad you wonder. Because that means if I do really screw up and trust some psycho that has me blind to his craziness, you'll speak up and maybe save me from myself. That's awesome.

  But the fact is that beyond the Harry Potter comparison, this is my business. Mine and Beckley's. I've got the backing of my own people on this, and if nothing else you can see it as an exercise in strategic optimism. He is former UAS, after all. That has to be helpful for us, right?

  The second thing I realized, both before Beckley posted and much stronger after I read the comments on the blog questioning him, was that we've maybe gone too far over the 'untrusting curmudgeon' line.

  I want you to read this post and think about it today. I really do. Because this matters.

  Look, we trust each other. Trust between strangers in small groups was how most people made it through The Fall to begin with. We put our lives in the hands of others, trusting that they would not make a fist. From there we formed communities--in the tens and hundreds and thousands--and we trusted each other to work for the group, to sweat and bleed and kill and die.

  Now we've formed a network of communities, based on trust, which is itself based on shared values. We demonize our enemies because they're violent, arrogant, hateful, thieving...because they don't share the values and haven't endured what we have. They are an enemy that needs to be fought, for sure, but by closing ourselves off to those of them who begin to see a better way, we risk becoming them.

  Beckley made the choice to leave. He stood up and saw the terrible things being done in the name of the UAS, and he couldn't have those actions on his conscience. He's a good man who was--was--part of a group that does terrible things. If the UAS keeps on, we'll do our best to stop them and if we have to we'll do as we did with the Hunters and eliminate them root and branch. It's harsh, but may be necessary.

  Along the way there may be others who choose to give up that life. We cannot close ourselves to them no matter how suspicious of them we may be. What we did with the hunters was maybe too far. It was overkill, and in the press to make sure our own people suffered the smallest losses possible, we murdered many innocents.

  In our struggle to survive we've faced a lot of challenges and done a lot of bad things for good reasons. I'm not saying it wasn't the most pragmatic course or the safest for our own people. But I see what happened to the Hunters as being a part of the same problem some of you are having with Beckley. Where would we be now if we hadn't thrown out the lines of trust in the first place? Where might we be now if we'd have taken greater risks to allow those Hunters who wanted to defect do so, and save the lives of their noncombatants? I don't know. I can't know.

  That unknown haunts me.

  So, please, just think about it. We're the last human beings alive, a great civilization brought low. We'll always do what we must in order to live, but it should always bother us. We should always question our motives and wonder if there are people on the other side who secretly want to join us. In order to avoid becoming the villain, we must always take a critical look at our own actions.

  And in times when the choice is between moderate risk and trusting someone, we should stop and think about how important our principles are to us. Food for thought, I hope.

  Thursday, February 21, 2013

  Air Power

  Posted by Josh Guess

  A few people have mentioned the concern that the UAS may have sustainable air superiority--in other words, planes, pliots, fuel, and ammunition. If that's the case, the argument goes, then things can and will get very bad for us.

  So far we haven't been bombed, which doesn't mean it won't happen. I tend to think the UAS would have used shock and awe tactics if the
y were going to. Their leadership are people who used to send troops in for little or no reason, and spent ridiculous amounts of money and manpower showing the natives of whatever country how hard their fist could strike. Unless more has changed than I'm aware of, I can't see them avoiding those tactics if they had the ability to use them.

  Could be wrong, but that's pretty much my entire opinion on the matter. The only thing I'd add is that if they do actually have a field of planes and pilots to man them, there's not a lot we can do about it except duck and cover.

  Right now the war is at something of a standstill. Who'd have thought the weather would hold out being so bad for this long? Here at home you wouldn't even know we're in a conflict if it weren't for some of our people heading to North Jackson to help out. The undead, however many of them are left in the county, aren't showing themselves. We have regular teams of Beaters going out with soldiers in an attempt to find those that remain, but so far we've come up empty.

  For the moment, things are quiet. Big K and I are working on the survival manual, our records, and various other small projects, but that's all fairly easy stuff. New Haven is doing pretty well right now. Jess is still busy getting her seedlings and sprouts going in the greenhouses. Will seems to be taking it a little easier; I heard he asked someone out on a date the other day. I haven't seen Becky in a fair bit, Patrick is taking every third day off from his usual work and picking up new skills. I tried to find Rachel yesterday, but her husband told me she's spending a lot of her free time honing her fighting skills, which still seems really weird to me. Seeing her in combat just doesn't compute.

  Steve and I have sort of reconnected. I don't know that I mentioned it, but Courtney is out west. She was the diplomat we sent out with Ketill and his people. Not all of that scenario was a sham, after all, and while we expect her home within the next few weeks, Steve is missing her hard. He didn't go with her because he had the flu at the time. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't even know until a few days ago. But the timing was critical, the caravans couldn't wait, and Steve was contagious.

  Of all the people I have known for any length of time, Steve has changed the least. I'm not sure what it is about his personality that somehow manages to resist being broken down or bent into new directions. The violence of the new world hasn't made him harder; it's almost as if he was always that way but needed a situation around him for it to show. He's still the happy, funny, imminently understanding guy he has always been. It's like...he's just more. More of who he was, the new aspects of him just uncovered by the tempest of The Fall.

  He worries just like the rest of us, but even with his wife out of state and in considerably more danger than the rest of us, he still sits and listens when I have problems I want to share. It's never about him. There's a zen quality in him for how things are. He really seems to accept the things he cannot change just like the serenity prayer. He has been coming by in the afternoons to just hang out recently, and being around him makes me feel so normal I get afraid I'll slip and forget for a while I'm living in a world of the walking dead and violent human enemies. That's both a good and a bad thing, I suppose.

  I wish I had his resilience. But a wise man once said that wishing for what can't be is a fool's game. Instead, focus on what is, and what you can change.

  So it goes with airplanes and enemies. Only worry about and plan for what you can actually do something about, and leave what you can't up to fate.

  Friday, February 22, 2013

  The Wicked Wind

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Some days, some news, hits you so hard that words seem impossible. Not the formation of the thought, you understand, but trying to use language to express the depth of your disgust and outrage. Sometimes it's all you can do to stop yourself from grabbing a weapon, hopping in a car, and aim to lash out at the bastards responsible.

  The enemy must have thought we'd give in long before now. Maybe they were under the mistaken impression that we didn't have the stones to see this fight through once we stepped into it fully. Whatever the reason, the stakes have been upped considerably from even the insanity they pulled at North Jackson.

  A community in the south, one not too far from where Block was, has been taken by the UAS. Every person there is dead. The small community, about two hundred people, was called Garton. It's empty of everything but corpses now, and those will have to go without burial. The UAS isn't allowing anyone to come close, but they aren't going in themselves. It's a warning to the rest of us, you see. It's a way of telling us how far they will go to force the opposition--us--into quitting.

  One of the last survivors in Garton managed to shoot off a message before she died. She said the killers were one of the teams of operators we know are moving about Union territory. They waited until the wind was right, then released gas that swept across the town. Apparently someone broke into their sewer system, which had been closed off and all the old pipes emptied of water, and released more gas there. Across the wall the wind came, bringing death, and when people retreated into their homes, more of the stuff boiled up from their drain pipes.

  Why do tyrants always think acts like this will cow the people they're trying to control? Why do they never learn?

  I could say a lot of things today. I've seen Patrick and Will already this morning, and their reactions were both severe. Will is enraged and determined, but I saw the hurt in his eyes. Pat is sickened, as am I. Our reactions to things like this tend to be pretty close, even if I show it more.

  So many things I could say. It all seems so inconsequential. How do you mourn for people you never knew, but felt a connection to anyway? Garton was a part of the Union. They made the choice to stand with us no matter what, and look how it ended. We have to honor that commitment and their memory, make sure things like this can't happen again.

  We have to take steps.

  I think I'll go say some of those things to the council.

  Sunday, February 24, 2013

  No Quarter

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I have been in discussion with the council for most of the last two days. Against the advice of every one of my friends except Will, who abstained from giving me his opinion, I have asked for the right to join up with troops who will take the fight to the UAS borders. Because what we have now is no longer a war for our freedom versus the UAS fighting to control. This is a war of survival on both sides. The UAS sees us--all of us--as a threat to their very existence. They aren't coming for us to bring the Union or the western groups under their control. They're out to exterminate, because the leadership there realizes they've picked a fight that has escalated out of their control.

  I should mention that the council voted overwhelmingly to deny my request. The reasons? Let's see: I've been depressed. I've been unpredictable. I've expressed a desire to see the fighting end. I've questioned the actions of our leaders. I've spent time advocating other solutions than violence in the face of overwhelming opposition.

  In short, they don't trust me to do it. I don't understand how one man could so badly threaten a group of soldiers when he's burning to accomplish their goals, but there you have it. Apparently I've gone from being something of a folk hero around here to being seen as an unstable guy who can't be trusted to defend his people.

  And you know? As much as it pisses me off, I can still understand. All of those things are true, though I'd argue that context matters more than the council admits. I'm benched, and if I'm being kept out of the larger fight now, when it matters more than ever, then I can't envision a situation where I'll be allowed to do my part. Sure, I can go outside the walls and fight the undead, maybe even take on the UAS if they make it this far into Union territory, but I won't be trusted to go out into the world as I once was.

  I begin to wonder exactly what we're fighting for. I've spent the last three years surviving just as much as any other person. I've dedicated much of my time and energy to helping as much as I can. Yet here I am, a free man, sitting in my own h
ome being told I can't leave to defend what may be an emerging nation.

  Maybe it's those kind of thoughts that keep me from the front lines. One of the reasons the council gave me, that the undead would rise soon as the seasons change, is certainly true enough; yesterday was so warm that our scouts saw a few zombies on the outskirts of the county. They were moving freely. My home may need me here to defend it.

  But I can't help feeling that in the urge to resist those who would oppress us, we've become too cautious and perhaps a shade oppressive ourselves. I'm not averse to having leadership with ultimate say about defense and how we operate as a community, but it seems to me that volunteers for dangerous front line combat should be given a chance. What do they think I was going to do, commit suicide by UAS? Run? Or suddenly decide that the people and land I've bled for were worth less to me than enemy lives?

  If that was the idea, then the council can go fuck themselves. Every single one of them who voted against me. Some of the them--many of them, to be honest--are friends. I know them well. That's a big part of why this hurts so much.

  It's their call to make, but that doesn't mean I have to like it at all. I have work to do here. Paperwork.

  Fuck.

  Monday, February 25, 2013

  The Angels Weep

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I've written a lot--a hell of a lot--over the last three years about how humanity has had to change because of The Fall. Some of that has been personal. You've seen this blog for the last six months. I'm damaged goods, but I've made efforts to heal. Maybe even hidden some of the pain when it became too much for me to talk about it every day.