Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land (10 page)

Strikes

Posted by Josh Guess

Got about an hour of sleep, and that was between nine and ten last night. I've been up the rest of the time, and I'm running on fumes. Most of us are.
Damn smart zombies hit another section of the wall last night that's been under repair. We weren't caught off guard this time, thank god, since the last attack taught us a lesson about not putting extra guards on weak spots. Still, this attack was different, and I think pretty important.
They hit us in groups. None were very large, maybe fifty or sixty at a time, but they kept coming. Every time an assault would end, another would attack just as we were getting ready to withdraw. I don't know if they were gauging the time it would take us to give up and decided that the assault was over, or if they were just trying to weaken us. I'd kill to know how the smarties communicate with the lesser, dumber undead. It isn't verbal from what we can tell. It's also fascinating to me.
Last night, I found a book that I'd bought a while ago and never started to read. It's called "The Warded Man", by Peter V. Brett. I was tired and one of my trainees had found it and set it out on my desk, I thought it would be a nice way to unwind, reading something new.
I won't get into too many details, but it's a good book. In it, humanity is constantly assaulted by hordes of demons every night, held back from destroying mankind by magical wards painted or carved on things. I naturally found myself wishing for such an easy solution to our problems, but that's fiction for you. It takes us somewhere that has solutions to problems that the real world just can't offer. It's a nice escape.
It just makes coming back to reality that much harder. I wish we had something like Brett's wards to use against the zombies as they probe our defenses. I suppose we'll just have to do as we always have, which is the best we can with what is in our hands.
I'm going to finish up some work that can't wait, and then I'm taking the day off to sleep.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Rising Sun

Posted by Josh Guess

This morning we got some pretty awful news. More than a week ago, an earthquake rocked Japan, followed by a tsunami that destroyed most of the northern coast.
Since The Fall, there has been very little in the way of international communication. The internet is mostly functional because of cellular signals, and most of what is usable here in the USA is run by Google. It pains me to hear so late that such a tragedy has hit Japan, and the repercussions of the earthquake have been worse for the survivors there than The Fall itself.
I've heard bits and pieces from my contacts at Google about how other countries have weathered the zombie plague. India was hit harder by the undead than almost any other place because of the population density there. The people of the middle east took drastic and severe measures to curb the viral spread of zombies, leaving themselves in better shape than most places.
Japan, I hadn't heard all that much about. I knew that many survivors had moved to places at the foot of mountains, where they might still be able to farm but could run to the safer places in the foothills if needed. Most of what we knew about Japan we learned a few months in, well after the metropolitan areas of that country were abandoned.
The consequences of the earthquake are severe. The tsunami triggered by the quake smashed one of their nuclear power plants to bits, and while it had been shut down since shortly after the zombie plague destroyed most of the civilized world, there was still a lot of waste there, and the area around it has been horribly contaminated.
All along the coast, huge swaths of land have been totally destroyed. There were a fair number of survivors that chose to stay near the coasts, fishing for their food and living on boats. Others farmed close by, I'm told, since that is the best soil for it by far. There's no telling how many survivors, precious human beings that are the remnants of our race, were lost to such a violent act of nature.
My heart goes out to the remaining people of Japan. I've always had a fascination with their culture, and a deep love of their dedication to perfecting themselves. It saddens me that such a unique people should have to suffer such heartbreaking losses yet again. I know that their spirits are bruised right now, and that they may be cursing the fates that have brought down so much misfortune upon them.
I know that they will struggle, and that they'll fail at times. I also know that the core of the Japanese mindset is a rugged determination. That kernel of willpower has always been the driving force behind their martial arts, which is the first thing that comes to mind for me, since I practice three Japanese arts. It's also what drove the geisha to become flawless artisans, their smiths to make weapons of beauty and efficiency. It's what made their artists so talented, and later made their technology so much more advanced. That spirit of perfection lead the Japanese from the darkness of World War 2 into the modern age, a nation of warriors who embraced peace and drove themselves to make ever-larger leaps toward the future.
It is that spirit that has given them the will to survive The Fall, and the will to overcome this most recent tragedy. They will overcome it, be certain. They will carry on and become stronger as a people because of it, as they have always done. They are the shining example that the rest of us strive toward. I only wish that I could be there to help them.
Ganbatte Ne, survivors of Japan. Good luck.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Spears

Posted by Josh Guess

For several weeks, Will price has been working closely with Dodger on several defense projects. One of the most important has been a plan to better safeguard the farms from intrusion by the local zombie population.
My brother Dave, you may remember, lead a group of workers in digging simple trenches and lines of stakes. Others have taken samples of...discharge from the zombie the Bald Knob folks caught, using the stuff to line the boundaries of one of the farms. While only temporary and not available in large quantities, that stuff works perfectly to repel other zombies. So well that Evans and Phil are working on ways to try and infect other zombies with whatever strain of the plague it is that gives that weird zombie the ability to mark its territory with its own vomit. I have my doubts that it'll work, but it's surely worth a try.
One idea that Will has endorsed for a very long time, along with many others in the compound, is hunting groups of zombies near the farms down and taking them out before they can organize close enough to us to be a threat. The scouts did a little of this after the cold set in, killing hibernating zombies in their sleep. Once the Richmond soldiers invaded, that practice stopped. And of course, most zombies developed resistance to the cold, which made it far too dangerous for our people to attempt, with their advantage taken away.
Since we've been home, we've been short on able bodies. But Will managed to convince Dodger that training a small group of people to work together as a unit would work as a means of depopulating swarms. Like most of the training in different areas people have been doing, the twenty of them have been working on this in their own time, and after about two weeks of hard drills, they went out for their first test in actual combat yesterday.
They're basically doing it like the Spartans did--shields (most made from old pieces of cars, usually hoods) and spears, which are probably the easiest weapon for us to make. Spears are awesome for killing zombies, being piercing weapons, and a lot of force goes into that point when it hits a skull. More than enough to break bone and ruin the brain.
Will and Dodger went with them, Will wearing his shackles as he has to do outside the compound. Jamie went as well, acting the part of scout for the group, and found a horde of the undead not far into the woods nearest the farm right next to the compound itself. Not a huge group, only about fifty, but our untested spearmen (and women) were outnumbered more than two to one.
Shields locked together in a phalanx, spears angled up and out, ready to be driven forward in one swift thrust, they waited at the edge of the wood for Jamie to bring the zombies running right into them.
He did. Our little Spartans stood their ground and methodically killed every zombie that came at them. Oh, there were mistakes; a dropped shield here, a broken spear there, missed thrusts and close calls with undead that got inside the reach of their weapons. But each man and woman, tempered by more than a year of fighting for survival, reacted well to those problems and kept one another safe. They killed almost forty of the zombies that came at them before those that were left turned and left them alone after seeing the piles of bodies that had been created in just a few minutes.
It was a good practice run, and showed Jamie, Dodger, and Will what needs to be worked on and what seems to work well. There are probably a hundred little details that need to be fixed just right, but it's a promising start. If we're lucky and don't lose too many citizens, we might be able to field as many as three trips a week for our spearmen, solely for the purpose of breaking up swarms.
For the first time since The Fall began, we've got real prospects for taking the fight to the undead. It's an idea still in its infancy, one that has to be nurtured and guided carefully, but it's beautiful nonetheless. I wish I had the time to train for it myself. Maybe I will, some day down the road when my trainees are fully capable of taking over for me...
But I can't risk it until I'm done training them. As much as I want to stand in that line, shoulder to shoulder with men and women I trust, making the world safer one push of the spear at a time, I can't.
Yet.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Tough Call

Posted by Josh Guess

This morning, we had to turn down offering aid to a group of survivors. We'd never heard of them before, but they are located not far from the epicenter of the zombie plague, on the Kentucky side of the river across from Cincinnati. They've kept to themselves over the last year, even though they had phones and access to the internet. They've followed this blog, and known there were options. 

Some of the things I've written about have put them off contacting us. They've had the luxury of not being attacked by marauders and having a large cache of supplies to keep them going, so they decided that coming to a place as dangerous as the compound wasn't worth the risk. I don't blame them, as we've had to do awful things to survive and protect each other. 

Now they're facing a swarm of zombies bigger than anything they've ever dealt with, including a lot of smarties, and they can't hold out. They need a large force to help them, and we just can't field it. Given the numbers of undead they're talking about, we would need to send at least fifty people to have a chance at saving them. That's weapons, transport, gas, food, water...and most important, the men and women we would send themselves. We've just gotten to a point where we're able to staff our walls and farms without making people work twelve hour shifts. We can't risk losing that many. 

It was a hard decision to make, but the council was right to do it. There were a few dissenting votes, but even those council members knew the incredible and unjustifiable risk we'd be taking if we sent so many people. 

A very small group might be sent, but that's going to be a separate vote. I don't fancy the idea of a dozen of our people going against a swarm estimated around a thousand, but those who will be going (if they get approval) will be elite scouts and fighters who've faced these kinds of numbers before. Maybe they'd be able to distract and drive off part of the swarm. I don't know. That's the sort of thing that Will and Dodger will have to figure out. I'm not sure how twelve people will be able to help, but I have faith that those two will figure out a way, if it's possible. 

I'm out. Too much frustration for me today, and the emergency meeting we had to call to vote on this means I didn't even get breakfast...

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Minus Six

Posted by Josh Guess

So...have I mentioned recently just how scary Mason is?
Don't want to sound like a broken record or anything, but the guy is unbelievably fearless. He and five others have gotten the council's approval to head north to try and help the small community of survivors with the huge mass of zombies that have surrounded them. Half a dozen people aren't enough to do any real good in a straight up fight against a thousand or so zombies, no matter how good Mason is.
His military training and experience make him one of the most dangerous people I've met since The Fall, but the fact remains that he's just one man, and he's human. He can't go toe to toe with that many zombies and manage to accomplish anything. I've seen him outside the walls, clearing away twenty or thirty undead at a go, but those zombies were spaced far apart, not in a roiling mass of dead flesh. And cutting that many necks and bashing that many heads wears a person out, no matter how good their physical condition is.
But, Mason swears that with the five people he's taking with him, he can do through trickery and creative tactics what blunt force alone can't accomplish. He's being given two modified trucks to use, extra fuel, and a fair amount of weaponry. We can't spare the Tank, so the trucks he's taking are modified with armor only, and even that isn't all that heavy.
I worry that we're getting too much in the habit of trying to save people. Granted, I've been supportive and active in most of the rescue efforts we've organized, but this soon after suffering such bad losses, I think risking even six people for a group that seems hopelessly outnumbered is just a bad idea. We want to help where we can, but for all that Mason seems to be an expert in exactly these sorts of situations, he also seems to have a pretty big blind spot in regards to the reality of what he's trying to do.
I've seen groups of a dozen men falter and get ripped to shreds by half their number in zombies. All it takes is one error at the wrong time, and it's game over. I don't have a lot of worries that Mason will screw up or take unnecessary risks with the people under his command, but fate is a hateful bitch sometimes. You never know what she's going to toss in your path.
I can't spend all morning worrying about it, though. There is a lot of work to be done here. The weather is looking a bit nicer right now, warm in the last few days in a way that makes the air taste like summer. Right this second it looks like rain will be on us shortly, which will slow the work at the farms as well as the repairs on the wall, but we need to top off our water supplies, so it's welcome.
Hopefully it will hold off long enough for Mason and his people to get on the road...
Hmm. I guess my brain is going to be stuck worrying about them no matter what I do to try and distract myself. I'm going to be really pissed at Mason if he gets himself and/or the people going with him killed. He's a resource for knowledge and strategy that we can't afford to lose, and his five best students are going along on this trip. Six people don't seem like a lot to risk, but the potential they carry is worth more than you can imagine.
Jesus, I just read over that. When did I start seeing people as numbers in an equation and not as friends or fellow citizens? God, I feel like crap.
Of course I want them to survive for other reasons, not just for what they can do for us. They're good people, worthy of respect and love just as much as anyone here. They're individuals that each add something unique and wonderful to our community, and losing any of them would be tragic and heartbreaking.
Well. That sounded trite and forced, didn't it? Maybe I'll take a few minutes and go see them off. Just to show I care...