Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land (3 page)

Monday, March 7, 2011

Three Amigas

Posted by Josh Guess

There are many pleasant ways that a man can be woken up. The first and most obvious is with sex--there's nothing quite like the gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) touch of a lover to rouse you from deep slumber. It's a fantastic way to start the day. The second best for most people is to wake up to the smell of delicious food.
That's how my morning started. At first I thought Jess had gotten up early to make something for us to eat--not a common occurrence around our house, given that both of us are always busy and working on projects. No, when the smell of eggs and the sound of sizzling bacon hit me, the first thing I did was flop an arm over to the side, expecting to hit empty bed.
I said I was sorry like a dozen times, but wives tend to get miffed when you drop your arm across their sleeping faces, even if it's an accident.
Curious, I got out of bed and threw on some pajama bottoms to go see who was in my house. No, I wasn't worried that the zombies had somehow breached our defenses and come inside to make breakfast. I WISH that were the case--any zombie that would cook for me would be one I'd think hard about keeping around. Nor was I worried that someone had broken in--there were about a dozen people that had free reign to come and go in my house at all hours. Lots of us have that policy.
What did I discover when I made my way into the kitchen? Patrick and his three girls, making breakfast for all of us. The fact that there was fresh bread, eggs, and bacon made me wonder just what was going on. Eggs weren't that uncommon, but I hadn't had bacon in a while.
As it turns out, Pat was giving the girls a lesson. He and I have talked a lot the last few days about the ideas behind yesterday's post, that being the sharing of all skills and knowledge among as many people as possible. While I ate breakfast this morning, he explained to me what his plan was.
The girls had all managed to cultivate good skills with firearms during the time they and Pat were on the run, especially while they were locked up in that abandoned militia fortress. He's proud as hell that the girls have been able to build a decent sense of judgment about danger and how to respond to it, but he's discouraged by their lack of pretty much any other skills. Add to that the deep emotional trauma they've been dealt and you have a recipe for shut-ins who won't socialize with anyone.
So he's having them do chores and duties wherever he can find them. The eggs were collected by the girls early this morning out at the farm, during a lesson on how to care for chickens, which included a lot of details about the species. I can see Aaron's touch there--he and a trusted group of people are trying to talk to everyone who can teach skills, explaining his view of the learning process. He calls is holistic education. As I've said in posts about Aaron before, he (and I) believe that the best way to teach people about a subject is to give them every possible angle on it.
So while they were collecting eggs and feeding the chickens, Pat's girls learned about the history of the domesticated chicken. They learned about chicken physiology. Common illnesses and how to spot them. What foods work best to make the best tasting chicken. If there's a thing that a farmer knows about those little cluckers, the girls had to hear at least a bit of it.
The crazy thing? The girls seemed to like it. Sure, Pat had to go with them to keep them calm, but it was more social interaction than I've seen them have since they've been here. Pat says they seemed like kids again, talking about how cute the chickens were, yet they didn't bat an eye when the farmer that was teaching them took one to demonstrate the best way to kill it. That's a reality everyone who learns out on the farms is going to have to deal with--once in a while, you'll have to kill an animal. For little girls, I really thought that would be a sticking point, knowing they would have to do it to keep the population down to a manageable number, but nope. No problem.
It didn't bother them to watch one of the hogs get slaughtered, either. In fact, they were such good students that their teacher gave them a small package of bacon to bring home along with the eggs, and a loaf of bread.
That's how they came to be at my house, making breakfast. My stove has been modified to run on a propane tank, and has an (admittedly cobbled together and crappy) vent hood that keeps us from killing ourselves with gas and smoke. It's one of the few stoves in the compound that can be used inside (excepting the mess halls), which is why Pat brought them here.
He's got a good idea with these girls. Making sure they learn the basics of farming along with the hard realities that go with it. Then moving on from the production of the food to how to cook it on a small scale for personal use. After breakfast, he took them to the closest of our three mess halls, where as I type this they are learning how to make meals on a larger scale. It's a lot for them to take in, and I expect they'll lose some of the knowledge being crammed into their brains by tomorrow...but some will stick. And they'll do it all over again, three days a week, until they've mastered it.
Pat's going to have them working pretty much nonstop. Tonight they'll be working with him at the forge for two hours, then spending time with Jess to learn some of her skills--I think she's going to do basic knitting this time. I imagine that Pat will keep on working them, eager as they are to make him happy, right up until they start asking for breaks. Their almost fanatical need to be near him, understandable though it is, is unhealthy. Making them do all of this will accomplish myriad goals.
1)Getting them interacting with others, which they aren't inclined to do on their own
2)Genuinely teaching skills that will serve them and the rest of the community well over a long period of time
3)Acclimating them to the rigors of making life work as an adult
4)Hopefully making them aware, through constant effort, that they do in fact need time off to be kids.
The last one is a big deal for Patrick. He's worried that the girls just won't get out there and have a little fun. They don't talk to other kids, don't even act like other kids. When the alarm sounds because of a zombie swarm being sighted near a part of the wall, they don't get worried or scared, don't cry like some of the other young ones. They just check whatever weapon happens to be at hand, make sure it's easily accessible and functional.
Pat's hope, as well as my own, is that the unending lessons will eventually make them ask for a day off. He says that when and if that happens, he'll be a happy man. Of course, he's going to hedge his bets a little, and tell them that if they want a day off that they have to spend it with the other kids. He's not going to let them hang on to his coattails forever...
I think it's a great idea. In fact, I'm going to get in touch with my other council members and see what we can do about cutting the duties of the other children around the compound so they can join the girls. With Aaron to help manage and guide the process and me to organize the times and details, I think we can make a good effort toward giving the next generation an education like nothing any of us have seen.
Those three little girls are special, and the friendship between them is beautiful. Pat realizes, as do the rest of us, that to keep that bond among them would be a shame. Better to see them share it will the other children, and bring all of our younger citizens together with a common goal. It's exciting to think about, and more so to actually plan!
I'm gonna go get started now.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Dodging Sleep

Posted by Josh Guess

I'm afraid I just don't have much in me today. It's hard to express with written words the exhaustion we're all feeling as we try to weave the broken threads of our lives here at the compound back together. It's not that we aren't working together--we are, or else we'd be in a whole universe of hurt--but the sheer amount of work with the people we have is just too much.
Zombies have finally started showing up on the north side of the compound in real numbers again, which sucks. We've got the majority of the work done, at least well enough to keep out the constant stream of undead. Most of the repair work is whatever we could throw together, but it'll do until we have more workers free to really reinforce it. The warm weather today makes me wonder at how many of them we'll start seeing again. I know they can last a long time without food, but the hunting parties tell me that they've found carcasses all over the place. Deer, rabbit, squirrel, even some ducks. I can't catch a squirrel, and I'm a fully functional human being. How the hell are the shambling, clumsy dead able to manage it?
Everyone has been putting in extra hours. It's a good thing, because people are getting out of their comfort zones due to the lack of manpower and helping out with things they've had little or no experience in. It's bad, though, because getting four hours of sleep doesn't make most of us inclined to pay attention when someone is trying to show us the finer points of just about anything.
I feel awful that I pretty much took a day off a few days ago. I slept for so long, and when I look around and see the dark circles under the eyes of every person I see, I want to apologize. A few people have given me a hard time about it, which is reasonable. A few others have pointed out that my efforts along with my brother's are what has kept the work schedules and materials needed for them organized--a task that can't be done running on half the sleep I should be getting. Also reasonable. Doesn't make me feel any better.
I think the person who has it the worst right now is Dodger. That poor guy is working at the same level Will was back in late fall, trying to get the defenses up to snuff just in case some cunning opportunists think to strike while we're relatively weak. I'm not too worried about it, if for no other reason than we've got some of the big guns ready for action. Next time, if there is one, we won't wait for parley. We won't try to talk our attackers down. We'll just do what we have to do, quick and mean, to make the problem go away.
That being said, Dodger doesn't feel like what we have is enough. Not just for human attackers, no, he wants to start work on a whole new defensive line outside of the walls to cut down the zombies without risking our people. I listened to some of his ideas, though it was hard at times to catch what he was saying around the jaw-cracking yawns he couldn't hold in. They're brilliant, at the very least on par with some of Will's better ones, but they require manpower and supplies that we don't have at the moment.
They 
are 
good ideas, though, and need to be tested. So I asked the council to give Will to Dodger for a while. Will can work on building some of the traps that Dodger wants to try out, and while he's still a condemned man, we'd be stupid to the nth degree not to use his brain. Will's a genius when it comes to defenses and efficient methods of killing zombies. If there are ways to improve them or even flaws to be found, Will can do it.
In addition to many, many other duties. We're really not letting up on the guy, but for convenience and efficiency he's going to be staying in the war room while he works on these projects. The war room being the name Will himself came up with a few months back for the house next to the armory that Will, and now Dodger, utilize as an office. It's where the guards change out weapons and armor, where the designs are made for new traps, and where defense coordinator (or whatever Dodger decides his title is, I vote for "Defense Guy" myself. Simple. Also, kind of funny) works to keep that part of our little song and dance running.
I've been doing the lion's share of the work managing the trips back and forth to the farms. I make the guard schedules for that while Dodger focuses on the compound itself. Given how exhausted he is, I'm really not looking forward to telling him that he's going to have to take over farm duty soon. With the planting beginning all over the compound as well as at the farms, I'm going to be a waaaaaaaay busier boy than normal.
This was so much easier last year, when all we had to do was eat out of cans and harvest what had already been grown. Can't avoid the conversation with Dodger much longer. Better honesty now than anger later. I think my mom said that. Maybe my sleep-deprived brain just pulled it out of my ass. At this point, I don't even care.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

No Fences

Posted by Josh Guess

Rain. Nonstop, pounding, driving rain. It's a good thing for the water barrels and cisterns, buckets and cups. It's not a warm rain by any means, but it's not freezing either. We needed to rebuild our reserves, and the reservoir down the road is apparently filling, because I took a shower this morning. I figured given the sheer volume of water falling from the sky, I could afford the twenty gallons or so to clean up nicely.
One negative, though, is that work has screeched to a grinding halt. Can't work a field or patch a wall in this weather, not that the wall really needs much more at the moment. I guess it's actually a good thing, because it's given the majority of folks around here a much needed day off. We've been fighting our collective exhaustion for days now, and I imagine a good number of folks are enjoying a nice sleep in.
Not all of us, though. I was struck by something pretty minor this morning, and I wanted to point it out to you. I'm sure most of you reading this have seen it in your own communities, but I didn't really realize the importance of it until today.
Pat and his girls live right next door to us. The forge is situated in the back of what used to be my neighbor's back yard, and Pat lives close to avoid a long walk to work. So, this morning Pat and the girls came over, it being too wet and stormy out for him to work the forge, and for the girls to work at the farms. His thought was to come over and all of us play a board game or something together, just spend this lazy day as a family and enjoy each the company of loved ones.
I watched them walk out of their house, across the yard, and it hit me. I didn't think of it as my yard anymore. I didn't look at the divots of missing ground where my fence used to be and think "That's where the property line is". It was such a small thing, but the implications of it blew my mind.
I see people walking through yards all the time around here. There are plenty of roads to use, but many people prefer the straight line between points A and B. I've seen it hundreds of times, yet it was this morning that made me realize I've not once seen anyone get upset about it. No one tells people not to walk on their property, or yells at them not to step on the plants (mainly because it's second nature for all of us to avoid stepping on what will eventually be food).
Even our houses aren't the sanctums of isolation they once were. I mentioned the other day that people come and go through my house all the time, at all hours. It doesn't bother me or seem strange, and most other citizens feel the same way. We've seen each other near to pissing ourselves in terror, we've been huddled together for warmth and safety. Privacy and ownership just don't seem like very important concepts anymore.
Community does. That's why we fought so hard to take back the compound. Not because of what it is physically, but because of what it represents. Our home, OUR place. The piece of ground that all of us protect and grow food in. The spot where we chose as a group to make our stand, love our neighbors, and work together. We could have done that anywhere, but only as one people. We came back for the ones left behind, as many as we could keep alive.
As you know, that went well. We lost people, but nowhere near the numbers we expected. And where some folks from other places might have held a grudge for the relative freedom that refugees like me had when we escaped, I haven't seen it here. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, just that I haven't seen it. I've seen nothing but respect from those who have been here throughout all our troubles for those of us who escaped.
It's neat to see how a neighborhood changes when you take down all the barriers between the houses. No fences anywhere means that pretty much the whole place becomes something different. Just think about it. No delineation between properties means that what used to be isolated, individual little kingdoms have evolved into openly shared spaces. Houses are just houses again, places to sleep and eat and keep your stuff, sitting right in the middle of this giant shared space.
I dunno. The idea is so different to me from how I used to think of this neighborhood before The Fall and the zombie plague that I feel like I can't really do it justice. Like I said, it just blows me away that so many fiercely individual people can be so casual about sharing everything. It's great, and it makes me smile. Just wanted to share.