Living With the Dead: The Bitter Seasons (31 page)

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9:43 AM

Posted by Josh Guess

Posting this from the road, though we aren't moving at present. There's been a flat tire up the way in our gigantic convoy, so we've got a bit of a break at the moment. 

Fuel is going to be a problem. We are probably going to have to stop somewhere soon and try to siphon what we can from parked cars, because we're getting low on what's in our tanks and all our extra cans are empty. Other than logistical problems, our trip away from the hospital has been uneventful. No raiders out on the roads, and few enough zombies that we didn't bat an eye at driving right through the ones we did see.

We're OK on food and water. Rationing has been a part of our lives for so long that none of us even really notice the hunger pangs anymore. It helps that when we stopped last night to camp, Jess was able to take down a buck. Only took her about twenty minutes, which was surprising. And she did it with one of the bows we brought instead of wasting one of her last bullets. Lucky for us that this part of the country is a lot like Kentucky in that it's swarming with whitetail, more so since The Fall and the decimation of the majority of hunters. If it weren't for survivors thinning the numbers, I'm sure that there would be so many deer that we'd be stepping on them to get into our tents. 

None of us are happy about leaving the hospital. It was a great location with a lot of positives to it, but knowing that our prisoner found us in the first place was reason enough to leave. Add to that his escape and our spent ammunition stores, and it was just a disaster waiting to happen. Leaving was the only sane choice. 

Luckily, Gabby and the other medical folks built up a lot of good will in their time at the hospital. There are people as far as two hundred miles toward where we're going who are willing to let us camp on their land or know a safe place. One of them even has a big hoard of fuel he's willing to let us trade for, though he's far enough away that we'll have to find gas soon to have a chance at getting to him. 

Not much else to report at the moment. We're about a hundred miles away from the hospital, and if we can avoid accidents and any more flat tires, we can be there by night time tomorrow. It's a long drive, and we're out of the way of the major highways that lead to it, but in the end it will be worth the trip, I guarantee. 

For now, I have to go. Looks like snow coming in, and while we're stopped I want to check to make sure the tire chains are where they're supposed to be. If the snow gets bad, we can always camp, but I would prefer to be closer to our goal than we are right now...

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8:49 AM

Posted by Josh Guess

We're not very far from our destination, but we've called a halt for a while. We would be getting there several hours early, but we have to stop yet again to pull one of our convoy from a ditch and to look for some fuel. With the insanely cold winds, we're having to run our heaters at full blast to keep from freezing inside our cars. It eats fuel, and the cold hurts our fuel efficiency as well.
I've been trying my best to keep in touch with people every chance I get, to make sure everyone who's outside the compound and headed in the same direction we are is OK during their travels. Patrick is still missing in action along with the kids he picked up in Florida, no word from him in a long while. I keep sending him text messages letting him know what's going on with us, so hopefully he'll get them at some point and meet us at our destination.
Aaron and his kids are still out of contact as well. It worries me, but I know they will get in touch when they can...
Courtney and the big group with her is still trucking along, but now they're done with their relief efforts and heading toward us. It's been a long and fruitful trip for them, and they will be bringing with them much in the way of supplies and food. More on that in a minute. First, some news.
Dodger and Jamie Packard have been trying to gather up as many refugees from the compound as possible. Both of their groups were helping, and now they're done. Except for those named above and my group, every other refugee from the compound is now with them. They, too, are heading to the rendezvous point we discussed, and with any luck sometime in the very near future every refugee will be together. The email I got from Dodger detailing his and Jamie's efforts to gather and transport everyone was interesting, I might pass it along tomorrow, or at least summarize for you.
If you're looking for a complete list of the people who got out, sorry for you. I don't know most of them by name, and those that I do know have asked me not to use their names. The folks that don't mind have already been named--Me, Jess, Patrick, Courtney and her bunch, Evans, Gabby and her family, Phil and his, Dodger, Jamie...maybe a few others. I wish that I could add more names to that list. Rachel is still, as far as I know, at the compound. Al and Elizabeth are there, and a few others that I haven't mentioned in a while. Too many left behind in the panic to avoid conflict. Too many away from home because of Will Price's speed in selling us out.
I haven't talked about him in a while. I've tried to stay clear of talking too negatively about the Richmond soldiers in general, so as not to antagonize them. But from the communications I've been able to glean from inside the compound, how I or anyone else feels about them is of least concern. Right now the soldiers are doing everything they can to quiet a fractious and unruly subjugated populace without killing anyone and inciting a riot.
I don't know what the hell they expected. I mean. you don't show up in overwhelming force and think that the natives will welcome you with open arms. You certainly don't expect a group of survivors, hardened killers all, to meekly allow you to have your way with their personal freedoms. It just doesn't make sense.
Will swore that the reason he gave us up to the Richmond soldiers was to keep us alive. I don't believe it for a second, and for one simple reason: if that was his only intent, he would have tried to drag out his conversation with the soldiers' leader for as long as possible. We would have started the evacuation if he had just told us he was going to delay them with talk. Another twenty minutes might have given us another fifty people out of the compound.
He didn't. And as a result, there are now somewhere around 250 people still living there, compound citizens who stayed behind. I've been slowly feeling them out for information, trying to figure out from what they've been able to tell me what the soldiers would do in reaction to a variety of things...
So, tomorrow I'll tell you where we're going. After we've gotten there. I'll let the reaction of the fuckers who took my home from me be the guiding factor behind where we go from there, and what steps we take. If this sounds annoyingly vague, I apologize. I still have to get there first, and talk to the others still on their way. Just the IDEA of our destination is enough to make me worry what might happen to the people back at the compound, but the consensus back home is to stick it to the bastards, make them get worried.
So I will. Tomorrow.
We'll let them sweat a bit over it first.

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10:12 AM

Posted by Josh Guess

Sometimes it's easy to forget that people read this blog and find hope in it. I began Living With the Dead as a warning when I and others around me saw the violence around the country for what it was. We hoped we were wrong, we hoped that we would be made fun of in a few days when the whole thing blew over. We didn't expect it to happen. We were right.
In the time I've been writing this, it has transformed from a basic log of my life, my perspective, during The Fall into something else. Many of you have been there from early on, reading about the lives of the handful of people who formed what would become the compound. You followed along as we struggled to wall in our home, to bring in more people. You watched as many others chose to join us and lend their strength to ours. It took months to make our home secure, and more cooperative effort than I had thought we were capable of. Eventually, though, we did it. We became a unified community, efficient and powerful in the needs that arose to ensure our survival.
We lost it all in a single day.
We've fought the undead in the thousands. Killed and outsmarted marauders and raiders time and time again. The citizens of the compound have always struggled to retain the hope for peaceful coexistence during the violent times that define us. We've been practical and sacrificing when necessary. Today is the day when that gets put to the test.
I've told you that I have been in contact with numerous people still inside the compound and under the thumb of the Richmond soldiers who took it from us. I've been talking with them at every opportunity to feel out their views on what the next move of those who escaped should be. All of us on the outside have been cautious to the extreme, doing everything we can to make sure that our actions don't put those left at home in danger.
The overwhelming response I've gotten from our trapped citizens whose safety has been paramount for we refugees?
"Take back the compound. By any means necessary."
Understand what I'm telling you here: our folks at home are willing to risk everything to oust the Richmond soldiers from our home. And they 
want the soldiers to know it. 
To see it coming. To know that they will be reaping the consequences of taking our home.
I wish it were that simple. I don't have a personal army to call on, no troops to send at them to reclaim what's ours. However, I am done with pussyfooting around the issue. Every refugee is now clear on the facts. The folks back home want their oppressors to know that somewhere down the road, there will be a fight. We're fine with them knowing that.
Now that the majority of survivor groups we've worked with or been in contact with have agreed to embargo the Richmond soldiers, the situation has changed. Now there are 250 hostages back home as the only barrier for us taking the place back. There won't be anyone joining the soldiers in the fight when it begins. They will be a little less than a hundred against whatever we can throw at them.
Someday, we'll have the weapons and people, transports and fuel needed to make that happen. Because this blog represents who we are as a community. It represents the mindset and desires of the people who made the compound, who helped it grow. It gives hope to some people out there that people still exist who listen to the voices of the better angels of their nature.
The message is clear: We will allow no tyrants. Though the soldiers might kill every last person left at the compound, the only purpose such an act would serve would be to make us angry and remove the last barriers for us to level the place around them. We will teach them someday that death is better than enslavement.
But not today. We don't have the resources, and the season is against us.
So the refugees are gathering at a place that can handle our numbers. A place we promised not to endanger with our presence, yet has offered us refuge time and again. Now, we accept that offer. Our hosts are welcome allies in our eventual plans to take back our home. Jack and his people welcomed us to his compound in Michigan last night.
Within a week, the rest of us should have made it here. Hopefully the few who have been out of touch will get here as well. There is work to be done in the way of paying our fair share to Jack and his people. We need to help look for food and supplies, and come the spring work to clear fields and plant crops. For now, this is our home, and we will defend it to the death.
Someday, we'll be back home. No more threats. No more promises. Only a simple statement of fact.
You've seen what our determination can do. It lead us to survive when others fell, to fight against the swarms of zombies and men who would kill us. It made us learn and grow, to adapt to the needs of a struggle to live.
Now we're focusing on taking back the compound. God help you.

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9:03 AM

Monday, January 10, 2011

Posted by Josh Guess

Yesterday was all about a big, sweeping statement of intent.
Today is all about living. Jack's compound is a big place, as many of you may know. I've been here before, and many of our people were here during the horrible waves of zombies a few months back, helping with the defenses and running raids. For all the hate we now bear for him, Will Price was a vital part of making sure this place survived.
Now it's on the shoulders of we refugees to do the same. The cold resistant zombies are up and about around here, though it seems the general population of undead hasn't recovered from the beating they were given a while back. I guess the cold slowed down whatever migration pattern they follow, because there isn't anything like the thousands that battered the walls here before.
It's wonderful to have at least some heat again. Granted, since this place is a complex of factories, the facilities aren't exactly ideal for comfort, but lots of improvements have been made since I was last here. One big one is that a large swath of floorspace of the main building has been cleared out of machinery that can't be used, and a large multilevel sleeping hall has been built there. It's about a hundred feet on a side, and three stories tall. Mostly made of wood, it's packed with insulation and all the entrances to it are sealed tight. It has no bathroom facilities, but a wonderfully complex system of heating and cooling. The solar arrays and wind turbines that give this place juice around the clock (thanks to the huge battery setup in the basement) allow for the sleeping area to be heated at night. It takes surprisingly little power, as the hundreds who cram into that structure during any given shift produce a lot of body heat to keep it cozy.
Of course, adding in a hundred plus refugees will be difficult. Only about half of us are here and things are already too tight fr comfort. It's an issue that my folks are working on alongside Jack's, and we're going out today to scavenge supplies from wherever we can to work on a separate space for us to stay in. One good thing about this complex--there's a lot of unused space. We're looking at a storage building that's been mostly emptied of the pallets it used to hold. Just big enough for us to sleep in and store our stuff, if we go in three shifts like everyone else here at Jack's compound does. Shouldn't be too difficult, most of us were already used to the schedule back home.
Jess and I have volunteered for scout duty. Now that the stress of being leaders of our group is gone, we really don't want to fall back into the roles we had at our compound just yet. I don't relish the idea of sitting at a desk, working on logistics, and she wants a break from teaching people about one or another of the many weird skill sets she carries around in that huge brain of hers. It's not that we hated those jobs, not at all. It's just a comfort thing. We don't want to get used to doing what we used to do. Not until we manage to get back home. Until that day comes, we want to stay as sharp as possible, do as much as we can to stay in physical and mental readiness for the day when we march toward the compound.
It's safe to say that if we do manage to reclaim our home, I will be content to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life if that's what I am called to do. All this excitement is for the birds.
Scouting up here is a lot different from back home. The land is flat and full of lakes and ponds, the areas around us mostly industrial compared to the wooded hills of Kentucky. The advantage there is that while the nearer parts of this region have been scoured clean of supplies by the citizens of Jack's compound, there are still troves of untouched (at least by us) factories and warehouses outside of their normal search areas. That's where the team that Jess and I will lead will be helpful. We are extra bodies, not needed for sentry duty or to work on some engineering problem. We can lead longer runs out into the surrounding areas to look for...well, pretty much anything.
That will be starting tomorrow. Today, as I said, will be a run to find building supplies and more insulation to make ourselves a cozy guest house from the steel building that we're going to all be staying in. It shouldn't be that hard--Jack's people raided a lumberyard for what they took to build their longhouse inside the factory, and they didn't take but a fraction of what was there.
All told, we're pretty happy with the situation here. When Courtney and her big group reaches us, there won't be any concerns about the refugees pecking away at the food reserves here when the edibles we brought with us run out. It's also nice to have a place where my dogs can run around and stretch their legs, and the storage building is secure enough that my cats and ferrets can frolic about until the work of construction begins. It's actually been nice seeing the folks in our group play with them and laugh at how silly and uncoordinated the ferrets are. Feels a bit like home.
Really, the only disappointing thing about this place (other than it not being our own compound, but it can't help that) is the lack of ammunition. There are just too damn many people here with too many large-scale conflicts at the walls with zombies. They ran out a while back. So it's melee weapons all around. At least everyone has something useful to use--one of the advantages of living in a building with a variety of steelworking tools and a fully functional machine shop. Easy to make weapons.
Sort of related, but kind of sad--I've retired my Iaito for the foreseeable future. It was the one I took with me when we left the compound, the katana that served as my cutting blade over the last ten years of my training in marital arts. It has been a constant companion, and served me well in surviving...
But she's damaged pretty badly. In our haste over the last weeks to stay alive, my sword took a lot of abuse. I've tried to take care of it, but the fact remains that it was never a weapon meant to cut into human bodies day after day. There are chips taken out of the edge, and what looks suspiciously like a crack in the blade. I've never seen steel crack before, but that's what it looks like.
Jack's shop was nice enough to make me a replacement weapon. It lacks the elegance of a finished blade, but works all the same. It's heavier than my katana, but not so much that I'll have trouble using it. It's basically a machete, but longer and thicker than any I've ever seen. It also has a hilt long enough for me to hold it with two hands. I like it.
Well, we leave out for our first scouting run in seven minutes, and I need to get running. Hoping to hear from Pat and Aaron soon, but for now I have to put my worries into the back of my head. Distractions can equal death.