Living With the Dead: The Bitter Seasons (37 page)

at 
8:31 AM

Posted by Josh Guess

Today, I experienced one of the most horrifying events of my life. It shook me to a degree I didn't know was possible.
Before The Fall, I was a Nurse Aide. I took care of the elderly, injured, and sick for a living. It's certainly not an easy job, and while physically difficult, the emotional trauma of doing the job any length of time weighs down on you. Watching people you care for grow more out of touch with reality, seeing family members get sadder every day as their loved ones drift away and become lost inside themselves...it's horrible. Seeing death is awful, but seeing it and being the one who has to care for the body after it's stopped being a person and become a shell is something that leaves a mark on your soul. You learn to deal with it better, but it never stops hurting.
When The Fall came, making the decision to stop going to work was one of the hardest I ever had to make. I didn't talk about it then and I don't really want to talk about it now, but I have to. You'll understand when I'm done.
In Frankfort, the zombies spread like wildfire. By the time they'd hit us, people all over the country knew something terrible, something world-changing, was happening. At the nursing home I worked at, the families of the residents were taking their loved ones in droves. By the time The Fall had reached a point where most people weren't going to work and most of the machinery of civilization was in chaos, there were only about twenty people left. Twenty souls who had been wards of the state, or whose families lived too far away to come get them.
Or had no one left to come for them. Worse, one or two just had families that 
didn't 
come get them. By choice.
I find it hard to blame them, honestly. I quit going to work when the numbers got that low, when everyone who was going to be taken from the facility was taken from it. By that point, society had taken a dive and was shuddering its last breath face first in the dirt. I was told by my boss that the remaining residents would be taken to a secure location run by the military. That the rest of my coworkers had been told to stay home, lock up, and keep themselves safe.
I told myself I believed that, but over time I came to doubt it. I think my boss was trying to save my life, and told me what I wanted to hear so I didn't feel as guilty about caring for my own first. What it boils down to is that I don't honestly know if those folks were ever rescued. I did the right thing in taking care of myself and my family. I don't feel that choice in itself was immoral or unethical. But I do feel like shit about it, and I should. I made the right choice, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a terrible choice to have to make.
All I know now, looking back, is that when we raided the place I used to work at, there were no people there. Not living, not dead, not zombies. No one. The doors were locked and everything was relatively neat. Maybe they did make it out. I hope so.
I'm telling you all of that so you can understand something: taking care of others is my nature. Protecting and saving people is ingrained deeply into me. I was a good CNA. Every person that died while I was doing the job has a place in my mind, their faces clear as day. When I think about them, it hurts. But I remember them with fondness also, because I grew to know them, to love them, to joke and enjoy their company.
I've seen a lot of death. At work, it was most often from the rigors of age or illness, once in a great while a complication from surgery. After The Fall, it was most often from zombie attacks or the violence of marauders. Today, it was different.
Jack, the man who has led the people of this compound to do amazing things, to survive against all odds, died in my arms.
I was working in the clinic overnight, since it's still too cold to go out on scout runs. It's been a while since I used my skills as an aide, but it's not rocket science. I moved from person to person, checking vital signs, adjusting injured limbs for comfort, even fluffing pillows. I did some wound care as well--between my mom and Gabby, I'm well trained for it.
Jack came in at about five this morning, complaining of a very upset stomach. Phil was the doctor on duty, and did his thing, checking bowel sounds and various other things. Jack took some medicine to calm his stomach, but it didn't help. Nausea, cramps, feeling full when he hadn't eaten anything, all of that got worse and worse.
At seven this morning, I went to check on Jack as he lay propped up on the cot we'd put in a corner of the clinic for him. He was laying crooked, his eyes distant, blood welling up from his mouth and running in dark rivers down the side of his face. I ran to him, turned him on his side and watched in horror as what seemed like gallons of the stuff poured out onto the floor. I screamed for Phil, but as I held him I felt his lack of breath, my free hand reached his neck just in time to feel the last few, feeble beats of his struggling heart before it stopped.
When it did, the face of every person who had died ran through my mind. Every resident from work, every fellow citizen from the compound, every friend and loved one over the years of my life. Now, this man, who had done the impossible in gathering and saving almost a thousand people with nothing but his iron will and a determination to survive that I have never seen matched, was gone.
I can't tell you why this particular death hit me so hard. I've lost less people than some, but my mother and my unborn son were among them. Those deaths wounded me, and I grieved. But seeing Jack die so suddenly, so messily...I don't know why. Call me a broken record. I can only say that my mind can't let go of the image of his face and the pool of blood beneath him. My fingers still feel an imaginary tingle from the memory of his pulse going quiet beneath them. My ears ring with the faint gurgle that dwindled to silence as that last uncatchable breath was given up for lost. The smell of old blood, rich and coppery, won't leave me.
So, I had to write. It's my way of dealing. Today, it isn't helping at all. People all over are grieving for the loss of a great man, and no amount of trying to distract myself will erase the impression of his passing from my mind. It hurts, and it disturbs me, and it makes me sick to my stomach.
So why can't I cry?

at 
8:35 AM

Posted by Josh Guess

I'm surprised at how well the residents here at Jack's compound have dealt with his death. I suppose I shouldn't be--he was an incredibly thoughtful and thorough man, and he had this place prepared to lose him almost from day one. He certainly knew how to plan ahead.
I almost don't want to say this, but this blog has always been about the truth no matter how hurtful or disturbing, so I will: Jack died while I was with him, and I did the last rite that all survivors have drilled into them. We don't talk about it much because of how awful it really is, but I think that by not doing so, we have done a disservice to the people who read this early on, and were not warned.
I am talking about what to do with the freshly dead, of course.
In the very early days, not many people were aware that all of us seem to be infected with the plague that makes us reanimate into zombies. Many died when a loved one or close friend gave in to sickness or injury, only to come back shortly thereafter and feed upon them. Every survivor I know has learned the hard way to give that last rite I mentioned--severe head trauma. Luckily I was at the clinic where there are tools for that purpose within reach of all the beds, death there always being a possibility. I didn't have to go far, and I did the deed myself. I had felt Jack die, been there with him as the last threads of life wore through and parted. I owed his soul the comfort of knowing that his mortal coil would not become the enemy.
I won't go into detail other than that. Most of you have probably done it in one way or another. Guns, hammers, a simple chunk of rock. It all ends up being the same. We had to do it for my mom when she died, though I was lucky enough not to be the one to do it.
I'm glad I was there for Jack. Because of my presence, I was able to do the thing quickly, and left him unmarred and perfect for the funeral yesterday. It was a beautiful if simple ceremony, one used for everybody that dies here when possible. Jack came up with it, and it's as functional as it is meaningful.
For about an hour, Jack's body rested on a bier set about thirty feet from the wall. People walked by it constantly, laying fingers on his hands or touching his cheek. Every one of them left something there, something small. Most were twigs or bits of cloth, some left things like playing cards and novels. To my great amusement, Jack's named successor and friend Susan Martin left the entire 
Twilight Saga
 there with him. I asked her about it later, and she told me that he secretly loved the series, and that she couldn't stand it. This way, she told me, both of them are happy--Jack goes into the hereafter with them, and she gets to watch them burn.
An hour and almost a thousand people later, Jack's bier was loaded so heavily with flammable objects that Jack himself was almost obscured. The bier was a piece of aluminum machined out solely for the purpose of funerals, and all around the edges there were little holes. I didn't understand what they were for until I saw the men bringing over a cage, which they put over Jack and his accumulated fuel. The gaps in it were small, less than an inch between the lines of the fencing that made it up. The workers ran retaining pins through it, locking it on.
It was a quarter hour later when a shout came from the wall. One of the funeral attendees ran inside the main building. With surprising speed, men brought a strange machine from inside it. It looked like a piece of train track, but with a block of steel on one end, all hooked up to big tanks. The men on the wall pointed sent a runner down to talk to the men setting up the machine. They loaded Jack's bier onto it, right next to the block of steel, and I was beginning to wonder exactly what was going on when I heard a clatter come from the machinery behind the steel block, and I watched as the far end of the rail raised up. After a minute it became clear; Jack's funeral bier was sitting at the bottom of a goddamn launcher.
At signals from some of the guys on the wall, the angle and direction were fine tuned, and at a final signal, one of the men running the machine ran around and threw a bucket of something over the bier and it's contents.
Then he threw a match.
The thing started burning, and after about twenty seconds, it started burning VERY brightly. Then they launched him. I watched the thing go over the wall like a shooting star, so bright I had to squint, and then I saw a bunch of the people on the wall chuck what looked like small bags of stuff out after it. I was pretty curious about the whole thing, so I walked up and looked over.
There was a crowd of zombies, and they were on fire. More of them were catching as I watched. The guard next to me saw the look on my face an explained: Jack wanted every death to mean something, even if the death itself seemed meaningless. Every person should, if possible, take a number of the enemy out with them. It was amazing to watch, the guard pointing to a small bag at his waist and explaining that it was a mixture of magnesium and a few other flammable materials. No wonder the zombies went up like candles...
The whole thing kind of took my breath away. After all, who expects the last moment of a funeral, usually a somber occasion, to end up the ejection of the deceased's fiery corpse into a swarm of the living dead? I didn't. But I can't fault it. It's not how we did things, but I understand the need for a show, for the people to see the departed well and truly gone. Philosophically it makes sense--zombie population reduced, reusable cage and bier, abundant supplies of insanely dangerous explosive metals reduced in a useful way...
Jack thought of every possibility. He named a successor, Susan, a person who worked with him every day and knows how this place works. He wanted the transition to be seamless, and it has been so far as I can tell. He did amazing things here, but he made it clear from the beginning that he was in charge. That attitude and surety of leadership has allowed the people here to accomplish much, and it all came from a man with an iron will who was simply not going to let his people die.
Again, and not to dilute the power of the word, I say that's just amazing. More so because when I look at what he accomplished, I think of Jack the leader, Jack the strategist, Jack who saw the possibilities and set up his moves ten steps ahead of the game. I almost never think about what he was before The Fall. Most of us just don't see the people we used to be and the people we are as the same. Probably because we're not.
Jack used to be an accounting person at the factory that used to be housed in the main building of his compound. He started here years ago as, or all things, a janitor. He went to school for years and mopped the floors at night, working toward something better.
That's almost poetic to me. 
That
 is how I will remember Jack, how I will think of him when the lack of his company strikes my heart. I will remember him as a man who worked for the betterment of himself, but equally concerned with the welfare of others. A man who saw the need for a strong leader, and became that leader out of necessity rather than lust for power. Who Jack was and what he became exemplify the qualities in people that I most appreciate, the things that give me hope for our species and the drive to save it.
His life can essentially be boiled down to this: a janitor that saved the lives of almost a thousand people, with nothing but his brain and common sense.
He will be missed.