Living With the Dead: The Bitter Seasons (38 page)

at 
8:39 AM

Posted by Josh Guess

Jess and I are headed out on a scout run, this time just the two of us. She's driving to give me a chance to blog. We're doing a long-distance trip this time, looking farther away than we've gone from Jack's before to look for more chain link fencing and other supplies. The vibe around Jack's is weird right now, but not for the reason you might think; rather than being quiet, reserved, or outright upset, Jack's people seem remarkably undisturbed by their leader's passing.
Death is a bigger part of our lives than it ever was before The Fall. We've gotten used to the possibility of seeing our friends die, and it was a necessary adaptation. It might seem cold or heartless to you, but I've said it before: if we broke down and grieved as the dead deserved, we would never have time for anything else.
Think of it this way--we're surrounded by walking tragedies all the time. The zombies that caused the world to come apart at the seams were people once, the good and bad alike. Early on we saw folks we knew coming to kill and eat us, and at the time the shock was so great that all we could do was roll with it and defend ourselves. We joked and made light, but over time the faces of the living dead start to leave an impression on you. Brief glimpses of expressions on them, as if they were remembering a dream. Seeing a child shambling toward you with a look of anguish from the hunger that drives her twists something inside you, and it should.
The biggest reason why we are able to harden our hearts against them, against death in general, is because those of us who have survived push all that pent up emotion onto the living. It's damn hard to feel regret for lopping off the head of your old pastor when he's missing an arm and covered in the blood of some poor soul, trying to eat someone whose heart still beats, whose infinite potential hasn't been reduced to stumbling around trying to eat people.
We, the living, are the only chance humanity has to survive and once again become the dominant species on earth. Anyone who's reading this who doesn't think that I'm right, that mankind is still number one? I suggest you fire a gun and wait for the crowds of zombies to roll in. They aren't us anymore, and they outnumber us thousands to one at the least. We've been reduced to a race that must struggle to get by every day, the evolution that took our natural protections from the elements in exchange for intelligence and creative thinking. Yeah, we can make complex machinery, but without fur we're hard pressed to survive in temperatures below the fifties.
Until and unless we can rebuild enough infrastructure to make living comfortable (or at least tolerable) rather than just survivable, each other is all we've got. Jack's people are different, and that makes sense. Each group of survivors should be. After all, every pocket of the living around the country share characteristics--too many people stuck together in too small a space for way too long. Almost always hungry and lacking creature comforts, constantly fighting to stay alive against mother nature, the living dead, and other human beings. When you apply that kind of pressure to one person and let it simmer, history shows us that the person will change. You put a few dozen or a few hundred of them together, and the group tends toward similar trends in reaction, attitude, logic, you name it.
The key to making society one day work again is making sure that no matter how different the groups of us (or the individuals for that matter) end up being, we all work toward the same goals. That was the major failing of civilization as it was--too many people ignored or hated others or their ideas, and agreement on anything of civilization-wide importance was usually false when reached, and most often not reached at all.
So, while I personally think the display Jack's people put on when one of them dies is over-the-top and unnecessary, I'm not about to let it get between us. If they want a grand display to accompany their dead into the afterlife, more power to them. It's just not the way I think things should be done. It doesn't risk lives or safety, which is the gauge I measure most things by, as do most others. As long as it meets that criteria, it isn't a problem for me.
The real challenge will be seeing if we can keep that mindset if and when things get easier down the road. Into the far future we're working toward, where electricity warms our homes and ovens (oh dear god, how I miss you, ovens) heat our food. When taking a jog doesn't include bringing a weapon, and having a picnic can be...well, anywhere outside of a walled fortress. Will we be able to continue to work together then? Can we act in unison as a species when the threat of consumption by our dead isn't the overwhelmingly huge problem it is right now?
I don't know, but I have a lot of hope that we can manage it.
Wow, I kind of went on for a but there, didn't I? I've been meaning to try and keep things a little more down to earth here lately, keep you guys informed about what's going on with everybody and try to give updates on the situation we face with the Richmond soldiers. The truth is, things haven't changed all that much over the last eleven months: life is still life. I'm not in a gripping struggle against an enemy every day, and I don't get updates from people unless they have something to tell me. When I know, you'll know.
Although I do want to tell everyone out there about Mason and the lessons he's giving a lot of people (including me) back at Jack's. Learning from someone like him is a whole education in Things I Don't Know. His skillset is immense, and he makes my ten years of martial arts look like nothing. I'm looking forward to telling you all about it.
Just not today. We're getting into some rural-ish areas, and my bars are fluctuating as I peck away at my phone to write this. I'll leave off here, and save Mason for another day, maybe tomorrow.
Be safe, and remember that the person you disagree with may be the man or woman in the trenches with you tomorrow.  Remember what's important, and as my mom used to say, "Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff."
Her favorite quote, and especially apt now.

at 
9:31 AM

Posted by Gabrielle

Hey all, long time no see. Post. Whatever.

Josh and Jessica are still away. He called last night to let us know that their signals were getting weak and that they might lose contact. I decided that since I haven't been very active on the blog lately that I'd give you an update on what's been going on in the clinic and maybe a different perspective on how the people around here are dealing with losing Jack.

First--the clinic. A while back I talked about how we were looking for things to make it better. It's been a big task, finding and safely transporting equipment in the unpredictable and terrible weather we've had lately. The good news is, we've made big steps. There is now a fairly well stocked area of the clinic that houses an x-ray machine (digital, no old-school stuff here), several dialysis machines (along with a lot of supplies for them--we found an untouched dialysis clinic), enough materials to build a small but fully supplied operating room, and lots of other stuff.

The biggest problem was putting it all together without draining too much power from the grid here. We've got a pretty steady flow of patients for one thing or another, though thankfully the flood of them has tapered away over the last week. Keeping some of our equipment on and plugged in could mean the difference between life and death. So we had to work on a solution that wouldn't overtax the power.

As some of you might remember, one of the things that used to be made in this complex of factories was solar panels. Jack's has a lot of them hooked up, but the weaker sunlight in winter means less efficiency and less power. Not to mention that adding more of them, building the cases to hold them and running cable, etc, is pretty much impossible given the current weather conditions. We're running on the main power system right now, but we're still concerned that the breakers will blow if someone switches on a bank of lights elsewhere in the building. Remember that there is a machine shop and one or two presses working most of the time. That eats a lot of juice.

There are a few decent sized turbines left from the big spate of construction Jack's people went through last year, when they were stealing anything that could produce power. We talked to some of the engineers about setting up a wind turbine just for the clinic to take some of the load off of the main supply. They told us that the same problems with installing new solar panels would exist if we tried to build a new wind turbine.

That's a shame, because it's been windy as hell lately. We need the power, though...and someone came up with a pretty good idea: why not set up the core of the turbine indoors, in a frame, and make it person-powered? Exercise is good for people, especially during winter. We took that idea to the engineers, and they seemed to think that it would work. The guy I talked to went on about gear ratios and material stress. I tried to look interested, but my specialty is putting people together, not machines.

It's going to be a few days at least before we hear anything about that--they have to do all sorts of calculations before they can put anything together. That's fine with me, I don't want some big contraption coming apart while people are using it. A bunch of injured people would weaken us as a community, not to mention a stupid amount of extra work for me.

I have to admit, it has been strange seeing the natives of Jack's compound react to his death. Or, more accurately, not react to it. I saw something similar back at our own compound, but on a smaller scale and not as widespread. I get that people nowadays have to deal with grief quickly and then move on to the job at hand. We did that back home pretty well. The people here had their moment at Jack's funeral, and then nothing. No one talks about it. No one talks about him. It's as if by dying Jack became someone that never existed.

Most of my own people, the refugees from Kentucky and the folks we've gathered to us since we escaped, still call this place Jack's. Every time one of the natives hears me call it that, they react in the smallest way. A frown, a tiny expression of surprise. Some people work through their pain by thinking about it. Here, the trend seems to be ignoring and suppressing until the pain goes away.

I'm not judging. Please don't think that. We're at a point in our fight with mother nature and the zombies at the walls where none of us can afford to be judgmental about how others get through it. As I think about that sentence, I realize that Josh might be right--we have to think about the long term, and plan for what to do when the threats we face are lessened. I said we can't afford to be judgmental because of how bad things are...but should we become so just because the threats are gone? It's complicated to think about.

And I have work to do. Scraped knees and split knuckles won't just fix themselves! Well, I guess technically they do fix themselves, but they'll do it much better and faster if I'm there to give a helping hand. Besides, my lunch break is over.

Back when I was a nurse on the floor, passing meds and running flat-out most of the time, I rarely got a chance to stop and relax during my shifts. Lunches were unheard of. I guess in all the bad, you have to find little slivers to be thankful for, and that's one of mine. Meal breaks.

I'll write again when I have some news for you.

at 
9:23 AM

Posted by Josh Guess

Jess and I are hunkered down right now in what used to be a rest area about a hundred and fifty miles away from Jack's. Our SUV's gas reserves are holding out well--we brought about a hundred extra gallons. We've been siphoning from anything we find anyway, just to be safe.
Thank god we decided to take a smaller SUV, and loaded it up so well with provisions and fuel. We only did it in the first place because we were worried that we might get stuck somewhere and have to leave the engine running to stay warm. It ended up being a godsend, because the extra capacity has given us the ability to stay our longer and look a little harder for things we might need.
We found some big caches of stuff, ranging from construction materials to a pretty large stock of fence, which we've been looking for pretty hard. The best find was a good sized town that was stripped bare of every scrap of food and valuables. Valuables under the old way of looking at things, not the way we look at them now. There wasn't any cash or jewelry to be found there, nor so much as a cracker. I guess you can chalk it up to the town being fairly isolated, but it seems like the people that looted it fled not long after, and no one stayed to try and hold their ground.
If they had, we wouldn't have run across what amounts to a treasure trove of materials. There's a small factory that made plumbing supplies: pipe, hoses, fittings, the whole nine yards. There's a huge distribution center for lumber that has more stacks of planks, boards, timbers, and sheets of plywood than any place I've ever seen. Best of all, there are several flatbed trucks that have diesel in them, which means we can get loads down to Jack's provided Jess and I can make it there.
It's a coin flip at the moment. Just in case we don't get out of here, I've sent detailed directions to all of the little caches of stuff we found over the last few days as well as a map to the town with the lumberyard.
We stopped at this rest area to try and contact Jack's. This places we've been over the last two days have had zero cell service, and have been seemingly deserted by living people completely. The dead, however, seem to be numerous and omnipresent, which has made it slow going at times and difficult when one of us has to go to the bathroom.
A good number of rest areas around the country have emergency cell towers run by solar arrays. I've mentioned that before several times, but it never hurts to repeat information that can be so valuable for a person on the run. We stopped here because our phones started getting signals, and we were eager to stretch out and catch a nap somewhere (anywhere, really) that wasn't the cramped interior of our CR-V.
Lo and Behold, my friends and readers, it was a MIRACLE! Not only did we manage to climb in through an unlocked bathroom window, but the place was untouched. We broke into the vending machines and let me tell you: my first coke in months was like a bit of heaven. A little flat, and I didn't exactly search for an expiration date...but it was great. The snack machine still had some candy and chips in it, though we stuck with a few candies. We did check those for expiration dates. We weren't going to take too many risks...
We found a couch inside the tiny office where the rest area attendant presumably worked when they weren't up front. The car was locked and safe outside, the doors were all secured, and Jess and I snuggled up together at about five this morning to catch a few z's. When we woke up a while ago, there were zombies clustered around the place thickly enough that busting out some of the glass and running just isn't an option.
I don't know if we drew them here with the sound of our car crunching through the snow or what. I can hazard a guess that maybe a group of them were watching this place, a dim memory of motorists stopping here on a regular basis giving birth to the concept of an ambush. Sounds pretty smart. Which makes sense--there are smarties among the dead faces pressed against the heavy glass in the lobby. A lot of people ask how you can tell the difference just by looking at them; what makes the smarties stand out from their less intelligent brethren?
Your average zombie has that thousand yard stare coupled with the knitted brows of a hungry beast angrily searching for a meal. It wanders aimlessly until it finds prey, and then it gets focused. A smarty can and will hold back the base instinct to feed if it sees a need. Its mannerisms are more controlled and methodical: it watches you, trying to figure you out. Sort of like the way Velociraptors were described in 
Jurassic Park.
 You're being studied by a walking corpse when you look at a smarty. A dead body that has thoughts about you and the best way to catch you.
There are two pieces of information I will leave you with that seem important to pass on. I will let you decide if they matter or not. One is that the group that's currently putting a distressing amount of weight against the glass walls of the lobby are all covered in blood, and it looks fresh. They've been feeding. They're also covered in bits of fur, and a few have the mangled remains of what might be rabbits or squirrels in their hands. This group, anyway, has been doing what most zombies only do as a last resort--eat animals.
This concerns me for several reasons. One is that they must be desperate for nutrients indeed if they are going so far as to eat animals--I've talked about that before, how they seem reluctant to do it. The other is the fear that given how easily the zombie plague seems to mutate, animals will start to be affected by the plague if they get such intimate exposure.
The other piece of information I feel a need to share? There is one zombie in particular, one smarty, that seems especially intent on us. He's more alert than the others, his eyes almost human as he looks at me. He's watching me type on my phone as if he knows exactly what I'm doing. Every so often he raps a knuckle against the glass. I ignore him when he does this, though I do glance up without moving my head now and then, getting a look at him without letting him know I'm doing it. A few minutes ago, he slammed his hand into the window so hard that I couldn't stop my reaction--I looked up at him.
And he 
smiled 
at me.
You can imagine, it wasn't what I'd call a sunny grin. I've never seen the undead exhibit anything other than vacant stares or hungry rage. What I saw on his face might have been an instinctual reaction to my fear, but to me it seemed to be what it looked like: a joyous response to a predator that knows it has just frightened its prey to its core. A smile can mean so many things. I think this one means that there are depths to the smarties that we haven't considered.
That's something to think about.