Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land (29 page)

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Quiet

Posted by Josh Guess

Sometimes it's so hard to write the words I need to say that I shake. There are moments now and then, events and sights that deeply affect me, which take the thoughts right out of my head.
We searched Shelbyville carefully yesterday, looking for signs of the group of Hispanic people we knew lived there, or at least they did many months ago. Our hope was to establish trade if possible, cooperative effort at a minimum.
First we checked the rural areas around the town itself. We found some crops growing in what had obviously been carefully tended enclosed areas. They had grown wild and dense, many vegetables fallen from their plants to rot on the ground.
We followed tracks as far as they would take us, but they always led to roads. Dead ends.
We searched the town itself, and it didn't take long to find them. A department store, windows carefully blocked but with firing holes left open, surrounded by defenses. It was in this little shopping center, tucked back off the main road a bit and hard to see through the verdant growth that has taken over much of Shelbyville.
We threaded our way through the barriers and traps cleverly arranged around the front of the place. The windows were very secure, the door locked and barricaded. We searched all around the building until we found an obviously hand-made mechanism, a rough but complicated crank that required both hands to use. It took two of us to figure out how to operate it. We got it in the end, and a rope ladder rolled down the back of the building when we turned it.
There were no sentries. Not a single guard.
From the access ladder on the roof, we made our way inside. The total number of them was fifty-four. Thirty were children. All of them were dead.
Everywhere we looked we found bodies. What I have to assume was the entirety of their group died, but none of them alone. Adults were clutching children, older kids frozen in death holding the small, thin frames of toddlers. From what we can tell, all the older people there committed suicide. Guns next to bodies and bullet wounds to the skull made that obvious enough. The decay in the room made it hard to gather facts, but Gabrielle, who was with us on the trip, thinks the young ones caught something that made them very sick. A few of the bodies of the younger children were still partially intact, and though the adults had pierced their heads to prevent them from reanimating, that wasn't what killed them.
They were thin. So very small.
There was food there, rows of cans and what had once been fresh produce gone to rot. It surrounded them. They had plenty to eat.
Further inspection by Gabrielle led her to believe that whatever hit them, it caused severe gastrointestinal problems. She said there were signs of dehydration and terrible diarrhea, though I haven't had the nerve to ask what they were. It's bad enough that I have those images in my mind. I don't need to dwell on the agony that must have fallen on those poor souls before the end.
The one that forced me to my knees and brought me to tears was a woman sitting on the floor, her back to a heavy wooden chest. Her legs were splayed out before her as she cradled the remains of a small boy, hear head tilted back atop the chest. Her eyes would have been facing the sky, were she alive. Even though both of them were months gone and I could only identify their genders by the clothes they wore, I could see them clearly in my mind. I felt her despair as she looked to the heavens, begging to know why such terrible misfortune had been visited on them. On him. On her.
Even in death, her posture was unmistakable.
It was a tableau too horrible to really grasp. Still forms, wrapped around one another in the last throes of death, finding one last moment of comfort, one last touch of love. Even to the end, they were there for each other. It was a silent scene that said more without words than I will ever be able to express with them.
So many lives lost. So much potential gone. We've seen so much since The Fall, lost so many, that you'd think it would be easier to deal with things like this. It isn't.
Today I mourn friends I never knew. That's all.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Embers

Posted by Josh Guess

The last of the thousands of undead have been burned. Our trenches are rock-hard now, the clay in them fused by the constant fires over the last several days.
We buried the bodies of the poor souls in Shelbyville. It took a lot of effort, but it was the right thing to do. We found some edible canned goods in their home, and fresh veggies in patches. Not a lot, but every bit helps. Though we didn't know them, the people from Shelbyville helped us again, even in death. Burying them was the least we could do.
I'm on hunting detail this morning, so I'm heading out. Now that the smell of burning undead is starting to fade, we're worried that zombies will begin to show up again. At least now we know that burning enough of them will keep some of them away. Too bad we've run out of their corpses for fuel.
We could face a swarm at any time, so hunting and bringing in all we can is vital. We won't know when we'll be hemmed in again. We can't waste any chance to bring in food.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Faith No More

Posted by Josh Guess

I woke to shocking and disheartening news: a group of thirty people, most of them the folks from the valley we brought up from Tennessee, have decided to leave. They're planning on being gone by Monday, and there doesn't seem to be a lot we can do to convince them to stay.
I can't blame them, not really. Since they've been here they've seen the worst happen more than once, and they've been treated badly by many people in the compound. If they want to go, no one is going to try to stop them, but with the reappearance of at least some zombies outside the wall, it will be a more dangerous venture than it would have a week ago.
We've lost more than half the compound as livable area, so the loss in numbers isn't a terrible thing from that viewpoint. We're struggling to feed people and going hungrier than any of us is comfortable with, so it's not the end of the world from that vantage either. Hell, I could sit here all day and point out the many ways that losing more people will be beneficial to the group overall. I could do that, but I won't.
I refuse because I'm sick and fucking tired of it. I'm done with being the pragmatist who has to look at people as numbers for the greater good.
Look at the compound. Look at my home, and see how far it has fallen. Less than a year ago we were a thriving community of people who cared deeply for one another. We fought, bled, and died for a common purpose. We were building things and moving forward. We were a small town unto ourselves, policing our own when needed and taking pains to make sure that every single one of us was fairly treated. There were entire weeks of time where it was almost possible to forget The Fall had happened, so comfortable and safe was our home.
I take small credit for that. I managed to see it coming, though at the time even I thought I was being stupid and acting crazy. Lucky for me, other people joined in the madness because without them the compound never would have been the haven it became.
Now look at us. We used to take such pride that we as a people had avoided the worst the zombies could do to us--death. Not so long ago we were damned happy to put in a long day on the wall with the knowledge that our foresight and hard work had prevented us from falling into the desperate situations so many other survivors have faced. We weren't starving waifs huddling in darkened houses. We weren't suffering. We were strong.
Even a few weeks ago things were still relatively intact. Sure, there were tensions and trouble, but we were still a viable community that believed in itself.
And now, doubt chips away at the compound. First small flakes of the mortar that holds us together, and now larger chunks are falling. We have fallen into desperately chaotic struggle to survive that we've avoided for so long. I find myself getting angry when I realize the small bowl of stew I've finished will be my only food for twelve hours.
I look around me and see so many thin faces, so many haunted looks, and I realize that The Fall has happened to us all over again. I used to wonder what drove men and women to become marauders, and I had a hard time seeing the cause from my comfortable perch in front of my computer, safe behind my principles and sedated by a full belly.
Now, I understand. What fools we've been.
The cracks are getting deeper.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Babel

Posted by Josh Guess

When men and women come together to build something, it can be a glorious thing. As you can guess from the title of this post, I can't help but liken the compound to the tower of Babel. If you don't know the story, a brief synopsis: after the great flood, humanity came together in a single place and spoke a single language. People lived and worked together in harmony toward common goals and needs.
God didn't like that, so he came on down and scattered them to the four corners of the Earth and confused their languages. There was no reason given for this--God simply did a thing, and the parable is meant to give origin to the diversity of human language.
I'm not one to blame unseen powers that be, but I can't help seeing the parallels between what we've tried to do here and the eventual fate of Babel.
As I type these words, men and women are slaving over deer and other kills, trimming every scrap for the stew pots, though we are saving some choice bits for our pets. A few people suggested eating the compound's dogs and cats, even my ferrets. I argued hard on that one: the cats keep vermin down to a minimum, my ferrets keep my garden and Pat's free of bugs.
The dogs are coming in handier than we'd have thought. So many of us are weak from hunger that it's becoming difficult to man sentry posts and guard rotations. The solution was simple, and another of Will's many ideas. So now we have dogs trotting along the walkways on the walls. They bark like mad when they see zombies getting close, and the zombies go nuts when they hear dogs barking so close to them. It must be reptile-brain instinct. One of the dogs jumped off the wall and even went after a few of the undead, and they ran like scared little bitches instead of trying to kill the pup.
All of that is nice, but no matter how much I might wish it, there's no distracting from the hard truth that the compound as a community is falling to pieces. All the recent troubles might not have savaged us so badly if we hadn't been made weak by hunger. It's damn hard to concentrate when your stomach feels like it's eating itself all the time.
I don't know if some of our social issues would have been easier to manage, even salvageable, if we weren't going hungry all the time. It's possible. Brings to mind the old saying that any civilization is only a few missed meals away from barbarism. We're not quite to that point yet, but it's getting harder to muster people to do anything other than hunt.
We've even expended the last of our bullets. Jess brought down several animals this morning, but now that she's used up the last few bullets for her rifle she's down to archery like the rest of us.
There are more people talking about leaving, but no one seems to have definitive plans other than the folks from Tennessee. I don't know how any of them are going to manage without food to eat on the road, and we have nothing left over. Nothing at all.
Not everything is awful, though. I've been in touch with North Jackson off and on over the last few days. Their soldiers returned home without incident, and they're talking about sending a caravan out to meet our friends from out west who are gathering a shipment of food for us.
It's good to know that even as the social order here at home unravels, others are taking up the challenge of being leaders. Of being unified.
They're good people.
I've been using my free time, of which I have a lot now that basic social order has broken down (there has to be a silver lining to that, doesn't there?), by working on the abandoned project I started when the zombie plague began to fence in the block my house is on. It's not all that much work, since we got about half of it done before we started in on the big wall. The rest of my block is open, and Pat and I have been bringing in pieces of debris from the destruction going on over in the annex to make a wall. It's just another safeguard in case the main wall is breached. A fallback point, if we need it.
I don't know if there will be enough usable materials from the annex to finish it. My brother is pretty thorough with his demolition, but Dave knows we want the raw materials, so maybe he'll actually tamp down the urge to break everything and come through for us.
I have to build. I have to accomplish something. If not, if I waste the little energy I gather from the small portions of food I get by sitting around and moping, then I've lost. I might as well open up my wrists. I'm not blaming the folks that can't muster the strength to do much else but breathe--this is a personal thing, and I'm only talking about myself. I can't stay idle. Even if I fall over and die from the insane heat outside right now, it'll be worth it. Because I know that I'd done something right up until that last second.
For me, the way things are right now, that would be enough to set my soul at ease.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Cornering the Market

Posted by Josh Guess

It's been a long and trying weekend. No major battles or anything, just the humdrum activities of daily life: the oppressive heat, ceaseless hunting trips. and helping the people from Tennessee prepare to leave.
As it turns out, they aren't going far. The departing group have decided to go to Shelbyville. They're going to use the facilities left behind by the poor souls who lost their lives to disease there. There is ample hunting available, and I'm sure patches of crops we haven't found yet. I'm glad to know they'll be close, especially considering a few of the women going are very pregnant. We may not have much in the way of food, but we've still got two doctors on staff and a good amount of medical supplies.
As a matter of fact, Gabby and Phil have had an idea that seems too good to pass up.
You may remember that during our exile, Evans and Gabrielle met Phil while they were running a traveling clinic. Most of our homeless medical personnel managed to survive by trading their services and supplies for food and other vital goods. Gabrielle, as it turns out, has not been idle lately.
She's had her nose buried in my copy of the Ark, the huge collection of information furnished to us by the people out at Google. I'm sure she's been indulging her endless curiosity to some extent, but mostly she's been learning how to do some very important things from scratch. Like making gauze and bandages among many other useful things. The most important?
Antibiotics.
She's even gotten started. Didn't want to get anyone's hopes up until she had some kind of results, so it came as a surprise to all of us. Granted, they're simple and probably not as effective as the pills we've all gotten used to, but she has done it. As far as I know, Gabrielle is the first person to manufacture new medicine since The Fall. She claims that with enough materials and time, she can make literally tons of the stuff. She's going to be focusing on this right now, because she's been in touch with a few other groups of survivors.
Funny how people swear they don't have any food to give you when you're begging for help, but when you have access to a commodity that will save lives suddenly there are hundreds of pounds of the stuff just lying around for trade.
You might be able to tell, but just to be clear--I'm smiling right now.
Just when things seemed darkest, there is this spark of hope. If Gabby can produce medical supplies in sufficient quantity for us to trade, there is a good chance we'll be able to make it. I have many people with free time on their hands that would love nothing more than to help her. I'm not counting on this working, but I'll be damned if I keep a cynical outlook on it. Have to be positive sometime, right?