Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5)

Volume
Five of Living With the Dead

Joshua
Guess

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work is ©2012 Joshua Guess

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This,
the fifth volume of
Living
With the Dead
,
an electronic record of the months and years following the
cataclysmic end of humanity's first technological age, is pivotal.
Herein the survivors of the event referred to by the author as “The
Fall” encounter the long-term consequences of the sudden loss
of many support structures once taken for granted. The struggle to
survive is complicated, not only by enemies living and dead, but by
forces larger and more pervasive. Forces nearly impossible to fight.

As
always, this volume is presented unedited from the original, save for
necessary format changes. As an historical document, we feel the raw
and high-pressure nature of the text should stay true to its origins.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Three
days without writing a post is weird. A number of you sent me
messages filled with concern that something had happened to me. No
worries: as I said in the last few posts, I needed to focus myself on
doing my part to help make New Haven function in the wake of our
conflict with the Exiles.
Three days. A lot can happen in that
time.
Nothing earth-shattering has, of course. I'd have
probably posted something if it had. The seasons seem to be changing
at a quicker pace now, warmer weather gaining a firmer grip on the
land. It's chilly out right now, but the last two days have been in
the sixties and the nights not much cooler. That's been good for
productivity across the board and has helped us save a bit on our
stock of firewood. That's wood we can use for cooking instead of
heating, which means not sending out teams of people to cut more.
It's weird how all the little details can matter in seemingly minor
ways that turn out to be important.
Take that very team of
woodcutters for example. By not having to send them out on a
scheduled run to fell trees and to haul in wood we've stockpiled to
dry at our preferred spot to lumber, we had extra hands available to
work on other things. With the weather being warm, Jess used them in
her greenhouses to help prepare for the planting that will happen
soon. That puts us ahead of schedule there.
And by keeping
that team home, we kept them from being killed.
While the
Exiles sit in the fallback point licking their wounds, the undead are
moving about more openly. Our scouts are having a hard time getting
accurate counts because the new breed has almost taken over the local
zombie population. They might be dead people walking, but the new
breed is clever enough to realize we have people watching them.
Clever enough, in fact, to watch us back without our scouts being
aware of it.
We usually keep a two-man crew moving around the
half of the county left open to us, doing rounds and checking up on
the locations that we visit often. There are still some cache houses
where we store supplies, the heavy copse of trees on the edge of a
vast forest where we cut and dry our wood, the creeks where we gather
and transport water when our reserves get low. There are more, a few
dozen spots where we have to send people on a regular basis.
It
was a lucky thing our scouts were near the lumberyard on time.
Normally they'd have been checking up on the woodcutting crew, but on
this particular round the scouts saw zombies. Lots of them, at least
seventy. They came out of the woods in a flood when they heard the
scouts pull close with their dirt bikes, and slowed down immediately.
The scout team thinks the undead were waiting for the trucks that
would drop off our would-be lumberjacks, and were surprised to see
only two men on motocross bikes.
It goes without saying that
the scouts turned around and hauled ass for New Haven to give us that
report. We've known for a while that the new breed is going to be a
lot harder to handle than the original recipe zombies, but to think
they've been watching the places we go, holding back the instinct to
kill...that's a huge problem. New Haven isn't self-sufficient in that
way; we have to send people out almost every day to gather supplies
of one kind or another.
It's startling to realize just how
much a weakness this is. We're dealing with a much more intelligent
predator now, and we don't have any choice in the matter. We can't
stop sending out teams. Hell, we've made some significant progress to
opening trade routes back up, but that's going to come with its own
set of problems now, too. How many runs can people make to New Haven,
bringing in goods while we ship out medicines, before the new breed
starts devising ways to attack the trucks and drivers?
Dear
god, what if they start to comprehend how badly off we'd be if they
just stopped trade altogether? Or even stopped us from going out into
the county to bring in food or wood or water? My deepest hope is that
the new breed...no. New Breed, in capitals, because they are enough
of a threat to deserve that distinction.
My deepest hope is
that the New Breed doesn't have that level of comprehension. I'm
acting as an adviser to the newly elected council and to Will, who
has been reconfirmed as Governor of New Haven, but my daily duties
aren't nearly what they once were. I'm not a vital gear in the
machinery of this place, as others have taken up the workload my
brother and I used to share. I see to many small problems that fall
through the cracks, but anyone with a brain (which is just about
everyone in New Haven) could do it.
I hope the New Breed isn't
capable of figuring out how deeply they could cut us, because I love
this place. I love these people, flaws and all. If the undead
discover that slowing down our activity outside New Haven's walls
will weaken us and make us easier targets, we'd be in for a world of
hurt. I don't have the pull around here that I did many months ago. I
can't make things happen by just asking for them. Then again, I have
more influence than I did under our recently deposed council, so
maybe that evens out. My duties, my work, might be small items that
don't have a huge flashy impact, and I'm okay with that.
Because
my loyalty is to this place and these people. I will do anything to
ensure New Haven's safety and prosperity, even if that means taking
on some responsibilities no one can be asked to shoulder. If that
sounds vague and cryptic, I apologize. I'll talk more tomorrow about
that. I've been up all night discussing ideas on how to combat the
New Breed with Evans and Gabrielle, and I'm starting to get a little
wonky.
For right now, we'll be more cautious. We'll send out
additional guards and try to armor every team that goes out as best
we can. We'll manage somehow, because we have to.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
There's
a storm front moving in from the southwest, and our contacts who've
already been hit by it tell us it's a bad one. Really, really bad.
Remember about a year ago when we got hit by that storm the dropped a
tornado on us? This one has spawned at least two so far. We've
estimated that at the speed the front is moving, the really bad parts
will be here somewhere between noon and eight tonight. That's as
close as we can gauge based on where it has hit so far and at what
times.
That means I'll be indoors most of the day, which is
fine. I have to work on the project I started talking about yesterday
anyway.
All of us have had to do some terrible things since
The Fall. Sometimes a necessity comes along that's too much for most
people to deal with. Not that they couldn't, I guess, but more that
they shouldn't have to. Killing to defend ourselves is a reality we
all deal with, as is risking our lives to go out and gather even the
most basic needs.
Capturing and experimenting on zombies,
however, isn't something most people should have to do.
Evans,
Gabrielle, and I have done this before. We learned a lot about the
way the undead work from that experiment. Data combined with
experience and insight creates understanding, and the only way to
combat an enemy, any enemy, is to understand them.
Yesterday
we caught two zombies. It wasn't as hard as you might think. One of
them is a New Breed, the other appears to be what I call an old
school or 'original recipe' zombie. We set a trap for them, hiding a
group of men with hooks and ropes behind a hill as our person acting
as bait led the undead to them.
The New Breed is obviously
intelligent, easily told apart by the thickened skin with its odd
gray color and rough texture, almost like a lizard. The old school
zombie looks like a walking dead person, but there's a glimmer of
cleverness when I look into its eyes. Something along the lines of
gazing into the abyss, and the abyss gazing also.
So far we
haven't done much to either of them. Our first purpose is to test the
reasoning capacity of the New Breed, then we move onto the physical
differences, various athletic abilities, and anything else we can
think of. It's dangerous as hell, because a lot of what we'll be
doing involves close contact with both of them. Because of that, only
I will actually be interacting with the subjects. Evans and Gabby
will be overseeing the tests as well as designing them, but both of
them are far too valuable to risk in this way.
I, on the other
hand, am way more experienced in fighting off the undead than Evans
and Gabby, and have the best chance of surviving any mishaps. I've
got a lot of firsthand practice handling zombies, and by going into
the enclosures alone I won't have to worry about protecting anyone
else. I'll be wearing armor and taking every precaution, but we've
decided that no one else will take this risk.
If something
should happen to me, the zombies will be put down and the experiment
will be over. I'm confident that with all the safety measures we've
taken, these two won't present that kind of danger. Famous last
words, I know, but it's really very safe.
The really
interesting bit is seeing if the old school zombie will change into a
New Breed without physical contact. The old school one has had the
tatters of its clothes cut off it (which was 
not 
a
fun experience, let me tell you...) and we can see that it hasn't
suffered any bites. We're working on the assumption that the New
Breed infects other types of zombies with their strain of the plague
through bites.
Ah, I'm going off on tangents. I apologize.
Thunder is cracking overhead, and we'll have to take down the
transmitter before long. I hope we uncover a treasure trove of
behavior data from these corpses, because I don't relish the truly
horrible parts that will come after that phase. The...physical parts.
Testing how much damage one of them can take and still function,
which means doing bad, bad things to them. I know they're zombies,
but they look like people. Just thinking about it makes my stomach
churn.
Time to put on my gear and go into the cages.