Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (35 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
The
first comment on yesterday's post, which was a rant on my part and
fairly long, began with a question. I was asked if I felt better. No.
I don't. I don't feel at all good about this situation or the hard
call we as a community have made to protect ourselves from
near-certain calamity.
Then again, that choice ultimately
seems to have been the right one, because people are dying in
Louisville despite the best efforts of the healthy folks there to
prevent it. And they're coming back as zombies, right there in the
crowded rooms where the rest of the defenseless sick people are
located. Not after a few hours, either. We've seen it before in
isolated cases, but the people in Louisville dying from whatever
disease is ravaging their population are coming back in minutes,
sometimes much faster.
Maybe it has to do with how weak they
become as they fail, their immune systems no longer able to fend off
control by the plague thoroughly rooted in every system of their
bodies. I don't know any facts, there. I'd have to study it to have
any idea at all.
What I do know is the sudden onslaught of
dying people rising up to consume their neighbors has put Louisville
in a panic. Just as we feared, they've begun following through on
their threat to come here. It's a last gasp effort on their part,
because it's going to take the last of their resources to load
everything up and head this way. They expended much of what they'd
saved up moving to the place they all live now--a sports arena, I can
now say without fear of bringing enemies down on them--and what
little is left in fuel and food will come east with them. Toward
us.
Those New Haven citizens that went there to help are
trying to convince them not to do it, as I understand. Faced with the
impending certainty of their arrival, the council met this morning.
For the record, I fought hard for a compromise that might save us
from having to do something we'd regret for years to come. I wanted
to set up a rough quarantine zone a few hundred yards west of New
Haven that we could put wide patrols around. We could drop off water
there, or rig up a crude gravity system to supply the area with water
without having to come close. Food would be a bit more tricky but
ideas were floated.
We wouldn't provide any manpower inside.
The amount of effort required to do this would/will take away from
our expansion efforts pretty drastically. We're already behind
schedule due to all the recent storms, but faced with no other option
than to fight, we decided that doing something to help no matter how
minimal on our part would be infinitely better than having to do
violence to friends.
Make no mistake: our position hasn't
changed. Our goal here is to prevent risk to New Haven, plain and
simple. The Louisville people have forced us into a corner here, and
we've pulled half the assault teams from zombie cleanup duty to help
our scouts out in watching for the convoys we know will be coming. We
are doing the bare minimum to ensure there is little to no contact
between the two groups. If that means losing some days of work and
using up some supplies to keep them from coming closer to us, then
that's what we'll have to do. The only other option is to fight them,
as I said, and we want to avoid that if at all possible.
The
council agreed to a modified version of my idea, hinging on agreement
from the Louisville crew themselves. So far there hasn't been a
response from them. Our volunteers there say that every time they try
to talk to the remaining leadership about it, they get sent to do
other work after being told it's under discussion.
For us, the
priority is not allowing a known infectious agent to enter New Haven.
If a person or a family, or even a huge group like the migrants that
will be here all too soon, happen to come here to live and bring some
unknown disease with them, we can't stop that. If people aren't aware
of what's happening then there isn't any way to stop it. That's the
difference here. The Louisville group knows exactly what's happening
to them, and they've forced us into making concessions to help them.
But they aren't coming through our gates, it's as simple as that. If
things work out, they won't come within fifty feet of another New
Haven citizen until the sickness in them has run its course.
We'll
risk a quiet, lurking illness when bringing people here to live. We
can't turn away everyone because of what 
might 
happen.
Rather a lot of you have made that point: will we turn away a person
who shows up looking for a safe place away from the wandering dead?
Of course not. We wouldn't even turn away a sick person. We'd isolate
them and treat them. Again, we'll take in a lot of people even
knowing that some of them may carry bugs in with them.
But if
you can't understand the difference between those scenarios and a
group of people actively wasting away and dying from an incredibly
virulent illness with an insanely high transmission rate, then
there's something wrong with you. I will risk being burned to help a
person, but I won't risk the lives of others to do it. Sorry for the
roughness, but I just don't get how people can't see the difference.
To me, the Louisville crew coming here isn't much different than a
terrorist ransoming a city with the threat of a biological weapon.
I
know they're desperate and afraid. I would be too. Hell, I 
am
.
As much as I hate the tactic they're using, I get that it's the only
thing they can do. It's a last-ditch effort to get help, because the
Louisville crew are desperately trying to protect and save their
people as all survivors do. If it weren't my home they were coming
for, I'd applaud the balls it takes to risk so much.
But they
are a threat, regardless of any other facts. One we can hopefully
manage peacefully when our scouts intercept them on the way here. I
don't pray much, but this morning I really am praying for that.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
I've
been going on at length the last few days; this post is by necessity
much shorter. Our scouts did manage to intercept the caravans from
Louisville yesterday and stopped them from getting closer than a few
miles away. The team, composed of four scouts and an eight-man squad
pulled from the assault teams, gave them our terms. Accept quarantine
with no contact or direct aid, with food and water provided, or turn
around and go home. 
The Louisville folks knew the
unspoken third option was force. Instead they opted for option four.
They pointed guns at our people and took them captive.
It's a
desperate gambit, one made with the idea that we'd have to take our
own people in, and logic would follow that since we'd be exposing
ourselves in the process we might as well take in the rest of
them.
The reason I'm keeping it short is that the council has
been in session off and on for the last twelve hours trying to decide
what our next move is going to be. There are several ways forward on
the table, but Will insisted that all of them--none of them
pleasant--be put up for a community-wide majority vote. Four plans,
four actions to take. We'll pair them off and take two votes. One
will end up winning.
I should point out in the limited time I
have to write this post that yes, one of the options is full
acceptance of the Louisville group into New Haven. They'd become full
citizens and receive as much treatment and care as we can provide. As
bad an idea as that is, I can't fault Will or the council for making
it an option. We've had enough heartache dealing with enemies. No one
wants to leave any option off the table. If we're going to get sick
and die, no matter how stupid or wasteful that may be, then we'll
choose to do it as a majority.
I'm not going to lie: if that
option is picked, I'm out. If the people around me want to expose
themselves to a very infectious and deadly illness, I can't stop
them. This is my home, but it's theirs as well. I can't fault people
for doing something I consider suicidal in its altruism, but just
like any citizen of New Haven I have the right to leave at any time.
I'll risk a lot, but I won't accept near certain death (especially a
slow and painful one) because other people tell me I should. If the
vote goes that way then I'll leave. Jess has already said the
same.
The votes begin in less than half an hour, and I'm
helping run things. I have to go. Keep us in your thoughts.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Many
thousands of years ago, the first intelligent human beings discovered
fire. Then tools. Before long they started herding animals and
building civilizations, transitioning from roving bands of nomads
into stable societies with centralized locations.
It's been
pretty much downhill since then.
There are days when I have a
lot of hope for the future, but I'm always brought back to earth by
some inescapable facts. Back before The Fall, before the zombie
plague wiped out everything humankind spent those thousands of years
creating, I bought a smartphone. I used it to surf the web and
whatnot, but I always came back to my clunky laptop to write and play
games. Because of the simple limit of how small a screen my eyes
could use for some tasks. Like gravity or electromagnetism, it was a
simple fact that writing was easier and way more efficient on a large
screen with a physical keyboard. Nothing the makers of my phone could
do about that.
Similarly, there are some things about human
nature that no amount of positive thinking or social structure can
override. When your people are sick and dying, you'll do anything to
save them. When your back is against that wall you don't think about
the consequences to others. We're the only species on the planet that
worries for the welfare of all, not just our immediate social group.
It's when the immediate social group is facing an existential threat
that the scope of your concern narrows to them.
It's about
love and family, you see. Doing everything you can to save the folks
who've been by your side each day, suffering as you have suffered and
sharing in the hundred little joys. We are a strange bunch; violent
at times yet equally compassionate before or after. Rarely we feel
both at once, a deeply morose sense of dark necessity, heartbreaking,
even as we commit to terrible acts.
Sorry I'm taking so long
to get to the point, but I don't want to type the words that are on
my mind. It's stupid, I know, but the part of me that's still a
scared and hopeful kid feels like not putting it out there for
everyone to read somehow keeps it from being real.
About half
the Louisville people that came here, which was more than
three-fourths of their total population, are dead. We killed them.
There wasn't much choice.
They released our captive scouts and
fighters. I guess the assumption was that once they were exposed to
the disease, our boys and girls would try to come back home. And that
we would let them. Neither of those things happened. A lot of people
seem to forget it, but we aren't stupid. All the people that went out
to intercept the Louisville people were volunteers who agreed that if
exposed they would stay out of New Haven for sixty days. We even set
up supply caches for them just in case.
When the captives were
let go, they scattered. Half-mad with disease and exhaustion, the
Louisville people moved toward New Haven. The able-bodied helped the
ill, brought the trucks within fifty yards when they hit the spike
strips out in the grass.
They came out of the trucks, some of
them walking, others crawling. Our defenders only killed a few of
them. Those became zombies quickly, and as slow as the ill were
moving they couldn't escape. One after another they died in a morbid
domino effect.
It took nearly half of them dying to convince
the rest to run. We burned the dead after killing the zombies that
rose. In this case I saw "we" in the correct sense. I was
there. I fired shots. I helped clean up.
I wept most of that
time. They weren't bad people, nor are those who retreated. They were
and are scared and desperate. Blame can be placed if you like, but I
can't find fault on either side. Just tragedy.
Violence and
tragedy. That's the way things go.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
There
have been a lot of messages from you out there who read this blog
since yesterday's post. Many of you apologized for your earlier
comments toward us, chastising us for not helping the Louisville
people out. Some of you have said that in light of their actions you
felt wrong about saying what you did. That we were right not to
help.
No. 
You 
were
right to call us out. At the time, none of us knew how desperate the
sickness would make our friends from Louisville. The consensus here
is that we still made the right decision in not offering our aid, but
course correction can't happen without feedback. More now than ever
it's vital that we continue to take a critical look at each other,
our motivations and actions, and speak up if we think something is
wonky. Maybe if we'd have worked out some kind of minimal assistance
earlier this situation could have been avoided. There's no way to
know.
Nor do I agree with those of you who say the Louisville
crew deserved what they got for attacking us, or that the remaining
members of their group are 'former' friends. You have the right to
your opinion, obviously, but I was there. I saw the terrible shape
they were in. Many of them looked starved after so long unable to
keep any food in their bellies. They were weak and terrified. Doing
what they did--coming here--wasn't a malicious act born out of hatred
or anger. It was the last-ditch effort of a dying people trying
anything they could to survive.
Because goddammit, that's what
survivors do. We've all learned by now that some principles shouldn't
be put aside even in the face of death itself, but others matter more
than the lives of others. I think about what I would do if New Haven
were wracked by a similar plague, and I can honestly say that if I
were in their position I'd probably have done the same. The people
around me, my friends and family (everyone here are those to me. When
you shed blood in defense of your home, that makes you family) are
worth any cost. I would die or kill or threaten to keep them
safe.
Don't expect any I-told-you-so's from me. Nothing about
this situation is good. One small spot of not terrible to be found is
that the surviving Louisville crew managed to get away safely. The
efforts of our assault teams in scouring the local landscape of
zombies paid off at least that much.
What happened was awful,
and I worry about the long-term consequences. We haven't heard back
from any of the volunteers that left to go assist them. We don't know
if they were among the escapees or never left Louisville in the first
place. I can only imagine that the ones left alive after this plague
burns itself out will harbor bad feelings toward us. Hard to blame
them, I suppose. And if that happens and they choose to fight about
it, I'll feel bad all over again. Because I'll always defend my
people, even if it means killing friends.
Much has happened
over the last several days aside from these events. As much time and
attention as I've put toward them, they've actually been a minimal
distraction from the work going on here. We've had all sorts of
people come in from the north, and new sections of infrastructure
being worked on. For what should be clear reasons I've ignored that,
and I won't get into it today. But tomorrow life and this blog will
go on as normal. At least I'll make my best effort.