Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (36 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
I
spent a good chunk of last night nursing a bottle of rum my wife hid
away for a very, very rainy day. In this case the rain was proverbial
instead of literal, but I needed a drink. Not a want, a 
need
.
I'm no alcoholic, but sometimes there's a damn good reason to let
booze soak your brain. Usually the reason either falls under
'celebration' or 'forgetting'. In this case we'll call it a little
bit of both.
On
the celebration side of the equation, the alterations to the plumbing
inside New Haven and the small expansion--the one made up of shipping
containers--is complete. The hard part is done, which I'm told was
digging up and altering a lot of the old pipes and whatnot, but I now
have running water in my house. From what I understand a very basic
delivery system is being designed and built as needed for all further
expansion sections. People will have to muddle through while that
work is being done.
That's right, I haven't mentioned the
other news. We got that big load of prefab pieces of wall in a few
days ago. Along with it came a good number of workers--about
forty--to begin installing them along the areas we've put in support
posts. As of this writing about five hundred feet of new wall is
standing. It looks rough since the shipping containers North Jackson
cut up to make the sections were all different colors and some of
them fairly rusty, but it's beautiful. Nothing like sections of sheer
steel wall soon to house new arrivals to make you feel a little hope
for a brighter tomorrow.
A smaller group of people are
rounding up materials from all over the county and beyond to make the
houses in the current expansion more comfortable. Since the plumbing
won't be set up for running water right away, they're trying to find
storage for rainwater (or some filtered river water if we have to
pump and haul it there.) We'll be digging cisterns and small
reservoirs, of course, as we've done in New Haven proper, but it's
nice to have as much capacity to store water as possible.
On
top of that, we're having to haul in beds, blankets, and all manner
of things our new arrivals will need. The next group arriving from NJ
will have many of their own supplies, but I'm sure there are people
who have had to do without. We'll have the wall finished around their
expansion (or nearly so) by the time they arrive, so at least we
don't have to go about zombie-proofing houses. That's a plus. The
only real snag is that there are more coming in the first large group
than would be comfortable in the housing available. Dave is tackling
that problem, but that's for another post.
All that is worth
celebration, and definitely a drink. But the other half, the
forgetting...
Some of the Louisville crew that escaped the
slaughter outside the walls the other day didn't get far. Some of
them ended up getting bitten and turned to zombies. Others looked to
have died from their sickness before they could get out of the
county. The twelve New Haven citizens taken captive and subsequently
released by the Louisville folks took up the task of...
I was
going to say something like "cleaning them up" or some
other euphemism, but misguided or not these folks were our
allies.
Our temporarily exiled citizens, living outdoors to
keep from vectoring the disease they may be carrying, killed those
poor people. Yes, they had turned into zombies, but that doesn't make
it any easier to know that former friends are dead. Twice.
Worse,
there were a few survivors. Not many, just a handful, and not sick
enough to be on the verge of death. They were hunkered down out in
the woods, trying to come up with a plan to get over the wall and
into New Haven. We know this because one of our exiled scouts was
sitting up in a tree above the place the group came to rest. He heard
the whole conversation, which he repeated to us via walkie-talkie.
Thank god for rechargeable batteries and the forethought to put
communications devices in the packages we leave for our exiled
citizens.
That handful are no longer a threat. Their attempt
to infiltrate New Haven can't become a reality. Desperate people will
do stupid things, as I've said a lot lately.
I want to thank
our people living rough for protecting us in so many ways. By keeping
away, you're protecting us from the virulent disease that may yet
claim your own lives. By doing what you had to do without hesitation,
you've stopped those stragglers from Louisville from making your own
sacrifice meaningless. It was a hard choice. I've made similar ones
myself.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
I'm
not huge into poetry or anything, but many years ago I read a book by
Clive Barker--
Weaveworld--
that
contained a piece of poetry by William Butler Yeats. It's a famous
poem called
The
Second Coming
,
and it's fairly short:
Turning
and turning in the widening gyre
The
falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things
fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The
blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The
ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The
best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are
full of passionate intensity.
Surely
some revelation is at hand;
Surely
the Second Coming is at hand.
The
Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When
a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles
my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A
shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A
gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is
moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel
shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The
darkness drops again; but now I know
That
twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were
vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And
what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches
towards Bethlehem to be born?
I
think I've mentioned this poem before, but it bears repeating.
As
I worked last night and early this morning on the very mundane and
kind of boring task of organizing parts of the expansion, it struck
me how chaotic things are around here. Sort of a controlled chaos,
since we're working on so much at one time. The assault teams are
still out there scouring the land of zombies, fighting for hours each
day to ensure the boring task of managing logistics here in my office
is safe.
The gyre is widening each day. New Haven as it is now
will soon be only a small center in a whirlwind of activity. The
scant few hundred citizens that have lived here longer than a few
months will be lost in a press of new arrivals, a relative flood of
humanity we only dreamed of a year ago. While Yeats was waxing poetic
about the end of the world using biblical imagery, I can't help but
see the parallels again and again over time. We've been through the
absolute worst the world had to throw at us; we've persevered through
it.
Time and again we've had our feet kicked out from under
us. Friends and families lost, setbacks in every shape and size.
We've hurt each time, but ultimately New Haven always stands back up,
brushes off the dust and wipes the blood from our eyes, and soldiers
ever onward.
That's who we are. It's what we do. Not because
it's the only choice; it isn't. We could lay down and die or give
less than our all in our endeavors. No, it's because our identity as
a people demands a high level of sacrifice and effort. We push each
other to do better, to do more.
Make no mistake, we think this
expansion and the resulting immigration of so many new people is a
good thing. It's just that there's a sense of loss around here
lately. We've had to make terrible choices to keep ourselves safe and
to ensure the expansion moves forward. The people of Louisville
suffered for that, regardless of what side of the line between right
and wrong they were on. Aaron said in a comment about the Louisville
group's illness that we had changed, and while I still think we made
the only choices we could in order to survive, he wasn't wrong in
that assessment.
We 
have 
changed.
New Haven as it is now will soon cease to exist. Maybe we're afraid
that the sense of identity will become diluted or vanish within a sea
of thousands of people. Maybe we've spent so long being in control of
our choices and our future that we're afraid of losing that to a
larger group. It's not unreasonable fear at all, but neither is it a
reaction that will change the path before us one iota.
People
come and go at all hours, shipments of supplies from the north come
in more often, and things are being built. We might be a little
scared of what this will mean for us, but we're also excited about it
for the same reason. Dreams of a New Haven bustling with life and
love and laughter aren't some abstract hope for a tomorrow long down
the road. It's happening now, right in front of us. We're 
making 
it
happen.
Think about that for a second and marvel at the
strange alchemy of it. Through nothing more than logical choices like
building walls and making the county safer to move around in,
creating running water and trucking in busloads of people, we're
making New Haven a place where new life will be created. Just through
hard work and planning, many more babies will be born here, people
will fall in love in greater numbers, laughter could spread among
thousands instead of hundreds. The potential of our home is being
expanded right along with the protective walls around it. That's
beautiful.
And, yes, I know that along with the wonders come
all the dangers. No one understands the pitfalls of human nature
better than we do. Survivors can't help but be aware of how far we
can fall.
But today, despite all the heartache that we're
dealing with (or perhaps 
in
spite 
of
it), I choose to be positive. To think about the good. If we didn't
make that choice now and then, I think we'd have died off long ago.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Hey.
Kincaid here again. Josh is probably going to sleep through most of
today. He was up for almost forty hours, splitting his time between
organizing our assault teams and working with a group of new arrivals
that came early. These guys are doing electrical work and installing
solar panels and wind turbines. I don't know much about that kind of
thing, but I promised Josh I'd leave the field and take over running
the assault team management duties for today and maybe tomorrow if he
needs it.
With that also comes blog duty. I don't know that I
have much to add to all the recent goings-on. I want to be honest
here, that's important. If we're going to build a future as a larger
set of interconnected communities, we have to be straightforward
about our differences of opinion. Especially when it comes to
perspective.
A lot of people are still down about what
happened with Louisville. I'm not holding grudges against the ones
that came out of the situation alive, but I haven't lost any sleep
over it either. I don't know if that's because there's something in
me that's broken or just too many nights on the road trying to
strangle the part of me that rebelled against the things I did. I
don't wish any of them ill. I don't mourn the fallen.
Not
because they made a choice. Some of them may not have been in their
right minds, and some of them really did choose to come after us with
clear heads. I don't blame them for that. I don't mourn because it
was a thing that happened that I can't change. 
We 
can't
change. They did a thing they knew could end badly for them. We acted
to save ourselves from a potentially devastating disease.
I
feel remorse, generally speaking. If I didn't then it's not likely
I'd be here in the first place. Just not in this situation. Those
folks got very unlucky and we did what we had to. I guess it's more
accurate to say I feel bad that they died but I don't feel
responsible.
Seeing people coming in from North Jackson with
excitement in their eyes and profound determination to improve this
place is a good reason not to feel so bad. It is to me, anyway. I
watched those guys scamper around, modifying power lines and busting
their asses to get things done. I simply can't feel guilt for actions
that meant protecting that. I fired shots that day too. I watched
people who had fought by our side die.
This morning, I heard
two of the new arrivals discussing putting actual electric heat in
one of the communal sleeping quarters. Something about an array of
heavy batteries and ultra-efficient furnaces. Maybe not enough to
make the place cozy since heat eats up volts like a starving hobo,
but enough to keep people alive. I know people--mothers--who've lost
babies to the cold. There will be a lot of children born here before
very long.
I weigh that potential, the safety and well-being
of those yet to come, against the failing health of people at the end
of their rope. It's not even close.