Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (38 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
This
is Will Price. I need to share some bad news with you. I was chosen
to write this post because the people closest to the situation are in
no shape to do it. Even Kincaid is shaken, having spent so much time
working with Josh lately.
First, let me say that Josh is still
alive. I know as well as anyone that the first thing most of us think
when we hear the phrase 'bad news' is that someone has died. But Josh
isn't well. Not at all.
The other night when we had our big
day off, Josh wrote a fairly emotional post. None of us knew how
badly he was hurting. It was much worse than his words led us to
believe. Throughout the day and into the evening, he made an effort
to socialize. I could see how hard a time he was having keeping up
his smile. He drank  more and more as the day wore on. By
nightfall he could barely walk, and somehow we lost track of him.
No
one was worried then, not really. Some people dwell on bitter things
when they drink, but...
We didn't know. Maybe we should have
seen it. Maybe we could have helped.
When Jessica noticed he
was gone she asked that I look for him. Patrick helped. We found him
down the road from his house on the edge of the first expansion.
There are places where the walls butt up against the shipping
container that serves as a gate between the two sections. Josh was
there, bottle in hand. More of them were on the ground, some of them
broken. His feet were badly cut. He didn't seem to notice. Tears were
streaming down his face, but he wasn't making a noise. He just stood
there, half slumped against the corner, bare feet grinding into the
shards littering the small patch of concrete under him.
He
wouldn't talk to us. Even when Patrick and I picked him up and
carried him to the clinic he stayed silent. I've seen men get
stitches before, but Josh curled into the fetal position and didn't
even flinch.
I was a soldier. In many ways I still am. I lead
New Haven not because of ego, but from a desire to serve. Part of
that service is seeing to the health and well-being of our citizens.
Josh was the first citizen, he and his wife. Yet I do not know what I
can do to help him. I have seen people in this state before. In the
old days before the military began to truly integrate psychiatry into
the service, they called it 'battlefield fatigue.' Later it was known
as PTSD.
I stayed with him all night and well into the
morning. I was there as he sobered up and began to realize how
injured he was. What I didn't see was a spark of his old self. His
eyes had the same desolate look as any shell-shocked infantryman.
Trauma comes in many forms. Some of it is immediate, but sometimes it
takes a thousand cuts to finally make the damage clear.
When I
finally coaxed him into talking I began to see how deep it goes. He
told me that for a long time now he has felt more and more empty,
like all the little pains have been wearing him away inside. It makes
sense. On the outside he seemed fine, but it only took one tiny crack
in the exterior to shatter the facade.
There is no easy
solution here. There may not be a solution at all. What we know,
right now, is that one of our own is ill and that we care for our
people when they need it. It isn't the new plague or the flu or
whatever the Louisville people carry, but it's a sickness and an
injury at the same time.
If he can recover from this, he will.
We will dedicate whatever resources are needed to make sure that
happens. On a practical level I couldn't make that promise for a
large number of people, but Josh is one person. I have yet to hear
anyone disagree. None of us would be here physically or be on the
cusp of such a transformative moment without him. We owe him.
I
personally owe him more than I will ever be able to repay. He stood
by me when few others would. He trusted me when he had every reason
not to. When I was shunned and hungry, he fed me.
He would
argue against all those things, I have no doubt. But this is my
decision to make and I'll deal with any potential problems as they
come. We've had enough hard choices lately. I won't abandon a friend
again.
From what I have been able to gather, this...breakdown
involves many factors. His workload, his predisposition toward
depression, the constant stress of his daily life. And the decisions.
God, the terrible things we've all done. He made more stone-cold
choices in the early days than any three people combined. What
happens when a decent person is forced by circumstance to do evil
things by necessity time and again? Even people farther down the
moral scale begin to break apart.
I'm rambling. I apologize.
This isn't easy for any of us and I am no exception. It probably goes
without saying, but Josh will not be posting for the near future.
Kincaid is taking over the management of the assault teams and most
of the blog responsibilities for now. The rest of Josh's work will be
absorbed by others.
I should have seen it. I'm his friend, and
he used to spend so much time with his friends. He used to talk about
us on here all the time. He has become more isolated over time and we
should have noticed. Almost all he talked about was current events
and work and Jess. We missed him pulling away.
And now he's
being watched around the clock, because it took this to make us
realize we were about to lose him.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
[This
post was written by Kincaid. That's me. But going through the blog I
see I'm supposed to mention it in brackets for some reason. Other
people did it, so I will too.]
Josh
has asked that we give it a few days before anyone who posts on the
blog starts updating about him. I can understand the need for
privacy. Nothing on that front from me today.
Otherwise New
Haven is moving forward very well. Franklin county isn't zombie-free
yet but the assault units have done a great job thinning them out. It
feels strange not to be out there with them. Stranger to know I won't
be any time soon. They don't need me, though.
I'm surprised
they're letting me step up and take over Josh's spot. Given my
history I never would have expected it except on an as-needed basis.
Dodger trusts me, but it took a while for him to get there. Not many
others in the defense sector here do. It doesn't exactly come as a
shock.
On second thought it may not be that they don't trust
me. If there wasn't a minimum level of trust I would be in a shallow
grave right now. No way I could be allowed to make a leap up the
ladder if a bunch of people had the idea I was going to sell them
out. There must be trust. It might be thin but it's there. They just
don't like me.
Hard to hold that against you, kids. I don't
like me much either.
That's the way it is and there's nothing
any of us can do to fix it. Until and unless I'm removed I'm going to
do the best job possible. It isn't a need to appease any of you that
drives me to that. It's not to make me feel better about myself,
either. I couldn't make up for my sins if I live a thousand years. I
will try anyway. A million small deeds to make some kind of
amends.
I'm out of joint this morning, I know. Maybe this
isn't the most informative or lengthy post but I'll try to do better
tomorrow. Honestly I'm still shaken about Josh. What he's going
through, I went through. It's terrible. The difference is, I did it
alone in my car at night where the other marauders couldn't see it.
Couldn't see my 'weakness'. I did it alone.
I've seen friends
visit him several times. They pass this way. I don't envy him for
having support. I couldn't be happier about that. I don't think it
makes me tough to have worked through it alone. Just unfortunate. I
only wish I could be there for him like they are. I don't have many
friends. I don't make people laugh. Josh doesn't need a reminder of
bad times by seeing someone who used to do far worse things than he
has ever dreamed of.
Huh. Look at that. I managed to talk
about him and what's on my mind without divulging any details and
violating his privacy. Maybe I'm getting the hang of the whole
writing thing.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
[Post
by Kincaid]
There is going to be an interval before the next
phase of the expansion. We have exhausted most of the supply of
easily found shipping containers North Jackson can spare. With the
number of people we have here, it's now possible to do some deep
searches around the area for more of them in the area. We can use the
reworked containers we have already used as templates to make our own
sections of wall.
That's where I come in. Now that the county
has a manageable zombie population we can spare assault teams to
clear areas where we know there are clusters of shipping containers.
There's a train full of them sitting on tracks a few counties over.
We'll have to take out a lot of undead to get to it but if we can
figure out a way to remove them and transport them we'll be ahead of
the game.
Will is trying his best to make people more
comfortable around me. It's not that bad and I told him so, but he
doesn't want personal dislike to endanger any of our programs. Josh
being unavailable is making it harder for us to all get along in the
planning meetings. I guess they feel like I'm trying to take his
place. Like an intruder. From their point of view, I suppose I am.
I
spent a good amount of time with Josh's brother and Patrick
yesterday. David and I worked on ways to quickly remove shipping
crates from train cars. Transport is something we will tackle later.
David has a surprising talent for physical problem-solving. Not even
knowing what difficulties we might face dealing with the train, he
still came up with several ideas that have a good chance of
working.
My time with Patrick was more personal. I'm getting
deeper into this job. Josh's job. I see how many people he has to
talk to in a given day. I try to solve the huge number of problems
and complications he worked on. I interact with the same folks as
him. I find myself wondering how he did it for so long. It's like
keeping two dozen plates spinning while finishing a crossword
puzzle.
I decided to take a risk. I don't know how Josh's
friends and family will react to me trying to get to know them on a
personal level. Patrick was my experiment. He was nice to even give
me the time of day. There are few people I can rely on for support. I
don't expect Josh's friends to suddenly forget who I am and invite me
over for tea. I'd settle for willingness to help me out only to keep
his work from being screwed up badly by me.
Patrick doesn't
think many people will warm up to me. Before now most saw me as that
quiet ex-marauder who led dangerous attacks on the undead or worked a
scout team. They didn't have to deal with me or understand me at all.
I was doing a dangerous job instead of one of them, so at worst I was
ignored. Now I'm helping do a job most of them aren't able to do. It
requires experience with the assault teams and skills honed by more
time in the field than any three average people here have.
They
don't like that. I understand why. I won't allow friction to screw
anything up. If I can't figure a way to smooth out the situation, I
will ask the council to appoint someone else. I can think of two or
three candidates that might do for the job. I can go back to killing
zombies and taking orders instead of giving them.
I don't want
to fail. I will take risks to avoid it even if it means upsetting
Josh's loved ones by approaching them with an olive branch. If I
don't succeed, I won't push. I'll step back and let another take
over.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
[Post
by Will Price]
Each of us makes choices as individuals. The
Fall brought death into all our lives. We have survived for a lot of
reasons. Some of us were lucky. A few saw the zombie plague for what
it was and prepared. Others had been prepping for some kind of
cataclysm for years.
All of us have done bad things to get
here. Nearly two and a half years after the end of the world and
still alive. We protect ourselves fiercely and have to weigh every
decision against the cost in lives that might result from it. History
is full of those choices. World War II was and is an example we
cannot forget. If America had entered the war sooner, if we hadn't
waited until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to finally join the
battle, how many lives would have been saved?
As a nation we
looked at the potential lives lost for our people and decided that it
wasn't worth the risk. At the time most people didn't know the real
happenings in Europe. We were unaware of the atrocities of the Third
Reich.
When we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we
were doing the same thing. Untold thousands died in a flash, entire
family lines wiped from the earth between heartbeats. There are many
conflicting opinions about the morality of that action, but even
after the first bomb dropped the Japanese refused to surrender.
Centuries of honing an indomitable warrior spirit boxed them in to a
mindset that made death preferable to giving up the fight.
My
opinion has always been that we acted in the only way possible. I
believe that countless millions were saved by making the world aware
that we were truly in an atomic age.
And now that we are in
many ways back in the middle ages, those kinds of choices become much
more commonplace. On one side of the scale we looked at our own
people and those to migrate here. We measured the stability we're
building and the potential we would be harnessing. On the other side
were the Louisville group, ravaged by disease and desperate for help.
To many it seemed like an obvious, if not easy, choice.
In the
rush to defend ourselves we left one factor out of our equation. We
didn't think about the cost it would take on us as people. I have
been rereading this blog off and on for weeks, and this morning I
thought to ask some of the younger kids what they thought of the
situation with Louisville. Their responses made me take stock of who
we are and what our ultimate goals are. Those kids thought we did the
right thing. Without hesitation or thought. They didn't make the
point that we could have done more, earlier. They broke it down into
survival or death.
They are our future, and after speaking
with the council about this, we've come to the decision that our
future may not be as bright as we'd hoped for. It isn't that our
young people lack compassion. They do have it. But we as adults have
been too rigid and focused on pure survival and pragmatic choices to
realize the lessons we were teaching.
That is why, as of
tomorrow morning, we will be going forward with out plans to build a
small but secure quarantine area for whatever Louisville survivors
are left. We have twenty-one volunteers out of the new arrivals that
are willing to risk infection to go bring them here and to care for
them. We won't be allowing any contact, because we aren't suicidal,
but we will provide for their needs through a system of dead drops so
the two groups never come close than a few hundred yards.
Josh
played a role in this. His breakdown was the wake up call some of us
needed in order to understand our flaws. To expose them to the light
of day. I told him about it before I wrote this post, and something
in him, some long-held tension, seemed to vanish. By no means did he
heal miraculously, but I think some portion of the burden he has been
feeling lightened.
...
P.S. As part of his...therapy, I
guess you'd call it, Gabrielle has ordered him to start getting back
into some of his normal routines. He's still in the clinic being
watcher at all times, but I take it as a very good sign that he
edited this post. The sentiment is mine, the better phrases are his.
I sat here while he did it, and while he isn't impressed with my
writing, I was happy for each little groan at my bad writing as much
as for each nod of his head or tiny smile at something he liked. You
can shatter a thing and sometimes it's impossible to put back
together. But if you can, it's a wonderful feeling to see those edges
fit together and to hold. They might not be perfect, but each one is
progress toward making a thing whole.
One piece at a time.