Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (6 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
I
may have mentioned this once or twice (or a dozen times) but it's
worth repeating: Becky is a fucking genius. She's come up with a
means to produce truly stupid amounts of Thermite, which is going to
be really useful against the New Breed.
I'm
not huge on chemistry, but as Becky and I were talking yesterday I
realized how easy it is to miss really important things. She has
managed to create explosives and other difficult to manufacture
substances where the rest of us scratch our heads like the
comparative cavemen we are. I was talking with her about our plans to
hunt down and assault the New Breed before they could gather enough
numbers to become a serious threat to New Haven. I was frustrated
because we have all these stocks of supplies and materials sitting
around, but a lot of it isn't that useful.
I mentioned the
huge storehouse we've loaded with various sundries--the old hotel
where we liberated some captives not long after The Fall--and started
naming off the random items that had no particular use. Keep in mind
that we've been making Thermite in small amounts for a while, but the
stuff requires metal dust and that's not easy to make in large
amounts. The process is time and labor intensive.
I told her
about the huge case of hematite rings we left in the hotel after
clearing out the marauders. What use could we have for those things,
you know? I'd taken a couple of them just because I liked the shiny
black rings, and they brought back pleasant memories of the various
ones I'd bought from flea markets and renaissance fairs over the
years.
That was when she stopped me. The look on her face was
priceless. You'd have thought I'd told her casually about a store of
hidden treasure.
She explained to me that Hematite is the
stuff that goes into a particular blend of thermite intended to cut
through steel. We've had some of it before, even. We just didn't know
exactly what was in it. Turns out we've been sitting on enough raw
materials to make a few hundred pounds of the stuff. Of course, the
rings aren't enough on their own. We need powdered aluminum in large
quantities. If only we knew a manufacturing center that had such a
supply...
So, yeah. North Jackson is sending their next trade
caravan to us early. We're doing a bit of separate trading with them,
direct instead of utilizing the network we've set up, exactly for
situations like this.
Becky, Will, Dodger, Patrick, Jess, and
I are all working today on how to weaponize this stuff. It's going to
need some fine tuning and testing. It's not a complex problem to work
out. All we really need to manage is a way to deliver the dust to the
bodies of the New Breed, and to ignite it without having to be too
close. Granted, it's really dangerous stuff and tricky to set on
fire, but we've faced this problem before.
Now that we have a
viable way to use heat against the New Breed (and I feel like an
idiot for not giving Becky a list of all our supplies earlier. All
those hours people have spent filing metals down...) there's a strong
feeling of hope around New Haven. In a worst case scenario, the swarm
in Shelby county has hidden themselves away and we can't find them.
So they attack here.
That's bad, but we're going to have a
large supply of an incredibly effective weapon on hand very shortly.
If the New Breed hits us here, we'll be better off a few days from
now than we are right now. I'm curious to see what the effects of
direct and indirect heat will be on the New Breed physiology. I don't
know how much of a weakness the heat will turn out to be. So far we
know it weakens their skin and underlying armored layers, but that
just means it's easier to fight them. To cut them.
Becky has
prepared a small amount of the new mixture for me to use on two of
our test subjects. One is going to get the direct heat treatment, the
other indirect. It should be interesting. We've never exposed the
undead to this kind of heat in a controlled environment. The results
will hopefully help us in determining the most efficient way to
utilize our new weapon.
I've got it in a plastic bag stuffed
into one of my cargo pockets. The stuff just looks like black dust.
It's crazy to think that the amount in my khakis is enough to cut
through most of an engine block. Thousands of degrees of potential
heat. Basically stone dust, engineered by human intelligence (again,
let's give Becky the credit here) into something useful. That's nuts
to me.
I'm excited to test it out. And I need to get to it
before the meeting I have with the others later. It's going to be a
busy few days, but with any luck they'll be productive ones. And by
productive, I mean we'll be able to kill a lot of zombies with
minimal risk.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Four
this afternoon is zero hour. New Haven is now playing host to a large
contingent of volunteers from the Louisville area. Becky has been
hard at work, missing sleep and recruiting workers to make as much
thermite as possible. We've got a plan, and it's going to be
incredibly risky.
The good news is that our scouts have been
busting ass to keep tabs on the zombie swarm in Shelbyville. We know
where they are, about how many of them we'll be facing, and what the
terrain looks like. We're sending seventy people of our own, enough
to do a lot of damage when working in tandem with our guests. We're
splitting the thermite evenly between home and the folks going out.
There should be enough gel bombs for each of us to have one.
I'll
explain Becky's genius idea to weaponize the thermite tomorrow. It's
not all that complicated, but I'd rather not brag on her behalf
before we've used the stuff in the field.
Um. I'll be honest:
she told me not to. She doesn't want me to get people's hope up if
these weapons fail utterly. She hits hard, so I'm doing what she
tells me.
We've actually got a pretty good strategy worked out
for the fight. I'm not trying to sound overconfident, but I think
we've worked out a good way to engage the New Breed on open ground
without losing cohesion given that more than half our force are
people we haven't fought with before. Again, that's almost a post by
itself and I want to do it justice. Because my brother Dave worked
out the logistics of the thing, and it's beautiful. Solves a lot of
problems we'd face in dealing with the New Breed on their own
turf.
I 
can 
tell
you why we're confident. Becky's idea for turning the thermite into a
useful weapon is part of it. Dave's work with portable defenses is
another. But we wouldn't even be considering this move if the results
of my tests with our captive New Breed hadn't yielded shocking and
frankly amazing results.
You may remember me saying that we
would be testing direct and indirect heat on the zombies in question.
The indirect heat method turned out to be less useful than I'd have
hoped. A flare of thermite had to be within a foot of the test
subject to have a serious effect on it. That's not due to any lack of
heat--the stuff burns at something like three or four thousand
degrees--but more because it burns really fast. A flare going off
within a foot will do immediate damage to the zombie. Past that and
the zombie's reaction to the white-hot fire is quick enough and the
distance great enough that they only take minor damage. That is,
within two feet of a thermite flare, they'll lose some of the
strength to their toughened skin.
So, if we had tons of the
stuff, we'd be able to set traps around New Haven and weaken an
attacking swarm. Assuming we could set off the stuff without too much
trouble. Really not an option.
Direct heat, however, has a
much more useful and interesting effect. Basically, it well and truly
fucks a zombie up.
It was a bitch getting one of my test
subjects strapped down, but SO worth the effort. I put a very small
amount of thermite on the thing's wrist. Smack in the middle of the
joint. The amount was tiny, about the size of a grain of rice. Took
me a few tries to get it lit, especially because the zombie was
trying his damnedest to pull his hand away. When I finally got the
magnesium striker to catch the thermite, the burn lasted for about
three seconds.
The zombie's hand and arm up to the elbow
stopped working. Completely.
That blew me away. I expected it
to do some damage to the thing's skin, sure, and to burn through and
cause some structural chaos...but at no time did I expect the results
I got. I was so stunned that I had to show Evans and Gabby right
away. Had to understand what had happened. Because we've done a lot
of bad things to zombies before. Even setting them on fire usually
takes a while to kill them. This was really fast.
After
removing the zombie's arm, I took it to the people with the fancy
medical degrees, who dissected and studied it. When you flay open a
zombie's body, you can see the tendrils of material that make up the
plague organism. The color varies, but usually the fibers of the
parasite are a pale purple or a dark red. The test subject's arm
contained blackened ash up to the elbow.
Evans thinks the
initial burn heated up the portion of the organism under the flesh,
which through some mechanism we don't understand tried to shed the
heat, causing the temperature of the surrounding tissues to rise.
Which caused the newly heated portions to shed the heat...you get the
idea.
What it boils down to is that a very tiny amount of this
stuff on the skin is incredibly damaging to the undead. The huge
temperature change over such a short period of time basically cooks
the plague out of that area. And if the reaction of the zombie I was
testing direct heat on is any indication, this is one of those things
that causes 
great 
fear
in the undead. Maybe not because of pain, since they don't seem to
feel it, but maybe by the unnerving experience of suddenly losing a
big portion of itself.
After a few more tests, I killed the
subject with a shot to the head. Took a few tries, as the thickened
skin and underlying fibrous armor (not to mention the skull itself)
can take a lot more punishment. In the end, I used a blob of thermite
gel (I love you, Becky) about the size a big cherry to manage it.
Right on the thing's crown.
Five seconds of burn, no more
zombie. 
That 
is
what we're taking into battle today. If we're insanely lucky, it'll
work.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
As
far as epic showdowns with mortal threats go, yesterday was pretty
good.
Our scouts were the first in the field. They ran quite a
way ahead to get the attention of the New Breed. The New Breed, as it
turns out, has scouts of their own. Apparently they've taken to
copying some of our tactics. Our scouts made it back to us without
taking any losses. Theirs saw our assembled force and turned back the
way they came.
What the New Breed scouts saw was a hundred and
sixty people out in the middle of a field. No defensive structures,
no large weapons. Only a few vehicles since we left them safely back.
The fight was going to be all-or-nothing. No escape routes.
When
the main force of Shelbyville New Breed came for us, we still looked
like a relatively defenseless group. They were cautious, spreading
around us in a very wide circle before getting close. We let the
circle tighten, the zombies surrounding us get within about thirty
yards before our front ranks dropped to the earth. Every man and
woman that dropped hauled on heavy ropes and straps, pulling up
custom pieces of metal, each with very carefully designed edges. Most
of them were triangular, old pieces of car hoods welded together and
unfolding. Our people locked theses devices together, built-in
supports swinging out and locking into place.
Diamond shapes
all around us. My brother has been working on portable defensive
structures for a long time, precisely for this situation. The things
aren't tall, five feet at most. But the center seam and the angles
made it almost impossible for the undead to climb the things. They
were forced in between the diamonds, funneled into small areas where
our teams of shield-bearers could hold them off while others mowed
them down.
We were worried at first that the New Breed would
retreat when they saw our people react with what was clearly a
pre-planned routine. To better entice them, we made sure one of the
deer our hunters brought in that morning was set aside. The smell of
blood and raw meat probably wouldn't do it alone, but the New Breed
couldn't smell that and see us, greatly outnumbered, and just walk
away.
I didn't get any front-line action in the fight. I was
serving as a bowman and unit commander. I was the one who ordered the
people in my wedge of our circle to raise their diamonds. I shouted
for the shield-bearers to move into position just as the first few
zombies rushed forward. The spearmen (and women) behind them didn't
need orders--they rushed forward exactly as practiced and set their
weapons butt-first in the earth.
The people behind
them? 
They 
threw
the first volley of gel bombs. Becky's nifty invention.
I
don't know what the hell she mixed the thermite with to turn
flammable dust that's very tricky to ignite into a sticky gel that's
hard to wipe off, but she did it. Every gel bomb is a just a water
balloon (one of the small ones, about the size of a grenade) filled
about halfway up. The things aren't tied at all, because the opening
of each balloon has a magnesium fuse in it. Turns out you can make
those really easily, and you don't need tons of magnesium to do it.
Mixed with some easily flammable dust (mostly scraped from matches),
those things light without too much fuss. It's dangerous as hell to
light one, but that's unavoidable.
The throwers worked in
groups of two. The person in front held their bomb in one hand, over
their shoulder. The person behind lit the fuse and gave the throw
order. The volleys weren't simultaneous, but the results
were 
awesome. 
Most
of the bombs hit their targets. Almost none managed head shots, as
our throwers were desperate to avoid accidents that might cause them
to lose a hand. But from where I stood, shouting orders and firing
arrows into the swarm around us, I saw many bombs splatter unlit into
chests, legs, arms, necks. The act of the balloon compressing against
a body was usually enough to cause the fuse to hit some small portion
of the gel--igniting it.
Even the bombs that hit the ground
did damage, as the brief but intense flares of heat were impossible
not to step on in the press. Zombies with suddenly useless feet and
lower legs fell to the ground, their brothers tripping over them. As
I stood on one of the small wooden boxes our archers carried into the
field (to get a better view of our targets), I realized that we might
actually win this one. Like, decisively win it. Not one of those
insane wins that require us to lose a lot of people.
I really
thought that as I saw a hundred and fifty gel bombs fly in less than
thirty seconds. As I fired arrow after arrow, saw the other archers
do the same. Oh, I worried when the zombies in the front got
desperate, too close for us to hit with gel bombs, and pushed super
hard. Our defense was good, but not perfect--they got through in twos
and threes. Our flying companies moved between the breeches, taking
down stragglers. I saw a couple people go down. But overall, we
held.
Most of our gel bombs had been used when the fight
really turned our way. We'd been heavily outnumbered at the
beginning, at least three to one. My best guess was that after a
scant few minutes, the number of undead left fully functional and
attacking was even with our fighters. That was when someone threw a
gel bomb that didn't quite make it. The thing bounced off a zombie
close to the front line, disintegrating into a flare of white fire as
it rebounded, and struck one of the diamonds.
The people
stationed near the flaming diamond recoiled from the wave of heat. It
probably wasn't enough to hurt them, but the intense light forced the
reflex. The zombies there pushed hard in their own terror, and they
breached the line.
For a double handful of seconds, chaos
followed. Zombies beat our defenders even further back from their
positions, widening the gap. I saw New Haven citizens and allies from
Louisville fall as they fought to defend each other. In that brief
space of time, a dozen people fell.
We'd drilled for that
eventuality, though. The person in charge of that wedge called for
the fallback, and the defenders parted quickly to leave the invading
zombies a path to the center.
That was where our gunmen
waited. Fully armed and armored, they surged forward. Each of them a
soldier from North Jackson, they moved in careful lines, their
weapons rattling in three-round bursts. No shot was wasted: each pull
of the trigger took a New Breed in the head. For the dozen bodies the
zombies had created, the gunmen paid them back with interest.
They
kept firing even as the zombies turned and ran. The sound of gunfire,
combined with the profound beating we were handing them and the huge
number of disabled undead littering the battlefield, was enough to do
the trick.
They turned. They ran. We fired arrows and bullets
at them until they were too far gone to be a threat. Then we took
stock of our losses, let our noncombatant medical personnel begin
triage, and ordered men out to finish off the damaged undead moaning
piteously across the scorched field.
I had the men keep a few
in reserve. I picked one new test subject.
The lives lost in
the fight were precious. Eleven of our allies from Louisville lost
their lives. Seven of our own people died, though five times that
took wounds ranging from a broken finger to a shattered pelvis.
Thanks to my wife's work over the months in making lightweight
armored sections, none of the survivors took deep claw wounds, and
there were no bites.
It seems like too high a price to pay,
but most people I've talked to don't think so. We've stopped this
group, basically right next door, from gathering enough momentum in
recruiting other zombies to do us damage in the near future. That's a
huge plus. Twice that number of New Breed hitting us at home would
have been incredibly dangerous.
That, and now we know that we
can fight them in the open if need be. We're going to send Becky out
with a small team of people to try and find more raw materials for
thermite (or anything else she can find that will do the same job).
This is clearly an effective weapon. Now that we've got some
first-hand data on how these ideas work in practice, we can do the
job of improving the portable defenses and gel bombs, and fixing the
flaws. It was a tough fight. We paid a hard price for the information
we gathered, and for the victory.
But we got them.