With Spring Comes the Fall (31 page)

Posted by Josh Guess at 
10:26 AM
 

Working at a desk means that there is a lot more going on than I ever get the chance to tell you about. Mostly due to the fact that there are several hundred people here now, I pass on a lot of stuff that I have to hear about rather than experience firsthand. Such is the case today.
We sent out our trucks and buses again to pick up another round of new folks, and those smart zombies were out waiting down the road. Not close enough for anyone to see them from the compound, of course, but close enough that we could hear the brakes squeal when human instinct took over for the drivers and they tried not to run the zombies down.
That encounter wasn't all that frightening. The zombies momentarily swarmed the vehicles, and I assume that they ran away shortly thereafter because they realized that there was no way in.
So the convoy makes it to the destination, the place where all of our recent newcomers have been safely holed up. Scouts on the tops of our modified vehicles made sure that the area was clear before our crews disembarked. It was all routine, and folks were already moving toward the doors when disaster hit them.
With no warning, there were half a dozen zombies right at our vehicles. Most folks had their backs turned except for the lookouts, but they couldn't see straight down the sides of the vehicles. In short, conditions were ideal for that half-dozen to deal us a terrible blow. Each of them managed to kill one of us before the lookouts could take them down. Well, all but one was killed. The sixth zombie managed to get away, moving with the speed this new type of undead all seem to have.
The crews couldn't figure out how they were surprised, until they looked under the vehicles. Smudges and bits of seared skin made it pretty clear that they had to have distracted our drivers in order to get some stowaways lodged in the undercarriages.
This level of sophistication means we need a council meeting now.
I want to give you the names and stories of all six of our dead, give them their memorial, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. We have a serious threat that needs attention right now, and frankly it can wait until tomorrow.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
2:08 PM

Today isn't the day for pretty words.
We had a very long and involved council meeting yesterday and most of last night. We finished in the wee hours of the morning, and I just woke up.
Anyone who has been reading this blog at all in the last few days can skip this paragraph. If you are a survivor who has just now discovered it, keep reading, because this short recap is important. You already know that zombies have managed to destroy society in virtually no time, but you have to know: there are zombies in Frankfort, Kentucky that have developed some limited form of intelligence. Perhaps not intelligence as you would think of it, not human smart, but they are extremely clever and capable of planning ahead.
So you know.
The meeting lasted as long as it did not because we were just struck dumb as to what to do about them. After all, we have contingency plans in place to deal with human attackers, since so many of them appear around these parts to try and take our home and resources. No, the problems we were running into were far more mundane. We had to hash out our plans, and see to all the details. Also, the meeting was a lot bigger than usual, since we included many of the new folks that have recently joined us. Evans, our doctor, went over all of his research dealing with the outbreak and its pathology. It's easy to forget that not everyone hears what we do about how zombies seem to work.
We're sending out some teams to start looking for these clever zombies, see if we can find out where they stay. The idea is to observe them, possibly capture one alive to study. That's as much detail as you need, I guess, since the rest is just logistics.
Another meeting in a few minutes to pick teams. I can promise you, I won't be one of them this go round. My wife will stab me in the face if I run off again this soon. But it is important, and I wish I could go. The scientist in me (well, the science nerd, anyway) relishes the idea of taking in so much new and interesting data first hand.
Damn, the bell is ringing. Meeting time.
Tomorrow, an appropriate tribute to our most recent fallen. I promise.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
11:17 AM

Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday, but we have been too busy to do much else but worry. We sent out some groups to observe the new band of zombies, the smart ones. Most of them are still out, though a few came back when part of the band began to head this way yesterday.
Since then, we have been dealing with these clever bastards non-stop.
They have been testing our defenses all over the place. Some of them have taken to walking the perimeter of the compound, taking gunshots while another one farther away hides and watches. Some have managed to find weak spots in the wall, places where we haven't been able to close the place in all the way. They keep on coming, and from the early reports we've gotten, there are a fucking lot of them.
That, we can deal with. Mounting extra patrols and keeping people who are off duty indoors pretty much manages the issue. It's annoying and definitely unnerving, but not an insurmountable problem. I can't say that I like the idea that these things are smart enough to try and figure out our weak spots, but when you think about it, it's really no more than some animals can do. It's just creepy watching a dead body do it.
The bigger issue is that Evans seems to think that whatever it is that inhabits the bodies of people to make them rise is almost certainly bacterial, and like many bacteria and viruses, it can mutate and spread to already infected hosts. What that boils down to is that he thinks that even one of these things can effectively spread whatever it is that makes these zombies smarter to other, large populations of them. Since one of our stowaways got away from us the other day when our folks were in Lexington (I can tell you now that we have finished moving everything all the folks from the group there, and all of their supplies) we might be in trouble. The good news is that Evans is of the opinion that whatever is in these zombies to make them smarter also needs a host of a certain quality.
So only fairly intact dead folks will do. That's good because if true (and I think it is due to the fact that none of the smarties have looked very run down) then it effectively limits their population to a much smaller percentage of the whole.
It's really bad though, because that means that the smart zombies will also universally be those most capable of doing damage right back to us.
Jesus, did I seriously refer to them as "smarties"? Oh well, works for me.
And since we are busy, I will give you what I can about the six folks we lost when the convoy was attacked the other day. I wish I knew more and had time to be poetic, but the world we live in now means that any epitaph is a good one.
Jenna Smith--mother of two, she was a constitutional lawyer who lost her entire family in the fall. She often made things for people, mostly out of fabrics. Society crumbled and she discovered a love of knitting, sewing, weaving...she was quiet, and brave.
Justin Reilly--fifteen year old boy from Jack's group up north. Didn't know much about him, except that he and I shared a deep love of video games. We spent a good deal of time talking about how stoked we were when Fallout 3 hit the shelves. He was a nice kid with haunted eyes, but he never had a harsh word for anyone and helped where he could.
Pete--never gave a last name. He was a big guy, looked like a football player. He usually worked cleanup outside the walls, gathering zombies up for burning. He said once that he used to work with metal, but never really said a lot about his past. He was grumpy at times, and spent a lot of his free time alone in the woods, hunting.
Dana Schwartze--She was kind of a bitch. I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but that's the truth. She enjoyed arguing with people, belittling their thoughts and ideals, though she never went too far with it. She was pragmatic to a fault, and while she agreed with some of the folks who thought this place was a "haven of sin", she always stood by the fact that sometimes you have to take what you can get. I sort of wish I had known her better, if only to understand what made her the way she was. Anyway, I can't fault her bravery or sense of duty, and somehow I think she would approve of this paragraph.
Parker D.--older guy, at least in his sixties. He was this little man, skinny as a rail but full of energy. He was the type to get excited about a project, any project, if he thought it would be good for the group. We found a huge pile of porn in his room when we went to clean it out. That might disgust some of you, but it only makes me smile. At least he was consistent; just as enthusiastic in play as he was in work.
Finally, Mikey Driscoll--he was an outright racist who never could look me in the eye. He made it very clear that he thought my wife being black was a bad thing, but I have never been one to censor others for what they believe. He did his job and never complained, worked long hours when needed and never shirked his duty. He was someone that a lot of people avoided, but he took that social stigma with remarkable aplomb, as though he understood that his views made others dislike him and respected that feeling. Can't say that I liked him much, but he kept us safe just as well as anyone else, and better than some. I hope that if there's a heaven, he gets in and learns the error of his ways there.
That's all we got. I hear the dulcet tones of alarm bells ringing, that's my cue.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
9:23 AM

The smarties (that name for the smart zombies caught on yesterday and now everyone around here is using it) have begun to attack us consistently. They're probing us, attacking differently every time and fighting harder with each hit.
There are a lot of them. Our recon folks have reported witnessing zombies being converted by the smarties. It takes a while, and it works on very few of them, but those that catch whatever strain of the zombie disease these fuckers carry end up getting smarter. That small percentage ends up being hundreds that we have seen so far, because Frankfort has thousands of zombies at any given time.
One good thing that our scouts saw during the time they were observing: it takes an effort for the smarties to stay focused. They aren't able to restrain their natures at all times, which is great news for us. If we can stake them out and place people where we know them to gather, chances are good that we can drastically reduce their population.
The problem is, that place is at our walls right now.
Roger has been working with Patrick at our makeshift forge to turn all the metal we can find into bracing for our weak and missing sections of wall. Patrols are out constantly, in fact I am about due for an hour of patrol myself.
Jess is getting big with baby, and is feeling the frustration of not being able to go out with us. But that's the rule around here for pregnant women.
Assuming that they keep the pressure on, I expect a major attack by tomorrow morning. Our remaining scout group is supposed to check in with us in a few hours, though given how hard they are hitting the gate it's unlikely we will be able to open it to let them in.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
8:44 AM

I never thought I would be thankful for being attacked so often over the last few months. The constant danger made us plan for worst case scenarios, and we pretty much had that happen yesterday.
I'm sitting on top of the tall state office building again, and this time it's not really by choice. I had no chance to write anything yesterday, because of the terrible increase in attacks by the smart breed of zombies. They started to hit us late yesterday morning at every weak point, every nook and cranny. We did all right for a while holding them off, but around noon the fat really hit the fire.
Two or three thousand of them must have been moving very fast to get here from Lexington. Our single recon group was watching thirty or forty of the smarties while they were huddled next to the interstate. Our scouts called us when the horde came into view, and it became clear right then that we were in serious trouble.
So we did what we had planned for and practiced, but never talked about to anyone outside our group.
We left.
Cars loaded with gas, food, weapons and any and all supplies to survive for as long as possible without any of the comforts of home. We had a prearranged signal, a loud old cattle bell we found at the farm next door, and when our recon team called in, we rang it. The retreat went smoothly enough, and almost all of us got out and made it downtown to our fallback point.
Thank god someone had the foresight to mention it to our new folks, the majority of whom live in the buildings we cleared out down here. They've spent a lot of time setting up defenses and trying to work on the plans Dave and I came up with to make this chunk of Frankfort safer. They also knew that we might have to make this trip, and that all of us would have to hole up here at some point.
We haven't lost anyone that I know of, but a small group stayed behind at the compound to keep us informed about what is going on there. They kill zombies when possible, but otherwise are using the crazy array of catwalks, stairs and ladders that move from walls to houses to ground. It's a great way for them to stay one step ahead...
But the rest of us are stuck. I actually hope that the smarties make it down here so we can try to take them out in a big group. The bridges in front of this building and the hotel are a killing field, and my brother is out there making it even more dangerous. We are going to be ready when they do make it here, assuming that they don't catch us unawares. These damn things have driven us from our home.
We are going to take it back.