Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) Read online

  This New Disease

  Volume Five of Living With the Dead

  Joshua Guess

  This work is ©2012 Joshua Guess

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  This, the fifth volume of Living With the Dead, an electronic record of the months and years following the cataclysmic end of humanity's first technological age, is pivotal. Herein the survivors of the event referred to by the author as “The Fall” encounter the long-term consequences of the sudden loss of many support structures once taken for granted. The struggle to survive is complicated, not only by enemies living and dead, but by forces larger and more pervasive. Forces nearly impossible to fight.

  As always, this volume is presented unedited from the original, save for necessary format changes. As an historical document, we feel the raw and high-pressure nature of the text should stay true to its origins.

  Thursday, March 1, 2012

  Chance Encounter

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Three days without writing a post is weird. A number of you sent me messages filled with concern that something had happened to me. No worries: as I said in the last few posts, I needed to focus myself on doing my part to help make New Haven function in the wake of our conflict with the Exiles.

  Three days. A lot can happen in that time.

  Nothing earth-shattering has, of course. I'd have probably posted something if it had. The seasons seem to be changing at a quicker pace now, warmer weather gaining a firmer grip on the land. It's chilly out right now, but the last two days have been in the sixties and the nights not much cooler. That's been good for productivity across the board and has helped us save a bit on our stock of firewood. That's wood we can use for cooking instead of heating, which means not sending out teams of people to cut more. It's weird how all the little details can matter in seemingly minor ways that turn out to be important.

  Take that very team of woodcutters for example. By not having to send them out on a scheduled run to fell trees and to haul in wood we've stockpiled to dry at our preferred spot to lumber, we had extra hands available to work on other things. With the weather being warm, Jess used them in her greenhouses to help prepare for the planting that will happen soon. That puts us ahead of schedule there.

  And by keeping that team home, we kept them from being killed.

  While the Exiles sit in the fallback point licking their wounds, the undead are moving about more openly. Our scouts are having a hard time getting accurate counts because the new breed has almost taken over the local zombie population. They might be dead people walking, but the new breed is clever enough to realize we have people watching them. Clever enough, in fact, to watch us back without our scouts being aware of it.

  We usually keep a two-man crew moving around the half of the county left open to us, doing rounds and checking up on the locations that we visit often. There are still some cache houses where we store supplies, the heavy copse of trees on the edge of a vast forest where we cut and dry our wood, the creeks where we gather and transport water when our reserves get low. There are more, a few dozen spots where we have to send people on a regular basis.

  It was a lucky thing our scouts were near the lumberyard on time. Normally they'd have been checking up on the woodcutting crew, but on this particular round the scouts saw zombies. Lots of them, at least seventy. They came out of the woods in a flood when they heard the scouts pull close with their dirt bikes, and slowed down immediately. The scout team thinks the undead were waiting for the trucks that would drop off our would-be lumberjacks, and were surprised to see only two men on motocross bikes.

  It goes without saying that the scouts turned around and hauled ass for New Haven to give us that report. We've known for a while that the new breed is going to be a lot harder to handle than the original recipe zombies, but to think they've been watching the places we go, holding back the instinct to kill...that's a huge problem. New Haven isn't self-sufficient in that way; we have to send people out almost every day to gather supplies of one kind or another.

  It's startling to realize just how much a weakness this is. We're dealing with a much more intelligent predator now, and we don't have any choice in the matter. We can't stop sending out teams. Hell, we've made some significant progress to opening trade routes back up, but that's going to come with its own set of problems now, too. How many runs can people make to New Haven, bringing in goods while we ship out medicines, before the new breed starts devising ways to attack the trucks and drivers?

  Dear god, what if they start to comprehend how badly off we'd be if they just stopped trade altogether? Or even stopped us from going out into the county to bring in food or wood or water? My deepest hope is that the new breed...no. New Breed, in capitals, because they are enough of a threat to deserve that distinction.

  My deepest hope is that the New Breed doesn't have that level of comprehension. I'm acting as an adviser to the newly elected council and to Will, who has been reconfirmed as Governor of New Haven, but my daily duties aren't nearly what they once were. I'm not a vital gear in the machinery of this place, as others have taken up the workload my brother and I used to share. I see to many small problems that fall through the cracks, but anyone with a brain (which is just about everyone in New Haven) could do it.

  I hope the New Breed isn't capable of figuring out how deeply they could cut us, because I love this place. I love these people, flaws and all. If the undead discover that slowing down our activity outside New Haven's walls will weaken us and make us easier targets, we'd be in for a world of hurt. I don't have the pull around here that I did many months ago. I can't make things happen by just asking for them. Then again, I have more influence than I did under our recently deposed council, so maybe that evens out. My duties, my work, might be small items that don't have a huge flashy impact, and I'm okay with that.

  Because my loyalty is to this place and these people. I will do anything to ensure New Haven's safety and prosperity, even if that means taking on some responsibilities no one can be asked to shoulder. If that sounds vague and cryptic, I apologize. I'll talk more tomorrow about that. I've been up all night discussing ideas on how to combat the New Breed with Evans and Gabrielle, and I'm starting to get a little wonky.

  For right now, we'll be more cautious. We'll send out additional guards and try to armor every team that goes out as best we can. We'll manage somehow, because we have to.

  Friday, March 2, 2012

  Zephyr

  Posted by Josh Guess

  There's a storm front moving in from the southwest, and our contacts who've already been hit by it tell us it's a bad one. Really, really bad. Remember about a year ago when we got hit by that storm the dropped a tornado on us? This one has spawned at least two so far. We've estimated that at the speed the front is moving, the really bad parts will be here somewhere between noon and eight tonight. That's as close as we can gauge based on where it has hit so far and at what times.

  That means I'll be indoors most of the day, which is fine. I have to work on the project I started talking about yesterday anyway.

  All of us have had to do some terrible things since The Fall. Sometimes a necessity comes along that's too much for most people to deal with. Not that they couldn't, I guess, but more that they shouldn't have to. Killing to defend ourselves is a reality we all deal with, as is risking our lives to go out and gather even the
most basic needs.

  Capturing and experimenting on zombies, however, isn't something most people should have to do.

  Evans, Gabrielle, and I have done this before. We learned a lot about the way the undead work from that experiment. Data combined with experience and insight creates understanding, and the only way to combat an enemy, any enemy, is to understand them.

  Yesterday we caught two zombies. It wasn't as hard as you might think. One of them is a New Breed, the other appears to be what I call an old school or 'original recipe' zombie. We set a trap for them, hiding a group of men with hooks and ropes behind a hill as our person acting as bait led the undead to them.

  The New Breed is obviously intelligent, easily told apart by the thickened skin with its odd gray color and rough texture, almost like a lizard. The old school zombie looks like a walking dead person, but there's a glimmer of cleverness when I look into its eyes. Something along the lines of gazing into the abyss, and the abyss gazing also.

  So far we haven't done much to either of them. Our first purpose is to test the reasoning capacity of the New Breed, then we move onto the physical differences, various athletic abilities, and anything else we can think of. It's dangerous as hell, because a lot of what we'll be doing involves close contact with both of them. Because of that, only I will actually be interacting with the subjects. Evans and Gabby will be overseeing the tests as well as designing them, but both of them are far too valuable to risk in this way.

  I, on the other hand, am way more experienced in fighting off the undead than Evans and Gabby, and have the best chance of surviving any mishaps. I've got a lot of firsthand practice handling zombies, and by going into the enclosures alone I won't have to worry about protecting anyone else. I'll be wearing armor and taking every precaution, but we've decided that no one else will take this risk.

  If something should happen to me, the zombies will be put down and the experiment will be over. I'm confident that with all the safety measures we've taken, these two won't present that kind of danger. Famous last words, I know, but it's really very safe.

  The really interesting bit is seeing if the old school zombie will change into a New Breed without physical contact. The old school one has had the tatters of its clothes cut off it (which was not a fun experience, let me tell you...) and we can see that it hasn't suffered any bites. We're working on the assumption that the New Breed infects other types of zombies with their strain of the plague through bites.

  Ah, I'm going off on tangents. I apologize. Thunder is cracking overhead, and we'll have to take down the transmitter before long. I hope we uncover a treasure trove of behavior data from these corpses, because I don't relish the truly horrible parts that will come after that phase. The...physical parts. Testing how much damage one of them can take and still function, which means doing bad, bad things to them. I know they're zombies, but they look like people. Just thinking about it makes my stomach churn.

  Time to put on my gear and go into the cages.

  Saturday, March 3, 2012

  The Narrow Miss

  Posted by Josh Guess

  No one expected yesterday's storms to hit as hard as they did, and while New Haven missed out on the worst of it, we got slammed badly. In other places the devastation was much worse, though from what we've heard not many people have been injured, and no one has died.

  Which is kind of amazing. New Haven didn't get the brunt of the storms, but even what hit us was so powerful that once again my brother is going to be supervising repair work for weeks. Usually Kentucky doesn't suffer from such bad weather so early in the year.

  I spent a lot of time with our captive zombies, but so far not much to report. We're still in the early stages of our observations. I'm spending today working on other stuff, since I have to divide my time between my regular duties and my work with Evans and Gabby.

  I don't have any time to spare right now for an extensive post. I'm going to motor through the rest of the odds and ends that make up my average work day now, then head out to help Dave assess the damage to the houses and other buildings around New Haven.

  The things I deal with are interesting, at least. It's still work, but whereas the team Dave and I trained to manage the daily administration of this place handle most things, I'm doing some needed work as a middleman. For example, I don't have to worry about construction materials or food. Instead, as soon as I get done with this post I'll be working on an estimate of the number of zombies in the county, using multiple reports as my data set. Then I prepare reports for each section of the administration based on what responses those sections may have to enact. For construction, my report will involve relative strengths and weaknesses of the zombies, how much of what types of material we might need in case of an attack....

  It's that way for each part of this community. I get to work with factors that affect all parts of our workforce and daily life, and decide the first steps on how to deal with those factors.

  Yeah, it's weird. It's abstract. I know that. Still, I enjoy it. Of course, I'd be a lot happier about this kind of work if existential threats weren't a major part of it. That adds to the stress load a bit.

  Like killing zombies, it has to be done...

  Sunday, March 4, 2012

  Furrows

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Though it's snowing right now (because mother nature is apparently having severe mood swings) we've still got people out there working the land. We're going to do some natural farming outside the walls by utilizing crops that grow without much human intervention, but inside the annex portion of New Haven there are big things going on.

  Obviously the ground froze overnight, so a lot of the work Jess and her crew started yesterday in plowing the earth has been put on hold. They broke a lot of ground, and are managing to get ahead of schedule a fair bit. Jess is aiming to have the entire annex done by the end of next week, rows ready to take whatever we want to plant in them.

  Cause the ground loves it when we plant our seed in it. Aw, yeah.

  I have to joke, because worrying about what may happen without any kind of pressure release would be impossible. This is the most critical time of the year for us. Planning and executing the overall agricultural plan is obviously crucial to our needs, and the problems we're facing are serious ones.

  One concern is the Exiles. They've also been working on preparing their land for cultivation. There's a lot less to work with inside the fallback point, and they have at least as many mouths to feed as we do. I imagine they'll have to move out of the confines of their little fortress and farm the surrounding land at some point. We're worried that our new neighbors are going to run out of food before they get a grip on farming. Their supplies can only last so long. I doubt the tenuous peace between New Haven and the Exiles could survive fierce hunger. That's a concern for the long haul. For now their stores will last them.

  The New Breed are a much more imminent threat. The annex isn't staffed with a full compliment of sentries, so it's impossible to keep all the zombies away. We guard the wall that borders the annex, and our sentries there have seen New Breed on the far wall. They must have watched us for a long while to have figured out the annex walls have a thinner compliment of guards. I don't know if that means they can count or if they gathered a general impression of less people, but either way, they've been sneaking a look at us. At least we know about it.

  And we can't stop them from doing it. Mounting the kind of guard we'd need to maintain all that extra wall is beyond us with our current numbers and workload. Our concern is split between the worry that the zombies will come over the wall to attack Jessica's work crews, which is a very real possibility...

  ...and the much more frightening thought that the New Breed has figured out that we're going to be planting food. The implications of that are huge and dangerous. If the New Breed attacks our people, that's one thing. It's awful but straightforward. But if they've realized how much damage they'd do to us by hitting our breadbasket, the
n they're far more intelligent and clever than we could have imagined.

  Because if they do, we'll have to forage outside of New Haven every day. We'll have to hunt. That means another period of time where almost all our time and energy goes to food and not toward innovation. Progress would stagnate, and our numbers would surely dwindle as we worked to gather food out in the New Breed's own territory. If they're devious enough to actually plan hitting our food supply to flush us out in the open, that is. I could be overreacting completely, giving them far too much credit.

  Then again, I watched our captive New Breed for a while this morning. He was playing with a simple puzzle, one of those twelve-piece jigsaw ones that small kids use. In the time I was there, he didn't try putting the thing together, but he studied it. Turned the parts over in his hands, glanced between the pieces as if to look for clues on how they related to one another. Studying. Learning.

  I put nothing outside the realm of possibility with the New Breed.

  Tuesday, March 6, 2012

  Mad World

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We went from seventy degree weather one day to raging storms the next, and then yesterday we got about six inches of snow. It came on suddenly and dropped in less than eight hours. Since yesterday morning when we woke up to see the beautiful blanket draped across the world, the temperature has dropped to the mid-twenties and stayed there.