Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land (Book 3) Read online

  The anniversary slipped right by me, though I did think about it a few hours after I posted yesterday. I considered writing something about it, but it just didn't seem like that big a deal. Yeah, a year has come and gone. So what? Why should that matter to us? We have to deal with necessities. We measure our time in what we need to do, and if we have the hours or days to do it. It seems pretty arbitrary for us to be concerned with the fact that a calender year has passed. That in itself has no significance. I'd rather think about the time since The Fall in terms of what we've done, and how far we have to go.

  In those terms, our struggle has far more meaning. In a year, we've had the world tumble down around our ears. We've managed to build a sustainable living situation that is mostly safe. We've lost our home and gotten it back. We've managed to innovate in several ways, and to teach ourselves new (and old) ways of doing things. We've changed from a pampered group of modern people, used to the ease of buying food and trash collection, into a rugged and experienced troop of survivors strong enough to hunt our meals and defend our way of life, and hard as coffin nails when the need arises.

  OK, I'll admit that last line was a bit over the top. I'm proud as hell of what we've done here, so allow me a little artistic license. Overwritten it might be, it's still the truth. We have a long, long way to go before our community is what it is capable of being, but how far we've already traveled down that path is no laughing matter.

  I guess we'll evolve along like any society. We'll have to change and adapt new social norms and customs, holidays and stigma just like groups of people have always done. It's my hope that we can continue to be self aware enough to continue to put aside differences and not fall into the rut of deadlocked ideas when the fat is truly in the fire. So far we've done well. We've always done what needed to be done, and taken up our arguments when everyone was safe again.

  I'd like to think that Will being allowed to live is a step in the right direction. What we've done to him is basically slavery, but the choice was his. He could have chosen death, but instead he made the decision to see how the life of a pariah fit him. It's cruel and demeaning. It wears away at his spirit. It's a fall.

  But it's life. We had every moral justification for ripping him to shreds. A few months ago I think it would have happened regardless of what the judgment was. Since the occupation, though, I have the feeling that more and more people here have learned to reserve a part of themselves against preconceived notions. I think that as a whole, we are more willing to listen to reason and judge on an individual basis. I'm profoundly happy that Will is alive, because every minute he breathes is a chance to prove his worth. Every day is an opportunity for him to make up for some of the damage he did. I have to liken it to something my brother Dave once said to me when I was young, a thing I have never forgotten.

  I'd asked him how long eternity was. I think I was about seven at the time, and was just beginning to wrap my head around huge abstracts. I'd read the term in a book of his, and I wanted to get some idea of the scope of the thing.

  Dave explained to to me thus:

  A man with a feather walks up to a massive granite boulder, swiping the feather across it lightly. He does this but once every thousand years, each time wearing down the boulder so slightly as to almost not have happened. One atom at a time, perhaps. When the boulder is dust, my brother told me, the amount of time that had passed wouldn't even begin to touch how long eternity was.

  I've since gained a good education in physics and other sciences, so I have a better grasp on what the infinite really is. But I've always liked that explanation, because it manages to easily use one sense of scope to describe another. You've probably seen the point here---Will's actions from here on out are the feather, his sins the boulder. I don't know that it will ever happen, but at least he has a chance to wear down that rock. A few months ago, we'd have just crushed him with it.

  How far have we come, and how far do we have to go? It's not about time anymore. It isn't the seconds and minutes, the days and the years. It's about the seasons, and the food we grow. It's about birthing babies and watching love blossom. It's about providing haven for those that wish it, and simply providing for those that need it. It's about moving forward always, not toward some false ideal that was lost in The Fall, but toward whatever it is that we should be. Toward what we will be. No preconceived notions, only an eventual reality.

  That is how long it's been for us. The distance traveled in lives and hopes. That is how far we have to go. A future where lives are safe and hopes are realized. How long it takes is unimportant.

  The journey there is the forge that shapes us.

  Friday, March 4, 2011

  Stomping Ground

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I really want to post something today, something good. I can't. I've been awake for more than a day, and I'm tired to the bone. Yesterday started out nicely, but around three in the afternoon our luck well and truly ran out.

  A swarm of zombies hit a farm in force, more than a hundred of them. It's lucky that it was the farm closest to the compound, which let us get there quickly. We fielded about fifty fighters against the zombies, and mowed them down in less than ten minutes. In the time it took us to get there and wipe them out, they killed a dozen sheep, seven pigs, and trampled all over an acre of seedling plants the farmers just finished transplanting in their dash toward the animal pens.

  It's a huge mess. If anyone out there is reading this and is heading our way, bring some of your own food with you. Until we can stabilize the farms, we're going to have to do a lot more hunting.

  That's the current situation. I can't even think straight at this point. I'm going to go to bed and sleep until someone wakes me up. Maybe this will turn out to have been a bad dream. It'd be nice, but I doubt it.

  Saturday, March 5, 2011

  Working Out the Kinks

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I slept for fourteen glorious hours.

  While I was knocked out, my brother and a bunch of other people came up with a way to at least slow the zombie population down if they decide to come at the farms again. It required burning through a lot of diesel fuel to do it, but Dave managed to coordinate three crews of people and got it (mostly) done. Basically, he dug a trench. It isn't all that deep, maybe a foot and a half, and it isn't very wide--just the width of the backhoe's scoop. For all of that, it's a brilliant idea and one that can be finished quickly. Zombies, after all, aren't all that perceptive and will slow down when presented with an obstacle.

  All Dave had to do was set the scoop and drive, scraping out a channel in the ground. Took a couple of passes, but with three teams doing it the work was pretty quick. There's about a quarter of the land we use to finish, but I'm impressed as hell that so much was accomplished so quickly. Dave wants to pile up the dirt on outside the channel, so the zombies have to climb over it. I think he's hoping they'll lose balance and fall in, maybe breaking bones. I think we can do better than that if we can make some stakes to set at angles. It would take a lot of work, but lining the outside of the compound with stakes here and there has been very useful in keeping them from massing at the wall.

  In all the ruckus over the last week, I've been neglectful of some of the more important news. Dodger, who has taken charge of the defenses, tells me that about half of the big guns brought here by the Richmond soldiers are functional and have ammunition. Surprisingly, we also discovered that there are few bullets for the soldiers' own personal weapons. We're still not sure if they hid their supplies or if they were low from the start, but it does mean that we're going to be very strict in our conservation of ammo from here on out. We've done a good job of that to this point, but there have been enough emergencies to tax our stocks pretty heavily. You might remember early on that a few of us had the foresight to collect what we'd need to make our own bullets. We still have plenty of lead, powder, and of course we save our casings...but primer is the real issue. Running low.

  There's
still a lot of work to do around the compound. Gabby, Evans, and Phil are still working on making sure the injured are safe from infection and healing properly. I hope that continues to go well, because we need the workers to finish some of the projects that really, really need to get done. Mostly the final touches on the north wall, but there's also the farms to think about, and one or two construction projects that haven't been touched since before the new year. All that aside, we're still running short all over the map: less guards on duty than there should be, less folks to help out at the farms, less secondary work being done.

  I just don't think people outside the compound can really grasp just how much gets done here, or at least how much we were getting done. There aren't enough people physically able to work at the moment to justify making chainmail, which is always in demand for the scout crews and guards to protect from bites. We don't have anyone working on making clothing or other fabric goods. No construction going on that isn't security related. It sort of reminds me of a recession, how the basics are covered but no extra stuff gets attention. Irritating, but unavoidable.

  I have to give him credit, Will is doing everything he can to help. I don't doubt that a good chunk of it is self-serving, but that doesn't change the fact that the guy is getting maybe four hours of sleep around twenty hours of frantic activity. He's still taking the honey wagon back and forth to the farms, but he's also doing a dozen other things to help, from carrying messages to cooking at the mess to acting as a gopher for the folks at the clinic. This morning I saw him working at the forge with Patrick, who is trying to learn how to do the job with one hand--and Will made the big guy smile for the first time in days.

  Just for that, I gave him a huge bowl of rice and venison. I think it's the first bit of food he's had in a few days.

  One major task left to us is figuring out exactly how we're going to do the whole leadership thing. We've done it democratically in several ways, but right now we're just sort of doing what needs to be done and putting any vital decisions before the council. I'm not sure how it's all going to turn out. Seeing how things in North Jackson have worked out, I have to wonder if an authoritarian voice isn't what we need to get through this rough transition. That will have to wait until the repairs are done and things have settled a bit, but all of us on the council have started telling people to think hard about it.

  I love being back home, but I see it so differently now. For so much of the time that I lived here before the Richmond soldiers took this place in December, I was sitting behind a desk or going on trips to bring in folks from far away. Being a refugee taught me a lot about the world as it is now, and for all the insane danger of it, I enjoyed going on scout missions and doing new things. I've made it a point to tell the council and my brother that down the road I intend to spread my efforts out a little more. I've got this idea about everyone doing something similar, but that's for tomorrow's post.

  For today, I've got my happy little spreadsheets and a mountain of logistical nightmares to put on them. Back to the rat race and all that.

  Sunday, March 6, 2011

  Skill Points

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Damn, it got cold overnight. It's just below freezing outside, which is sort of scary. The farms have already started putting plants in the ground, and a frost could mean disaster. We've got our fingers crossed that doesn't happen.

  Yesterday I mentioned something about people learning different skill sets. I've talked about it before--everyone training to do a little bit of everything. To a large degree, we've done a good job of that. Most people here have basic first aid training, know how to do CPR, and can treat a wound if it's not too bad. Almost everyone has been taught to fire a gun accurately as well as a bow and arrow, knows enough hand to hand combat to fight off a zombie, and can at least swing a machete or ax well enough to save their lives. That's awesome, really. I can't describe to you the headache that coordinating all of that early on caused me, but I'm really glad we did it. Now, others that I have taught can teach the basics, which makes it easier.

  However, there are a lot of areas where skills and knowledge haven't been parsed out as evenly. There aren't many people, for example, that know how to cook for large groups and make it taste like anything other than shoe leather. There's also a real lack of people that know how to farm. Yeah, most of us have been able to grow food within the compound itself, each of us tending the gardens in our own space. There just aren't that many of us that know the ins and outs of real farming, doing it on a large scale. Most of the folks that go out to the farms to help out, guards included, are just following directions at present. After talking with the farmers, it's clear that this has to change. We can't leave it to chance that those men and women with that precious knowledge won't be killed or forced to leave. What they know, all of us have to learn.

  The same goes for every other skill and trade around here. There are a few people that know how to make bows and fletch arrows. They will be teaching others. Same for smithing, construction, leatherwork, crafting chainmail, even sewing. Everything has to be shared. We can't afford to lose someone critical, so the only option is to make sure no one is critical.

  We've got a good backup for knowledge with our ownership of a few copies of the Ark, but knowledge itself is only half of what you need. People with experience in a given trade are worth their weight in gold. It's all well and good to know something about how to plant corn when you read it from a book, but the farmer who's been growing it for twenty years will teach you how to do it right the first time, do it quickly and safely, and get the best possible yield with the least amount of work.

  I'm not trying to harp on about this, but I think it's important. All of you out there who are in your own groups should consider this seriously. The beating we've taken recently proves that every able body is going to be needed to move forward. Over the last few days several of our injured have gone back to work in one capacity or another, and we're hoping a few more each day will do the same. The folks from North Jackson have left, just as the remainder of the people we left there have arrived here. It's not an even trade, as there are about twenty more of our new arrivals than people that left to go back to NJ. In numbers, we're doing better than we were. In experience, not so much. Most of these new arrivals are folks we picked up along the way, mostly from the town where Gabby and the doctors set up shop. They don't know their way around here, and most of them aren't familiar with what most of us do on a daily basis. We'll teach them, of course.

  It just takes time.

  The good news is that they brought a lot of food down with them, mostly stuff that Courtney and the convoy she led hauled back with them. Donations to help out the refugees from the compound. Lucky, that, especially since we're not refugees anymore. That food won't last as long since it has to feed so many, but it will give us the breathing room and strength we need to muscle through these last few weeks of winter.

  Now I get to go learn how to make a pot of soup that will feed an army. I'm about as hungry as a whole platoon, so this should work out well...

  Monday, March 7, 2011

  Three Amigas

  Posted by Josh Guess

  There are many pleasant ways that a man can be woken up. The first and most obvious is with sex--there's nothing quite like the gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) touch of a lover to rouse you from deep slumber. It's a fantastic way to start the day. The second best for most people is to wake up to the smell of delicious food.

  That's how my morning started. At first I thought Jess had gotten up early to make something for us to eat--not a common occurrence around our house, given that both of us are always busy and working on projects. No, when the smell of eggs and the sound of sizzling bacon hit me, the first thing I did was flop an arm over to the side, expecting to hit empty bed.

  I said I was sorry like a dozen times, but wives tend to get miffed when you drop your arm across their sleeping faces, even if it's an accident.

  Curiou
s, I got out of bed and threw on some pajama bottoms to go see who was in my house. No, I wasn't worried that the zombies had somehow breached our defenses and come inside to make breakfast. I WISH that were the case--any zombie that would cook for me would be one I'd think hard about keeping around. Nor was I worried that someone had broken in--there were about a dozen people that had free reign to come and go in my house at all hours. Lots of us have that policy.

  What did I discover when I made my way into the kitchen? Patrick and his three girls, making breakfast for all of us. The fact that there was fresh bread, eggs, and bacon made me wonder just what was going on. Eggs weren't that uncommon, but I hadn't had bacon in a while.

  As it turns out, Pat was giving the girls a lesson. He and I have talked a lot the last few days about the ideas behind yesterday's post, that being the sharing of all skills and knowledge among as many people as possible. While I ate breakfast this morning, he explained to me what his plan was.

  The girls had all managed to cultivate good skills with firearms during the time they and Pat were on the run, especially while they were locked up in that abandoned militia fortress. He's proud as hell that the girls have been able to build a decent sense of judgment about danger and how to respond to it, but he's discouraged by their lack of pretty much any other skills. Add to that the deep emotional trauma they've been dealt and you have a recipe for shut-ins who won't socialize with anyone.