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

  It should be mentioned that Becky has a ludicrous amount of training and experience in practical chemistry along with many years of learning the theory of it. I've said she's one of the smartest people I know, and that's still true. She's also very careful, meticulous, and cognizant of the danger in what she's doing.

  Rather, what she's done. Because this morning, Becky brought a dozen sticks of the stuff to the house. She even made blasting caps, though none of them were actually inserted into the explosives. She's been talking to Will about ways to weaponize the explosives that won't endanger any of our people.

  The zombies won't know what hit them. Bring on another five thousand of them, right?

  Maybe not, but at least we'll have some heavy artillery to throw at them if and when a large group comes. One positive thing about the apparent constant evolution of the undead is that they have some capacity to learn, at least when it comes to the very basic things like threats. Enough explosions ripping dozens of them apart might lessen their desire to attack us.

  Will is working on a defense system that is brilliantly simple and easy to construct, but at least in theory devastatingly effective. He's arranged a small-scale demonstration. I'm off to attend right now.

  So much going on at the moment, such a dramatic turnaround from how terrible things have been. We're facing a new dawn of creativity and willingness to try new things, and it's awesome.

  Friday, August 5, 2011

  Grinding Halt

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Construction has come to a stop while Dave and his crew come up with a way to ferry water here. We've been cautious about how much we've been using to mix the cement for our concrete, as it takes a lot and we don't have infinite supplies.

  Fortunately, it looks like rain this morning, so that may help. I really don't have much today, just two pieces of good news. The first is that Dave thinks there are enough materials at the yard down by the river to allow us to build the entire wall with concrete. We'd resigned ourselves to simpler large stones held together with cement, but with the extra fuel and help we've gotten from our friends from NJ, we've got the resources to haul gravel and other aggregate material from the depot.

  The other good news is actually really awesome: the folks out west who have been promising us a shipment of food have hooked up with a newly discovered group of people not far away from them, and will be bringing a load of edibles to us shortly.

  Combined with the fear the zombie swarms seem to have for us now and the prospects we have for trade, things are looking good. Not great, but better than we could have expected a month ago.

  Ah, I hear the raindrops now. Need to set up a few of the water catchers.

  Saturday, August 6, 2011

  The Subtle Art of Naming

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The title of this post is a reference and tribute to Patrick Rothfuss, who was a rising star among fantasy authors before The Fall broke humanity. I've mentioned him before, and as far as I know, he's still safely tucked away with his family. I hope he's been safe from the hordes or undead, and has found time to keep writing. When and if society rises from the ashes, people will need stories to uplift them again.

  The reason Pat and his amazing book, The Name of the Wind, come to mind this morning is because the citizens of the compound are officially voting to rename this place today. I'm excited. I think we all are.

  We're considering several options, but I've been asked not to mention them here. While communication with the rest of you out there is usually limited, nobody on the council wants any outside influence. Names are important things. This is a decision that has to be totally ours. Even the visiting NJ soldiers and workers aren't being told.

  It almost feels like we're approaching some kind of renaissance period. We've been through such awful times lately, and though the storms battered us, the clouds are breaking and sweet sunlight is on the horizon.

  So much is going on without my input now that it's hard for me to keep track of it all. Gabrielle's efforts toward manufacturing medical supplies have, as I've mentioned, spurred a flurry of creative energies around the compound. She's got a dozen people working with her during the day, and there are shifts of people producing antibiotics and other medical supplies around the clock.

  I also said that people have become more open to trade now that they know we've started making very desirable products. What we didn't realize, and what I didn't know until a day ago, was that this would spark a wave of trade among many groups of survivors.

  Basically, some of our people have taken up the mantle of managing trades between the different groups. While we need to trade our goods for food, some groups don't have any extra to barter with. Maybe group A has food, but group B only has spare weapons. Group C has clothing, which group D needs. Several of our people ( proudly, I can say that three of them are my former trainees) are working out trades among them so that every group manages to get something they need, and get rid of stuff they don't.

  Such simple ideas wouldn't have seemed extraordinary before The Fall, but humankind has become even less trustful since the zombie plague began. I guess it took a truly desirable and rare set of goods to precipitate the whole thing, but there you go. I can only imagine what will happen when Gabby is able to produce penicillin. Oh, yes, she's working hard on that. Unfortunately it's a complicated, finicky process that involves a lot of specialized equipment to do right.

  We've got people putting feelers out there, trying to find it.

  I went wide of my intended topic, which was names of things. Specifically, the name of this place, but I think this post pretty well sums up why this is so important to us. We've gone beyond being a bunch of people living together behind a wall. That's a compound.

  We've suffered as one on a scale none of us imagined possible a year ago. At least, I don't think any of us would have seen us surviving the things we've gone through. Somehow, we did it. Add to that new innovations, working on unifying survivors from all over with trade, trying to act as a neutral party so everyone ends up a winner, and "the compound" seems dull, utilitarian, and wholly inadequate as a descriptor for who we are.

  Names can mean everything or nothing. Everything if you choose the right one, and nothing if you fail to live up to that choice.

  We'll do our best.

  Monday, August 8, 2011

  David

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I want to dedicate this post to a lost friend, one of my closest. Last night, we lost Little David.

  David and I met years ago. We worked at the same factory, and though I was several years older than his own eighteen, we clicked. We had the same dark sense of humor, the same geeky love of comics and fantasy of all stripes. He dug death metal, while I was in my Johnny Cash phase. David had the same snarky reaction to stupid behavior as me. We never got in fights, never stabbed one another in the back, never let disagreements be anything other than civilized.

  When The Fall came, he was one of the first to join us. His family came with him, and though he hasn't always been at the forefront of activity, he's always been a reliable and stalwart defender of this place.

  He suffered a lot of heartache in his life before The Fall, and more after. He watched as many loved ones passed, as all of us did, and found new hope with Darlene. When the compound fell to the Richmond Soldiers, she was killed, and David was devastated.

  Though he healed, David was never the same. He spent his time alternating between periods of depression and times of reckless risk. Yesterday was, ironically enough, a good day. A normal day. He was putting in a shift hunting with one of our many crews, and a zombie came through the area he was in. It should have been a simple kill, then back to the hunt.

  He was found before he had a chance to reanimate, and I didn't ask which member of his team made sure he stayed gone. I don't want to know.

  All of us who knew him are saddened by his loss. He was funny as few people are, sarcastic and biting, but w
as always a sympathetic ear when you needed him. We who were close to him feel more than sadness for his passing, but also a deeper pain at how hard he had it. To have lost so much and gained hope only to lose it all over again...that's what all of us fear. That deep, hollow worry that what we've salvaged from our prior lives will be gone in an instant. David lived that, and fought, and hurt. He dealt with it for a longer time than I think most of us would have been capable of. He was tough.

  All of us know how quickly we can lose what little we have. Cherish each moment, pleasure and pain, as something precious and unique that may never come again.

  A wise man once said that even when we're with others, each of us dies alone.

  I say that we may always die alone, but the best way to live is together. With each other, for each other. David understood that on a very deep level. He was the essence of this place. He dealt with his own pain privately so that he could show a strong face for the rest of us. So he could better give his quick mind and strong arms in the service of the community he was so instrumental in building.

  It's fitting that David was the one to suggest the name that was eventually chosen to replace "the compound". He read over some of my recent posts, and one struck him. He pointed out to me that while this place was no longer a haven after the split among our people and the massive zombie swarm that nearly obliterated us, we were on the path to recovery. More, we were actively building new and more powerful hopes from the ruins of the old.

  His contribution to the compound is many-faceted, in service and many other ways. The one that he'll be most remembered for is giving us a name. A real name.

  Everyone will know that Little David was the first to call us "New Haven".

  And yes, before anyone gets snarky and mentions that there was a town of the same name in Connecticut, I am aware. David believed, as many here do, that using old names was a fine thing as long as they fit. We're staring down a future full of possibilities we couldn't have dreamed of two months ago, and it gets bigger and brighter every day. We are growing strong and fit, and people have already expressed interest in traveling here again.

  It's enough for me. We've got a way to go, but a name with such resonance just means we'll have to try that much harder to meet the expectation it creates. David would have done his best to, and we will do no less.

  Tuesday, August 9, 2011

  New Haven, New Ideas

  Posted by Josh Guess

  As I mentioned yesterday, the compound has been renamed. New Haven is what we're calling our community, though I have to admit to a little apprehension. We've weathered a lot of storms (literally, as of yesterday, since it finally started raining) but as much as we want to meet the expectation that comes with such an auspicious name, some of us are worried that we'll fail.

  Not that we aren't trying, of course. We've just seen what happens when people get too comfortable with their achievements and stop thinking as cautiously and creatively as they once did. I know it might seem silly to some of you out there, but the concern around here isn't that we can't meet the expectations we've set for ourselves, but rather that we'll grow lax and careless.

  That being said, we've got some really impressive things going on right now. The outer wall (as we've begun to call it) is going up at a good pace now that we've got water to spare. Will is working on new defenses that are, for lack of a better word, fucking NUTS.

  He arranged a small scale demonstration for us this morning. Basically, his idea is to defend the walls with a series of, well, potato guns.

  Will is a redneck in ways that are vast and mysterious.

  For those of you who don't know what a 'tater cannon' is, it's simple: you take a length of PVC pipe, about the size you'd need to fire a potato out of. You screw on a larger section at one end with a cap. You jam in a spud, fill the large section with hairspray or some other flammable compound, and light that bitch up. Most folks used to drill a wee hole in the reservoir section and install a flint lighter, like the ones that ignite gas grills.

  Will's design is similar, but so much more awesome. His prototype uses an old propane tank filled with pressurized air, hooked up to a piece of pipe that gets filled with gravel rather than vegetables. He and Becky worked together to make a sabot that would keep the air from going around the rocks (sabots are basically just sheaths for projectiles to accomplish this) and showed us as soon as they finished testing it themselves.

  The zombie they hit, one of just a few wandering a hundred yards or so outside the walls, didn't have a chance. I got a little worried when Will and Becky carried their contraption through the front gate and the zombie came toward them. They might be afraid of coming near this place now, but not enough to turn away an easy meal.

  Twenty feet away, and shotgun blast of pointy rocks later, no more zombie head.

  This is just one small demo of Will's larger idea. We've got a lot of old propane tanks lying around, and we can bring in many larger ones. We use a lot of propane, and still haven't used up the supplies from the closest facility we take the gas from.

  I'm interested in the idea that Becky had, which is to turn some of these things into mortars to fire dynamite from if needed. Will wants to build a huge system of these homemade guns on the inner wall, though he's having some trouble overcoming the need to pressurize the tanks. After he modified the one he used, it took him an hour of pumping to get it to lethal pressure.

  I go off on tangents a lot. I meant to talk about how we're trying to make something new and better out of our community, and all the other jazz that comes with it. But frankly, I can't think of a better example of that idea than this. A whole new wall, defended on every side by these terribly effective weapons. Capable of launching stupidly powerful explosives into whatever swarms of undead may come. Using materials we have plenty of or at least easy access to. It's a wonderful instance of taking plentiful resources and using pure human ingenuity to make something useful out of them.

  Gabrielle has made headway into making medical supplies and medicines. Becky has done wonders with chemistry in creating explosives from animal fats and whatever she used to make the final product (I don't ask. I really don't want to know.) Others are taking heart from those examples and are trying new things. People look at the unused junk around them and they're starting to see possibilities where none were clear before.

  There isn't better proof that we'll break new ground and become better than we were. I only hope that once we cross that horizon, we can stay the course and never forget the path that took us there.

  Thursday, August 11, 2011

  Pale Shadows

  Posted by Josh Guess

  A band of marauders came into town last night. We went on alert, and the soldiers visiting from North Jackson were more than willing to help us out, but it turned out we didn't need them.

  There were twenty of them, men and women. All of them were thin and scarred, something missing from the way they moved. They had prisoners with them, three people bound and chained to the bed of a pickup. The running theory is that they'd been without any kind of communication since The Fall, just traveling around and taking what they need from wherever or whoever they could find.

  Clearly, they had never heard of the compound, and certainly not New Haven. If they had, they wouldn't have stopped their vehicles outside. I would have called it a stupid decision if it weren't so obvious they were in dire need of food and water. I mean, there is a wall being built outside and many other clear signs of habitation by a large number of people.

  Over the last few months it's become a lot more clear to me how some people ended up as marauders. I won't reiterate the terror and agony we've been through, but suffice it to say we've gained some perspective from it. Starvation ignites a powerful urge to survive, and the people that came to our gates yesterday were starving.

  That much was obvious, because they'd started eating their prisoners. The three that were still alive hadn't been cut up, but in the back of the truck with
them was enough blood and viscera to make clear what they were being saved for.

  Cannibalism isn't something we've really dealt with so far. Nature provides a huge number and variety of animals to eat, vegetables and fruits to pick, and, worst case scenario, bugs and grubs that are edible and nutritious. Our sentries made a goof guess when they saw the butcher's block and knives strewn around the truck bed, and they passed the word.

  Our shots were measured and careful, since no one wanted to hit the prisoners. After we searched the bodies and released the captives, we found no guns, no bows, no long range weapons of any kind. These marauders, we decided, were pale shadows of the ones we'd faced off and on since The Fall.