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  Steve stood by me, because that's what friends do. He was steady and solid, a presence of comfort even though he had brought this panic on me.

  And then the first of them got loose. Well. I don't need to tell you how it went, do I? I'm here writing this, after all.

  Monday, September 10, 2012

  Small Circles

  Posted by Josh Guess

  One of the most memorable parts of my training in Aikido and Judo was the concept of small circles. The idea was that any technique achievable by a large movement--usually circular, at least in Aikido--was also achievable with a much smaller movement. The difference between them was only difficulty, a problem overcome with time, effort, and dedication.

  I've come to terms with being allowed to sit on my ass and write. I don't feel a pressing urge to show willing by having a normal day job here. Truth is, there are a lot of people around New Haven that have desk jobs. I had one myself for ages. Jess and Patrick have convinced me that what I do here on the blog is just as important as what I used to do. Maybe not in the material sense of organizing and collating data for easy use, but in a longer arc. Writing honestly about the dilemmas we face on moral, ethical, mental, physical, spiritual, and philosophical levels really does make a difference. I've heard it often enough from other survivors. Making ourselves reevaluate our actions and attitudes as well as keep an eye for people buckling under the strain is important.

  That being said, I do feel that it's vitally important for me to rejoin the ranks of on-call defensive fighters. It isn't just a philosophical ideal for me, though being available to defend my home just like everyone else is a part of it. Mainly, after yesterday, I'm learning just how hot the situation in the county is getting for our folks.

  The assault teams are being stretched to their limits with all the undead coming in from the west and south. We've killed so many zombies over the years that we forget just how many people used to live in this country. Even if only ten percent of the population turned into the undead, that's still more than thirty million of them. And we have good reason to believe that number is much, much higher.

  Word from out of town is that the new breed version of the plague has become universal. It's every damn where and the pace at which old school zombies are being infected with it or eaten by the new breed to sustain them is increasing. Two highly relevant facts should be taken away from that observation.

  One: the number of new breed out there is increasing. If I have to explain how dangerous that is to you, then I'm not sure how you survived this long. Welcome out of your bunker, I guess.

  Two: as the number of new breed grows, they eat more of the remaining old school zombies, reducing their easily available food supply. Which means sooner or later those fuckers run out of their equivalent to canned food and need to go shopping.

  I suppose I should add a third here, though it goes without saying: we're the grocery store.

  Some of my friends aren't happy with Steve for sticking me in front of those zombies yesterday. I'd love to say I had a revelation and am now a fully-charged ass-kicking machine, but that just ain't so. People aren't built on simple binary systems. We are not one thing or another. We're complex and fragile and amazingly capable of holding the cracks in our armor together until that last hit that shatters the whole thing.

  I didn't turn into a John Woo character and start firing my gun as I leaped sideways, screaming like a madman and clamoring for revenge. My movements stuttered as I fell into a shooting stance. I was slow and awkward, and Steve had to slow down the first zombie to come for us by putting two rounds into its chest. Those copper-jacketed pieces of lead didn't do any real damage to the zombie, but they did make him pause for a second. Nothing like pain crossed his face, but a look of vaguely puzzled concentration did.

  While the zombie was considering the holes that blossomed over his heart, I sighted and fired. The whole experience after that is sort of blurry, but I remember very clearly a moment where I thought the panic would rise in me like magma, explode up and out and fall back down to crush me.

  It didn't. I don't know if my survival instinct made the rest of my psyche its bitch or what, but I did the work that needed doing. Not prettily, not well, but I did it. I don't know that I can be relied on not to crack under pressure yet, but I know this was a step. This was the big expansive circle of practice I needed to begin. Now the trick is to gradually reduce down, to hone and perfect, until I know I can defend my home when called.

  Like I said, as a purely practical matter I need to do this because our assault teams may soon not have a job. They've been trying to make runs into the county to thin out the incoming herds, but the task is getting beyond them. The one small advantage is that the Exiles can't seem to run operations against us amid the chaos of thousands of undead walking about.

  I'm going to be spending some more time with Steve today. Dodger may join us, I haven't spent much time with him lately. I may be taking baby steps, but at this point I'll take any forward motion I can get.

  Wednesday, September 12, 2012

  All Creation

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I'm still working on getting my reflexes back, but the recent spate of zombie attacks have given me plenty of targets to practice with. Steve has been taking me out every morning since that first one, and standing at my side as I remove the captive zombies that come for us.

  I am not unaware of how much effort he's going to in capturing the undead. Even though I know he is wrangling the survivors of attacks that have been caught in traps or tangled in our growing network of lines and cables that act as a buffer, it's still tremendously hard. It isn't just him, either; there are five or six people helping out. Spending their valuable time setting this up so I can rehab.

  It isn't perfect. Yesterday I had a full-on panic attack when my gun caught in my holster, and Steve had to take over. Three years ago I literally could not have imagined him even holding a gun that wasn't a replica blaster from Star Wars or a phaser from Star Trek, but there he went, calmly gunning down two zombies not ten feet away from me. No muss, no fuss, no wasted motion. Even sighting down the gun with his one eye happened naturally. He's the most adaptable person I know.

  Not wanting me to crawl back into my shell in the wake of totally losing my shit, Steve took me to Pat's house. That's right next door to mine, and my best friend was there working at the forge. Patrick has been hauling ass working on repair jobs and new work lately. A lot of it is piecework needed for the expansions. Everything from brackets for segments of wall to the complex jumble of connectors used to string up the cables we use in our buffers. Then there's all the repair pieces, from armor to weapons and a dozen other things.

  Pat doesn't do it all by himself, of course. He has a team of six workers that have been learning as they go for a long time now. Pat himself had to endure a lot of trial and error when he decided to start working metal. Combining traditional forging with modern metalworking isn't easy, but he has managed some amazing things, especially considering he has just the one hand now.

  New Haven dedicates a lot of resources to the forge. Torches, gasoline and generators, twelve new arrivals who joined Pat's crew not long ago to help pick up production. Hell, his place and the clinic are the only spots in New Haven that can flip a switch and have electric lights going any time they want them. My house doesn't even have that.

  The zombie attacks have been getting frequent and more brutal, which means a lot of damaged stuff and more work for Pat's crew. The assault teams stopped their runs into the county in the face of increasing swarms of zombies coming in, which means we have no people out there thinning the herd. The theory right now is that so many people in one area are creating a powerful smell that travels for many miles, a buffet irresistible to the undead.

  I spent the day working with Pat, mostly repairing cable connectors. I had no idea how much damage the undead were doing. We've been using old power lines for most of the buffer, stringing them up between
posts (mostly old telephone and power poles, cut up and moved) to create a barrier to slow down the zombies before they can get to the wall. The theory is sound; some will get tangled and some will manage to fight their way through quickly, but the overall effect will be to create a safe zone between the wall and the buffer where our people can easily take down the undead with minimal risk.

  In reality, whole sections of the buffer fail. Each of those repurposed power lines--hundreds of them in each section of buffer--are held to the posts by eye hooks, pulleys, steel bar, or whatever we can find. The weight of all those undead put a lot of strain on those parts, and sometimes even pull up the posts themselves. One such occurrence actually led to a section of wall in the newest expansion being overrun. The weight of the undead pushing against that part of the wall--enough to kill the buffer--also caused two welds in the wall's supports to pop.

  Thank god the new arrivals were watching and ready, or it could have been a bloodbath. As it is, five people died defending there, and dozens were hurt. I didn't even find out about that until yesterday.

  There was something of a revelation working its way through me as I toiled next to Pat. I was acting as a set of hands, all labor and no skill, as he made things from raw metal to serve the common good. I realized how amazing that really is. He can't fight any more, not without two hands, but the work he does is absolutely vital to New Haven's well-being. Patrick gets to make things. He does a job he loves.

  And he serves the community while he does it. Maybe that seems totally obvious to you, but to me it was a bolt of lightning. I can't believe how backward I've been thinking about things. Molding myself into something I think I need to be in order to help is stupid and dangerous. Rather, I need to find a way to make who I am and who I become useful, no matter what shape I end up in. I mentioned that to Pat, and he laughed and made fun of me. He knows how prideful I can be about feeling smart, and how being made to feel ignorant rankles me.

  But I was being dumb, honestly. I was worrying too much about reshaping myself to fit a niche, rather than finding a niche that fit me. Pat pointed out that metal can be reshaped--usually mustbe reshaped--to serve a function, but that other things in creation only serve because of what they are. So it is with people, he said. Some need to be changed to be of use, and most of us have been by the end of the world, but others need to be exactly what they are.

  I know, I know. Philosophical and off topic, but I needed that. I really, really did. I feel like I've begun to move forward, and as if there's a floor under me now. I can stumble and fall, but it won't kill me. I feel as though I can just be, without worrying on everything all the time. I'm going to ask Will to resume sending me updates on everything--honest ones with no thought to my mental well-being--so I can begin to integrate more of what's going on here back into these posts.

  I don't feel normal, but I think I can see the light from normal now. Thank you, all, for putting up with me using the blog as therapy for the last few weeks. Without it, and without you, I don't know that I could have coped.

  Thursday, September 13, 2012

  Evolve Or Die

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Somewhat to my surprise, Will agreed to give me regular updates on everything going on in New Haven. Unedited, raw reports that don't pull punches. If I'm to do my job as historian then I need honest data to record. I should probably point out that the blog is, as of this morning, only part of the equation where that task is concerned.

  In light of the increased pressure from the new breed and other zombies out in the county and my desire to create something of value for current generations as well as those who come after, I've expanded my efforts. I was going to just write this blog and collate the data I've collected over the last few years, but now I'm working on something else. I'm collecting all the written reports I can get my hands on, everything passed between the people who make New Haven run no matter how high or low on the totem pole.

  I know, it sounds wonky and strange, but for posterity I think it's important. I've asked for a permanent relocation of one of my old solar cells, which Jess and I had given up to the clinic. With all the new ones coming from North Jackson, simple and inefficient as they might be, there isn't a lack for power in critical areas. One of my little cells will be more than enough to run my laptop and printer for this project.

  And it's a big project. Hundreds of pages of written material have been delivered so far. Right now I'm incapable of doing much with them, not until I can get more battery storage than my dinky little portable solar charger can handle. When and if I can start charging up the chain of batteries in my house again, I'll begin the process of photocopying those documents and keeping a running set of volumes detailing the way we choose to live.

  I talked yesterday about doing something important, finding something that fit me perfectly, and this is it. The blog matters because it's informal and an easy way to digest a lot of information into an easy to understand format and spread it to those of you lucky enough to have a cell signal. Collecting reports and messages, putting them all together and distilling that information down into meaningful data is the other half.

  You can tell a lot about a person and a people by how they communicate. I don't think we as a community are on the wrong track necessarily, but course correction is vital. I've said it enough times that it's almost a joke, but we cannot make it long term unless we evolve with our circumstances. You can see the truth of that hard fact of nature in the undead that assault our defenses; we kill a lot of them at one time, and they retreat from the dying ground long enough to adapt. Then they hit us again.

  By reading and absorbing all that information from the movers and shakers in New Haven, I have a chance to see patterns in how people think and react. Hopefully I'll be able to call out and correct people who are leaning heavily toward bad ideas or solutions without considering other options. We learned that lesson with the Louisville crew, and thankfully we didn't repeat it with the Exiles.

  I'm not at all saying I'm going to be some morality police or the ultimate arbiter of what is right or wrong. I don't know that my moral compass isn't skewed in one direction any more than the next person's. The entire impetus behind this project comes from reading over my own words for the last year or so. Looking back at my posts, I can begin to see how I distanced myself from people, how the cracks started forming inside me. I don't see New Haven having that problem on the whole, I just want to put everything I possibly can out there in the open.

  Yes, these volumes will be available for the citizens here to read. One thing that I have in abundance is paper and toner for my printer, two items which (unsurprisingly) were not on anyone's list of things they just had to have when The Fall came. By disseminating the information I gather, we'll be crowdsourcing how we react to events. My hope is two-pronged: on the one hand I'd like to make sure that we've got checks and balances so people can call out the leadership if they think we're about to make a mistake. On the other, I'd like to think that by doing this we're writing a sort of bible for those future generations. Not on how to act, but on how best to determine how to act and react.

  I don't know that it will work. I know it isn't going to do a damn bit of good if I'm the only one behind it. I can shout my opinions from the rooftops and it won't change a thing at this point. So far we've done a good job as a community in making our voices heard, participating in votes, and managing course correction. I'm not doing this to address some glaring flaw in how we live and function. I'm doing it to make the process of course correction easier and faster.

  Pat, Will, Becky, Jess, and all the others have been very supportive of this idea, which I've been jabbering about since yesterday. None of them have smacked me in the mouth to shut me up about it, not even when I walked into Courtney and Steve's house last night without knocking and interrupted them having sex.

  So, I guess it isn't a terrible idea. People seem to like it. Makes it easier for folks to get the facts, meaning we won't h
ave to call huge (and increasingly huger) town meetings to talk to everyone at once. I absolutely promise you this is the one and only time I'm going to write about that side of my job in any detail. It's going to be boring and time-consuming, but I am excited about it and had to share. I will of course share any relevant findings from my record-keeping, but I won't bore you with the details.

  Except for today. You're just gonna have to deal with that.

  Friday, September 14, 2012

  Last Choice

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I've always prided myself on being able to rethink my positions and gather perspective. I like to see myself as open-minded and flexible. Given my recent worries, some people are inevitably see this post as a cry for help. Here's my disclaimer: it's not. I want to approach a subject I've put a lot of thought into recently and which was driven home for me this morning.

  So. Let's talk about suicide.

  No, I don't want to kill myself. Even at my most self-destructive, my survival instinct was always too strong for that to be an option for me. It's bad enough to want to die, but imagine wanting the pain to be over and knowing you are not physically capable of even letting it happen, much less doing it yourself.

  Bah. I digress. This isn't about me. This morning I learned that one of the new arrivals from the first wave was found dead on the grounds of the new expansion. Without giving any gory details, the fellow ended his life in such a way that he wouldn't reanimate as a zombie and become a threat to others. His name was John.

  No one knows why he did it. He didn't leave a note. There were no signs that he was depressed at all. Everything seemed fine with him, according to his friends. I think we're all worldly enough to understand that putting up a false front as a defense mechanism is one of the first things a person who needs help will do. It shouldn't come as a shock that someone who wanted to die managed to make themselves appear normal. Doubtlessly there are people that knew and cared about John who are right now blaming themselves and saying that they should have done more.