Living With the Dead: The Bitter Seasons Read online

Evans has started taking names from people to learn medicine. He's got enough gray in his hair that he worries about leaving us without a doctor and surgeon. Will has asked permission to learn from him, which is surprising. Some people are still nervous about Will, worried that someone from his unit in Richmond managed to perpetrate such a heinous act here. Those folks don't think we should put full trust in him, and they lump medical training in with that.

  I happen to think that every person who learns skills that might save others is a treasure. It's something that we will take up in council, as well as the larger issue of Will's place here in the compound. I don't think it's fair to the guy, given the strength of character he has shown us, that we continue to dictate his freedoms piecemeal. I think it's time for a definitive yes or no on his status. Is he a citizen here, as he wishes to be, or an enemy?

  I will vote citizen. He has proven himself to me, and has killed for us. And I think that if we are going to build a society that will do and be better than the one we have lost, we need to start trusting a little more. Making one man's life so stressful and complicated because of where he comes from rather than judging him on his actions in his time here only makes his life that much worse. The constant fear of being thrown out or imprisoned for his former affiliation with the soldiers in Richmond does nothing to improve his life. I don't wish that albatross of stress on anyone, because as we have all been shown once again in the last week, life is far too short.

  It's here to be lived, and enjoyed if possible. Will could die tomorrow, and if he does, I would like it to be with the certainty that he did so in service to his equals, as we should be in service to him.

  ...I guess I should add, before I go, that we had a small service for the baby yesterday. Nearly everyone who was off duty wanted to come, but it ended up being Jess and I, with Will, Pat, Steve and Courtney. Treesong acted as our minister, and we gave our unnamed son our love as we set the pyre alight. We decided to spread the ashes at the base of an apple tree near our house. I'm not a religious person, and only spiritual to a mild degree, but it gives me hope to think that he will help that tree grow, and that its fruit will strengthen and sustain others.

  To all of you that wanted to come, we are sorry. It would have been too much for me to see the sadness on your faces, our own pain magnified back at us hundreds of times. Jess and I appreciate your love and concern, and hope that you understand.

  at 9:05 AM

  Tuesday, September 14, 2010

  Simple Motions

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I spent my morning burning off some stress. The folks from downtown have taken to securing the adjoining neighborhoods with amazing zeal, every free person from down there at the fallback point coming here in their spare time to help with our efforts. Not surprising, considering that they are going to be living there, but a nice bolster to our workforce.

  I have been patrolling the boundaries in armor, cutting down undead. Going out and sweating inside of the mismatched gear we use to defend against zombie bites, walking into danger with each cut of the blade, is just what I needed to get my mind right.

  It isn't that I don't want to mourn. It hurts more than I can say. But sitting at my desk working on figures and plans isn't at all helping me get past the pain and be effective. It just leaves me more opportunities to think about what has happened, to turn it over in my mind, and I know intellectually that I need to do something to snap me out of that habit or it will consume me.

  So...

  Walking a beat, hearing the swish as the heavy Iaito in my hands cuts the air. Feeling the sudden resistance of cold flesh and bone as my swooping blade meets the enemy. Watching the parts fall away from each other as the threat is suddenly just a pile of meat.

  It makes me feel like "The Bride" from Kill Bill. Like Ogami Itto from Lone Wolf and Cub. Like every titular character from Seven Samurai. Yeah, it's corny and stupid. But it takes me back to a time when I was younger in almost every way, in which those characters were ideals of righteous revenge, if not justice. For a moment, every time I see a zombie and mentally fall into the rhythm of motion that at once tenses and relaxes me, I become that ideal. For those few seconds, I don't think about recent events, I simply act.

  Stupid, I know. But it's useful work, and if it makes me feel something from my younger days, if it makes me feel like some protector from the movies, then so what? It's just another form of release, something all of us desperately try to find nowadays, and if I get poetic and silly about it, feel free to laugh.

  Hell, I would want you to laugh. God knows I wish I could here lately.

  But now, of course, it's back to those plans and figures. My brother can't do it all (without losing his mind, anyway) and I have to help him. But you know? I do feel a little better.

  Now if I could only get a hold of Patrick and the people with him, to see how far they've made it.

  at 1:24 PM

  Wednesday, September 15, 2010

  State of our Union

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Still no word from Patrick and the group that went out with him. It's not surprising, really, given how spotty and unpredictable cell coverage is, but it still sucks. None of us likes the thought of a large group of us going out with no way to contact home regularly, but we expected it given that they are heading in a direction none of us have been since society fell.

  Work on the annexes is coming along quickly. We need to secure the neighborhoods next door with speed if we are going to get the folks from downtown into comfortable housing before it gets really cold. Frames for the walls are getting raised with good speed. We learned a lot from the mistakes we made while building the first wall, and of course we have a much bigger work force this time around.

  One factor that seems to be helping a lot is the shift in weather. Kentucky is one of those places that doesn't seem to have a lot of intermediate stages in the seasons. One day it was crazy hot, and the next it was cold. Like thirty degrees colder at night and in the mornings. The zombies don't appear to like the cold very much, moving slowly if at all. Not a lot of attacks in the early parts of the day, just stragglers in ones and twos.

  I have brought up the idea of increasing the number of sentries with the council. In the wake of the attack on Jess and the loss of our baby, it has become clear to me that we need to keep a closer eye for living people and not plan mostly for zombies. I know that the man who did the shooting was a trained military operative, and that he might have made it in regardless, but I think (as do many of us) that more eyes on patrol will ultimately make us safer.

  But like all of our decisions of late, this one is being held up with a lot of debate and discussion. The longer we operate without a central leader, the more clear it becomes that we need to elect someone to break tough votes and sort of act as our president. We have put it off and sort of forgotten about it since we have been doing pretty well without a leader, but with winter around the corner and lots of logistical concerns to be worked on and major decisions to be made, the slow decision making process we use now has to be fixed or forgotten.

  I am spending two hours a day with about forty other people, learning what we can from Evans and Gabby about medicine. Right now we're doing anatomy and physiology for beginners, though I have a good working knowledge. I am mostly helping people new to the concept while getting a much needed refresher. Will and Roger are in the class as well, all of us very hopeful that we will be able to master the knowledge and skills needed to eventually become something like field doctors. Not quite real doctors or surgeons, but with enough knowledge to do a fair job diagnosing and repairing...

  Aaron, our recent find from Lexington, has taken to his new post as our primary teacher with almost scary dedication. He holds classes from just after dawn until dusk, then stays up for hours engineering new ways to make people want to learn, writing lesson plans, and learning about what he is going to be teaching the next day. He seems to have become singularly focused on his work, but
a few of us are really worried about him. He's friendly to a fault and always willing to talk if you approach him, but he doesn't socialize at all and looks sort of sad every time I see him.

  I really hope we can get him to open up. He has some amazing ideas about education that ring true with some thoughts many of us have had, like teaching people what they want to learn instead of shoving a bunch of worthless errata at them with only traces of useful knowledge added in.

  Listen to me. Worried about him because of how useful he might be, instead of worrying about him because it's just the right thing to do. Sometimes I read the things I have written and think about the empathy I once had for all people, and it makes me want to cry for the man I once was.

  You lose enough, you hurt enough, and it wears away at you. I have to hope for the safety of all of those I love because I love them, and because if I lose much more it might just grind me down to nothing.

  at 11:01 AM

  Thursday, September 16, 2010

  Some like it hot

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Holy shit, what a night.

  It got unseasonably hot yesterday, over ninety degrees, and the sudden shift toward warm weather seemed to jump-start our local undead.

  The bad part is that it stayed warm all night, and the zombies kept on coming until about two hours ago. It was a steady stream from multiple directions, and enough of them got cut down at the northern section of the wall that the most recent arrivals could just about walk up their bodies to the top of the wall.

  I would say that we took down somewhere around a thousand of them over the night, and that says great things about the wall. The higher areas of it kept the undead that attacked them from being any kind of threat, funneling them to shorter areas of the wall where kill teams could be concentrated.

  Will was helping with the attack, standing on a crutch while loosing arrows. He managed to get my attention at one point during a lull in the fighting, asking about the modifications to the wall he had previously suggested.

  With so much going on, it's been all we could do to build a few of those mods, and there is no way we could do the whole length while still trying to annex the other neighborhoods. But he gave me a very detailed explanation of how the extensions would make defense much easier, and I have to agree. Maybe we can get a small team of maybe six people working on them, slow and steady...

  We spent the last two hours hauling bodies and burning them. I don't know what it is about the infection that controls the zombies that makes them burn so easily, but I am glad for it. At least we don't have to waste fuel getting them going.

  Heeeey....maybe we can use zombies to power a turbine...

  Ok, I have been awake for entirely too long. Going to bed now, and hoping that the folks on watch today while the rest of us get some needed rest don't have a hard time of it.

  at 8:38 AM

  Friday, September 17, 2010

  Gathering

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We've had to make a lot of hard choices since all of this began. The world we live in is now a harder place, with the odds stacked against us. As strange as it may sound, we have had a hard time with making decisions about animals. Sound weird? Think about it.

  We keep dogs, in large part because they act as a wonderful early warning system for zombies. Even small dogs can smell them coming from a long way off, and tend to freak out when a large group is coming. Of course, Jess and I have our big boys, Riley and Bigby, who double as guards when the need comes up. But dogs have to be fed, and while food isn't a huge problem right now, winter is coming and stores have to be put aside.

  It's hard to imagine our lives without our pets. Jess and I have cats and two ferrets, and they have large stocks of dry food, enough to last another year at least. All or our animals bring us comfort and unconditional love and companionship. We kill people when the need arises, and zombies every day....but all of us came up against a hard wall when it came to man's best friend. Dog food just goes too fast, and takes up so much space that we didn't stock up that much of it.

  The solution we came to isn't a pretty one. We have to stock up on food, and having a steady supply of meat is crucial to keeping up our strength through the approaching cold.

  So we have decided to measure out exactly what we will need for ourselves and our dogs protein wise, and add twenty percent to it, and we are going to slaughter cows to get it. Some of the ones at our nearby farms, of course, and as many as we can find in outlying areas. Then we release every cow that lives out into the wild, try to herd them into a large mass. We intend on letting them breed and migrate as they will, but try to keep track of them so that we can hunt them down when the spring comes. We'll be wanting milk, I am sure...

  The big reason for this is that cows need a lot of pasture, and since they were our only domesticated livestock option until now, we pretty much had to keep them around. But Will Price and Aaron got to talking after one of Aaron's classes the other day (as a fellow "outsider", Will has made it a point to reach out to our new teacher, and to try and get to know him. They also happen to share a love of accumulating errata and odd bits of trivia...) and during the course of that conversation, Will learned that Aaron knows where several very large sheep farms are located. This is awesome news, because sheep are a perfect staple animal.

  They produce more meat per square foot of grazing land required than cows. They reproduce faster. They are covered in warm, fuzzy wool with which we can make lots of clothes. Well, next year we will, can't shear them right before the winter...

  The hard part will be getting them here. None of us have quite figured out how we are going to do that yet, but a party will be heading out this afternoon, following Aaron's directions and hoping for the best.

  I told Will, after he passed this information on to the council, that he and Aaron should come over to the house tonight. Jess is coming home, finally, after so much time recuperating at the clinic. I wish Pat could be here for it, and the small homecoming get together I have planned, but he and the volunteers with him are still gone and out of touch. So instead of pining for my best friend to be here when he can't, I will focus on getting to know new friends better, and maybe helping draw Aaron out of this shell he's drawn himself into.

  Come to think of it, maybe I will invite Roger and his wife over as well. I'd like to see some familiar faces tonight...

  Jess isn't a fan of beef. I might go look and try to find a chicken somewhere, though most of them have been moved out to the neighboring farm. Damn cold mornings, making everything harder.

  at 10:37 AM

  Saturday, September 18, 2010

  Commentaries

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Today has been crazy, and I wasn't going to post anything...but a few comments on my last post caught my attention.

  RichLayers said...

  Ummm, I hate to be a naysayer... but are you sure... do your zombies ever go after animals? Because, I mean, you're setting yourself up for a whole new meaning of Mad Cow Disease.

  I don't know what the zombies around your neck of the woods act like, but here, they rarely attack animals. I mentioned this in a response comment, but it does bring up an interesting point. Our zombies attack small animals if they get desperate for sustenance, and it's becoming more common. There are just less people for them to eat, though they do seem able to survive on for a very long time on almost nothing. I chalk it up to the controlling organisms in their bodies being very efficient and being able to store up a lot of excess inside. Also, autopsy by Evans has shown that zombies will cannibalize their own unneeded tissues for energy--such as intestines and the like. Since the fungus or bacteria that control the dead bodies of the zombies leaches nutrients from the stomach direct (which seems to grow to meed the size needs of that particular undead) those organs are so much food, saved to be used at need.

  I should also note here that the zombies seem to harbor no aggression toward animals. I don't know if this is some
holdover from when those brains were alive and human, but in general they ignore or avoid any life but human. Of course, that means we get ALL the aggression (which is why this post is hastily written, and wasn't going to be written at all initially--several attacks on the annexes today, groups of five or six, and I have been helping out over there...).

  The other comment was this:

  Drackar said...

  And here I thought this was a lead-up to eating the dogs. Sheep are a good food supply, and easy enough to keep fed. Goats are a better option, grazing wise, as they can eat more feed, but they don't provide the wool...and the milk is not very tasty if they eat anything but grass and grain.

  Perfectly reasonable, Drackar. Indeed, I think it's a great idea. Unfortunately, we have no idea where any goats might be, while we do in fact KNOW where some sheep are.

  Which is another part of why I have decided to post today. Our party found those sheep farms earlier today, and were able to contact us not long ago. And guess what? Those farmers are still there! They have agreed to travel here, herding their flocks (as long as we provide some guards, of course. We're happy to.) all the way to Frankfort. It will take a bit of time, but FINALLY, something has worked out easily and without complication.