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

  I imagine the circled exiles would have really cut loose on us then, but they suffered a small distraction as four of their assault vehicles exploded, killing all inside them.

  From there, it was pretty much a clusterfuck for the exiles. The circled vehicles backed away and fled when they realized we'd killed so many of their people, and our gunners lobbed explosives at them. They had to do it from far inside New Haven's walls, which made the shots inaccurate and wild, but that didn't matter. All the fleeing exiles saw behind them were massive bursts of fire and earth.

  We also had a few sharpshooters pinging them with bullets just to drive the point home.

  If you're wondering how we managed to blow up those four vehicles, it's not all that mysterious. Will is a fucking genius. He's been working on a lot of different ways to weaponize the dynamite Becky has been making round the clock for the last two weeks. The air-powered launchers work, but aren't all that accurate for firing in an arc with no line of sight. There are other, more secret things he's built I can't disclose, but the mines are okay. They were a stroke of genius.

  Will rigged up a bunch of explosives to be remote detonated. I don't know the details, but it involved walkie-talkies. Will and a few volunteers managed to sneak out in the middle of the night and place them. The tall grass helped there, since they didn't have time to bury them. Will marked the grass where they mines were, and tried to put them in areas we knew the vehicles would be likely to traverse.

  Not that it was hard. Will put a lot of those things out there, and all it took was a few watchful sentries with the detonation switches. The explosives themselves were carefully designed to funnel the force of the blast straight up, propelling shrapnel right into the undercarriages.

  So, the exiles lost some people. Not many, but it was devastating enough that the rest of them gave up the fight.

  For now. They didn't get the result they wanted, experienced losses worse than they expected and probably much sooner, and they retreated. They didn't flee in terror, though. All reports indicate a pre-planned, orderly retreat.

  That implies backup plans. We'll see what the future holds. We're all wondering when and if they'll come back. Today, though, is a lovely one. We've already resumed trading, even as we clean up the blackened remains of the inner wall. We'll rebuild it over time, better than it was before now that the outer wall will protect us as we do so.

  From every hurt, from every injury we sustain as a people, we'll rebuild better than before. Death is the only way to stop us. We'll never give up. Never again.

  Sunday, August 28, 2011

  Nails

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Victories are relative, and almost never cut-and-dry. The day before yesterday was all we could have hoped for. The trades went well, and New Haven is stocked up for a long haul, with more food and supplies in the pipeline contingent on production of our medical supplies.

  We're also getting more requests for medical treatment from survivors around the country. We'll take them, for the trades being offered in return as much as to help out. We'll take them despite the overload our medical personnel are under right now.

  While the day before yesterday was good, yesterday was awful. The exiles left some surprises for us, and a group of our hunters paid the price of discovering one of them.

  Six of the eighteen people that were hit by the bomb died instantly. Turns out Will wasn't the only one to experiment with building shrapnel bombs. Where his were made to destroy vehicles, these were designed to inflict maximum fatalities on a group of people.

  The other twelve are being seen to right now, and they're a mess. A couple of them are probably going to die, and the rest of them could be months in recovery. God only knows what complications will hit those poor people.

  We've got people out searching for more of these things. It's amazing the damage that can be done with a few pounds of explosives and some roofing nails. It's a blessing and a curse that human ingenuity for destruction has survived the end of the world. It keeps us alive, but keeps us killing one another.

  I have an announcement to make, an important one, but I don't want to eclipse this tragedy. I'll pass it on tomorrow. For today, we care for the wounded.

  Jess is one of them. I'm trying not to think about it.

  Monday, August 29, 2011

  Envoy Redux

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Jess is doing well, but she'll be a while in recovery. Her right leg took a brutal hit from the bomb, which is actually pretty lucky considering the damage other folks took. Two men in front of her died. I shudder to think what would have happened if she'd been leading the column...

  Her injuries make this next part all the harder for me, but it can't be helped.

  I'm leaving.

  My duties in New Haven are redundant now, which is a good thing. Where before there were only two people to handle the logistics of running this place, now there are half a dozen and the number is growing. Gabrielle has someone specifically to manage the gathering of supplies for her projects, as do the other major groups of people inside NH who have moved toward manufacturing.

  I have a wide variety of skills and talents, many of them honed in the last eighteen months of rigorous and practical use. Apparently my best and most useful one is surviving.

  I've been asked by the council to lead a team in a cross-country journey. Late last year, Courtney did the same, moving across the remnants of America in a mission of mercy. To say her trip was a success would be to understate the issue to a huge degree. Courtney and her team kept going long after the original goal had been met, building ties and ferrying people and supplies all around the country. Every trader that came here was either a person she had worked with before or someone who'd heard of what she had accomplished. All of them gave her team's actions as a primary reason why they felt they could trust us.

  The bazaar was so successful that the council wants to reach out to as many others as possible in order to keep trade going, and to build on what we have. We're in the harvest times now, and winter will be here before we know it. The idea is to personally meet and encourage as many people as possible to open themselves to trade. Not only to enrich themselves, but also to help others.

  There's not much left of the human race, and every life counts. Every man, woman, and child is vital.

  I get to pick my team, which is a relief. Ideally I'd take Jess with me, but she'll be weeks in recovery if not months. The council wants us to head out in the next week to ten days, so that's not a possibility. I can't take Courtney, either, which makes sense. She's our diplomat, and I'm going to be doing her job out in the field while she continues to build bridges at home. Risking both of us out there would be foolish.

  I'd like to take Steve with me, but given how much I hate the idea of being away from Jess, I don't know that I have the heart to take him away from Courtney. Patrick is also a no-go, since he's vital to New Haven in his own job as a metalworker and blacksmith. Not to mention he's only got the one hand now. Unless it's a serious emergency, Pat's days as a front-line fighter and scout are long over.

  I'll be picking my group in the next day, and I'll keep updating.

  I feel a curious mixture of things when I think about being asked to make this long, long commitment. I've been asked, but really I was told. With the strengthening of our people, the politics of the place have begun to resurface. We took an awful hit from the homesteaders, and the council is worried about anyone who could be seen as a gathering point for opposition. Not that I'd do that, but I was the one who founded this place. If a faction of our people ever decided to do what the homesteaders who became exiles did, I could be used as a rallying point.

  Not to mention...well, it was made clear to me during the council meeting the other day that some of the things I wrote on this blog about the homesteaders probably didn't help the situation with them. I think that's probably fair: I have a long history of shooting off at the mouth in anger.

  The
general idea is to get me away, let things solidify and calm down here, and at the same time accomplish a needed goal. I can't argue with the logic of it, though I hate to leave at such an exciting time. I'll miss this place. More than I will ever be able to say.

  On the plus side, I'll be provisioned heavily, and I'll have plenty of time and opportunity to study zombies in the wild. I've put that to the side for a long time now, but my interest in the undead that blanket the land has never wavered. Silver linings and all that.

  Tuesday, August 30, 2011

  A Gang of Six(ish)

  Posted by Josh Guess

  If you missed yesterday's post, you might want to go back and read it. Go on, I'll wait here.

  ...

  Done? Good. then you know I've been asked to assemble and lead a team of people to travel with me all over the country in a repeat performance of Courtney's trip last year. I'm to lead the team, and technically be a sort of diplomat in the field, but the council suggested very strongly that they wanted someone with me who went on the last trip. Someone the various groups of survivors had met, gotten to know, and trusted.

  So yeah, Steve is coming with me. He volunteered, since beside Courtney (his wife) there's no one that went on that journey who was trusted more than him. Little David would have been a good choice had we not lost him recently. While I'm technically the envoy, Steve is the practical choice. He knows these people. They'll listen to him much easier than they will me.

  Becky is also on the list. She's useful in a ton of different ways, and while she's getting more comfortable around the people of New Haven, she's still dealing with a lot of emotional fallout from her trip across the world to get here. She and I have grown very close in the time she's been with us, especially given that she lives with Jess and I. She doesn't want to stay in NH without me. Not to minimize how much her skill set is going to help out, mind you. I'm just glad she's been teaching people how to make explosives, or the council probably wouldn't have let her leave.

  You may have guessed already, but I'm also taking Will Price. I spent a lot of time yesterday basically telling the council that if he didn't get to go with me, I wouldn't leave. They made the argument that Will, who is still technically a prisoner, has been vital to the defense efforts here. That New Haven would be less safe without him. I made the case that we shouldn't be so reliant on a convicted criminal, which was my underhanded way of trying to have his sentence overturned, his punishment ended. Dodger, who is in charge of defense, has a lot of Will's plans and designs to work with. NH will be fine without Will.

  The outcome of this trip will determine whether or not Will remains a prisoner. I'm keen to see him do well.

  Mason is coming with us as well. He's healed up from his injuries, though the process took months. He's back to his normal, scary military man self. Plus, he knows the outside world and safe routes. None of us have gone a tenth as far as him.

  So far we haven't got a sixth person on the roster. I'm looking into it, and maybe a seventh. It'll depend on what the other members of the team think. I need to keep our numbers small for the sake of mobility and making supplies last, but I won't turn away someone who might make our trip easier or safer because it would make seven.

  That's all I have on the trip so far. My brother has outright declined to go, but he's busy making sure all the stuff we'll need for a long haul is ready. That, while he's still managing the completion of the outer wall. His work ethic is almost crackhead-like.

  One last parting word for the day--if you live in a group of survivors that doesn't sweep the main thoroughfares around your base of operations, you should. We've only been doing it for a week, and most of Frankfort is now empty. We still get stragglers here and there, and more zombies are always wandering in, but daily upkeep makes the roads, neighborhoods, and clusters of buildings so much safer to navigate. I'm really glad we started doing this. You wouldn't believe how many places we left untouched because there were too many zombies in or around them. We're finding all kinds of neat things.

  Preparations to make, projects to work on. My job is never done.

  I think that's a good thing.

  Wednesday, August 31, 2011

  Human Condition

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We're still deciding on the team, so no updates there. But working on this trip into the wider world, going farther and bigger than I ever have before got me thinking about a lot of things.

  I've said before that the human race had reached an evolutionary choke point. We're a species on the edge of extinction, staring as a unit into the vast gulf of nonexistence. If such a thing came to pass, if the swarms of undead consumed us (which would be almost fitting--philosophers have been saying for centuries that the only true threat to humankind is itself. This is just a more literal translation of that) then what would be left?

  Cities are already crumbling. The process will take years, but eventually the broken windows of the skyscrapers that act as tombstones for the human race would fall. Our bridges will collapse, our monuments retaken by the earth, weathered down to smooth stones. Should we fall, there will be precious little to tell our story. Humanity would be just another species that failed Darwin's test.

  Eighteen months it's been now, and still we hold on. More than that. Though we struggle and our numbers dwindle, there are children being conceived and born. What was unthinkable for most of us in the first weeks after The Fall is now happening on a wide scale: a new generation. More people, ones that will live their entire lives in a broken world. Children that will never understand what cable TV was, or be able to simply drive up the road to grab a cheeseburger and a shake.

  They won't miss these things. They will only know them in the abstract.

  Instead they will live in a world that is a strange hybrid in many ways. We'll have electricity thanks to renewable sources of energy, and our level of technology has taken a beating but hasn't been killed. Eventually we'll have many of the comforts we lost in The Fall. Air conditioning, electric heat. Vacuum cleaners, maybe.

  Those kids will also spend their lives learning to survive. To raise livestock, tend gardens not for fun or pleasure, but to live. To eat tomorrow. Every one of them will learn a smattering of skills, from building houses to repairing turbines. They will, by necessity, know the land and trees intimately and with great reverence.

  I find this duality appealing, truly.

  Pondering a future with those children in it, many of them yet unborn, I pull back mentally and look at the larger picture. The question burning in my mind is the same that many of us ask ourselves time and time again.

  Why?

  The religious sometimes posit that The Fall was the biblical end of days. They may be right, since as I'm not God I have no way to know. The rapture may have come and gone. Yet I wonder: if they truly believe that's the case, then why keep on? They were not the chosen. Are they working toward our goals because their faith drives them to it? Sometimes I'm afraid to ask, but then I remember an important truth.

  It doesn't matter.

  I personally believe in a higher power, a greater creative force in the universe that exists on such a vast scale that my mind is physically incapable of perceiving or understanding it. My belief is that such a being is too infinitely complex for me to ascribe any sort of intent to its actions. It would work on such a vast canvas that the comings and goings of one race on one planet sitting in the middle of a backwater galaxy would be as far from its notice as microbes are to us.

  I don't blame that force for what has befallen the world. Nor do I give it credit for the good I see in people. It simply is, like the sky and stars. We, ultimately, are the masters of our fate.

  Because surviving and working toward a better society is not about motive. Human beings as they are now have very few choices in life. You can take the easy route and become a marauder, taking what you want. You can take the harder route and work with your fellow man for the benefit of the group. Or you can die.
>
  That's it.

  At this point I don't care why my fellow survivors do what they do. I'm only concerned with the results: a better world for those who come after. Simply going on is not an option for us any longer. It would be the depth of cowardice to merely survive and the worst kind of apathy not to improve what we have. It isn't for ourselves that we should labor, but for the young.