Living With the Dead: Year One Page 4

  David A. (not my brother Dave) told some of our friends from my old job about us, and it looks like a group of five or six of them are headed this way today. I know all of them, and while I might not have been best buds with them or anything, I think they will all fit in.

  Various others have called, but those are the only ones I can tell you for sure are coming. Some of the others are going to make a stand where they live, or haven't committed to anything yet. I hope that they come around. We've cleaned out the houses on our road, so there is ample room, if not as secure as our place.

  So all in all, things are looking up. I was worried when we started to see looters around here, not helped by the pair I scared off last week, but it looks like they've thought better of coming back. No more major groups of them in the last few days.

  Jess is berating me for being overly optimistic, but when the sun is shining, the breeze is just right, and good friends let you know that horrible, biting death just happened to miss them, how can you not be?

  Posted by Josh Guess at 1:49 PM

  Wednesday, March 17, 2010

  New kids on the block

  Gabrielle made it, but just barely. I have no idea what the other group of people (Tate, Will, and others) are facing, but they aren't here, which is a good thing.

  We drove out to the main road at the bottom of the neighborhood to wait for Gabby and her family. They were on the phone with us from the time they got into the county (on the far side from us) until they got to us. The distraction of talking them through getting here might have had something to do with them not seeing the people following them.

  The only thing that saved us was Jessica's insistence that we go in a group, and heavily armed.

  We took one of the trucks, Patrick driving, and me, Jess and Little David (David A) in the back. When Gab and her clan showed up, going very, very slow due to the abandoned cars everywhere and keeping an eye out for us, we thought everything was kosher. We were wrong.

  They got up to us, pulled onto the main road of the subdivision, and we all started chatting. Over the hill on the main road, a huge SUV came into sight. We watched them for few moments, hoping it was Tate and his group, and most of us just stood in shock when windows rolled down and weapons popped out of them.

  My wife, the quiet, shy one, started firing before the rest of us realized anything was wrong. Jess slowed them down, as only 30.06 rounds can do, while those of us on the ground got into the back of the truck. I motioned Gabrielle to go up the road ahead of us, and Pat threw the truck into gear so we could follow her to our house.

  Little David had the sense to call mom while Jess and I tried to keep the SUV behind us at bay. It turned out to be unnecessary, since she and David's family could hear the gunshots from her house. I put a bunch of rounds into their engine before we were halfway up the really big hill on my mom's road, and their vehicle died.

  This was good and bad. Good, because it slowed them down, but bad, because once they knew they had no wheels, they got out and spread. It is much easier to aim when you don't have to lean out of a window to do it.

  Luckily there weren't that many of them, only seven. At the time, I didn't think about what I was doing, no thoughts were in my head to cloud my judgment of my actions. Only a hot mixture of rage and fear, and the certain knowledge that those I loved would die if we failed.

  We stopped at the top of the hill, about two hundred yards from mom's house, and had ourselves a gunfight. Jess dropped two of them very quickly, shooting one of them through the glass of his car door as he was getting out. Didn't even get a chance to fire back. I got one myself as he ran toward me, the idiot. Pat had gotten out of the truck as soon as we stopped, leveled his shotgun and started firing with a speed that seemed impossible in such a big guy.

  Pat got two of them.

  We managed to avoid getting hit only because we had the advantage of terrain, and the sun was at our backs, making it hard for them to look at us to aim. The last two of them almost had me, but since I was still in the bed of the truck, I dropped flat when I saw them rushing toward us, pulling Jess with me. Pat dropped back to hunker by the front of the truck, forcing the last two attackers to come around if they wanted to get him. I thought we were done for, honestly, because Jess and I were sitting ducks, flat on our backs. They could have easily walked up next to the truck and fired down on us, but for one small factor.

  Little David.

  When we stopped, I forgot all about him. He dove into the truck as Pat was getting out, and in the chaos, everyone forgot him. But he kept his wits sharp and was watching it all very closely, and when the two men tried to get close, he threw the truck in reverse, making them duck the sides. One of them smashed his face on the asphalt when his weapon got tangled up as he tried to roll, and Patrick took him in one shot.

  The last one was a bit more spry and had actually started firing when a big, silver SUV came over the hill at forty or fifty miles an hour and crushed him.

  I never knew my mom had it in her. She abhors violence, hates it with a passion. But from her house, she told me later, she saw what was happening, and wasn't about to let her son die.

  Now that it's all over, many hours later, I am starting to really feel what happened. I killed someone. I ended all of his potential, all that he could have been, in a single instant. And even though I know it was necessary and completely justified, I still feel terrible about it. It's like a toothache that won't go away, always in the back of my mind, along with the fear and worry that our new world forces on us. I did a thing today that a few weeks ago I never dreamed of, and I wonder what other decisions we will be faced with in the months and years ahead.

  I am trying not to think about it. My heart hurts enough right now, with guilt at being a killer, and relief that my people are alive and unharmed, and more guilt for part of me feeling good that I ended a threat to them.

  It was looking to be such a beautiful day. Just goes to show that Jess is usually right about these things.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 7:04 AM

  Follow ups

  Six more looters have come for us, in two groups.

  They must be looking for their friends, which has disturbing implications. That so many survivors could become so pointlessly violent and savage is terrible, but that they would band together and be so organized frightens me to my core.

  It wasn't pretty. I don't need to go into details, but this time was a lot more brutal. The fellas we killed yesterday attacked us without reason, the guys today sneaked up on us twice, two groups of three. We blocked off the other roads into the subdivision, so mom's road is the only access in by car. The first set must have come through the other side, because they came to our house on foot. I guess they haven't been through here lately, because they obviously didn't know we post guards. Jess was up on the roof in the little crow's nest we put up, and she stomped on the shingles when she saw them. She shot one of them in the face, and Little David and I got the other two. I had to go out through the escape hatch in the floor. David went out the front, and got his man, but he took a grazing shot to his thigh.

  The second group went up the main road and broke into mom's house.

  HUGE mistake. We were all waiting for them, and not only because Little David needed first aid.

  We found the first group's car, and we moved it to the main road, and then set if on fire, put the bodies in front of it. We made sure that they knew what house to look for. Pat was at the front door with me, and when they kicked it in, both of us made good use of all the hours on the mat in the dojo. I broke the neck of the first guy through when I dropped him on his head. Pat crushed the throat of the second one, and we muscled the last guy to the floor. He is tied up in my mom's basement right now, until he wakes up. I want to know as much as I can.

  Yesterday, I felt bad. Guilty. Today I am angry, just angry, and that focuses me on stopping this threat here and now.

  Still no word from Tate and his group.

  Post
ed by Josh Guess at 11:56 AM

  Thursday, March 18, 2010

  Hard lessons

  Today is gonna have to be fast. Patrick spent an hour alone with the looter we caught. I didn't ask him about it, and he didn't volunteer anything. But now we know where the group of them are.

  We intend to hit them today. It is clear that they will keep coming after us, and we simply can't let that happen. We have a plan, and a time line, and hopefully the will to do this.

  The world is a different place now. If we want to live, the burden of survival isn't on laws or the government. It's on us. And to live, to safeguard the lives of my family and friends, I will go to whatever lengths I have to.

  In five hours, we go. Today is a busy day. If I an alive tomorrow, then you will hear from me.

  If not, it is my hope that one of the group will carry on. Wish me luck.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 9:40 AM

  Friday, March 19, 2010

  Machinery of night

  The title of this post means nothing.

  It is simply part of a line of Ginsberg poetry, a line I have always found particularly beautiful. I feel the need for beautiful things at present.

  As I sit here and think about it, though, perhaps it does have something to do with what I have to tell you after all. Because as I sit here reading it over and over again, I do not see the letters and words for the wonder they were meant to portray at the vast cosmos around us, but rather a more sinister label for the mechanics of darkness as it spreads across the human soul.

  If I sound morose, or bitter, don't fret. It's only that I am.

  I don't want to scare off any genuine survivors who wish to join us, but I would be doing you all a huge disservice to lie to you and say that we all talked it out, and everything is fine. The truth, as it often ends up being, is harsh, and painful, and makes me want to scrub my skin raw.

  If I could paint you a tale of heroic valor, against odds too great to overcome, I would. But there was no epic duel, no beautifully choreographed swordplay. There was a building, and some men who lived inside it. Now, there are neither.

  We watched from far away, too far to be noticed and hidden in any case, as men came and went. Many of them, more than we have in our group. We saw them leave clean and fresh and return spattered with blood. We witnessed a man try to bring in a captive woman, only to see her escape, the tattered remnants of her clothing whipping around her as she ran. If I could have helped her, I would have. But as she ran her captor simply unshouldered his rifle, took lazy aim, and brought her down.

  Inside their home, a doctor's office, they finally gathered. As the afternoon sun began its march toward the horizon, they entered en mass and locked the door behind them. I can see why they chose the place: a single door, easy to defend. While it appeared single story from the outside, if you walked up to it, you could see a basement level. You could see it because the ground around it had been cleared to about four feet out, a path of smooth stones surrounding the whole thing. It was a good twelve foot drop. All of the windows on the basement level seemed to have been boarded up.

  We were taking no chances.

  They might have kept a watch, as we do, but if they did, the man was so drunk that he wasn't going to notice anything. They all were, after sitting outside for hours guzzling their way through the apocalypse. None of them woke as Patrick and I made circles around the building, checking for any bolt holes. We saw none.

  As I was watching the first Molotov cocktail arc away from my hand, I could not help but think of the beauty of its movement, flashing and flickering as it spun in that mathematically perfect curve, starkly drawn against the consequences of the act.

  We threw a lot of them. Pat stayed at the door, the only normal way out, and I walked around it, watching for movement in case any of them pulled off the plywood covering the plate glass windows. The idea was to cut them down if it came to that.

  But it didn't. I consider it a blessing. I have to assume that they all died in their sleep, small comfort though it is. We decided to end the threat decisively, to ensure our safety from those looters not only today, but for every day to come.

  You may realize by now, that I feel a strange combination of depression and numb disbelief at our actions. But no surprise. I don't know if the fact that I can do these things mean that I am changing, or only that I always could and was only lacking the right (or wrong, I suppose...) context and situation. I don't feel different. I still love my wife, my mother, my friends. I hate what I have done, and that it was necessary.

  I can't imagine that this will be the last of these sort of actions I will have to take. I only wonder if doing them will ever become easier.

  God, do I want them to?

  Posted by Josh Guess at 8:49 AM

  Sunday, March 21, 2010

  Building Blocks

  You may be wondering why there was no update yesterday. I apologize to those of you out there who have told me that you take some solace in this blog, as a reminder that others are out there. But Saturday was a necessary exception to my "at least" daily update rule.

  The reality is that once in a while, situations come up where there is simply too much to do, little warning that we have to do it, and no time to set up a back up plan...So, I missed.

  Yesterday morning, before dawn, two of my best friends finally managed to get in touch with me. They live in southern Illinois, and basically, we HAD to get there to pick them up. That area of the country has been hit harder than most; I chalk it up to the incredible flatness of the landscape making it very easy for the zombies to travel.

  Courtney and Steve were holed up in their house, in a bad situation: out of food, entrances weakened from constant attack, and unable to find any other survivors at all. I know a lot of people in that area, and from what I have been able to glean, many of my other friends fled.

  I would have asked Pat or Little David to post something for me, but everyone was so busy trying to make this neighborhood more secure that my blog was the last thing on anyone's mind. So while the rest of the group was going into town to scavenge gas and ferry cars and supplies in, Jess and I took a long, long road trip.

  There was no great drama to it. The drive used to take about five hours, and surprisingly, this time it only took about an extra hour and a half. Once we got out of Louisville, the interstate was fairly clear. We passed one other car in Indiana, but they were as wary of us as we of them. Courtney and Steve were fully capable of getting to us if they had thought it possible, but after seeing the desolation around them, I'm not surprised that they believed the trip to our little safe haven would take them days, if not weeks. And they had no supplies for that, because every store was burned down, almost every home looted, and enormous droves of zombies milled about nearly everywhere.

  So we got them. More than thirteen hours of driving, skirting dangerous wrecks and having to mow down the undead half a dozen times, and they are safe at our home.

  While we were gone, everyone else was busy. It's clear that the wake-up call from the looters around here has been received by my mom, David and his family, and Pat...if only Tate and the others had made it. We have to assume they never will.

  Our subdivision is walled in by cars. Huge lines of them, bumper to bumper. Pat and the others packed them into every little space available, to make it that much harder for the zombies to get through. My front yard is surrounded by them, and we plan on using them as a base to make a wall. They must have worked the entire time we were gone to have done so much. I saw miles of fishing line strung between spaces, cans hidden in corners. Early warning systems, if only basic ones. Effective against all forms of threat, undead or otherwise.

  Lots of work to do, but two more people to help us do it. And two of my favorite ones, at that.

  I will keep them safe.

  Alive, at least.

  Posted by Josh Guess at 8:17 AM

  Monday, March 22, 2010

  A tough break (and a development)
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  Well, a lot can happen in a few hours.

  I'm going to be out of commission for a few days. I am still able to type, but no heavy lifting for a while. While Pat, Jess and I were out on a supply run, we ran into another group of folks scavenging in the same area. There wasn't any time to talk, I think we scared the hell out of them. There were two women and two men, looking pretty scrawny and beat up. They were so high-strung that one of them put an arrow in my left shoulder before we could do anything but widen our eyes.