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

  The problem is, I want to utilize her skills. She's got a lot of knowledge floating around in that massive brain of hers, but her sharpest talent is keeping people alive and putting them back together. She's reluctant to take a spot in our clinic, though, because we're flush with staff there, and she's got some...issues with providing any kind of medical care at present. Just talking about it sets her trembling, and from what I can gather that's due to her terrible journey here. I can't imagine how hard it was for her, trying to keep so many companions alive on the way to the compound, only to lose every last one.

  Some took infection from wounds despite her best efforts. Others from trauma she couldn't mend. I think her experiences since The Fall have accumulated in her mind, giving her the same sense of futility about trying that many of us have felt at one point or another.

  Gaaaaah. I want to keep this brief. Anyway, I'm going to take her with me, partly because she needs to get out of the house for a bit, see some other people and visit the farms for the first time, and partly because her judgment is still sound, her brain quick. I value her opinion and her skills as a problem solver. Maybe she can come up with some ways to keep any future frosts from killing what we plant.

  Seems like the only way this Winter is going to die is if we chain it down and stab it in the heart...

  Saturday, April 2, 2011

  Blow

  Posted by Josh Guess

  We had an unfortunate thing happen here yesterday. A guy named Harry, one of the cooks who run our mess halls, did several lines of cocaine and beat the hell out of Will Price.

  I don't know where he found the blow, but it isn't hard to imagine. We've rifled through more than half the houses in Franklin county, and almost every one of us has been on a trip to do it. I'd guess Harry found it somewhere and kept it for a rainy day. Yesterday was a hard one, as we lost a bunch of our crops just after we'd planted them. Maybe that was what made Harry want to get high, the thought of the constant hunger that goes with not having quite enough.

  For the moment, I'm going to ignore the incredible stupidity of dulling your brain with a substance as powerful as coke. I'll also ignore the further idiocy of doing so when zombies could attack in force at any time. I'm not going to talk about how that would have made him a threat not only to himself, but to everyone else as well. It's been made clear what we do with threats.

  No, I'm pissed about what he did to Will. Most people are, even a lot of the folks that wanted to see Will executed for handing the compound over to the Richmond soldiers. Will lives under a lot of punishment, which I've described before--the only food he eats has to be given to him by a citizen. The only way he sleeps indoors is if someone invites him, though for the sake of convenience he's been sleeping on the floor of Dodger's office while he works on defense projects. Will has to do any task he is asked to do, unless he's working on orders from the council, as he is right now.

  Will was just walking by the house that Harry shares with several other cooks. Harry was out of his mind at that point, and his hate for Will overcame his already fuzzy judgment. He just attacked Will for no reason.

  Will took every punch and kick. He curled up on the ground to protect himself, and though the beating only lasted long enough for people to reach them and stop Harry, Will took a lot of damage.

  This is simply not acceptable. Will lives under constant punishment, and he is a criminal found guilty of treason, but we still have rules around here. His punishment is severe, but that doesn't give anyone the right to commit unprovoked violence against him. He's still a human being, and one whose life was spared because most of us still see value in it. In him.

  Harry's in some serious shit, and I've got the feeling that the council is going to make an example of him. No one can be allowed to walk away from this thinking that this sort of chaotic behavior won't be severely punished. If we were to give Harry a slap on the wrist, people would start to think that it wasn't such a bad thing to do. Which could eventually lead to people thinking that it wasn't wrong at all. It's a slippery slope that leads to utter havoc and to the land of do-as-you-please.

  That's how marauders do things. Not us.

  Monday, April 4, 2011

  Facing the Wind

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehashing the events involving Harry and Will Price. You can go back and read that if you want to. Long story short, Harry got whipped. Three lashes. One for the assault on Will, one for the recklessness of putting himself in danger by doing large amounts of a dangerous drug, and one for putting the rest of us in danger. On top of that, Harry now has to cover Will's old job driving the honey wagon around and picking up people's buckets of excrement. He has to keep doing it until Will is healed up, though Will is in good enough shape to continue his work with Dodger on the defenses.

  Moving on...

  We've seen a big change in the weather around here since my last post. From a hard frost last week, we're now in relatively balmy temperatures in the high sixties. The down side is that the wind has picked up a lot, and that makes working outdoors difficult. Kentucky is usually pretty windy in early spring, but the gusts have been unusually strong.

  This has had an interesting effect on the local zombie population. I stood on the walls earlier this morning, checking the placement, number, and sharpness of the stakes we planted in rows to slow the zombies that wander toward the walls, and I saw several of the undead as they were buffeted by the wind. About half of them would just stop when the wind hit them hard, tucking their heads down toward their chests until it eased up. This was such weird behavior that I can't even begin to theorize on what caused it. I've seen plenty of zombies in my time, in many different situations. Wind is a pretty common occurrence, but this reaction to it is totally new to us.

  One thing that we've learned to accept and watch out for is the fact that the undead seem to evolve continuously. Or rather, the fungus or bacteria that animates them does. We've seen a small number of them become more intelligent, those we call the smarties. We've seen them develop a capacity to ward off the hibernation-inducing effects of cold in a matter of a few months. We've seen one of them develop a sort of territorial marking reflex, but just that one being used by the folks out in Bald Knob. The search is still on for others, but our time and resources are limited.

  Those are just the obvious bits of evolution that we've been able to witness. There are other implied changes that we suspect might have happened in the zombie population over time. One of those seems to be the capacity to store a lot of the flesh and blood they consume in their stomachs, preserved for future consumption in presumably the same manner that their flesh is preserved. It seems to be the most logical explanation for why they can go so long without feeding.

  What's the point of this? I don't know that there is one, aside from making it clear that we have to keep our eyes open for any changes we see. I've talked many times over the last thirteen months about how we humans have had to push ourselves hard to grow and change, but it's just as important to note that the primary threat to us, the zombie hordes, do this as well. The best weapon we have against them is caution and knowledge, to arm us against whatever survival mechanisms that may grow in them over time.

  I hear the creaking axles of the honey wagon coming through. I plan on giving Harry a big smile when I hand over my bucket. Maybe this punishment will teach him a lesson, and help him to grow.

  The sad thing about people is that we're just not as consistent as zombies are. They WILL adapt and change, while we have to hope for the same results. It's almost funny, if you think about it.

  Tuesday, April 5, 2011

  Strikes

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Got about an hour of sleep, and that was between nine and ten last night. I've been up the rest of the time, and I'm running on fumes. Most of us are.

  Damn smart zombies hit another section of the wall last night that's been under repair. We weren't caught off guard
this time, thank god, since the last attack taught us a lesson about not putting extra guards on weak spots. Still, this attack was different, and I think pretty important.

  They hit us in groups. None were very large, maybe fifty or sixty at a time, but they kept coming. Every time an assault would end, another would attack just as we were getting ready to withdraw. I don't know if they were gauging the time it would take us to give up and decided that the assault was over, or if they were just trying to weaken us. I'd kill to know how the smarties communicate with the lesser, dumber undead. It isn't verbal from what we can tell. It's also fascinating to me.

  Last night, I found a book that I'd bought a while ago and never started to read. It's called "The Warded Man", by Peter V. Brett. I was tired and one of my trainees had found it and set it out on my desk, I thought it would be a nice way to unwind, reading something new.

  I won't get into too many details, but it's a good book. In it, humanity is constantly assaulted by hordes of demons every night, held back from destroying mankind by magical wards painted or carved on things. I naturally found myself wishing for such an easy solution to our problems, but that's fiction for you. It takes us somewhere that has solutions to problems that the real world just can't offer. It's a nice escape.

  It just makes coming back to reality that much harder. I wish we had something like Brett's wards to use against the zombies as they probe our defenses. I suppose we'll just have to do as we always have, which is the best we can with what is in our hands.

  I'm going to finish up some work that can't wait, and then I'm taking the day off to sleep.

  Wednesday, April 6, 2011

  Rising Sun

  Posted by Josh Guess

  This morning we got some pretty awful news. More than a week ago, an earthquake rocked Japan, followed by a tsunami that destroyed most of the northern coast.

  Since The Fall, there has been very little in the way of international communication. The internet is mostly functional because of cellular signals, and most of what is usable here in the USA is run by Google. It pains me to hear so late that such a tragedy has hit Japan, and the repercussions of the earthquake have been worse for the survivors there than The Fall itself.

  I've heard bits and pieces from my contacts at Google about how other countries have weathered the zombie plague. India was hit harder by the undead than almost any other place because of the population density there. The people of the middle east took drastic and severe measures to curb the viral spread of zombies, leaving themselves in better shape than most places.

  Japan, I hadn't heard all that much about. I knew that many survivors had moved to places at the foot of mountains, where they might still be able to farm but could run to the safer places in the foothills if needed. Most of what we knew about Japan we learned a few months in, well after the metropolitan areas of that country were abandoned.

  The consequences of the earthquake are severe. The tsunami triggered by the quake smashed one of their nuclear power plants to bits, and while it had been shut down since shortly after the zombie plague destroyed most of the civilized world, there was still a lot of waste there, and the area around it has been horribly contaminated.

  All along the coast, huge swaths of land have been totally destroyed. There were a fair number of survivors that chose to stay near the coasts, fishing for their food and living on boats. Others farmed close by, I'm told, since that is the best soil for it by far. There's no telling how many survivors, precious human beings that are the remnants of our race, were lost to such a violent act of nature.

  My heart goes out to the remaining people of Japan. I've always had a fascination with their culture, and a deep love of their dedication to perfecting themselves. It saddens me that such a unique people should have to suffer such heartbreaking losses yet again. I know that their spirits are bruised right now, and that they may be cursing the fates that have brought down so much misfortune upon them.

  I know that they will struggle, and that they'll fail at times. I also know that the core of the Japanese mindset is a rugged determination. That kernel of willpower has always been the driving force behind their martial arts, which is the first thing that comes to mind for me, since I practice three Japanese arts. It's also what drove the geisha to become flawless artisans, their smiths to make weapons of beauty and efficiency. It's what made their artists so talented, and later made their technology so much more advanced. That spirit of perfection lead the Japanese from the darkness of World War 2 into the modern age, a nation of warriors who embraced peace and drove themselves to make ever-larger leaps toward the future.

  It is that spirit that has given them the will to survive The Fall, and the will to overcome this most recent tragedy. They will overcome it, be certain. They will carry on and become stronger as a people because of it, as they have always done. They are the shining example that the rest of us strive toward. I only wish that I could be there to help them.

  Ganbatte Ne, survivors of Japan. Good luck.

  Thursday, April 7, 2011

  Spears

  Posted by Josh Guess

  For several weeks, Will price has been working closely with Dodger on several defense projects. One of the most important has been a plan to better safeguard the farms from intrusion by the local zombie population.

  My brother Dave, you may remember, lead a group of workers in digging simple trenches and lines of stakes. Others have taken samples of...discharge from the zombie the Bald Knob folks caught, using the stuff to line the boundaries of one of the farms. While only temporary and not available in large quantities, that stuff works perfectly to repel other zombies. So well that Evans and Phil are working on ways to try and infect other zombies with whatever strain of the plague it is that gives that weird zombie the ability to mark its territory with its own vomit. I have my doubts that it'll work, but it's surely worth a try.

  One idea that Will has endorsed for a very long time, along with many others in the compound, is hunting groups of zombies near the farms down and taking them out before they can organize close enough to us to be a threat. The scouts did a little of this after the cold set in, killing hibernating zombies in their sleep. Once the Richmond soldiers invaded, that practice stopped. And of course, most zombies developed resistance to the cold, which made it far too dangerous for our people to attempt, with their advantage taken away.

  Since we've been home, we've been short on able bodies. But Will managed to convince Dodger that training a small group of people to work together as a unit would work as a means of depopulating swarms. Like most of the training in different areas people have been doing, the twenty of them have been working on this in their own time, and after about two weeks of hard drills, they went out for their first test in actual combat yesterday.

  They're basically doing it like the Spartans did--shields (most made from old pieces of cars, usually hoods) and spears, which are probably the easiest weapon for us to make. Spears are awesome for killing zombies, being piercing weapons, and a lot of force goes into that point when it hits a skull. More than enough to break bone and ruin the brain.

  Will and Dodger went with them, Will wearing his shackles as he has to do outside the compound. Jamie went as well, acting the part of scout for the group, and found a horde of the undead not far into the woods nearest the farm right next to the compound itself. Not a huge group, only about fifty, but our untested spearmen (and women) were outnumbered more than two to one.

  Shields locked together in a phalanx, spears angled up and out, ready to be driven forward in one swift thrust, they waited at the edge of the wood for Jamie to bring the zombies running right into them.

  He did. Our little Spartans stood their ground and methodically killed every zombie that came at them. Oh, there were mistakes; a dropped shield here, a broken spear there, missed thrusts and close calls with undead that got inside the reach of their weapons. But each man and woman, tempered by more than a year of fighting for survival, reacted
well to those problems and kept one another safe. They killed almost forty of the zombies that came at them before those that were left turned and left them alone after seeing the piles of bodies that had been created in just a few minutes.

  It was a good practice run, and showed Jamie, Dodger, and Will what needs to be worked on and what seems to work well. There are probably a hundred little details that need to be fixed just right, but it's a promising start. If we're lucky and don't lose too many citizens, we might be able to field as many as three trips a week for our spearmen, solely for the purpose of breaking up swarms.

  For the first time since The Fall began, we've got real prospects for taking the fight to the undead. It's an idea still in its infancy, one that has to be nurtured and guided carefully, but it's beautiful nonetheless. I wish I had the time to train for it myself. Maybe I will, some day down the road when my trainees are fully capable of taking over for me...