Living With the Dead: The Bitter Seasons (4 page)

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11:01 AM

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.

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8:38 AM
 

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.

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10:37 AM

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. 

And no shots fired. Always a plus. 

With the recent spurts of zombie attacks due to so many of our folks being outside of the walls working, Trying to organize about a billion details, making decisions in the council, worrying about a new leader (and worrying about everyone else, come to that...), I find myself feeling remarkably normal. It's not that I don't feel pain at the loss Jess and I share, simply that I find that one of my mother's sayings turns out to be true: the only way to deal with tragedy is to go on, to live and work. To not let it dominate and control your life. 

She was a brilliant and wise woman, but in all honesty, I am glad that she didn't live to share this particular pain. I hope that whatever heaven she may be in, she is smiling that I learned at least one lesson from her. 

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6:57 PM
 

Posted by Josh Guess

Things have quieted down for the most part around here in the last day. The zombie attacks on our workers have slowed down dramatically with the first truly cold mornings of the year. It also helps that Jeff Thomas, the guy who figured out how to modify some electric motors (taken from some hybrid cars) to run milling equipment finished his work. We can now crank out enough lumber to keep up with the needs of the hoard of people working on the annexes. 

Our detachment of additional guards has reached the people we sent to look for the farmers willing to drive their sheep here. It's looking good weather wise for their trip here. Helps that those farmers have about thirty large dogs with them to harry the zombies they will certainly run into and to herd the sheep. Keep your fingers crossed. 

I guess the only big news around here today is that Will Price took his first unaided steps today. His arm is still a few weeks from freedom, but today he walked. He only made it about five feet before he needed a crutch, but it's pretty great progress. Evans thinks that he will be totally mobile in a few weeks, though he will have to rebuild the strength in his limbs. He's pretty excited to start pulling his weight, and is frantically trying to learn just about everything around here. With Patrick gone (still no word...) he is spending about an hour a day with Roger learning metallurgy and smithing. He's still doing two hours of classes with Evans on medicine. He is acting as the council's consultant on defense, which is at least three hours at a stretch several times a week. He spends a lot of time with Aaron, taking classes and acting as a teacher's assistant when called for. He does many other things, and watching him soak it all up is pretty impressive. To have had such a burning urge to learn all this time, and to hold it in check says volumes about his willpower. 

Speaking of Aaron, he has opened up a little. That's a relative statement, mind you, because he is still pretty reclusive when not teaching, but at least now he leaves his quarters for walks occasionally, and once in a while stops to talk to people. I think part of what has been helping him is that I put him in touch with my sister, who was our primary teacher here before she left for the safer realms up north. Aaron and Jackie communicate every day, and conversing with someone who shares his passion has given him some stability. It has also helped him become more creative in his lessons, but that is going to be tomorrow's post. It's interesting, and I want to do it justice. 

I hate to leave on a down note, but we have gotten some disturbing reports from those we send out in our ever-expanding sphere of exploration for materials and supplies. Signs show that there might be (or have been) a lot more survivors than we previously thought. Evidence leads us to believe that pockets of survivors have been hiding and then worn down over time by constantly roaming hordes of zombies. Fresh blood and bodies, abandoned supplies, cars still running...at first we thought that these were isolated incidents, but a pattern is emerging. It seems to me that finding other living humans has to be made high on our priority list if we are going to keep the human race going. It also explains why so many of the undead are still walking around instead of starving. We know that they can go for a very long time with nothing, and truly we have no proof that they actually need to eat...god, I hope they do. Because if not, then that means that their numbers can only be reduced by us killing them...

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9:43 AM