Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (18 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
There
was a comment on yesterday's post that made me angry. The person that
wrote it seemed to wonder if my mention of the numbers and my hope
that that we were seeing a fatality rate of five percent instead of
fifty was somehow a coping mechanism. The author seemed upset that I
was talking about numbers and asked how I would feel if one of the
people in those statistics was someone I love.
They also said
that our focus in New Haven is defense and food, which to them
represents survival but not sustainability. So let me just clear up a
few things right now.
First off, I've spent a lot of time and
energy since the zombie plague killed my entire extended family
worrying that the handful I was able to convince of the danger and
save might be next. When I write about things like this new plague
that could affect all of us, do I think of my friends and family
being killed by it? Yes, absolutely. I worry about it all the time.
I'm terrified that my wife is going to start coughing next to me at
night, or that Patrick's nieces will get sick before they've had a
chance to discover that first love and the pain of heartbreak. I fear
for my loved ones greatly, and for the rest of New Haven almost as
much.
So, in short--don't ever think I don't understand the
personal consequences of the things going on around here. I've
watched loved ones die. I need no reminders. In fact, I don't
want 
anyone 
to
suffer from this, but reality is a mean bitch at times. We face
numerous threats on a constant basis. If we didn't have the capacity
to shove that fear to the back of our heads and learn to deal with
things as they happen, we'd never get anything done. The zombie
swarms would have picked our bones clean two years ago.
As for
survival and sustainability...well, if you don't think we're building
sustainable long-term conditions, you haven't been paying much
attention. We've got the basic things we need for survival for an
indefinite period--food, water, shelter--and we're planning or
actively working on a lot of stuff to improve our lives. I don't know
what other folks might mean by sustainability, but as far as
resources go we can keep up with population growth here for a long,
long time.
Ultimately, though, my hope that this new infection
won't kill half our people is just as much about hard fact and
numbers as it is about not wanting to lose those who mean so much to
us. We would be emotionally devastated to see so many people fall,
but the practical side of the equation is clear: missing half our
population, we could not sustain New Haven as it is. There are too
many things that need doing, too many tasks from guarding against the
undead to pulling up radishes that can't be done without each other.
We couldn't leave the walls without sentries or guards to plant or
harvest food, and without food no one would have the strength to
fight. It's a numbers game, yes, and one I don't like playing.
It's
about people, too. If I'm going to be brutally honest about it, I
could stand to lose my loved ones. That's cold, I know, but I've done
it before. I would be emotionally crippled to see Jess or Pat or any
of them die, but I know from experience that I could live and
continue on. I might not find much joy in life after that but I could
do it.
I know this not only because it has already happened,
but because even now I live and work more for others than I do for
myself. I've got enough knowledge, skills, and practical experience
applying both to leave here with a small group if I wanted, strike
out into some remote and zombie-free corner of the world and live in
peace. It wouldn't be hard to do from a technical standpoint.
Emotionally? It's impossible. I love what we've built here, I love
the people. I love working to make our lives better, and while that
love could never replace the intense personal love I feel for those
close to me, it would see me through the worst of the pain. Give me a
damn good reason not to give in to despair.
Conversely, I
couldn't leave here with that hypothetical small group of people even
if they were all close friends for exactly the same reason. I
couldn't abandon my home and the folks who've shed so many tears and
drops of sweat (and blood) to make it what it is. I love my wife more
than any single thing on earth, but I couldn't abandon New Haven.
It's a weird symbiosis but one I have no desire to escape. If this
disease takes a turn for the worse, it's going to hurt any way you
cut it.
So you'll forgive me if I try to push those painful
possibilities away with the dry recitation of numbers. They aren't
dead yet, may not be, and I can't work efficiently constantly worried
that the kids playing down the street are going to be laid up in the
clinic and dead within a month. Similarly, I can't maintain a happy
relationship with my wife if I burst into tears every time I go to
kiss her. Chicks hate that. Yeah, I worry about what may happen down
the road. But right now?
Right now the only thing I can do is
be thankful she's here, that most people are doing reasonably well,
and work with that in mind.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Three
more people are sick. One of them is a small child. Her name is
Lindsey, and she's just five years old.
You
know, there are any number of small bits of good news. The constant
rain over the last few days has filled our cisterns and
reservoirs--many of them very new and large--to a point that gives us
months of water in case of drought. The clover we've seeded all over
the place grows back within a week of us cutting it for food. We've
got lots of extra food. Work on the expansion is coming along nicely,
faster than we planned for. George and his team are back with no
incidents. Their cargo was unloaded yesterday afternoon.
I've
got a laundry list of positive things in front of me but not one can
stop me from drifting back to the yellow post-it note on my desk.
There are seven names on it, and my eyes lock on to hers every time I
lose my focus. Lindsey. Five years old.
It's a blessing that
we've been able to beat the New Breed zombies back for a time. The
lack of attacks means a time of relative peace and calm. Unfortunate
that the quiet means it's much easier to dwell on the new strain of
the plague that's taking our people.
I've been to visit her.
She's a small thing, thin but wiry with the soft muscles
children always seem to have. She's got lovely caramel
skin, bright green eyes, and mocha hair cut short to her head. Her
parents died in The Fall, no one is sure what her background is.
Lindsey came here from Lexington last year with the group we pulled
from Rupp Arena. She's an orphan. She has parents of a sort, two
women that took her in and cared for her, love her. I've seen both of
them come visit her several times with tears in their eyes.
So
tiny and frail, but not alone. Not in body or spirit or heart.
A
part of me wants to rant against the universe for seeing anyone face
what these people are facing. The slow agony of having your breath
choked off, never quite able to pull in enough air. The rest of me is
past that childish reaction. No amount of shouting at the heavens
will change a thing. All we can do is our very best, but we don't
have the resources or time to try anything like a cure. In the movies
some brilliant biologist or chemist comes up with a solution and
saves the day.
The real world, even before The Fall, has never
functioned that way. Because of that truth, that breakthroughs take
time and knowledge and technology, it's possible that a small girl
will die. I can't blame anyone for it. It's no one's responsibility.
It's just sad

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
There's
something going on at the fallback point. We're not sure what the
Exiles are up to because of the screens they erected all over the
place, but the sounds drifting across the river are of heavy
machinery and a lot of construction. Saws rasping through wood,
hammers driving nails, trucks backing up. It's unnerving to know
they're working in the rain, that whatever they're doing is important
enough to get soaked to the skin to do it.
Could
just be building shelter, but since the fallback point has a hotel
that's six or seven stories high as well as a twenty-story office
building, I can't see them needing the space. Thing is, we have zero
clue what it is and that's the really bothersome part. Maybe it's
catapults? But why would they need them given the huge amount of
weaponry at their disposal? Ugh. My brain hurts.
The timing is
a little scary as well. We're going through an extended lull between
zombie attacks at the moment. Not many come together at once even
though a lot of old school zombies as well as New Breed are out and
about. We pick them off as we find them, but that's not a huge
imposition. It's lucky for us since this illness has begun to spread,
but that's why we're worried. The Exiles have to know about our
people getting sick, and all of a sudden they've got a construction
project that just can't wait.
Honestly, I'm a little
disappointed. If the Exiles are planning on breaking the truce, I'd
have thought they would wait until more of us were too sick to fight.
If they're going to hit us, this is too obvious. The construction has
raised our hackles, made us ready for a fight.
But we won't
throw the first punch.
Because every day we can put off any
kind of battle is a day for our injured to regain their strength.
It's time we can use to tinker with new ideas, work on the expansion,
do any number of things that will help us in the long run.
Not
that we're going to ignore the activity going on over the river. Will
is calling a council meeting this morning that I'll be attending.
We're going to throw around ideas about what the Exiles are building.
Our watchers can't see much past the screens, but they're moving
around to find a better vantage point. The cliffs on our side of the
river are huge and dangerous, some parts almost impossible to
navigate. If they have any success by the time the meeting starts
they'll send word.
So far no more people have developed
symptoms. That's a small miracle as far as I'm concerned. We've
threaded the needle of disease for more than two years now. There are
so few people and contact with outsiders is so limited that the usual
suspects don't make many appearances. The flu isn't as prevalent as
it once was, though I've fallen ill with various problems several
times. On a longer time scale we're bound to run into outbreaks of
disease. I don't think any of us expected it to be this. Maybe
something like measles, which people tend to forget is a really awful
and dangerous illness, but not a variation of the zombie plague.
Dealing with zombies (and turning into them when we die) is bad
enough without having to lose people to them because of the organism
that makes them go.
...Damn. Just got word that I'm wrong. Two
more people found sick this morning when they didn't show up for
work. I'll update again tomorrow. This meeting and trying to plan for
the worst in the face of possibly seeing an epidemic hit us has me
frazzled. Damn.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Since
my post yesterday morning, six more people have come up ill. The
disease is spreading. Strange thing is, a few of the newly infected
don't have symptoms as sever as the others. I'm trying not to get my
hopes up that this is a good sign, but I'll take any good news even
if it's just not-as-bad-as-I-thought news.
A few people around
New Haven have asked what we'll do to quarantine people once the
clinic runs out of space. The simple answer is: nothing. Based on the
disparity between all the infected so far it's safe to say that the
illness has spread to every corner of our home. People seem to
develop symptoms at different rates, but no evidence thus far
indicates a snowball's chance we could slow it down if we tried. Not
that we're encouraging people to spend time with sick people or
anything.
Our meeting yesterday was, given the circumstances,
pretty chaotic. The number of people trying to fight off the new
strain of the zombie plague grows, making it harder to get things
done. So far we're not in dire trouble from lack of manpower, but a
lot of our focus right now is on trying to keep those folks as
healthy as possible. Many ideas have been floated around, some of
them...extreme.
Will wants Evans to work on finding some kind
of treatment. Given our near total lack of facilities and technology,
that's a tall order. Evans doesn't like being given impossible jobs.
They make him swear a lot and mumble about how things were in the
jungle back in the day. Crusty old man might give us a hard time but
his heart is in the right place. He's as worried about the infected
as anyone.
Aside from keeping our people alive and as healthy
as we can make them, we're working on contingency plans for the
possibility that too many of us fall ill to properly defend New
Haven. For obvious reasons I can't explain what those plans are.
We're on the job, let's leave it at that.
One of those obvious
reasons is the project the Exiles are working on. Our watchers
finally managed a look inside the fallback point yesterday, though
one of them nearly fell off the sheer face of Devil's Hollow to
manage it. No one is quite sure why, but the Exiles are building a
boat. Pretty big, too. My first thought was that they were going to
go pirate and start hitting communities downriver, but that would
break the truce. Maybe they're hoping no one would hear about it or
be able to prove they did it. It's also possible they're going to use
it for fishing or something, but my spidey-sense is tingling. I'm
paranoid as hell, I know. I also lean heavily against the idea that
the Exiles are ever up to anything innocent.
No idea what the
boat is for, but I don't think it's anything good. Until and unless
we see them actually do something bad with it, though, we can't do
much but wonder. There's always the possibility they're going to use
it to attack us. Pleasant thoughts, I know.
If they do go
pirate, we'll have to do something about it. We know it, they know
it. We've made too many blunt statements about what behavior is
acceptable from them, and to allow any leeway there is to invite
disaster. Our numbers would have to take a severe hit for us to lose
the will to punish the enemy for breaking the rules.
That's
what scares me. At the rate we're going that could be a few weeks
from now.