Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (20 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
I'm
kind of drunk right now. Not wasted, because I can still type with
reasonable coherence (and use phrases like 'reasonable coherence')
but I can definitely feel it. Why, you may ask, have I been drinking
so early in the morning? Or at all considering my usual opposition to
intoxication in our circumstances?
Because I want to, that's
why.
I've had drinks with people here and there, but for once
I wanted to indulge myself. I'm doing no work today other than
writing this post. I'm spending my time with my wife, who is
similarly accomplishing nothing. Jess went with us when we took the
fight to the New Breed, and she has earned a day off with me.
Part
of it is to celebrate life. We lost good people when those ten
Beaters died, and after that loss and the subsequent balls-out
assault we gave the New Breed, I think the best tribute I can give
them is a day spent mostly in bed trying to make the next generation
happen. Yeah, that's probably way more than you want to know. But
that's the truth and I've rarely shied away from that.
So, do
you know what you get when you take the back end of an
eighteen-wheeler and turn the trailer into a mobile war platform? You
get a lot of dead zombies. The idea was a natural evolution of the
tactic our team and the Louisville crew used at the zoo: make a cage
that can't be breached by the zombie swarms, draw the undead toward
it, and give them utter hell.
That's what we did. Outrunners
moved among the horde and drew as many as possible toward the truck.
We had tanks (not actual tanks, but modified vehicles outfitted with
armor and weapons to mow down the undead) waiting to swoop in. We
lost no one, partly due to good planning but mostly because of luck.
Some of us wanted to step through the open walls of the cage as the
outrunners and the zombies pulled toward us, but Will was there to
rein us in. It was a damn good thing, too. Our blood was up, and we
were close to going off-plan.
It was one hell of a fight. We
went though more arrows, bullets, grenades, and other gear than we
really should have, but even when the New Breed realized they weren't
going to do us any damage we still kept cutting them down. After we
blew up a bunch of them, shot them to death, put arrows in their
faces, they ran. And we followed.
Our tanks circled them, our
fire rained down in their path. We probably pushed harder than we
should have and definitely went farther than we intended.
Did
we kill them all? No. Not even close. Even if we had managed to
corral them into an escape-proof location, the sheer numbers would
have overwhelmed us eventually. But we hurt them badly. We showed no
fear even if we felt it. We taught the New Breed how fierce survivors
can be.
But that's not all of why I'm spending the day like
this. In fact, yesterday I planned to spend this morning working like
a mule. There are a lot of projects that need a little love. Instead,
I'm drinking. I'm going to hop in my bed and take my time showing my
wife some much needed love.
It looks like soon enough there
won't be time for much fun. It's going to be all duty and caring for
the ill. Over the last day and a half, a full dozen have fallen ill.
One day isn't going to make the difference as we are right now, but
tomorrow could bring a landslide of difference.
For now, joy
and love. Tomorrow duty calls again.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Today's
entry comes very late due to my...active day off yesterday. I only
woke up a few hours ago, and I wish I hadn't. Not only because Will
and the rest of the people who regularly boss me around aren't happy
I slept through half of today, but because of more bad news.
The
new plague has appeared in other places. I'm not naming names--most
of the communities in question don't want a weakness broadcast for
everyone to read--but containment is no longer an option, if it ever
was one. Evans thinks the most likely vector for the spread of the
illness is the undead themselves, and zombies move around
constantly
You would think the barrier stopping the undead
from crossing the river here in Franklin county would have spared the
Exiles from the worst of it, especially combined with the fact that
they don't interact with many outsiders and usually kill zombies from
long range, but you'd be wrong. I thought the same thing until I read
the reports on my desk from the watchers at the river.
Several
Exile guards could be seen actively coughing and ill, exhibiting the
obvious signs of infection by the plague. There was some question
about whether that might have been a show put on by the Exiles to
throw us off, but apparently almost all work at the fallback point
has halted. No one is working their fields, no progress is being made
on that boat they're building for whatever reason. Maybe some zombies
worked their way north or south over a distant bridge and wandered
down to infect the Exiles. Who knows 
how 
it
happened.
The thing is, it happened. Some people might think
this would be a great time to break the truce and strike them down,
but I'm a fan of 
Star
Wars. 
If
we did that, chances are that the universe would give us the finger
for being warmongering, opportunistic assholes and make the exiles
pull a Kenobi and rise up more powerful than we could ever
imagine.
Stupid, maybe, but in wholly practical terms it's
just a bad idea. While we haven't had any more cases of the plague
ourselves since yesterday, the ones we do have are starting to strain
the resources of the clinic. The personnel over there have a lot of
practice at efficiently caring for a lot of people at once, but no
amount of work ethic or ability makes up for the reality of plain old
hard work. There's only so much time in the day. Human beings doing
work really is a resource, and we're running near capacity on that
one.
I know the people in charge aren't thrilled with me right
now, but this is a problem I think we can address somewhat. A big
part of the issue is that the clinic and its support buildings
weren't meant to be medical facilities. There's too much work to do
in the limited space available, making it highly problematic to be as
efficient as our people can be. Also, with space rapidly filling up,
we're at a point where we have to change the game in order to manage
what will probably be even more cases of the plague in a short period
of time.
So I'm heading over to talk to Will. There are
several empty nursing homes in town as well as some other similar
facilities that might not hold as many people but are nicely
appointed and really close. In fact, there's one literally a hundred
feet outside of New Haven's wall. The only reason we haven't used it
for anything yet is the extra work it would take to put a wall up
around it. Oh, and repairing the damage done to the building when The
Fall turned otherwise reasonable human beings into destructive
pricks.
Now that we have so many sick people to care for,
fixing the place up isn't a bad idea. Might not have been worth the
time before, but with so much floor space and individual bathrooms
and whatnot (though those will take some work to modify, obviously)
our medical staff will be able to do a lot more with what they have.
I think it'll work beautifully.
I don't know if other
communities are facing the same problem, but it's clear that the
plague is a problem all of us are going to be facing. If more can be
done to mitigate the damage, we'll do it. We all live different
places and have our own homes and friends to worry about, but in the
end we're in this together.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Will
and the council didn't outright approve my idea to set up shop in one
of the abandoned nursing homes/assisted living facilities. They're
going to give me an answer tonight, though I admit to some surprise
they didn't give us a green light at once. Still, I'm taking the
initiative and working on the meat of the problem, coming up with
several options for places we can use and figuring the numbers for
how we can fix them up and all the boring math that goes into
manpower and resources.
Boring, but important. We might not be
dealing with zombies at the moment, but that doesn't mean we're out
of the woods. God, I wish. The situation has become more grim since
my late post yesterday. Another half dozen people have started
showing symptoms. At the rate we're going it'll be less than a month
before the majority of people fall ill. If we wait much longer before
making the move to a larger care facility the choice is going to be
taken from us. We won't have the numbers to manage that kind of
transition.
I'm not trying to minimize the danger we face from
the New Breed, either. We dealt them a sharp blow the other day, but
we also blew through a lot of weapons and ammo we can't easily
replace. If we had managed to kill every single New Breed in the
county it still wouldn't have been enough. They don't scare easily
and sure as hell not permanently. The near constant stream of them
coming in across the bridges over the Ohio means we'll probably never
eliminate the threat.
It also means that even when we grind up
nearly all of them, we've got weeks at best before facing the threat
all over again.
In terms of our situation right now, that's
vitally important. We're a sick community and getting more so every
day. The new plague is an enemy we can't kill with a simple blow to
the head or cleverly placed fire traps.
Ah, I've just been
called to the principal's office. Maybe Will and the council have
made an early decision. I'll try to post later today to let you know
what's up.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Sorry
I didn't post again yesterday. The messenger I received was from Will
after all, but not about the nursing home situation. There were some
problems over in the expansion that needed sorting out, and the
process took most of the morning and early afternoon. Turns out when
your building materials include shipping containers that you use for
storage, it's really easy to lose things you store in them when the
metal boxes get moved around.
I did, however, get an answer
from the council after all that was done: No. An unqualified
negative. We won't be sparing the time and resources to secure and
repair anything outside of New Haven at the moment. I understand
their reasons--how much it would cost us in resources, the need to
put guards all around, transporting people back and forth--but I'm
still furious.
I mean, this isn't something that's going to go
away. We have too many people ill and more getting that way (three
more since yesterday, though one of the other folks that was sick had
one of those weird near-instant recoveries) all the time. The clinic
has already had to set up tents outside to manage the overflow of
patients. Thank god it hasn't dipped below fifty at night or those
folks would suffer even more than they already do.
What's
worse is the council and Will won't even let volunteers use their
free time to annex the place right next to New Haven. It's not our
ideal choice as it doesn't have a lot of beds or rooms compared to a
nursing home, but it would help alleviate the pressure a lot. It's
close enough that getting there wouldn't be a terrible risk.
Their
reasoning is sound, but to me it's cowardly. Yeah, the New Breed have
hurt us recently. We hurt them back. They're a threat, to be sure,
and they're probably watching us and planning to attack any group
regularly leaving New Haven. But what are the other options? We're
past the point where our medical staff can manage care for all our
people easily. It's getting worse. One night of unseasonably cold
weather and some of the folks out in tents might not make it.
For
once, nothing I say or do is going to make a difference. I've made my
case for this very strongly, twice, and I got shot down. Will knows
me well and told me in no uncertain terms I'd be locked up if I did
something stupid like trying to organize volunteers to do it anyway,
regardless of what the council says.
Haha. It's like he read
my mind, you know?
While the threat of being put in a cell
doesn't hold much fear for me, I don't want to risk being put on the
sidelines again. I want to be here if I'm needed--I'm already putting
in volunteer time at the clinic whenever I can squeeze it in--and the
amount of effort it would take to go against the council's wishes
would eliminate every free moment I have. And that's 
if 
I
managed to even get the place fixed up without getting caught.
No,
it's not a game I can win. I've obviously thought about it, and I
think it would be a huge net positive for us, but if there's one
thing I've learned through more than two years of fighting bad guys
whether they be zombies, mother nature, starvation, or asshole human
beings, is that you've got to know when you're beat. Taking a stand
can be damn important, but survival is about weighing the risks and
understanding when the odds are stacked high enough against you that
success isn't likely no matter what you do.
So this time I'm
giving in. I had an idea, it was rejected, and we'll move on from
there. I'd probably fight harder for it if there wasn't a lot of
truth in the things Will and the council said to me. We are running
low on manpower. We've got to be cautious of our supplies since we
don't know how this plague is going to play out. There might be other
solutions that, while not as elegant as mine, work out almost as well
in the end. Now I've just got to come up with one, since no one else
seems to be making any headway on it.
In fact, I think I've
just had an idea. It might take a little work, but I think the
council will see the wisdom in it. Of course, I thought that
before...