Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (22 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
There
was a short but passionate debate on my last post. One person thought
I went too far, the other thought I was totally in the right. Look,
we live in a fucked-up, dangerous world. If you need any better proof
that I believe deep in my heart that working together is the best way
to outwit and outfight the zombie swarms, just remember where I
live.
I said it in that post, and I'm saying it again: Jess
and I started this place. What I said in that post about refusing to
leave my home wasn't a play for pity or attention. I really meant it.
To get me away from my wife, whose strength is slowly beginning to
ebb away, they'll need to be super serious about it. Physical
violence is the only way I'm leaving her side. I can (and am, because
Will realized how serious I am) working from home. Doing double or
triple duty, at that, as I'm working on some project logistics,
caring for several ill people that were moved in yesterday, and
helping Jess manage the food and armor situations.
What the
argument boils down to is: how is this different than the Exiles (the
ones that used to be citizens here, not the marauders they joined up
with) who chose to do their own thing despite the larger needs of New
Haven? How can I justify my actions knowing that precisely 
because 
I
have some influence, others may choose to follow my example?
Don't
think I haven't considered it. But my reaction, while angry and
probably upsetting to many of you, is what it is. I've given more to
this place than any of you know, put up with hardships and put forth
efforts that I don't always cover on the blog. Beyond survival, I've
tried to do things here that gave people something resembling a real
life. Jess has done as much if not more.
Realistically, yeah,
things could get very bad if a huge number of people suddenly decided
to stay home with their loved ones or roomates. Funny thing is, most
people choose not to do that. Most citizens here have some medical
training to one degree or another, but not much in the way of
experience or education in providing long-term care. It takes a sort
of acquired patience. I know many folks who have sick relatives or
friends who stop by our new clinic and the old to visit their chums
before going out for duty on the wall or to tend our crops. They
understand that New Haven needs to appear strong in front of the
increasingly numerous zombies outside.
Fact is, they
don't 
want 
to
stay back and care for people. Their viewpoint is that people better
trained and suited for the work can do it more efficiently. And
they're right.
The crux of my argument wasn't that I would
forsake my work for Jess, but that I could do the same job (in fact,
more, since I have four other sick people living in my house at the
moment, saving that effort from our regular medical staff) from home.
Will and the council don't actually care if I come work in the space
they set aside for me. I don't think they even really need me to work
on most of the stuff Will has assigned to me. It's piddly stuff that
isn't really vital.
No, they want me out and about 
because 
I'm
well-known. Because despite not having an official leadership
position, people still follow my lead. Right now things are tough.
We've seen tougher, but this sickness thing has the Exiles so bad off
they aren't even working their crops. As a threat, they're nullified
at the moment. We could be heading that way soon, and there are a lot
more zombies on this side of the river. People are scared, and Will
wants the leadership to appear strong and in control. That's totally
reasonable. Good leaders go about business as normally as possible in
a crisis, because it shows people that calm can be maintained in bad
situations.
Again, I'm not playing the game. I have no real
authority here, despite founding New Haven. I'm fine with that, of
course--I don't want to risk letting power get to my head again. But
because I'm no higher on the totem pole than any guard on the wall or
chef in the mess halls, I don't feel bad about making my stance
clear: I won't be forced to leave my wife so I can be paraded around
for morale. You want me out there, you'll need to make a serious
issue of it.
One small caveat, however: if things start to get
really bad, of course I'll help. I'll do whatever needs doing to
ensure Jessica's safety. If we have too few people to defend the
walls for whatever reason (even if it's because people start wanting
to stay home with loved ones after all, though I am not seeing that
happen with anyone but me) I'll go out and patrol myself. I won't let
the safety of this place be compromised, and the suggestion that I
wouldn't care frankly pisses me off.
I'm doing what I'm doing
precisely because it's safe and doesn't affect my ability to get work
done. I'm not advocating skiving off work or refusing duties, just
saying that my own aren't affected by where I am.
Oh, that's
just rich. I had to say something about fighting, didn't I? All that
up there about why I can't leave, and the attack bell just went off.
At least a hundred of them are about to hit us. Funny.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Yesterday
was a false alarm. Well, not a false one, the bells were set off on
purpose. Will wanted to test our responsiveness to danger given our
weakened state. We did fine, and he gave me the shittiest grin when
he saw me on the wall with my bow. I almost think he did it just to
prove he could get me out of my house if he wanted to, the clever
bastard. I gave him a wink before I went home. He's still my
friend.
Things are working out rather well, all things
considered. We had a bad rush of victims of the new plague yesterday,
another ten sick. We're still getting weirdly varied results, though.
Some of the ill wake up feeling perfectly fine. This morning one of
my own patients sleeping in my living room got up and felt wonderful.
He'd only been sick for a few days.
And seven of those ten
people aren't bad off enough to stop work. They feel like crap, their
breath isn't coming as easily, but much like Jess they can work. Some
more than others, but still doing something constructive with their
time. More important, they're not using up the efforts of the medical
staff.
This does create a special problem, however. As sick
people get suddenly better, healthy people get either somewhat ill or
totally incapable of caring for themselves, the schedule has to
change. Some folks that do heavy labor come down with the new plague
and can't manage tending crops or hauling firewood, but maybe they
can work on armor or something else that doesn't require tons of
effort.
What it boils down to is a hugely chaotic situation in
which the different section managers of New Haven get reports each
morning from all over the place with new listings for sick, healthy,
and people in between. It's becoming a total clusterfuck to manage,
because it takes so much effort to work out who can go where, to
substitute this person here but then figuring out where the original
person needs to be assigned...
Yep, guess who got the job of
making all that work?
It's not that bad for me, because I
don't have to worry about any other paperwork-type things while I'm
doing it. I haven't got a section of New Haven to run, no department
to head. All I have to do is take reports from all over the place and
do the math. Difficult, but much easier than what my former trainees
were facing by doing this and their normal jobs. The fact that my
house is a more convenient point of convergence than the new, um,
city hall or whatever you want to call it, helps. People running in
and out all morning makes it a little hard to keep track of what I'm
doing, but I manage.
The folks staying here with Jess and I
aren't all that needy just yet. I help them with whatever they need,
though mostly that's cooking for them and helping them use the
bathroom. I don't have to do much in-depth work with any of them yet
since they're still alert and capable of feeding themselves. A couple
of them have even offered to help me with the schedule changes, which
is endearing and funny. That kind of willingness to help also says a
hell of a lot about the character of your average New Haven citizen.
I gave them hugs and told them to shut up and get some rest, but I
smiled when I said it.
Predictably, some people are upset that
I've basically told the leadership to let me do what I want and got
my way. Things have worked out well, and there aren't any snags so
far. So my response?
Fuck 'em.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
It
seems counterintuitive, but it turns out that people infected with
the new plague actually seem to be relieved by smoke. Though the
fresh and damaged version of the zombie illness is hitting them in
their lungs, blow-by marijuana smoke does seem to have a positive
effect.
Yeah, I know. Strange. The folks in my house aren't
using the stuff, but the clinic is treating several people with more
difficult breathing and it's doing some good. I don't know if the
moderate amount of THC they're getting from the indirect inhalation
is just relieving some of the pain or if it's the particulate matter
of the smoke itself making the two warring versions of the plague
behave better, but it's a win.
Funny that the end of the world
came, and instead of toking up given the lack of law, people are
instead really using the stuff for a medical purpose. With disturbing
numbers of zombies still milling around outside the walls, you'd
think a lot of people would be getting high if for no other reason
than to mitigate the insane level of stress that situation
creates.
But, no. Our people are way too laser-focused on
getting their jobs done and seeing to the most important needs of the
community. Maybe one day when everyone is safe, we'll have a party
and those who want to partake can do so without fear of endangering
others with slow reactions. I hope that day comes, I really do. Not
for the freedom to indulge (I never cared for the stuff myself) but
for the simple freedom to choose.
Jess isn't doing any better,
but she's not doing any worse either. That's something, I guess, but
I can't quite get over waking up after my very minimal naps and
seeing her unchanged. New cases of the plague are slow in developing
at the moment, and a few more people have beat the thing overnight.
Sadly, two more deaths as well, which only makes me wish to see Jess
pop up one morning hale and hearty. Other people are doing it, why
not her?
It's terribly stressful, but I try to keep cool in
front of her. One small piece of solace is this blog, which she
doesn't read. I mean, why would she? I'm right here, and everything I
say on here she could just ask me. So in this space I can complain
about my worries, fret over the fact that she reacts very badly to
smoke of any kind and thus won't benefit from this new treatment if
she does get worse, and I don't have to worry about her feeling bad
for me. I'm trying my damnedest to be her rock right now. I don't
know how much she needs it.
The zombie plague has destroyed
much, and in my wife it has beaten away the layers of fear and worry.
Jess used to be shy and unsure of herself, but now she leads
naturally, without any hesitation or concern over what people think
of her. She has to labor to breath if she does anything more
difficult than walk at a normal pace, but that doesn't stop her from
doing every ounce of work she can, and then some.
She's
tougher than I am. I know that now. If my being home can help in even
the tiniest way, I'm going to keep doing it. Hell, right now I'm
mostly just helping the others and being impressed at how much Jess
can still do on her own.
I see it wearing her down, though she
fights it. She's smart enough to pace herself but time and weariness
aren't forgiving to the infirm. She'll keep going until she falls,
because that's just who she is.
And I'll catch her, because
that's who I am.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
There
are some days that start off bad and just roll downhill from there.
Bad days like that can be epic from a single event, so terrible and
mind-shattering that they leave scars on you that take years to get
over. Others aren't as damaging in the long term but have the same
kind of impact.
Where to begin?
I guess it started last
night. The giant outdoor freezer I'd been designing before the team
and I left out, the one my brother completed while we were away,
failed. Not a structural failure--I spent too much time digging
through the various articles and texts in my copy of the Ark and too
much time double-checking my work to have made an engineering mistake
that bad--but plain old human error. Our Absorption fridge needs a
heat source to keep the process going, and last night the person who
was on duty passed out just after they relieved the person before
them.
The guy who passed out was sick with the new plague and
didn't tell anyone. The fire has to be carefully tended, and no one
came by to check on him as they should have. As a result, the
contents of the fridge began to thaw. We insulated well, but the
amount of time that passed means we have to eat a lot of the stuff
that's in there. Mostly meat. Now that the fridge is cooling back
down we can restock it, but we've got a lot less people to send out
hunting than we did a few weeks ago.
Oh, and it's not like we
can easily send people out. The zombies have apparently taken notice
of the lower number of guards on the wall. They're coming closer to
the ring of traps around New Haven all the time, and our people have
been told not to fire on them unless the undead actually attack. We
don't want to provoke them. The game here is to keep from having to
fight again for as long as possible.
Sending out hunting
parties is problematic for that very reason. We can't let them
through the gate where the undead can easily spot them and attack. We
have to get hunters out over the wall at times when they aren't being
observed. Getting them back in is even more of a mess, because they
have to come in wherever there's an opening, which means we need
teams ready to run to any given spot to haul ropes and ladders at a
moment's notice.
Two more deaths since yesterday, and four
more sick. Three of those four are council members, so we're running
a deficit in the responsible leadership area. The Exiles have started
to reappear in small numbers at the fallback point, some of them
going outside to work on their crops. Not devastating news, but it
means they're either recovering somewhat from their outbreak of the
plague or on death's door with hunger and desperate enough to survive
that they'll send a few healthy souls out to collect food.
I
don't know which is worse, to be honest.
Oh, and on top of
those bits of bad news, the annex--the burned-out section of New
Haven we abandoned last year and now farm in--is being invaded. By
gophers.
Yeah, cute little guys that annoy Bill Murray in
legendary golf movies. It's almost funny how dangerous those fuckers
are to us. The ground and crops are being assaulted by a force of
dumb, adorable tunnel dwellers that only want a nice meal. We've got
deadly enemies across the river, implacable and clever undead nearly
beating on the walls, and our biggest worry at the moment is how to
deal with buck-toothed rodents nibbling on the food supply.
I
can't help thinking of how hard Joss Whedon would be laughing right
now. I think back to season seven of 
Buffy
the Vampire Slayer
 and
the cryptic warning that echoed through the episodes: From beneath
you, it devours.
We're in a tough spot and dealing with a lot
of stuff at once. It's just frustrating and disheartening to have
these kinds of setbacks all at once. I'm doing what I can, which
includes taking Jess over to the annex to see the damage for herself.
I don't want to strain her, but she insists.
We need to catch
a break.