Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (28 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
We've
had an eventful weekend. Severe windstorms Friday night and severe
thunderstorms the whole time since have sidelined my ability to post.
Sorry about that, but I'm willing to bet a good number of you out
there haven't had the ability to access any sort of communications in
that time, so we'll call it a wash.
The harsh weather and
brutal heat (in the hundreds again) conspired to keep most of us
inside. Sure, there were guards and sentries out on the walls, but
only a skeleton crew. We're still enjoying an extended break from
zombie attacks because of the heat. Most of us hung out in our homes
or those of our friends, working on small projects and generally
spending time together.
I'm really glad for the inclement
weather. It gave me a chance to meet someone new and to get a better
understanding of what family is.
Her name is Judy. She's one
of the few older folks in New Haven. I don't know what her age is
exactly, but her hair is more gray than not and she has the worldly
air of a person who has Seen Things. In the constant bustle of
activity as we've dealt with the new plague (the treatments for which
are going fairly well), dealing with the New Breed zombies
incessantly buzzing our walls (though no right now, ha!) and the
hundred other details of daily life, I missed the fact that Judy took
over the education of New Haven's children when Aaron left.
She's
a funny lady. She talks fast, corrects herself often, and never shies
away from uncomfortable truths, even ones about her. By sheer chance
she was over at my house last night as Jess, Becky, Patrick, and I
played cards by candlelight. She was good conversation. I learned a
lot about her, and since I'd only met her once or twice since she
joined New Haven, there was a lot to learn.
She was a teacher
before The Fall, but other than the fact that she has taken on that
same role recently, her history before the world fell apart is mostly
irrelevant. What caught my attention is how, since coming here, she's
made herself everyone's favorite aunt. Not in a biological sense, of
course, since she has no family here. Judy always made herself
available to watch kids or to help out when someone was sick or
injured. She spent a tremendous amount of her free time doing this.
Flittering between houses, using her personal time helping out. Just
amazing.
To be honest I'm not quite sure how she ended up at
the house last night. I think Pat might have invited her to join in
the card game. It's been a while since the zombie threat has been low
enough and people have been healthy enough to allow for a little R&R.
When she showed up I expected to deal her in. Instead she chatted
with us as she made snacks and filled drinks, laughing at our dirty
jokes and telling far, far dirtier ones of her own.
I asked
her why she does it, why she tends toward serving others rather than
sitting back and relaxing. She told me that she has always been that
way, and loves to see the little bits of happiness that she brings
people. It was a simple answer and a good one.
People see her
as family. Judy has become a part of many people's lives in New
Haven. Not in a huge, flashing-neon-sign kind of way, but with a
thousand small acts of love. In a way it's a microcosm of New Haven
itself; she supports the group, the group supports her. She has
become family in the ways that matter.
Many of us are that
way. Family was and is important to me. Before The Fall, my extended
family was gigantic and spread out all over the place. That didn't
stop us from keeping in touch and caring about what was going on in
our respective lives. I've been blessed (and damn lucky) that so many
of my family members have survived, but I never forget how many have
passed on. In some small way, New Haven itself has become a surrogate
for those who have gone on. Though I have actual family here, it
feels like many of my friends and neighbors have become family as
well. I feel that deep sense of belonging, anyway.
Maybe I'm
just blathering at this point, but I can't help thinking that by
helping nurture this place and by putting so much of myself into it,
that I've given my family a small portion of immortality. Though most
of them are gone, their spirit and values live on here.
We
live and die for one another. We help when others need it, and get
help when we need it. There are shoulders to cry on, ready hands to
shake in moments of triumph, and words of comfort when we fail. If
that ain't family, I don't know what is.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
The
early hours of the morning got fairly cool. With that surprising
chill wind came the New Breed. You almost wonder if they were just
waiting for it to come for us. All in all it wasn't a bad one, though
the New Breed did manage to get over the wall in one place. We still
had minimal crew there this morning, but we were prepared. Everyone
knew to secure their homes before they went to sleep, and the
standing order was for our guards to pull back from the wall if they
found themselves badly outnumbered.
Not that it was all that
risky. The New Breed were...not right. Maybe it's being so damn
hungry, but I tend to think they're getting hit with the new plague.
I remember that attack quite a while back where the zombies hitting
us seemed like they were sick. I'm willing to bet the new plague was
the culprit. Our research at the time seems to bear that out, and the
ones Gabrielle cut up this morning have the same symptoms.
But
you know, it's actually way more important to me how well we reacted
to this assault. Weeks have gone by without a major fight, and when
it comes more than three dozen zombies actually get inside New Haven.
Our people did exactly what they were supposed to do, and those who
were on call to respond to the bells were efficient and careful.
House-to-house fighting in the dark, chasing down stragglers, and not
one of our people was killed. A few minor injuries, sure, but that's
a small price to pay.
I've said many times that getting
complacent is a sure way to get dead. I think we've reached a point
where we no longer have to put much effort into reacting to danger.
We're practiced enough at it that it's now second nature. Sort of
like learning to drive; at first you're shaky and concentrating way
too hard, but eventually you just get into the flow and do it. We're
there.
There are a lot of big things just over the horizon
that I want to talk about. I'm hoping that by tomorrow or the day
after at latest I'll have the go-ahead to share. There have been
plans in motion for a long time that are finally coming to fruition.
It's not a matter of 'if' anymore, only 'when'.
I hate to be
vague, but I don't have much choice.
Ah. Shit.
Alarm
bells again. Short pattern. Another breach.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
I'm
writing this from New Haven's expansion and fallback point. Because
yeah, yesterday's attack was unexpectedly fierce. Everyone has been
evacuated into the expansion. Even as I write this, teams are
scouring the main section of New Haven for zombies.
Basically
we were hit with a tight column of undead that slammed into a single
point on the wall like a spear. The front section, the tip of the
spear, was mainly composed of old school zombies pressed into
attacking by the New Breed behind them. Inside the thick line of
attackers were zombies carrying logs to use as ramps, just like the
night before. They came in fast and way too concentrated for our
people to hold off. If there hadn't been two hundred of them focusing
on that one spot to overwhelm us, I'd have called it a suicide
run.
A lot of them did die in the initial approach, compound
bows and crossbows thrumming out arrows and bolts at the enemy with
clockwork regularity. A dozen of our best defenders stood their
ground against the onslaught even as the undead breasted the wall,
while others rang the bells and called for a retreat.
Even
running from a fight, I can't help being damn proud of our people.
Able-bodied adults either moved toward the breach or oversaw the
evacuation depending on their assignment. Older kids did their duty
in helping the younger ones get to safety while the adults covered
them. It was orderly and went mostly to plan.
It cost us
lives, though. Only two of the twelve at the wall managed to pull
back in time to get behind the lines of defenders that rushed in to
help. Ten souls gone, just like that.
But hundreds saved.
That's a big fucking deal to me. To all of us.
New Haven
hasn't been totally abandoned, of course. There are still folks in
the watchtowers feeding us reports by walkie-talkie every few
minutes. There are still guards and sentries running the walls and
using some of the individual house defensive positions. We've got
eyes on the enemy, no doubt, and we've been long prepared for
something like this. Caches of arrows and bolts ready to be used. I'm
told someone is camping on the top of my own house, picking off the
zombies still roaming around and eating the truly ancient beef jerky
I made and stored on the roof for just such an occasion. My apologies
to that guy's intestines.
The latest estimate has the
remaining number of zombies somewhere around a hundred. We haven't
been able to totally shut off the flow of them over the wall, but
we've got people out in tanks dispersing large groups and mowing down
smaller clusters. Our people walking the streets of New Haven itself
are engaging zombies pretty much constantly, but they're being
careful about it. I've got a round of that duty myself in about an
hour.
We're uncomfortable, cramped, and out of sorts. But
we're alive. I wanted to share my big news today, but it's going to
have to wait until tomorrow at least. I want to dedicate the proper
time and space to it, not leave you with a footnote and a ton of
other questions.
I want to spend some time with our sick
people, too. Kincaid's simple yet brilliant solution to the new
plague is working, but it isn't perfect. A good number of the people
who were too sick to do anything for themselves weren't allowed to do
the treatment because Evans and Gabby didn't think they could survive
it. Also, people are still getting ill. It's much more manageable,
but still terrifying to deal with. Especially since Phil, one of our
two doctors, got sick day before last. I had no idea until this
morning. It's easy to minimize one problem in the face of another (or
several, as the case may be) but the new plague is still here, still
hurting us.
At least behind the steel walls we're in now, the
New Breed can only hem us in and not actually get to us. Small
comfort, but with everything going on it's one we'll happily take.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
The
cleanup is almost done. Really, it's done but Will is adamant that we
do one last detailed sweep of the main section before we move
everyone back in. Other than that, local news is thin on the ground.
The old adage is true--no news is good news.
So I don't feel
bad about taking today to share the news we've been sitting on for a
while now. All the agreements have been made, all the plans
finalized. I can now happily tell you that in the next few months,
New Haven and Franklin county are going to be getting some upgrades.
Also, visitors. Well, not really visitors. Permanent citizens.
Two
thousand of them.
It's going to take some explaining, I know.
You may have noticed that I haven't been talking about North Jackson
very much lately. That's an intentional thing, because we were asked
by the leadership not to draw any attention to NJ. The reason was
simple: where New Haven has stagnated under a plethora of awful
situations, NJ has been expanding in every way imaginable. We started
out as similar kinds of places, but things change over time. New
Haven has done well, but North Jackson has truly bloomed.
There
are almost five thousand people there now. That's an insane number,
it really is. So much work has been done around the place that I'm
told it's almost unrecognizable from my last trip there. The heart of
the place is still the factory complex, but very few people live
inside it now. Over the last year the complex has been converted
almost completely back into a place that makes things. North Jackson
might be the last true industrial center in the country. Much of the
machinery there is old-school hand equipment, but there is more
reliable electricity being generated there than any place I know of.
That's in part because they've been producing solar panels and wind
turbines. I understand that making them from scratch, by hand, is
very difficult.
There are many hundreds of acres of farmland
being cultivated around NJ now, and tiny dwellings dot the landscape.
They've been busy up there, hauling things from all over the state to
use in their expansion. Rabbits are pretty much the best source of
meat they could come up with. It hasn't been a flawless trip, though.
There have been bumps along the way, hungry times and everything from
discomfort while living outdoors as homes were being planned to
severe danger as swarms of zombies have menaced the area.
How
does this apply to us? Why does it matter? I'm getting there, calm
yourselves.
The constant stream of people migrating to NJ
brings with it a huge labor pool, loads of supplies, and the most
important commodity in the world: information. This part of the
country is filled with resources that just need to be located.
NJ
hasn't been turning people away, but they've reached a point where
the population is almost too much to deal with. So over the next few
months slightly less than half of those folks are going to be coming
here. We aren't going into this blind, of course. They're bringing
food of all kinds, supplies, and the like. They're coming in groups
and will be hauling in trucks carrying shipping containers to further
expand New Haven. As you can imagine, we're going to need to make
this place a lot bigger. Plans have been laid out for more farming,
the kind we can secure, so that next year when the supplies start to
run low we won't have food riots. The million details we've had to
work out have all been considered and dealt with. I won't go over all
of them here.
Yes, it's a ton of work. Yes, it's risky for us
to expand so much so quickly. But in return for taking the pressure
from NJ, we're getting the gift of new citizens. And they're doing
the work of making their settlement here workable. Oh. And NJ is
hooking us up with a ton of new power generation equipment. More
solar panels, more turbines, and the tools and knowledge to make the
stuff ourselves. We'll become an industrial community ourselves even
if it is on a much smaller scale.
As you can imagine, the new
plague has slowed down this process. NJ has been very careful about
the plague and caught some lucky breaks with the rate of infection.
We feel confident now that we can begin the process. New Haven has
struggled through a lot of shit over the last few years, but we're
happy to take this as a win. In one stroke we'll become the largest
community in the area and magnitudes stronger than we've ever been.
It's scary and exciting.
It kind of feels like the future is
right around the corner.