With Spring Comes the Fall (26 page)

Posted by Treesong at 
9:58 PM
 

Amid the constant moans and groans of the wandering zombies outside the compound, we heard a new sound this morning. Truck engines, big ones, carefully humming along. A few of our more daring scouts sneaked about to look for whoever made the noise.
It looks like the ex-military guys that we ran into on the way back from rescuing Evans are finally looking for us. They have some impressive vehicles, and from what the scouts have seen, impressive weaponry. If push comes to shove, though, we will do what we have to. They might have training and equipment, but we have the advantage of a defensive position, and the desperate fury of people that are protecting children.
We should be getting a report back soon. If there is such a thing as good luck, it will b good news. But I doubt it.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
10:43 AM

The people we heard yesterday are almost certainly the military men that we ran into last month. They have to know where we are, but they are camped out several miles away, apparently either not interested in us or wary of provoking us. 

I refuse to let them weigh me down right now. All of us are ready for full-on attack from them at any time, but I think we have all gotten a little sick of living under the constant threat of living people that want to kill us or control us on top of the threat of zombies. Many of the folks I have talked to here in the compound seem to feel this way--deciding to put it on a back burner of their minds, and worry about it when and if it happens. 

There is a lot going on. Naturally, we are installing sections of prefab wall sent back with us from Michigan. As dearly as we would love to have the next shipment of them in, we are holding out on sending a truck of food up north and suggesting to Jack and his people to do the same, while these interlopers are here. I don't know what their game is, but I won't risk our new and fragile alliance with the folks up north. 

We are building a few new watchtowers, and several of our better shots (including my wife) are showing some others how to fire long range. We have a few other tricks up our sleeves should anyone decide to come knocking without an invitation, but you will excuse me for not sharing them here. The element of surprise is always understated in its importance, no matter how much credit you give. 

My brother has some plans to work on some modifications to the existing power grid, so we can try to network up all of the houses in the compound to the solar arrays and turbines that are being set up as I type this. It won't be enough for air conditioning (which sucks, because it's balls hot right now) but it should be more than adequate for lighting and charging some of our equipment. In an awesome display of goodwill, the folks at Google HQ have been nice enough to have a few of their engineers design some battery arrays for us, and instructions on how to build them. Thankfully there is no shortage of car batteries around, and the design is pretty much scalable to any degree we could want, so we will have some power at night when the old grid finally goes down. 

It can't be long now. The folks at the power plant send word that they are very low on combustibles, and without people to harvest wood or other fuel, they will have to leave. I hope they choose to come here. 

Posted by Josh Guess at 
10:17 AM
 

they're hitting us. we are under attack. do not come here unless you are ready to fight, kill, and die if you are against us.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
2:26 PM

Well, the good news is that we didn't exactly have to endure a siege yesterday, but the bad news is that these fuckers don't seem to be going too far away, either.
We should have known that something was going on when the zombies outside the wall, nearly a constant fixture over the last few months, started to move away from us in droves. Maybe they felt the vibrations of our most recent attackers as their massive military vehicles trundled on toward us, but whatever the reason, we should have seen the exodus as the warning it was.
Our loss of life was minimal. We lost two of our scouts before the attack, which is why they didn't get any warning to us. They must have been caught beforehand...
They hit us with some light fire at first, peppering the front wall and forcing our sentries to duck out of sight. Fortunately for all of us, the metal sections that we got from Jack included armored parts to hide behind, so most of the folks on the wall got away with small or no injuries.
I think it was their intention, these army guys, to "shock and awe" us into submission. They obviously aren't just out to kill us, or they would have done much more damage. It seems they underestimated us, though, because they scattered for a bit when we put a round from our tank right into one of their lead vehicles.
It took a lot of effort to get that damn thing hidden in a place that had line-of-sight to the front of the compound, but man, it was worth it. Bought us some much needed time to regroup and set some plans. When they came back, we were ready. Riflemen kept them at bay long enough to make them give up for a while. But another scout team tells us that they are holed up less than a mile away, and are staged to attack again at any time.
We have learned our lesson about taking the fight to anyone. We are safer here, and we are ready should they come. We will give no quarter, and expect none.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
11:14 AM

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Yesterday was a the worst day since society crumbled, at least in our small corner of the world.
The people that hit us a few days ago came back, and this time they were in real military form. They managed to get someone inside the walls through one of the incomplete sections in the middle of the night, and he blew a hole big enough for a dump truck to drive through in the front gate. These ex-military bastards hit us with rocket propelled grenades, heavy machine gun fire, all sorts of shit. We fought in the streets, we fired at them from blinds, we killed and killed until there were only a handful of them left, and they surrendered.
We executed them on the spot. Seven bodies now hang in front of the broken gates as a warning to those who come against us with malice.
But the cost was too high for any of us to bear. We lost thirty adults and six children in the conflict, an injury to our little community that has all of us in deep mourning. Most of the dead were killed in the fighting, though two of the adults died trying to protect all six of those kids, only to have the house they were hiding in hit with an explosive, collapsing the structure down on top of them.
I haven't slept in days, so I will not try to name all of the dead, but I will say that each of them were heroes, for not fleeing or giving up, for staying here through all that we have suffered on the slim hope that we might make something better than what we left behind.
I have to give credit to some other people as well, without whom we would surely have failed to defend this place.
When we got our first hint that trouble was around the corner, we sent word to Jack and his folks up in Michigan that they should stay away to keep safe. He agreed with me, but apparently decided that we might need a little backup. When the fighting got intense, we heard more vehicles rumbling down the road, which most of us thought had to be more of the enemy. We were wrong. Jack sent about fifty people in some of the armored vehicles they had modified, and they saved us. Jack's people set to immobilizing the vehicles the enemy arrived in, which forced them to realize that only victory would keep them alive. For all that it made them fight harder, it also pushed them further into the compound.
They were surrounded by what amounts to a neighborhood full of farmers and builders. Regular people fighting to keep what they made. They never had a chance.
There are consequences, of course. We are short so many people now that our projects are all suspended for the most part. This might be only a temporary issue, since Jack is letting any of his people that want to come here to live do so. We have some folks here that want to go north to live with Jack and his people, and while this hurts me, many of them have kids, and I understand completely.
My sister is one of them.
Jackie is going to be leaving with her husband and kids as soon as transport can be arranged. I love my sister more than I can explain, for more and better reasons than mere blood. Jackie is kind-natured and loving, a wonderful mother and a talented teacher. I will miss her, but since we have lived apart for much of our adult lives, it is a situation that I have experienced before. Her husband is a computer programmer, so his talents will be very useful up north, and they have four wonderful kids to think of. I will miss them all, but I want my family safe as well.
My greatest hope is that Jack will have enough folks who want to come live with us that we can continue our works as before. But I recognize that while we might have enough come here to gives us comparable numbers, for all of us that survived the last few days the world have changed forever. The toll on us in friends and loved ones is too high for anyone to deal with, on top of the losses we all still feel from the world collapsing around us. We are in mourning and hurt, and for myself, I can say that I might be hurt a little too much to ever get so close to new people again. I think most here are wary of getting too attached to anyone else at this point, for fear of a repeat performance of the pain that has basically shut us down right now.
Maybe I am being too dramatic, but it feels like happiness is an abstract, as far away and as untouchable as the moon. We will smile again, and laugh with people, but I have to wonder if we will simply be going through the motions.
I pray not.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
7:30 AM

(From Courtney. Woo.)
We killed and killed because there was nothing else we could do. I am getting so fed up with other people forcing our hand. It's always been easier to destroy than to build, but why take by force when you could just ask? What has our community ever done but give freely to whomever is in need? What is the damn point of shooting at us when we would usher you in through the front gates, so to speak, if you came peacefully? I'm sick of looking at dead people. I don't feel anything right now, not triumph over our fallen foes, not sorrow over our dead. Just the urge to not have to look at corpses any more. They're pale and waxy and don't look quite human without that animating spark, and I think it reflects my fear that we will become less than human over time. 
From a strategic point of view, I feel disgusted with such wastefulness. The invaders laid waste to much of our hard work, they wasted the potential of so many lives, including some that had just barely begun. They wasted their own lives, in the end. What did we gain yesterday but destruction? What did anyone gain? Thirty-six dead is a SUBSTANTIAL loss, and that's not even counting casualties on the other side, though a creeping bitterness makes it tempting to say our opponents' lives ending doesn't ultimately count for much of a loss. 
So what do we do? For my part, I've been throwing myself headlong into whatever reconstruction and cleanup efforts I can. My muscles are screaming at me in protest; though anyone's life in this harsh new world could hardly be considered leisurely, the relatively soft life of a diplomat has gotten me a bit out of practice for heavy lifting. On a tangential note, THANK YOU, Jack, Lisa, Randall, Kimiko, Amadi, and all you others who have not only put aside fear and prejudice to reach out to us and our community, but came through and helped us so much in our hour of need. You're true heroes and genuine human beings, and you've given all of us some much-needed hope right now, as well as an actual shot at survival. I miss everyone up north so much, but there's no way in hell I'm leaving here now. I don't blame anyone who wants to get the heck outta Dodge; there have been plenty of close calls lately. I just have this little stubborn part inside that ignites when random groups of violent idiots come bringing death to our doorstep AGAIN, and there is just no way I would give them the satisfaction of running me off. At least not for now.
Finally, I never did properly thank Patrick for protecting Treesong while our diplomatic group was away. I had this D&D character who became obsessed with increasing her speed and mastering teleportation, so she could get to anyone who needed her help instantly. Not having mastered those skills IRL, knowing there was literally NOTHING I could do to help you guys was agonizing. No one can be everywhere at once, which is why it's so great to have a devoted group of friends and family you can count on to carry out good works in your absence. Thanks so much, Pat.
Well, focusing on the positive for a little while has helped improve my mood a great deal. I'll be getting back to work, then. A big ol' F-U to the warmongers that can't seem to get it through their heads that the old ways were dying out even before the zombies, and the standard invite to those who want to forsake the mindless violence and ceaseless drive for conquest, and help build something real, a place to call home. It's harder, but I still believe it's worthwhile. 
But the bodies. Man. The sight of fallen friends and neighbors should never be something that fills you with irritation and disgust rather than grief. I know I'm not okay right now, but I promise I'll get my head together soon. So many lives, so much potential, just snuffed out...it's so stupid and pointless. So if you're feeling particularly expansionist in your violent tendencies, please do us all a big favor and stay the hell away from our compound. We have plenty of bodies already, and right now, no one here is feeling particularly reluctant to add yours to the pile.