With Spring Comes the Fall (3 page)

Posted by Josh Guess at
1:54 PM

Short one, just to let you know that we are still here.
The hoards from Lexington and Louisville hit us at the same time. Non-stop droves of them, for the last sixteen hours. It's gotten so bad that we can't even go outside, unless we go out onto the front deck.
She's yelling for me. They're beating on the windows.
Oh god.

Posted by Josh Guess at
10:56 AM

Thursday, March 11, 2010

It's been insane around here.
The street is nearly empty right now, the gigantic herd of zombies has moved on. Not far, I'm sure, because  there are still a lot of people in town. If you listen from the back yard, you can hear the screams.
If you are hoping for some heroic tale of how we were scared, but found some amazing inner strength after our quaking fear, and went on a zombie killing rampage set to frenetic death metal, and possibly in montage form, you are going to be disappointed.
Jess and I spent the last...what, day or so?...alternating which one of us would go out every fifteen minutes and make sure they weren't getting past our defenses, and who would sit in the house and shake. I can tell you exactly how many we took out in that time, between us: ten.
That was the unavoidable result of going outside, even onto our enclosed deck and hidden from view. Most of them were due to a broken gate on the front deck, because of a stupid design error on my part. The crowbar gets heavy after a few swings.
The movies and comics never give you the real experience. They never convey the bone-weary exhaustion that comes with living in constant fear, interspersed with periods of sharp terror and nausea as you have to bash in the skull of something just to stay alive. I think I took out our mailman. To be fair, he was trying to bite my face off.
I shouldn't say this, but a small part of me enjoyed that. He skipped our house a lot.
Right now, we are just doing what we can to relax, and shed some of this tension. I think I will go see mom today, see how she is holding up. She's made of incredibly tough stuff. Patrick has my eternal thanks--he stayed with her through it all.
Jess is drawing, maybe painting. Pat is eating. Mom has taken up smoking again. Can't say I blame her. After all, cancer is not likely to be what kills her at this point.
And I am writing. I wish my talent were enough to make a picture for you of what our world, this little slice of America, has transformed into in less than a week. But hunger and lack of sleep has dulled my words enough that all I really want to do now is sleep.
More later, maybe, after I talk to mom.

Posted by Josh Guess at
12:13 PM

Every really bad day has to have some sort of good news in it, I think. I got mine.
I was feeling so frustrated at my mom, because after all of that, she still refuses to come over here. I mean, its not as though she lives far away; I can walk to her house in two minutes or so. But that two minutes is hugely different now, and she's my mom. I worry for her.
So there I was, sitting out on the roof with my compound bow, thinking that one more negative moment in my day would drive me over the edge, when my phone rings. This got the attention of one of the stragglers ambling past my house, and I had to put an arrow through his eye. (After I put one through his thigh, belly, and, unfortunately, his crotch. Aiming from a roof is hard.)
It was a friend I hadn't talked to in a while, even before the dead started to walk around. David and I were really good friends at one point, but recently have not had the time to hang out. I worried about him, and above the general buzz of concern that fills the back of my mind all the time now, and hearing from him picked me up. He told me that his family is with him in a big van, five of them, and they are trying to make it to us.
This is great, but also potentially bad. He said that they have a bunch of food, but we don't have room for that many people. Maybe his parents can stay at mom's, and the rest here. It's something we'll all have to discuss. But hey, more people means more security, and I am all about that. So i guess you can call me cheered up a notch.
Maybe some of them will nap on the way. It would be nice to sleep next to my wife for at least a couple hours.

Posted by Josh Guess at
4:52 PM

Just a short update here.
While we were waiting for David and his family (who are staying over at mom's at present), we managed to take  some time to assess the damage to our house. When you have several hundred zombies pressing in around your property, banging on windows and whatnot, you get scared.
As I said before, we stayed in the safe areas during the whole thing. But, of course, adding the steel sheet metal over the windows had an unexpected effect: zombies are attracted to reflective, shiny things. The good news here is that they barely dented it, because we made the window coverings thick. The bad news is that when large groups pass by, we are going to become a giant drum as they hit our house.
It should be explained here that one of my previous posts dealt with that scenario, and my mother pointed out to me that I did not go back over and explain it in greater detail. Now that I have the time, you have your explanation. The truth of it is, this isn't some plotted-out adventure story. It's my life. And life is  confusing, stuttered, chaotic, and sometimes the details come later.
And to be honest, I was kind of embarrassed. I mean, who wants to let his readers know that he was nearly pissing himself because a couple ghouls were breaking bones on solid metal? Basically, I was jumping at shadows, and I didn't want to admit, then, just how weak and helpless I really felt. Because, of course, it turned out to be no threat at all. Anticlimactic. That's life.
Anyhoo, back to your irregularly scheduled blog in a few hours. Just wanted to clarify.

Posted by Josh Guess at
3:33 AM

Friday, March 12, 2010

Things are starting to settle into a pattern around here. We're still getting waves of zombies here and there, and it's looking like that is going to be the way of things for the near future at least. As soon as they run out of food, or into a large enough group of different zombies, they sort of pinball around in a random direction. Here in Kentucky, where the hills and forests prevent a lot of movement, that direction seems to be the way they came from as often as not.
David's parents and brothers are staying with mom, which is a great load off my shoulders. She has a lot of room but not much in the way of food, so it's a good match. David himself is staying with us, along with Patrick. With four of us here, we can mount hunting trips and keep a guard, all without leaving the house empty.
Jess and I are going out hunting today. Funny that I am the one to show her the necessity of killing animals to survive, when I myself have a hard time with the idea. But I am her husband and her best friend, and I have been there for her through all the bad times. I know her and how she works, and no one else on earth has any better chance to get her to do this. And she will have to, for us to survive.
So far, no more contact with friends, but David showing up here gives me some hope that we will hear from more survivors eventually.
I am worried about some survivors, though. Patrick tells me that he saw some looters at the bottom of the subdivision, and that they looked like a pretty rough bunch.
Ah, Jess is ready to go. She looks adorable in a camo hat.

Posted by Josh Guess at
11:23 AM

My wife is a natural shot.
She felt terrible about it, and cried her eyes out, but she hits what she aims for. At first I wasn't sure she was even going to be able to pull the trigger, and after she bagged the first squirrel, I thought she was done for. But she calmed down, and proceeded to school me on how to shoot. I've been sport shooting for years, this is her first time actually firing a rifle. I love this woman.
Things are going well, considering our circumstances. David's family is getting on well with mom, though I think it will be a while before she gets used to having so many people in her house.
Now we're stocked up on meat for a long time. The only problem is keeping it from going bad. Pat proves to be an invaluable resource here: he knows how to dress a lot of varieties of animals, how to make jerky, and how to smoke meat. He has a list of skills longer than my arm, gained over his years of moving around the continent.
We are starting a house to house search for survivors. It doesn't look good for our road, which is almost certainly deserted except for us. I know for sure that the houses on either side of us are empty. We have plans for those...
As soon as we get done smoking and jerking our kills, we're going to go out and see what construction supplies we can find. My brother (also named David, we call him Dave) can build anything. He is going to make the trip from a few towns over to get us started on some projects. Frankfort was hit so hard and fast that I think it's a safe bet that the big stores will have some of the things we want, and what we can't find at the stores, we will scavenge from houses.
This place is going to be a fort when we get done. And big enough to house a lot more people. I think we can make it work, at least if we can get more people.
Back to my meat lessons with Patrick.

Posted by Josh Guess at
10:38 AM

Well, here's something I didn't think would happen.
Boredom.
Without the banalities of modern life to fill in the gaps, we actually have a lot of time to fill. So far we have done so with construction, keeping guard, etc. But now that there are more people here, it's amazing how much extra time comes free.
It's not as though we don't have a lot planned. My brother is going to help us build a lot of stuff, or at least get us on the right track. My current idea is to annex the houses on either side of us, and remove the fences in between, fence in the whole thing, and make one huge back yard that we can farm and build in. But all of that is going to have to wait for several things, not the least of that being enough materials and enough people.
So here I am, no zombies around to speak of, off of guard duty, but since we have decided to travel in pairs at all times, it's just Pat and I at the house right now, and he's on guard.
When other people get bored, they play video games or watch TV, but our options in that area are fairly limited right now...so i will write. I know that once we get things really going here, it will be hard to find the time to update. But until then, I guess, you folks out there will keep getting running updates on what we're doing, and how. If any of this helps you a at all, even if just to remind you that in a world gone completely mad, you are not alone, then the my time in writing it has been well worth it.

Posted by Josh Guess at
10:35 AM

It was pointed out to me that since I have some free time just laying around, I could get into more detail about our supply situation, what materials we have and are planning to have, and what modifications we have done to the house, with the added request that I show pictures.
The majority of that is no problem, but I have to explain why I will not be showing any pictures of My house from the street, or in any way that would identify it by sight. You see, while we want to encourage some people to come here and have a safe haven, to hopefully build a community, there are those out there with much more dangerous intentions. I've already given our approximate location, and I have no intention of advertising to looters, rapists, and murderers.
That being said, we will be adding some pictures soon. Jess and I are still looking for our camera, which we misplaced yesterday. We are planning on some video logs as well, though I don't know when we will be able to get them out. Hopefully in the next few days, I will let you know when we get them up.
As for supplies...a partial list in a previous post, can be found
here
, but for those of you who missed some of that, here is a list of a lot of the things we have stocked up on:
Food:
Bulk flour (and plastic containers to store it in), 30 large containers of salt (and grabbing all we can when we find them), 20 large bags of rice, 10 large bags sugar, 20 large bags of dry beans (various), 2 large containers of pepper, various spices, hundreds of cans of vegetables, and a lot of dry pastas. For an idea what you should look at in food stocks, click
here
for the article in the zombie survival wiki. It adds the idea of oxygen absorbers and vacuum canisters. We grabbed a lot of canned stuff, which is typically against my inclination, but since most of it is high-calorie, which we need, we eat it first.
Weapons:
(Note: I have included a lot of tools in here, because it seems wise to me to multitask as much as possible. Thanks,
Alton Brown
.) 12 crowbars, four each of the three lengths available at my local store, 6 drywall hammers (various weights), 2 pickaxes, 10 hatchets (4 wood haft, 6 single-forged), 3 wood axes, 3 brush cutters (the single edge ones that look like miniature hooked spears), 3 bows (2 compound, 1 wooden), lots of arrows and dowels to make more, several rifles, shotguns, handguns, knives, and a closet full of ammo.
Construction materials:
A dozen large rolls of ten foot chain link fencing (so far), a hundred long fence posts, four large pallets of 3/4 inch plywood, ten large jugs of nails (various dimensions), about a hundred 2x10 boards, 3 pallets 2x4 boards, many large coils raw wire, assorted boards for home construction (footers, etc), a variety of latches, locks, bars of steel, steel plate, tools to work them, and errata that are too numerous to remember, much less list.
Misc:
(not a complete list, because all the things we have are jammed in and stacked up, bought or taken by all of us at different times) bulk box fishing line, 4 fishing poles, lots of clothes of various types, water purification tablets, two generators, large plastic containers of all sizes (including water tanks for farms, two for water, one for gasoline), a bunch of extra shoes and boots, dozens of bars of soap, liquid soap, matches, steel and flint, duck tape, extra needles, thread, bolts of fabric, lye, funnels (because funnels rock), various lengths and diameters of rope, various types of chain, bags of goose feather, Lots of how-to books, smell maskers.
Farming:
4 shovels, 2 spades, seed spreader, tiller, post hole digger, gloves...and time.
Seeds:
Tomato, potatoes, cucumber, various melons, wheat, various greens, corn, soy beans, bamboo (i will have a whole article on this one later), onion, beets, various peppers, carrots, peas, various beans, peanuts, cotton, various berry plants, including blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries, mustard, radish.
This is not a complete list, and likely, I will never be able to produce one. I will be going over some of our future projects in great detail later on, and some more comprehensive lists may be included. The hard truth is that I sit on my couch as I write this, pretty much the only free space in my living room. We have some outside storage, but our mad dash to prepare has greatly overloaded our home, and there is no digging through the random piles of supplies to satisfy my curiosity.
You may note a total lack of any medical supplies. That is because my next post is going to be all about that. With links, I hope.
Keep safe.
PS--how do you guys feel about the lists? Are there any specific ones you want to see, or do you hate them with a fiery passion. Let me know in comments. Also, if any of you have specific questions on how to do something, the best way to do it, what you need, or where to find a way to do it, ask it. I will do what I can.