With Spring Comes the Fall (32 page)

Posted by Josh Guess at 
11:17 AM

The team that stayed behind at the compound to keep an eye on the zombies that overtook it have given us some strange news. Apparently these smart zombies are a little more focused than we originally estimated. They searched the compound pretty thoroughly, sniffing around for us, and when they realized that we were gone, they left as well.
But not to come here. I mean, they have to know where we are, at least roughly. And if they are looking for us by scent, there just isn't any way they could be missing us. But no sign of them on the roads, and our teams can't find them anywhere close.
We're using every minute until they appear to make every approach to this place a deathtrap. We have rather hastily managed to block off most of this area (the civic center, the office tower, and the hotel) from foot traffic. It'll be a bitch getting back out of here, but it should keep the smarties at bay well enough for us to kill them without being in too much danger ourselves. One very nice advantage is that the three buildings we are occupying are all pretty tall, so we have a dominating view around us. No sneaking up, and excellent sniper platforms.
It's bad enough that we had to abandon our home, even temporarily, but worse is the fact that while we had prepared for such a contingency, we didn't plan on staying down here long term. Not in such numbers. The result is that most of us are sleeping on concrete floors, in sleeping bags. There isn't enough water storage for all of us, so we are constantly having to crank the big hand pumps we have running to the river. Of course, we have to boil the hell out of that water and filter it, which means that when you start to get thirsty, you have about thirty minutes before you can drink it. And forget about a bath or shower.
We are having to do our cooking outside. We aren't lacking for fuel due to all of the trees and houses we've torn down or blown apart in the last day, but it does mean that you pretty much have to eat outside, and any southerner can tell you that midsummer next to a river is no fun for bugs. Most of us look like we've just been walking through a rain forest covered in honey.
Now it's just a waiting game. We know better than to leave our easily defended square here in downtown to search the smarties out. They might be intelligent to some degree, but nothing so far leads us to believe that they will be able (or want) to subvert their very nature. Whatever disease it is that fills their nervous systems, brains, and muscles in order to mimic them got better at its job for one reason: to become a better predator.
They will have to come for us soon. When they do, may the smartest killer win.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
12:06 PM
 

If I didn't know better, I would think that the zombies were trying to starve us out, or at least lure us into a false sense of security. No news is good news as far as our defenses go, but I would rather be in the comfort of the compound rather than stuffed into a corner of this office building with no windows that open.
All around me I hear the hollow crack of rifle shots as the watchers on the roofs pick off normal zombies. We've only seen two smarties so far, and they were damn careful about checking us out. Which is, of course, how we knew they were smarties.
Otherwise all is the same. We're using our time to shore up every defense we can here in the fallback position, and hopefully they will be enough. We're deadlocked until we get attacked, because we don't plan on leaving a group of any size to follow us back home when we head that way.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
10:43 AM
 

I'm hoping that my posts can become a little less sporadic. Yesterday I ran out of power both on my laptop and my phone.
I want to keep all of you out there informed, because things here have gotten extremely ugly. The smart zombies ("smarties") have been making appearances over the last two days. We spent a lot of time and effort taking out bridges, knocking down houses and trees, and moving all the rubble into a very large wall. We have enough people to keep a solid perimeter at all times, so we thought we were good.
We were sure that the smarties would have to take the twin bridges to come at us in force, and we were partially right. In order to get big numbers in, they had to take the bridges. But they also managed to hit us from the one place we thought was impossible. They took so long to attack us because they were slowly scaling the enormous hill to the north, and about a hundred of them managed to get down to us in the dead of night.
"Dead of night". I actually laughed out loud just then.
Anyway, it was awful. The smarties drew enough of us from other parts of the defenses to make it possible for them to get all the way across the bridges in serious numbers. It was a very good thing for us that they are so very clever, because the extra time it took them to get up that hill made all the difference.
Our traps took out a lot of them, no bones about it. We had tripwires strung all over, explosives on hair triggers, spikes and stakes that popped up, a lot of stuff. I feel rather proud of one of my own creations, which was a series of simple poles with sharpened lawnmower (and other) blades set up on them. Tripwire gets hit, the tension on the blades is released, several zombies hit by each one. Loved it.
But by far, what really saved us was letting them get so close. While lots of us were running around killing the sneaky bastards that came down the hill, many more were along the edges of the wall pouring down fire.
Have you ever seen a homemade cannon? I have, now. And we made napalm, flamethrowers, lots of different stuff. All of it rigged together hastily and insanely dangerous to use. Patrick was standing right next to a guy named Steve (not Courtney's Steve, this guy's last name was Pointer or Pointing, something like that) who came from Lexington recently when his flamethrower melted. He was using it at the time, and Pat couldn't do anything but watch as the guy burned to death.
And worse, he came right back to life. While he was on fire.
So Pat shot him in the head.
All told, we lost about a dozen people. We are certain that there are many more smarties left, probably at least twice the number that have hit us so far. As far as I know, none of the dead are people that I know very well. If this attack is indicative of what we are going to face, then I doubt that will remain the case.
Fuck. I hear the alarm bell.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
9:49 AM

Hot and sweaty are usually terms that describe lots of my favorite activities. Today, they describe the minimum of what we are enduring here. There is no power other than what solar batteries we brought with us from the compound, so no air conditioning at all. I mentioned before that none of the windows at the hotel and tower open, and of course the civic center doesn't have any.
We've been dealing with it. But yesterday afternoon was brutal, and today it's not even nine in the morning and it's already 85 out there. We are baking. It's making everyone testy and on edge, and caused a few fights.
Resetting the traps has been a pain in the ass, and hauling new supplies down here from our storehouses was more difficult than I would have imagined. The smarties (smart zombies, for those of you that aren't aware) are probably now aware of the fact that we have trapped nearly every square inch of perimeter, but there isn't a lot we can do about that. We've adjusted for the fact that when they do hit us all at once, they will probably avoid the tripwires. It's makeshift at best, but we have set up a series of pull wires to set off the traps if we need to.
There is a lot of talk around here about heading back home soon, regardless of whether or not the smarties attack us. It's been shouted down by more reasonable people, but you would be amazed at how quickly a degradation of living conditions will make people irrational. We can't go back as long as a large force of them is roaming around, and if more than a few dozen leave here we'll start to have holes in our defenses.
Just got a text message...
Jesus, one of the smarties just mauled three people in the hotel. The folks over there think it must have slipped in the other day and hid. I have to go.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
9:13 AM

Science is awesome. Really.
Imagine for a moment that you are a tired and ragged group of survivors, watching as a horde of relatively intelligent zombies are moving in a giant mass toward your safe haven. Further imagine that you have fought a smaller group very recently and were hard pressed to repulse them. Add to that image the certainty that they know you have trapped the area and will be actively avoiding them if possible, requiring you to activate the traps remotely, and thus less efficiently.
It's pretty bleak, don't you think?
So there we were, every able bodied person waiting for the assault on our fallback position at the hotel, the tower, and the civic center. A ring of human bodies, armed to the teeth and only able to look on as the hungry thousands edged closer.
Then, the glorious rain. It had been looming all morning, a bank of iron gray clouds that promised relief from the oppressive heat but at the cost of visibility. Thunder hammered the sky while we waited, and distant lightning danced.
When it came, it struck like a comet. The rain pounded the undead, and the thunder seemed to unsettle them. The moved much faster toward us from many directions but the majority over the bridges. The trapped, deadly bridges. The bridges with tall steel streetlights on them. Of course, those streetlights were the posts that our tripwires and such were anchored to, and that made a nice circuit to the drenched road when the lightning hit.
Electrocution can now be added to the short list of things that will permanently kill a zombie. It didn't take out a lot of them, maybe only three dozen, but it was enough to scare the shit out of the ones coming up the bridges. It made them careless and frenzied, more like dumb zombies. Watching in confusion as the front of their ranks fell all at once, we took the opportunity their hesitation gave, and we began to mow them down.
Traps slinging about, gunfire ripping into them, every person choosing shots. We waylaid them. We also prepared a group to go out and fight them hand to hand, and that worked out very well. I was one of them.
We figured that no matter what we did, at least some of the smarties would make it to the base of our buildings. A dozen of us were outfitted in the hodgepodge armor that has worked so well for us. It was tiring as hell, since all that fabric absorbed a lot of water, but we had secured all of the gear we were wearing with duct tape so none of the smarties could undo our helmets or get inside our Gi. There was nothing to it but wading out into them and cutting as many of them up as we could. We moved in two groups of six, watching each other so that no one got mobbed and weighed down.
Handguns and katana, with cover provided by people right above us with rifles. Good thing about living in Kentucky is the huge numbers of hunting rifles and ammo.
We won. WE WON!
We didn't get them all, of course, but we feel confident that there will be enough time now to truly secure the compound before they have enough numbers to threaten us again. We will surely have worse days, but for today at least, we are the victors.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
10:59 AM

I just want to go home.

Yesterday, after we had the big fight with the smarties, we began to pack up. It was our intent to come home this morning. We started to, in small groups with heavy guard. Jess and I were in the sixth group to go out. It turns out that the smarties are a hell of a lot smarter than we thought. 

We were so sure that we had scared off what remained of them by killing so many in such an overwhelming display of force. We were so certain of it that we failed to accept the possibility that their tactics could adapt quickly. So while we were on the way home, our group got hit. 

We were in a truck, a big super cab Ford packed with people. I was in the back with three other guys to act as lookouts and guards, and out of the tall grass (pretty much all grass is, now) a pack of twenty or so of them rose up and swarmed us. We were just passing the intersection where a big set of apartment complexes looks out over the river valley. I've been there a few times, one of my friends used to live there. 

That's where I ran to when I fell out of the truck. I hit my left elbow on the pavement, tore it open pretty badly. The blood and the fact that I was easy prey made all of them focus on me. The truck took off as soon as it saw an opening in which it could speed up. Don't get mad that I was left behind--it is our standing order that groups must leave a person behind when confronted by overwhelming numbers. I can only imagine that my wife was screaming for them to stop, but I am glad they didn't. I can't imagine what I would do if she or the baby she's carrying were killed.