With Spring Comes the Fall (33 page)

Besides, I'm pretty sure they could see me run like hell. They wasn't much chance of me getting snagged up by the truck since the horde was so close on my heels. I booked it to (crestview? I can't remember for sure what the place is called...) and tried to lose them between the buildings. There are some houses over there as well, and how lucky am I that a few zombies were already roaming around? 

I went the only direction I was sure they couldn't follow quickly. I made for the edge of the giant fucking cliff the whole place sits on. I vaguely remembered looking up from the river valley and seeing the place, noting that at the extreme edges of the neighborhood, the cliff softened slightly into hills. I made my way there as fast as my feet could take me. 

I didn't dare try to pull my pistol out and try to fire. I had lost my rifle when I fell out of the truck, and a knife wasn't going to do much good with no armor. 

It was nerve wracking to say the least, and the hunger of the clever zombies chasing me actually worked to my benefit. Several of them moved too fast chasing me down the incredibly steep terrain, and fell a few hundred feet. The rest were more careful and slow, allowing me to keep some space between us. 

When I made it to the bottom, I ran. I wasn't all that far from the fall back position we had just vacated, but there were some stragglers on the road I ended up on, so I went the other way. Unfortunately, the other way was into the closed off area of south Frankfort, and we had blasted out the bridges. There were undead on Louisville hill, so getting home that way was a no-go. 

I am in south Frankfort now, and it sucks. 

I am only a few miles from home, but until a big enough group can get down here and clear out the zombies that are beating on the walls of this place, I'm stuck. I know I am somewhere on the far side of capital ave. but not at all sure what street or block. All I know is I am stuck in a house with boarded up windows that I managed to get into as the zombies were chasing me, mainly because it looked like the best chance I had to survive long enough for rescue. 

I have already talked with people at the compound. They will be sending some people this way as soon as the move back home is done. Hopefully it won't take more than a day or two, because I skipped breakfast. But I understand the rationale perfectly, and I agree with it. 

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or, in my case, the one. 

Wow. This is making me want to watch the 'Star Trek' movies. 

Gonna try and nap now. Might lock myself in the basement or a room without windows. Those planks are rattling mighty hard...

Posted by Josh Guess at 
12:48 PM

Phone is almost dead. Still stuck in the basement of this damn house. I am really lucky that there aren't any windows, because the zombies would have gotten me in no time. But now I am well and truly stuck, for about the last twelve hours. I came down here yesterday to sleep, and right after I woke up they started to really try to come in here and get me.
I came beck into the basement because the zombies managed to bash in  some of the windows, plywood over them and all. I have reinforced the door that comes down here, but the house above me is packed. The folks back home told me that were sending a rescue party out, but now I am worried that they won't be able to find the place. I mean, the zombie horde outside was sort of a dead giveaway that a living person was in here.
Now, though, they are in the house. I don't know if enough of them are outside to make the place stand out. If not, I am in for a long and hungry wait, as they do a house to house search.
Ok, less than twenty percent power now. Going to wrap this up and save the rest of my battery for calls if I need them.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
5:28 PM
 

I have been rescued. Rejoice!

I have been home and left again. It took the teams a little while to draw the zombies away from the house I was staying in. They had to come in and clean out the stragglers. I spent last night in the arms of my wife after a very wonderful meal of rice and venison. One of the great things about living in Kentucky is that the population of white tail is so large that we used to have to hunt them as pests. Now that there isn't any out of season poaching, there is plenty of meat for patient folks with firearms. 

I had a lot of time to think while I was stuck alone. The onset of the zombie plague literally destroyed society in a matter of weeks, and for the first time I really had to ask myself: was that because the plague was so powerful, or because society was too weak? 

In the time that I was trapped in the house, before I went into the basement, I could see the top of the capitol building through a thin crack between boards over one of the windows. It's funny that I have lived here for twenty years, seen the place a thousand times, and yet in all that time I never really stopped to think about what that sprawling stone campus and all like it say about us as people. 

We were a society built on the idea of elected officials acting in our best interests, because we voted them into place. All of us know how that worked out. But I think even the most cynical of us was shocked at just how self serving almost everyone in the country proved to be when the fall hit us. Government collapsed, the armed forces collapsed, and it was pretty much every man for himself. Those bold facts lead me to believe that our previous government was, by and large, run by a group of people obsessed with their own public persona, rather than any sense of true public service. 

A great example of how this obsession and belief in their own perfection created a system of inflexible bureaucrats incapable of dealing with society in realistic terms, much less forces capable of destroying it: when I was young, I visited the capitol building with school. I was fascinated by the sheer size of it, the precision and detail with which the vast stones were fitted together. Never mind that it must have cost ludicrous sums of money to heat and cool, or that repairs to any of the granite and marble had to be done by men whose craft had become so rare as to cost more than many luxury cars for even simple work. What always stuck in my mind about that trip was when the tour guide walked the group over to an open door, and pointed to the middle hinge. She pointed out that the hinge was missing a screw, and had been for about a week. With a charismatic and simple smile, she informed us that by law, all pieces and parts of the building had to be exact copies of the originals. Every desk and chair, every nail and bolt, had to be individually ordered made from scratch to meet the specification of the old part, despite the fact that the old ones were created in a time where electricity had yet to make its way to this part of the country. 

Can you imagine the cost over the long term? What waste, and what hubris. 

So for the last hour or so, after a few days thinking hard about what we need to leave behind us as a people, and a longer night at home remembering all the good things our government did for us, I have been systematically dismantling things in the capitol building. Doors, desks, chairs. Anything we can use, anything that can be made a part of the great machine that is our small but growing community, we are taking. Maybe some day we will use this building for its intended purpose, as a seat of government. When and if that day comes, I truly hope that we can do the same good that our previous democracy was capable of, while keeping an open mind and a ready memory of the bad that we not repeat those mistakes.

I sincerely hope that someday, we will have the need for a large representational government again. I believe in the power of democracy, and I yearn for the safety and population that will both allow and require it. Truly, I miss what we had. But this is our chance to revise the errors we once adhered to with all the conviction of young priests to the dogmas.

Until that day comes, we will cannibalize what we need from here, and this place will be an empty tomb memorializing the idealists who built our nation, and standing as a warning to us of the egotists who corrupted that vision. 

I believe that the time will come when we can take the words of the founding fathers as they were meant: as basic guides for government and society. Jefferson himself believed that society would have to evolve and change, that only a self-correcting and progressive system of governance could survive long term. I will leave you with that quote:

 
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment... laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times.... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Posted by Josh Guess at 
10:13 AM

Work work work work.
We're doing nothing else but working on the wall, finishing it up and adding to it. Every single person we have is doing it, except for a few off duty folks who are either pregnant or injured. They are working to make food round the clock so we can work three shifts.
Jack sent a bunch of trucks full of advance units of wall section along with fifty people to help install them. Jack is giving us a big hand here, and surely part of it is that if we all die, one of the bigger sources of their food will dry up.
We've repulsed a few small attacks while we've been working, nothing we couldn't handle. All of us are on the razor's edge of wrath, tired as hell of having to constantly be on the alert. We have been extremely brutal and quick about taking them out...
I need to finish my lunch and get back to the wall. But we will finish the wall in a few days. The framework was the hardest part, but we have been working on that for months. This is it. Soon, we will be able to relax for the first time since all of this began.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
11:12 AM

We're almost done with the walls. Pretty much everyone is falling over with exhaustion. We've burned a lot of fuel using some of our big machines to move large sections quickly. We decided to do this because of the risk we run while exposed. I would rather be safe and low on diesel than dead with full reserves.
We used a lot of those old heavy wood doors from the capital for reinforcement all over the wall. Pretty much every square foot outside the wall is studded with stakes and pits.
It's funny how any time we feel in the least secure, we begin to argue and debate among us. We endlessly discuss every aspect of our lives and our society, and it's only when we are faced with a clear and unifying threat that we let all of that fall away. When it really counts, we band together.
I say this because there is already some serious talk along the wall as people work about changing the way things are run. Some folks think that the leadership is too close knit and from too small a group of people. Given that I was the one that started this place with my friends and family, I tend to think that you give credit to the people that have made the right calls and kept you alive. But that's me. I won't argue if folks around here choose to elect new leadership democratically. That's their right, and one I truly believe in.
But I will definitely be cautious of any changes. I won't blindly follow someone who clearly has no idea what leadership is. I won't waste my effort working for a person that is obsessed with their own ideas over the good of the group. I have been that guy. I know the follies.
My problem is that the dangers are just too real for me to be comfortable with people running this place that aren't already doing it. The council is mostly made up of folks who have been around here pretty much from the start, when the zombies still walked all over us on a regular basis and other survivors made war on us daily.
The problem about a purely democratic society is that when the masses imbue one person or a small group with a tremendous amount of power, they tend to overuse that power at times. The way things are now seem pretty minimalist in terms of rules and governance, and most of us would like to keep it that way. But of course, you always have people who think there is a better way, a way that no one has considered.
And there might be, I admit it. But given the mortality rates in this town, I think that we have done about as good a job as could be hoped for. Defensible fortress. Organized community and government. Plentiful food.
Survival.
I mean, what more can you ask for? It is because of that small group of people that we have communications with the outside world (or what's let of it anyway), why we have solar and wind power (and plans for more renewable energy down the road) for our lights...I just don't see what rocking the boat could do to improve our lot. But I am open to change if I can be convinced it's for the better.
Got off on a tangent there, sorry. But since all we are doing is zombie-proofing the compound, not much else to write about but my random thoughts. Sue me.
Ha. No lawyers. One advantage of society falling.
Done with lunch, back to work now...