by Guess, Joshua; Ribken, Annetta; Ayers, Rachel; Whitwam, Lori
Or maybe not. Just got word from one of the kids that there's some people approaching our group.
Oh hell, I have to go, if you guys don't hear from me in the next couple of days, don't worry. We're safe.
at 4:43 PM
Monday, January 3, 2011
Secret Ingredient
Posted by Josh Guess
You'll have to forgive me if this post is a little sloppy and short. I'm not quite a hundred percent yet. See, a bunch of us were apparently poisoned.
It turns out that one of the people that came here last week to get treatment was actually one of the Richmond soldiers. We know this because he left us a damn note after he put something in the food to make us wish we had died. Not to actually kill us, you understand, but affect us just enough to let everyone here know we can still be targeted, and in ways we might never expect.
Thankfully the food he tampered with didn't get everyone. The people that were on sentry duty didn't eat, obviously, nor did most of the medical personnel since they were also working.
I hate being sick, and whatever he put in the stew did its job very well. Vomiting, fever, the runs, coughing...the whole flu experience compressed into a few days. It still feels like my head is going to roll off my shoulders and hit the floor.
At any rate, I don't have much else in me at the moment. We're OK if miserable, and even with a third of our numbers out of commission we've been pretty safe from the zombies ambling around outside, holed up as we are in the hospital...
Back tomorrow. I've only been up an hour, but I need a nap.
at 11:44 AM
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
P.O.W.
Posted by Josh Guess
I'm still recovering, but I wanted to update you all on the situation around here.
We've been sieged with constant, if small, groups of zombies. There hasn't been a lot of traffic in or out of here since we were poisoned until this morning. Gabby and Evans tell us that those of us who ate the tainted food should be OK since we're all getting better. I think that the idea wasn't to kill us, but only to drive home the point that we're vulnerable, that we can be reached and hurt by the Richmond soldiers if they want to.
It's a pretty clear message. Fortune has smiled on us, in that we are going to be able to send a message right back to them.
See, the guy who poisoned us ran. We didn't plan on trying to find him. I mean, with the zombies beating at the walls of the hospital and the weather taking a turn for the worse, not to mention the chaos created by two dozen deathly ill people, who would? Fate or coincidence or whatever you want to call it can be a cruel and hateful bitch at times, as our lives since March have shown.
Sometimes, though, she can hand you a gift-wrapped present, free of charge.
A carload of people were heading this way yesterday, and ended up colliding with the vehicle our escaped poisoner was driving. Not by accident, either--we sent out a lot of emails and calls describing his car, to warn anyone out and about to keep clear of him. The folks that hit him were given the heads up by whoever pointed them our way, and when they saw his car, they pushed him off the road.
And fought him to the ground. Tied him up. Brought him back here. Oh, yeah.
We've got a prisoner, and we intend to learn as much as we can from him before we send him back to the compound. Don't be surprised by that; he didn't kill any of us, so we aren't going to kill him. Not that the idea didn't get tossed around. We're going to send him back home in a few days, alive.
This is a golden opportunity for us to get a different perspective on what's going on inside the compound. We'll have a chance to get the viewpoint of one of the soldiers who took our home from us. We've set aside the urge for vengeance in favor of gathering intelligence. If we want to stay ahead of our enemies, stay alive, it's crucial that we know as much about them as possible.
I'll tell myself that every time I run to the bathroom, shitting my guts out from whatever it was he put in my food. Which I do about thirty times a day. I'm drinking about two gallons of water a day just to stay hydrated, which puts a dent in our water supplies since several dozen of us are having to do it. We've got reserves, and the weather lately has been generous with rain, and there's always creeks and whatnot...but it takes a lot of effort to do all of that, and this bastard has cost us that effort, and the time it takes.
It'll be weeks before any of us are back to full strength. Used to be that when you got sick, you had reserves of fat to draw on when you got better, general good health and decent living conditions. We've all been losing weight since The Fall began, our various injuries and illnesses taking their toll on us. Not to mention this hospital isn't heated since we can't afford to waste the propane it would take to run the generator that hard. We live in a building that's constantly fifty degrees on the inside, and that's just not helpful to getting better.
I'm off to ask some questions. I'm sort of worried that some of the Richmond soldiers might have gotten hold of Aaron--I've lost touch with him in the last day. Anything could have happened, of course, even just his phone losing signal, but the current situation makes my mind lean towards the bad guys by default.
Can't forget my crowbar. Those always help when trying to pry the truth from reluctant lips...
at 10:43 AM
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Spent
Posted by Josh Guess
The situation here is bad. Very bad.
Some might say dire, but those people are probably already dead from The Fall itself, having been unable to manage the rare achievement of surviving the apocalypse when it tore through society like lightning.
Early yesterday morning we sent out a small group of scouts to search for signs of any large swarms of zombies. They were back in less than fifteen minutes with extremely shitty news: a crowd of at least a thousand was heading our way. We didn't even bother trying to set up a defense inside the walls of the attached parking lot; we just locked ourselves in and double checked the barricades. Oh, and hoped. We hoped very hard.
In the wait before the swarm could get to us I sent out call after call, shot emails to people, and generally did everything I could to all of the folks headed this way to warn them off. I even contacted Google to make sure they warned the courier carrying the copies of the Ark to stay away if he was anywhere near, though I strongly doubt he could be this early in his trip.
Long story short? Messages received. Patrick and Aaron's group were the only ones to not eventually get back to me, and I desperately hope that they were holed up somewhere safe and not anywhere close to here in hopes of getting in.
The attack went badly from start to finish. We had a lot of ammo here, or at least a lot for the way we fight. Our philosophy is to conserve as much as possible, the way my survival instructors (bless them for having such a dim student but trying anyway) taught me. Primarily we have used our firearms as long-range weapons and backups in close combat, instead relying on edged weapons, crowbars, makeshift clubs, and the like.
We really didn't have a lot of options when the swarm hit the wall of the parking lot, zombies trampling their own kind and piling up until the back ranks could just walk to the top of the wall. Not to mention the hundreds beating on the barricaded and boarded windows on the ground floor of the hospital, few as they are. We started picking off those that we could, Jess up on the roof using her rifle along with others who had long guns. The rest of us, including those with shotguns, used the windows on the second floor as our firing platforms. I hung halfway out of one for most of an hour, a kid reloading my magazines for me and handing them up. It was insanely difficult to fire accurately that way for me. I'm right handed but have a dominant left eye for sighting when I shoot, so I have to angle my head sharply to even get the ironsights to line up.
That was pretty stressful. I pretty much stuck to firing at the ones coming over the wall, and I tried to take headshots whenever one of them came over the section closest to me. The sad truth is that wi
th the number that got over and into the parking lot, it was only a matter of time before they beat their way through the heavy stuff we put in front of the doors. Most of us using handguns decided to get down to the ground floor and set up a killzone there before that happened.
When the inevitable happened, every single person with a firearms was needed.
We formed lines in a V shape near the door, the point of the V away from the doorway. The front row of us (myself included) were kneeling, a helper behind us reloading our magazines and speedloaders. Behind them, riflemen and women stood, popping off shots and aiming at distant zombies through the shattered remains of the door.
It actually worked out a lot better than we'd hoped for. There didn't have to be a lot of us in the V at one time. It took the zombies a while to get in, which gave us a bit of time to set up a sequence for us to fire in so that no one wasted bullets. The undead had to fight the heavy vending machines and other junk we'd piled in front of the door out of the way. Then when they crowded the way in, we let loose with a salvo to drop as many of them in one place as possible.
For a while it was a simple matter of people on the right of the V firing at the right side of the double doors, and those on the left shooting at the left. In order according to the simple sequence we'd put together. It was simple to maintain that, and it took the zombies time to move the still bodies of their fallen out of the way enough to get in.
It went that way for a while. Pile up dead zombies, watch as zombies became visible and tried to move them, pick off the movers to make the pile bigger. We were methodical, thorough, and calm, at least on the outside. Those that weren't actively in lines patrolled around the rest of the ground floor, making sure no breaches popped up. The main door to the parking lot was our big worry, since that was the one portal to the outside we used, and we hadn't taken the herculean efforts to keep it closed that we had on the rest of the building.
No breaches. But the swarm pushed us to our limits; it was only the narrow entryway combined with coordinated effort that kept us from breaking and getting slaughtered. Bless my firearms instructor (my brother David) for helping me to learn my favored shooting stance, for teaching me the right way to hold my arms. And bless all the people with me for keeping cool heads during an attack that, by all rights, should have killed us.
We managed to stay alive. We took down a LOT of zombies. My .40 caliber Glock 27 has been my constant companion right along with my wife, and it performed beautifully yesterday.
But guns are just clunky rocks without bullets. And we're out.
Not totally. We've got a few left for the odd small caliber weapons here and there, a handful of deer slugs for a couple shotguns. Jess has five rounds left for her 30.06. That's about it.Thank god we were using old ammo that came boxed, and not the homemade rounds. I've been told that using hard cast bullets would eventually cause my Glock to go...boom. We went through virtually every round we had, though the constant hail of gunfire was apparently enough to send the remains of that swarm away looking for an easier meal. Or maybe it's the smell of zombies made finally dead that overpowers their hunger in situations like this. I don't know. Never did figure that out.
Because we have no other choice, we're leaving. Not in a few days or when we get a chance. Before lunch. We knew there were circumstances that might make us leave, and this is one of them. We can't defend this place against a similar attack again and hope to survive it, so we're heading out for our next destination. Where we're headed, I'm not worried about not having much ammunition. We've got some locals (Well, they live within an hour of here, anyway) willing to shepherd us out of the area in return for what will be left of the medical supplies here after we take what we need. It isn't great, but we planned for it.
Oh, and sometime during the attack, the soldier we had tied up got himself loose and escaped. We managed to interrogate him before he got away, but the information he gave us was virtually worthless. Given the state we left him in, I doubt he'll get far. I don't really care if he does get back to the compound at this point. We'll be gone for a new location before he gets halfway there.
He's on foot. Since he didn't want to respond to us asking nicely, we had to take very drastic measures. When I say he's on foot, I mean it in the most singular way possible. We tossed the one Evans cut off him out into the parking lot. Guess a zombie ate it.
Time to finish packing, load up the dogs, and hit the highway for a while.
at 9:43 AM
Friday, January 7, 2011
A Pause
Posted by Josh Guess
Posting this from the road, though we aren't moving at present. There's been a flat tire up the way in our gigantic convoy, so we've got a bit of a break at the moment.
Fuel is going to be a problem. We are probably going to have to stop somewhere soon and try to siphon what we can from parked cars, because we're getting low on what's in our tanks and all our extra cans are empty. Other than logistical problems, our trip away from the hospital has been uneventful. No raiders out on the roads, and few enough zombies that we didn't bat an eye at driving right through the ones we did see.
We're OK on food and water. Rationing has been a part of our lives for so long that none of us even really notice the hunger pangs anymore. It helps that when we stopped last night to camp, Jess was able to take down a buck. Only took her about twenty minutes, which was surprising. And she did it with one of the bows we brought instead of wasting one of her last bullets. Lucky for us that this part of the country is a lot like Kentucky in that it's swarming with whitetail, more so since The Fall and the decimation of the majority of hunters. If it weren't for survivors thinning the numbers, I'm sure that there would be so many deer that we'd be stepping on them to get into our tents.
None of us are happy about leaving the hospital. It was a great location with a lot of positives to it, but knowing that our prisoner found us in the first place was reason enough to leave. Add to that his escape and our spent ammunition stores, and it was just a disaster waiting to happen. Leaving was the only sane choice.
Luckily, Gabby and the other medical folks built up a lot of good will in their time at the hospital. There are people as far as two hundred miles toward where we're going who are willing to let us camp on their land or know a safe place. One of them even has a big hoard of fuel he's willing to let us trade for, though he's far enough away that we'll have to find gas soon to have a chance at getting to him.
Not much else to report at the moment. We're about a hundred miles away from the hospital, and if we can avoid accidents and any more flat tires, we can be there by night time tomorrow. It's a long drive, and we're out of the way of the major highways that lead to it, but in the end it will be worth the trip, I guarantee.
For now, I have to go. Looks like snow coming in, and while we're stopped I want to check to make sure the tire chains are where they're supposed to be. If the snow gets bad, we can always camp, but I would prefer to be closer to our goal than we are right now...
at 8:49 AM
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Public Opinion
Posted by Josh Guess
We're not very far from our destination, but we've called a halt for a while. We would be getting there several hours early, but we have to stop yet again to pull one of our convoy from a ditch and to look for some fuel. With the insanely cold winds, we're having to run our heaters at full blast to keep from freezing inside our cars. It eats fuel, and the cold hurts our fuel efficiency as well.
I've been trying my best to keep in touch with people every chance I get, to make sure everyone who's outside the compound and headed in the same direction we are is OK during their travels. Patrick is still missing in action along with the kids he picked up in Florida, no word from him in a long while. I keep sending him text messages letting him know what's going on with us, so hopefully he'll get them at some point and meet us at our destination.
Aaron and his kids are still out of contact as we
ll. It worries me, but I know they will get in touch when they can...
Courtney and the big group with her is still trucking along, but now they're done with their relief efforts and heading toward us. It's been a long and fruitful trip for them, and they will be bringing with them much in the way of supplies and food. More on that in a minute. First, some news.
Dodger and Jamie Packard have been trying to gather up as many refugees from the compound as possible. Both of their groups were helping, and now they're done. Except for those named above and my group, every other refugee from the compound is now with them. They, too, are heading to the rendezvous point we discussed, and with any luck sometime in the very near future every refugee will be together. The email I got from Dodger detailing his and Jamie's efforts to gather and transport everyone was interesting, I might pass it along tomorrow, or at least summarize for you.
If you're looking for a complete list of the people who got out, sorry for you. I don't know most of them by name, and those that I do know have asked me not to use their names. The folks that don't mind have already been named--Me, Jess, Patrick, Courtney and her bunch, Evans, Gabby and her family, Phil and his, Dodger, Jamie...maybe a few others. I wish that I could add more names to that list. Rachel is still, as far as I know, at the compound. Al and Elizabeth are there, and a few others that I haven't mentioned in a while. Too many left behind in the panic to avoid conflict. Too many away from home because of Will Price's speed in selling us out.