by Guess, Joshua; Ribken, Annetta; Ayers, Rachel; Whitwam, Lori
Although I do want to tell everyone out there about Mason and the lessons he's giving a lot of people (including me) back at Jack's. Learning from someone like him is a whole education in Things I Don't Know. His skillset is immense, and he makes my ten years of martial arts look like nothing. I'm looking forward to telling you all about it.
Just not today. We're getting into some rural-ish areas, and my bars are fluctuating as I peck away at my phone to write this. I'll leave off here, and save Mason for another day, maybe tomorrow.
Be safe, and remember that the person you disagree with may be the man or woman in the trenches with you tomorrow. Remember what's important, and as my mom used to say, "Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff."
Her favorite quote, and especially apt now.
at 9:31 AM
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Upgrade
Posted by Gabrielle
Hey all, long time no see. Post. Whatever.
Josh and Jessica are still away. He called last night to let us know that their signals were getting weak and that they might lose contact. I decided that since I haven't been very active on the blog lately that I'd give you an update on what's been going on in the clinic and maybe a different perspective on how the people around here are dealing with losing Jack.
First--the clinic. A while back I talked about how we were looking for things to make it better. It's been a big task, finding and safely transporting equipment in the unpredictable and terrible weather we've had lately. The good news is, we've made big steps. There is now a fairly well stocked area of the clinic that houses an x-ray machine (digital, no old-school stuff here), several dialysis machines (along with a lot of supplies for them--we found an untouched dialysis clinic), enough materials to build a small but fully supplied operating room, and lots of other stuff.
The biggest problem was putting it all together without draining too much power from the grid here. We've got a pretty steady flow of patients for one thing or another, though thankfully the flood of them has tapered away over the last week. Keeping some of our equipment on and plugged in could mean the difference between life and death. So we had to work on a solution that wouldn't overtax the power.
As some of you might remember, one of the things that used to be made in this complex of factories was solar panels. Jack's has a lot of them hooked up, but the weaker sunlight in winter means less efficiency and less power. Not to mention that adding more of them, building the cases to hold them and running cable, etc, is pretty much impossible given the current weather conditions. We're running on the main power system right now, but we're still concerned that the breakers will blow if someone switches on a bank of lights elsewhere in the building. Remember that there is a machine shop and one or two presses working most of the time. That eats a lot of juice.
There are a few decent sized turbines left from the big spate of construction Jack's people went through last year, when they were stealing anything that could produce power. We talked to some of the engineers about setting up a wind turbine just for the clinic to take some of the load off of the main supply. They told us that the same problems with installing new solar panels would exist if we tried to build a new wind turbine.
That's a shame, because it's been windy as hell lately. We need the power, though...and someone came up with a pretty good idea: why not set up the core of the turbine indoors, in a frame, and make it person-powered? Exercise is good for people, especially during winter. We took that idea to the engineers, and they seemed to think that it would work. The guy I talked to went on about gear ratios and material stress. I tried to look interested, but my specialty is putting people together, not machines.
It's going to be a few days at least before we hear anything about that--they have to do all sorts of calculations before they can put anything together. That's fine with me, I don't want some big contraption coming apart while people are using it. A bunch of injured people would weaken us as a community, not to mention a stupid amount of extra work for me.
I have to admit, it has been strange seeing the natives of Jack's compound react to his death. Or, more accurately, not react to it. I saw something similar back at our own compound, but on a smaller scale and not as widespread. I get that people nowadays have to deal with grief quickly and then move on to the job at hand. We did that back home pretty well. The people here had their moment at Jack's funeral, and then nothing. No one talks about it. No one talks about him. It's as if by dying Jack became someone that never existed.
Most of my own people, the refugees from Kentucky and the folks we've gathered to us since we escaped, still call this place Jack's. Every time one of the natives hears me call it that, they react in the smallest way. A frown, a tiny expression of surprise. Some people work through their pain by thinking about it. Here, the trend seems to be ignoring and suppressing until the pain goes away.
I'm not judging. Please don't think that. We're at a point in our fight with mother nature and the zombies at the walls where none of us can afford to be judgmental about how others get through it. As I think about that sentence, I realize that Josh might be right--we have to think about the long term, and plan for what to do when the threats we face are lessened. I said we can't afford to be judgmental because of how bad things are...but should we become so just because the threats are gone? It's complicated to think about.
And I have work to do. Scraped knees and split knuckles won't just fix themselves! Well, I guess technically they do fix themselves, but they'll do it much better and faster if I'm there to give a helping hand. Besides, my lunch break is over.
Back when I was a nurse on the floor, passing meds and running flat-out most of the time, I rarely got a chance to stop and relax during my shifts. Lunches were unheard of. I guess in all the bad, you have to find little slivers to be thankful for, and that's one of mine. Meal breaks.
I'll write again when I have some news for you.
at 9:23 AM
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Glass House
Posted by Josh Guess
Jess and I are hunkered down right now in what used to be a rest area about a hundred and fifty miles away from Jack's. Our SUV's gas reserves are holding out well--we brought about a hundred extra gallons. We've been siphoning from anything we find anyway, just to be safe.
Thank god we decided to take a smaller SUV, and loaded it up so well with provisions and fuel. We only did it in the first place because we were worried that we might get stuck somewhere and have to leave the engine running to stay warm. It ended up being a godsend, because the extra capacity has given us the ability to stay our longer and look a little harder for things we might need.
We found some big caches of stuff, ranging from construction materials to a pretty large stock of fence, which we've been looking for pretty hard. The best find was a good sized town that was stripped bare of every scrap of food and valuables. Valuables under the old way of looking at things, not the way we look at them now. There wasn't any cash or jewelry to be found there, nor so much as a cracker. I guess you can chalk it up to the town being fairly isolated, but it seems like the people that looted it fled not long after, and no one stayed to try and hold their ground.
If they had, we wouldn't have run across what amounts to a treasure trove of materials. There's a small factory that made plumbing supplies: pipe, hoses, fittings, the whole nine yards. There's a huge distribution center for lumber that has more stacks of planks, boards, timbers, and sheets of plywood than any place I've ever seen. Best of all, there are several flatbed trucks that have diesel in them, which means we can get loads down to Jack's provided Jess and I can make it there.
It's a coin flip at the moment. Just in case we don't get out of here, I've sent detailed directions to all of the little caches of stuff we found over the last few days as well as a map to the town with the lumberyard.
We stopped at this rest area to try and contact Jack's. This places we've been ove
r the last two days have had zero cell service, and have been seemingly deserted by living people completely. The dead, however, seem to be numerous and omnipresent, which has made it slow going at times and difficult when one of us has to go to the bathroom.
A good number of rest areas around the country have emergency cell towers run by solar arrays. I've mentioned that before several times, but it never hurts to repeat information that can be so valuable for a person on the run. We stopped here because our phones started getting signals, and we were eager to stretch out and catch a nap somewhere (anywhere, really) that wasn't the cramped interior of our CR-V.
Lo and Behold, my friends and readers, it was a MIRACLE! Not only did we manage to climb in through an unlocked bathroom window, but the place was untouched. We broke into the vending machines and let me tell you: my first coke in months was like a bit of heaven. A little flat, and I didn't exactly search for an expiration date...but it was great. The snack machine still had some candy and chips in it, though we stuck with a few candies. We did check those for expiration dates. We weren't going to take too many risks...
We found a couch inside the tiny office where the rest area attendant presumably worked when they weren't up front. The car was locked and safe outside, the doors were all secured, and Jess and I snuggled up together at about five this morning to catch a few z's. When we woke up a while ago, there were zombies clustered around the place thickly enough that busting out some of the glass and running just isn't an option.
I don't know if we drew them here with the sound of our car crunching through the snow or what. I can hazard a guess that maybe a group of them were watching this place, a dim memory of motorists stopping here on a regular basis giving birth to the concept of an ambush. Sounds pretty smart. Which makes sense--there are smarties among the dead faces pressed against the heavy glass in the lobby. A lot of people ask how you can tell the difference just by looking at them; what makes the smarties stand out from their less intelligent brethren?
Your average zombie has that thousand yard stare coupled with the knitted brows of a hungry beast angrily searching for a meal. It wanders aimlessly until it finds prey, and then it gets focused. A smarty can and will hold back the base instinct to feed if it sees a need. Its mannerisms are more controlled and methodical: it watches you, trying to figure you out. Sort of like the way Velociraptors were described in Jurassic Park. You're being studied by a walking corpse when you look at a smarty. A dead body that has thoughts about you and the best way to catch you.
There are two pieces of information I will leave you with that seem important to pass on. I will let you decide if they matter or not. One is that the group that's currently putting a distressing amount of weight against the glass walls of the lobby are all covered in blood, and it looks fresh. They've been feeding. They're also covered in bits of fur, and a few have the mangled remains of what might be rabbits or squirrels in their hands. This group, anyway, has been doing what most zombies only do as a last resort--eat animals.
This concerns me for several reasons. One is that they must be desperate for nutrients indeed if they are going so far as to eat animals--I've talked about that before, how they seem reluctant to do it. The other is the fear that given how easily the zombie plague seems to mutate, animals will start to be affected by the plague if they get such intimate exposure.
The other piece of information I feel a need to share? There is one zombie in particular, one smarty, that seems especially intent on us. He's more alert than the others, his eyes almost human as he looks at me. He's watching me type on my phone as if he knows exactly what I'm doing. Every so often he raps a knuckle against the glass. I ignore him when he does this, though I do glance up without moving my head now and then, getting a look at him without letting him know I'm doing it. A few minutes ago, he slammed his hand into the window so hard that I couldn't stop my reaction--I looked up at him.
And he smiled at me.
You can imagine, it wasn't what I'd call a sunny grin. I've never seen the undead exhibit anything other than vacant stares or hungry rage. What I saw on his face might have been an instinctual reaction to my fear, but to me it seemed to be what it looked like: a joyous response to a predator that knows it has just frightened its prey to its core. A smile can mean so many things. I think this one means that there are depths to the smarties that we haven't considered.
That's something to think about.
at 11:32 AM
Friday, February 4, 2011
Thinking Inside The Box
Posted by Josh Guess
I don't know what kind of glass this place is made of, but it's a lot tougher than it looks. The zombies outside have been beating the hell out of it for most of the last day with rocks. There are scratches all over, but no spiderwebbing or cracks that I can see.
We haven't been able to get any sleep since yesterday. The sound of stone against glass has been constant and in this small space it rings like a church bell every time. I haven't seen that creepy smart zombie for a while. I'm hoping he's given up and moved on. I doubt it--the numbers outside don't seem smaller, which means he's probably around here somewhere, waiting in some dark corner to jump out and scare the shit out of me. That smile reminds me of a clown. I fucking hate clowns.
Jess and I are going to have to figure out a way to escape soon. There isn't any water here, and the soda in the machine isn't really a solution for thirst in anything but a short term sense. We need water, real water, and soon. We're used to dealing with hunger, and we can survive a long time without food. I'm hoping it doesn't get that bad, honestly. I've been thinking of ways to escape since yesterday morning. None of the options so far are very pleasant to think about, and all of them are stupid risky. We're going to work on it today, and decide something by tomorrow morning if the situation here doesn't change drastically before then.
Mason offered to lead a team up here to get us. I declined the offer (so far) because of two very important facts: the people at Jack's need him and his knowledge along with the training he's providing them. And, because while I can't get a solid count on how many zombies are out here, I am relatively sure that there are over a hundred. It would take a good sized team to distract that many of them, a much larger one to kill them. Which would risk every member of the team that did it. I'm just not willing to let so many people risk their lives for my wife and I.
I'm not being a self-sacrificing douchebag, here. I'm all about getting out of this and heading back to Jack's. I just look at the situation with the proper math, and it tells me that as long as we are safely locked in here, there is no need to risk others to get us out. Two aren't worth the lives of a dozen. Not even two people as fantastically good looking as Jess and I.
Mason didn't like it, really, but he agreed with me. He's so busy right now teaching SO many things to everyone at Jack's that he really doesn't have the time to come here. I mean, he could, certainly, but he's trying to cram a lifetime of skills and knowledge into a few months at best. He knows what happened to my people at the compound, and he's eager to help the people at Jack's (and we refugees) learn all they and we can in the hopes that such catastrophes can be avoided in the future. It's not perfect, of course--there's no way anyone can perfect any of the things that he's teaching in such a short time. He is giving people a good basic knowledge of a lot of things--woodland survival, urban and wilderness movement training (so you don't get caught), some down and dirty fighting techniques, how to make weapons out of just about anything...plus a wide strata of knowledge about all kinds of things--materials that are commonly found most places and how they can be utilized for survival, weapons, etc. The weakest parts of the human body and how to exploit them.
There's a LOT o stuff. There are people working with him to copy it all down to use as the basis for some manuals. Aaron is working especially closely with Mason to try and unify all of the different pieces of what he knows into one big, scary lesson on how to survive. How to kill.
A
nd damn it, how to be creative about it. That's important.
I talk a whole lot about "the world as it is" and "the world we now live in". It's a delineation that most of us make without thinking about it, but it's vital that we DO think about it. Right now we're like kids in a giant, zombie infested candy store: the world ended less than a year ago, and the corpse of society is still fresh enough that we can pick off the best parts. Gasoline is still around, metals are still plentiful. There are, as you read yesterday, still literally hundreds of tons of usable, cut wood to be taken. There's even canned food to be found, though it's starting to get a lot harder to do that.
We have to be creative to survive in the long term. We have to think around corners, outside of boxes, and be five steps ahead of our enemies. The situation Jess and I are in is proof of that--it's Darwin plain and simple. More, survivors have to start looking into the far future and start thinking about what problems will be ahead once the easy stockpiles of supplies, the useful but finite leftovers of a society that was, are gone.