Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land (Book 3)

by Joshua Guess

  Those of us that are left now that the most extreme of the homesteaders have left are a pretty cohesive group. I once worried that the food problems would lead people to move against one another, cause strife and discord among the compound's citizens. Thankfully, I was wrong there. Maybe it was everyone seeing how our own children sacrificed for the safety of all, or perhaps we're just held together as a people by our compassion for each other, but I was wonderfully wrong.

  What's in a name? All those things. Every man, woman, and child who shared with someone in greater need despite their own hunger. Every person who stood their ground when the hordes came, who shed blood and sweat to defend our home in the face of overwhelming odds. Our name should say something as well about a person who fights against the odds, the hunger making her weak, to dedicate herself to making something that benefits all.

  You may be able to understand now why choosing a name is so difficult for us. We've been beaten terribly in the last few weeks, but we're alive. Gloriously, wonderfully alive. When a forest burns, for a time it may seem dead, defeated.

  But it's never long before shoots of green burst from the blackened floor, and a whole new forest grows.

  Friday, July 29, 2011

  Stone by Stone

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Yesterday I mentioned that Dave has something big planned if he can manage to bring it all together. I promised I'd tell you what it was, and since I have much to do, I'll make it short.

  He wants to build a wall. I know, seems redundant. We've got one of those already.

  No, Dave wants to make a permanent wall of stone and concrete around the compound. It's exactly as huge a project as it sounds, though to be fair it would only surround three sides of the original compound, since most of us live there now. The fourth wall would of course be the one that faces the annex, which itself is a barrier to us and the zombies outside.

  First, let me be clear: the idea isn't to make a perfect concrete structure, smooth and without flaw. There aren't enough materials for that, nor manpower to make it possible.

  Over the last year and a half, our people have scoured the county in search of food and medical supplies, but they've left untold amounts of materials behind, some marked for future use. Dave thinks it will be possible for us to build a wall of large stones piled between reinforced forms and filled with cement to hold it all together. Yeah, it's a big job, but the hardest part is going to be finding gas to power the vehicles so we can haul all that shit.

  Frankfort has a an abundance of stone just laying around. Even if there weren't a gravel and rock processing plant down by the river (and there is, and it's full of materials) there's still enough rock laying around to build our wall a dozen times. The plant has everything we need, even massive trucks to load and haul everything. We're just on the search for enough diesel fuel to make it happen.

  I don't expect it to get done quickly, though again Dave assures me I'm wrong there. He says that if we can manage to find forms, the trenches will act as footers for the new wall, and we'll be able to put up sections faster than they can dry. Just set up the forms, which will hopefully lock together easily, pour in stone, fill with cement, then repeat until the form is full.

  I'm oversimplifying this idea, but Dave is excited about it. Stone walls on the outside of our mostly wooden ones would create a narrow area between the two which would become a killing ground for any zombies that managed to get into it.

  Not to mention the fact that right now we can't start in on this. We've got to stabilize our food supply and work on producing trade goods as our top priorities. Dave wants to work on it as a side project, raising sections when he can over time. It might take him a year, but eventually...

  While I have to be realistic and think about how labor intensive the job will be, I'm glad to see him so excited about the project. He's got designs drawn out and alterations made to them already, ways to add catwalks and guard posts to the outer wall that doesn't even exist yet. It's that kind of frenetic drive to do something new and amazing for the community that keeps us from sinking into a pit of worry and fear. It might be a dream empty of any real possibility for all I know, but it gives hope and meaning to people.

  I can't complain about that.

  Saturday, July 30, 2011

  The Remnant

  Posted by Josh Guess

  After a long morning of meetings yesterday morning, I went out with Dave on a long scouting trip to look for materials for his proposed second wall. One of the perks of sending out so many people to hunt for food is that we're getting tons of reports of useful stuff being found. It doesn't hurt that the constant traffic away from the compound means easy travel as our people clear more and more of the roads.

  Our trip took us southwest, farther that direction than most of us have been since The Fall. Kentucky has a lot of towns tucked away so well they're almost impossible to see, and with grass everywhere growing unchecked, it's possible to miss entire roads. Luckily, some of our scouts are from Elizabethtown, and that's the direction we went.

  I won't bore you with the details, but I will say that I could kiss whoever it was in state government that requested some of the ethanol vehicles be trucks. The one we drove in had blessed air conditioning and a functional CD player, so I got to listen to music. That's a rarity for us. Granted, it was my brother's music, but I'll take what I can get.

  The trailer we were hauling behind us had some spare gas loaded on it, just in case we had to detour or make a run for it. Our goal was to get to a smallish town about ten miles short of E-town where our scouts and hunters had marked a large construction contractor's yard as a possible source of materials.

  Long story short, it was. The place was simply huge. I guess the company that used it did a lot of business, because Dave was like a kid in a candy store. We found steel forms to use for the wall, though only two sets of them, enough to do about twenty feet at a time. There was a lot of stuff there, but much was missing. Must have been several jobs going on when The Fall came.

  Best of all, they had their own diesel fuel on site. Nice portable hand pump hooked up to a rolling tank. About half full, and the thing could hold five hundred gallons. I didn't ask how much weight we could haul in the truck, and Dave was suspiciously tight-lipped about it.

  Since the tip had worked in our favor, Dave and I prowled the town in an attempt to find more diesel fuel. We're never without a trusty siphon.

  It was about twenty minutes into our search when we came across a zombie. The lack of them wasn't surprising, since most places empty of people also tend toward low populations of the undead. No, what caught me off guard was that the thing was standing in one spot, staring at a mural on the side of a wall.

  The paint was chipped and faded, the image old long before the zombie apocalypse hit us. It was of two children playing on a swing set, one pushing the other. Both of them were smiling, happy. I think it was an old advertisement.

  Dave and I watched for a minute, unseen as we'd ducked behind a hedge. Being on foot was dangerous, but we drew less attention that way. The zombie occasionally cocked his head to a different angle, then back. After two minutes, we were ready to leave. That was when the zombie did something strange.

  It bent at the knees and put its hands out, and mimed pushing, never looking away from the mural. I heard it let out a low keening sound, a sound so forlorn, so human, that it brought tears to my eyes.

  We run into zombies sometimes that do things like this, and it never fails to remind me of the harsh reality that these were once people. Some of them almost seem to remember that existence. It doesn't make it us hesitate to kill them, but it makes it harder on us to do it. These occasional remnants always seem to catch us off guard. No matter what they do to us, the hurt is fresh each time.

  Dave and I left it alone. What use in killing it? Its existence might be terrible for us to comprehend, but it clearly wasn't threatening anyone. Why risk ourselves to kill a being that was so obviously
saddened by the vague sense of what it had lost, yet took solace in the old pictures that reminded it of that life? Right or wrong, I leave it for you to judge.

  For us, it seemed too cruel.

  Monday, August 1, 2011

  Dawn Riders

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Wow.

  Jess came in about two hours ago and woke me, and in my half-sleeping state I couldn't tell if she was excited or if something was terribly wrong.

  There were several school buses of people waiting outside the compound's main gate. With them, two semi trucks and a fuel tanker. She gave me this news while I was pulling on clothes, and we ran as fast as we could to the gate.

  As it turns out, the people of North Jackson aren't done helping us out. Their community is strong and growing, flush with extra people and an abundance of materials. With several hundred folks without duties to draw on, they've managed to scour southern Michigan clean of just about everything useful.

  The soldiers that came down this way and eliminated the zombie swarm that nearly overran us in a blaze of coordinated gunfire had to take a detour on the way home. They took a trip through a small town whose only industrial center was a truck stop. A really big truck stop. There were two diesel tankers there, and they managed to siphon hundreds more gallons of fuel from abandoned trucks.

  Since they had the means, the leadership of North Jackson contacted the council to arrange a mission of mercy. They couldn't bring any food, as they're on tight rations themselves, but we've been doing okay in that area. Instead they brought people: engineers, workers, and soldiers to guard us. They want to help my brother build his wall. One of the trucks carried a stack of panels to make concrete forms with. Dave says this will allow us to set up forms for a hundred feet of wall at a time.

  That's fucking NUTS.

  With all the extra help, we can get this thing built fast. Maybe in a few weeks if the fuel holds out as we move materials here. Everyone here is excited.

  The only thing that bugs me is the fact that I was caught off guard by this. I would have thought someone would have mentioned it to me, since I...

  Well, I don't really do much in the way of my coordinating job anymore. My trainees have all graduated to fully capable of doing the job themselves, and I've been doing other things. I'm still a councilor, technically, but I bounce around the compound so much doing what I can to help everyone at least a little that I don't get to many meetings.

  I guess I've become obsolete. I'm strangely fine with this.

  Hmm.

  Tuesday, August 2, 2011

  Letters in Exile

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Today's post is, at best, ominous. I got an email from one of the exiled homesteaders. That they have access to computers with a functional internet connection is worrisome. I'm just going to post the contents here:

  Compound:

  We wanted to send you a message since we know you're all probably worried about us. We're alive, at least most of us. We lost fifteen people on the way to where we are now, but the rest of us are safe. We're doing very well, thanks so much for asking.

  Just letting you know we're still out here. Far away from home, but the place we're living in right now works. It has lots of things. Like trucks and fuel. Supplies, like food and clothes. Medicine, even. It also has weapons.

  It just doesn't feel like home. The compound, that was home.

  Exiles

  I changed the names, because they used specific names to greet us and end the email. I don't want to be accused of starting shit by naming names, so I just made them general.

  I'm worried about this as well as frustrated. We have guests here helping us work on the new wall, and the zombies are staying clear of the soldiers. None of us wants to take human lives if we can help it, and we're barely on the path to recovery from our last war. We don't have the resources or strength for another.

  I haven't got any idea where the exiles could have ended up, though the only places I can think of as well provisioned as the one they describe is a military installation. That's assuming they're telling the truth and not just trying to rattle us.

  Either way, exiles: thanks for giving us warning. The time where we become intimidated by threats is long gone. All you've done is remind us that some people will never stop being threats to others, regardless how much you try and help them out. We may not be at the top of our game at present, but we won't lay down for you or run, either.

  I've got hunting duty today, so I'm out. I'll keep everyone informed if I hear more about this.

  Wednesday, August 3, 2011

  Shell Shock

  Posted by Josh Guess

  This morning, our guests from North Jackson gave us a present. In all the activity and general business going on it was forgotten. Or maybe they just wanted to really surprise us by not handing it over straightaway.

  Bullets. Capital 'B'.

  We've been totally without any ammo for a few weeks, and the last of it was only for the big guns Will managed to get working. The soldiers that joined the community at North Jackson brought literally tons of supplies with them, but many of the higher-ranking among them had managed to stockpile ammunition in dumps around this part of the country as they traveled.

  You know, just in case.

  It was a little disturbing to see the joy in Jessica's eyes as she cradled a dozen boxes of ammunition for her rifle. It was like watching a mother cradle her child.

  Most of it is military issue stuff, which works well since we've got a shitload of military weapons lying around unused for lack of bullets. A few of our sentries armed themselves appropriately, and for the first time since the soldiers from NJ were here a few weeks ago, the crack of gunfire rang out. We are going to be rationing the ammo very strictly, but one or two shots at a group of zombies won't hurt.

  The interesting thing is, the zombies turned tail and ran at the sound. I guess the surviving locals have learned their lesson in that area. We've got a lot of rounds at our disposal now, but we aren't planning on wasting them. Even the few men who fired their guns this morning got a stern warning about it.

  The NJ soldiers also brought us thirty compound bows, really nice ones, complete with arrows. They've been using similar weapons to pick off the odd zombie as they stand guard over the folks working on the new wall. We'll have to get a group of folks together to screw the heads onto the shafts, but that's no problem. I mean, free stuff, right?

  It's funny, but even though we'll save the bullets for dire need, it's comforting to know we have them. I'd forgotten just how reassuring it can be to know there's real firepower at your disposal. I don't know what the future holds, what kind of trouble we'll face, but our confidence is slowly growing. We've been managing good hauls with hunting, stretching the food very far by making more giant batches of stew, and we're putting a little away each day.

  Things aren't rosy and wonderful, but they're getting better. I think that more than anything is interesting. I've gone back over the last few months' entries, and what I see is our story being told in flashes and still images, each one adding to the total to make a moving image. We struggle day by day, we scratch for every victory and hold on to them for dear life, but it's not some epic tale.

  It's life. Our collective experiences as we live them. I'd love to tell you that some miracle fell out of the sky and blessed us with endless plenty, but that's not true. We've had help from good men and women that risked a lot to do so, and we're thankful for that. The extra bodies around right now are a blessing, but they aren't a panacea. Long after our NJ friends have gone, we'll be dealing with hard times and nervously eyeing the horizon from our posts along the wall, ready for the next threat.

  The struggle can be overwhelming at times. I'm incredibly happy that we've got allies to help us through the toughest parts.

  Thursday, August 4, 2011

  Side Jobs

  Posted by Josh Guess

  I may not talk about it in great detail, b
ut most people around here have some kind of project going on that is somewhere between a hobby and an obsession. For some it's working on the compound itself, making sure things are in repair and functional. For others, like Will, it's an obsession for creating offensive and defensive ideas and strategies. Gabby, of course, has been digging deep into the realms of chemistry, herbalism, and medical technology. Many people have been inspired by that.

  Becky, who has been useful in a hundred ways but absent from the house because of that, has been working on her own project: homemade dynamite.

  If your stomach went cold as you read those words, that's okay. It's a sign that you've held on to your sanity.