Safety (One Eighteen: Migration Book 1)

by Christopher Wiig

The Barricade surrounds the entire town of Greenly. It's a reinforced fence built from the anything we could find, salvage, or tear down; topped with a mix of barbed and razor wire.

  Wood braces keep the makeshift walls from being toppled by excessive weight, and tall metal support posts dig deep into the soil at regular intervals, making it surprisingly sturdy. Six guard towers give Horace's Deputies a decent view of both the town and surrounding farmland.

  It's the about ugliest thing damn thing ever built, but works right down to the two gates (at either end of town.) It does a good job of keeping the zombies out, and unfortunately, the rest of us in. Leaving isn't allowed.

  Building The Barricade was a town effort. Every man, woman and child who could swing a hammer was out working in the July heat, with the Horace's Deputies standing on top of the houses providing defense. The young men used hunting rifles to off the various corpses that were drawn in by the noise of construction (though truthfully they mostly just got drunk and watched us do the real work.)

  It took two weeks for The Barricade to surround the entire town of Greenly. The lumber came from my store, the park gazebo, and a few beautiful homes that were unlucky enough to lack any living owners. The end result is something not unlike a prison wall, complete with high ground to shoot outward (or inward, I suppose.)

  The citizens were thrilled when the Barricade went up, our little town transformed into a castle with only two entrances or exits. We were safe. Well, relatively.

  Don't get me wrong, I was just as pleased as anyone when we got it finished. We needed to function as a town before we could move forward with anything else. It's just that I thought it was a temporary arrangement; a place to regroup before deciding what to do with ourselves.

  But the Greenlys built their keep and damn if they didn't plan to rule in it. As far as Jeb and Horace Greenly are concerned, the town on Greenly is the entire world.

  There was only one attempt to contact the outside world, and it was an absolute disaster.

  About a month after our Barricade was completed, we sent a scouting party to the closest town by road, Paradise Falls, South Dakota.

  For those of you who are behind on your "middle of nowhere geography" Paradise Falls is twenty miles west of us, and a world away if you can't use a car. It's a larger town, about twice the size of Greenly. We shared a common high school, bowling alley, and Walmart, all three of which provided important loitering opportunities to area teens.

  The scouting party was hand picked by Horace Greenly, consisting of some of our best fighters (and unfortunately for many of the teenagers in town, our best fathers.)

  We sent thirty armed men on the expedition, and only one returned. Poor Tom Watkins. He wandered into town frothing at the mouth and raving, covered in blood and clearly mad. His tongue had been severed, along with both of his hands.

  Tom was so violent he attacked the Deputies the moment he saw them, and they had to isolate him in the holding cells under the Civic Building (where they keep the people who wouldn't turn off their electronics when they stopped broadcasting the news and switched to "the murmur.")

  [The Murmur (Cliffs Notes Version.)

  The Murmer started when the change happened, and any device that could receive a signal started repeating it. It's an unsettling, warbling sound... not quite static, not quite speech. And listening to it is very bad. If you find yourself near a radio or television, turn it off as quickly as you can.

  People found next to a working radio or television became violent, or insane... or just different. Something in the transmission gets to people. How long it takes, or how it will manifest varies.

  What it is, we've not a clue about.

  If you've never had the pleasure of experiencing the murmur first hand, consider yourself lucky. That's all I care to say about it for tonight. To describe it is to remember it and it's truly unsettling to listen to.

  We've got about 15 people who are being "cared for" by the Deputies for various forms of insanity down in the cells. I've never been down there, Sarah goes weekly to visit her mother, and word is it's filthy, and with no running water and barely any light. It's more like a medieval dungeon than an organized jail. If there were still an Amnesty International, they'd be appalled.]

  Not that the conditions mattered much in Tom's case; he didn't last the night. Willy Fetch took him out and shot him in the back of the head after he attacked and killed one of the other lunatics.

  Tom Watkins was buried in his front yard. The grave became a make shift memorial to the entire group. They buried Tom, reason, and hope in the same grave, and to the best of my knowledge, none have risen again.

  After the Paradise Falls debacle, leaving the city became forbidden for everyone except for Horace Greenly's "Deputies," (a group of high school idiots jacked up on testosterone and energy drinks.) They carry hunting rifles and tin stars, and have standing orders to "keep the peace."

  They do this by loitering, misappropriating community resources and occasionally climbing one of the the makeshift watchtowers and shooting a few half frozen Dead Things. It's seems important to them to do this drunk, so as to waste as much ammunition as possible trying to kill Dead Things too far off to be a threat.

  Horace's logic behind using teenagers is supposedly to keep those of us with useful skills free to work for the good of the community, a fairly solid argument. Some days though, I worry he might be following the example of another law-and-order loving German and getting the kids around to his way of thinking early. Hell, even the Bible says "As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth."

  I was against the looting and hoarding along with everyone else in town; we were being both wasteful and miserly at the same time and it wasn't getting us anywhere. But Horace's cure is starting to look worse than the disease itself. The kids fear Horace and nothing else. They aren't lawmen. Well, they aren't men at all really; they're enforcers.

  A dangerous man doing right out of fear of another dangerous man scares me. A kid doing it scares me more. It won't be long before someone gets shot, by accident... or on purpose. Maybe that's me being hysterical, but I believe it.

  I will say though, they do continually seem to find food, even if they're rarely able to actually kill anything that wasn't already dead and shambling when they found it.

  Every time they leave the city to forage, they return with plenty; loads of canned food, supplies and medicine (that they immediately hand over to Horace.) The Deputies may not be hunters, but they've got the gathering part down.

  Now, I'm not saying it's all bad in Greenly. I realize I'm complaining a lot, and that's not entirely fair. If I had to guess how things are outside of Greenly right now, I'd have to assume we have it pretty damn good, actually. The town is safe.

  Our makeshift Barricade has held.

  Behind it we've got enough ammunition to make Charlton Heston jealous.

  (And that's not counting whatever personal stashes haven't been recorded, mine included. Everyone keeps some things private, knowing that their property can be taken by the Deputies if or when they so choose. Ammunition and guns are their favorites.)

  Yes, the Second Amendment is alive and well in Greenly, even if we've been lax on upholding the rest of the Bill of Rights. Our food supply is holding out well, more from a dearth of population than an abundance of food.

  I wouldn't go as far as to call it a thriving city, but I can't imagine there are many places in the world left where a man can walk the streets unarmed without fear of an army of hungry Dead Things running him down. We could do worse.

  We're surviving.

  It's getting dark, and I'm doing my best to ration my candles and lamp oil right now, so I'm going to cut things short since my eyes are already starting to get tired. I'd use a flashlight again if I didn't think the Deputies would smash it against a rock for being an instrument of evil.

  I'm getting careless about the gadgets.

  Tomorrow, I'll write more about the
months leading up to where I find myself, and hopefully touch on some plans for doing more than just surviving.

  I'm going to try to fall asleep now, and dream about a future where I don't have to wear a snowmobile suit and goose down parka to bed. Some place safe and warm and not here.

  I doubt my dreams will be pleasant. They never are.

  Once the first thaw breaks, I'll have some options again.

  I want to see for myself if we're the only ones left, or if the world is out there surviving, chugging away while we bury our heads in the sand, confident that we're the last people on the planet. Without radios, cellular phones, or the internet, how would we know?

  This one little town has become the whole world. I don't want to believe that this is all that's left of human innovation, culture and struggle.

  If it is, we're all in a lot of trouble.

  Hopefully tomorrow will be a lot fucking warmer,

  Jonas Waight

  Survivor

  Chapter 2:

  Dreams and Dreamers

  “Any kid will run any errand for you, if you ask at bedtime.”

  Red Skelton

  February 15th, 2008

  I'm using the flashlight tonight, small minded superstitions be damned.

  If you've never tried to write by candlelight, let me tell you that it's no small pain in the ass. Between the flickering inconstancy of the light and the shadow cast by your hand, it's nearly impossible to write legibly.

  (How people did this for several thousand years baffles me; the fact that I may have to do it for the rest of my life frightens me.)

  It can't be good for the eyes, either, and for some reason I suspect few optometrists survived the apocalypse (no offense to any eye-doctors who happen to read this, just working the odds.)

  If I want to get any serious journalism done after sundown, I need clear electric light. It's worth the risk, I'm finding the journaling really helps me organize my thoughts.

  I just need to be a little careful, and conserve batteries by trying to be as organized and concise (as possible in a journal of this nature.)

  News first.

  There was another attack today. It's been too cold for the Dead Things to move, and because of that we've gotten lax about security. Today Mensa candidate Steve Jarvis got up on his roof with a snow shovel in what would be his both his life's worst, and last, decision.

  So there's Steve, a couple shots of new potato moonshine in his system, up on his roof shoveling snow. My best guess is he was afraid his roof might cave. We'd had a bad snow and it might have put stress on the roof but in a city of empty homes this was a stupid risk.

  Anyway, that's my best guest. We'll never know for sure why he was up there, though, because Steve hit a patch of ice, slid off the roof and broke his neck. Nobody saw it, so a few moments later Steve got up, went inside his home, and killed his wife. From there, the two corpses went thundering through Greenly, charging anything that was alive.

  That's how it happens, basic multiplication:

  One kills one.

  Two dead.

  Those two kill two.

  Four dead.

  Those four kill four.

  Eight dead.

  Suddenly you've gone from an issue to a problem in ten minutes. It's like a chemical reaction. You have to stop it fast, or it'll go until it can't go anymore.

  (This time) Greenly got lucky.

  It was too cold for anyone but that idiot to be out so early. Most of us were asleep when the air-horn sounded, followed almost immediately by the all clear. The Deputies were learning about the attack at the same time it was already over.)

  Where were the Deputies during all this, you ask?

  Wandering outside of town, drinking and taking pot shots at the frozen Dead Things as far as we can tell. The Deputies learned about the attack at about the same time it was already over. They said they were hunting, but as I've said before that's more a euphemism for exploring and gathering and general dicking around..

  There are supposed to be at least two armed Deputies patrolling the streets at any given time. They've gotten lax. Most of the Dead Things are frozen, and we've got The Barricade, so they often just go up to one of the towers and sleep, or go exploring.

  So, there's Greenly, with all of it's brave defenders out drunk and playing in the snow, with two Dead Things roaming the streets.

  This could have been a major incident it it weren't for Alex Wilks, our town chef. Alex took Steve down with a revolver and meat cleaver, and probably would have been killed by Mrs. Jarvis, had Horace Greenly not waddled his ass out of the Sheriff's office at the absolute last minute, and picked her off with a rifle.

  Alex was not happy and according to the town gossip, he took a swing at Horace. The phrase "do your fucking job" was used, garnished with some rather inventive profanity. Then Horace fired back, (he's also a masterful swearer,) and it quickly devolved into a near fist-fight.

  The Deputies pulled Horace back, and Jackson Tate did his best to corral Alex. I think Horace would have thrown Alex in jail if he thought he could find someone to cook for a hundred and thirty people. (Well, a hundred twenty eight, now.)

  After forced apologies from both men, it was over.

  So I’ve been reading over what I wrote in my first journal entry, and it strikes my that I am making some pretty big assumptions here in expecting that whoever finds this will relate to or understand the things I'm talking about. What if this journal isn’t found for years, or even decades?

  (OK, decades may be a bit much. It's just a cheap notebook so I'm probably screwed when it comes to posterity.)

  But what if what's happening here is different than what's happening in other places? What if it's ONLY happening here. I guess I can't make any assumptions. So there are some things I should make clear.

  First, and most central: the dead are trying to kill the living.

  It's more complicated than that, but that is a fair thesis statement of the problem. I'm going to try to explain the specifics (or at least the ones I feel pretty certain about,) to the best of my ability.

  Take everything I write with a grain of salt. I'll try to sort speculation from fact wherever possible, but to be honest, most of this is going to be purely speculation and best guesses. We just don't know anything for sure yet.

  It all started back on June 13th, 2007.

  It happened in stages, first the Murmur, then the worse.

  Things that died began getting back up, and they started trying to kill everything around them that was still alive. We don't understand how it happens, and or why (though we've all got our pet theories), but everyone who’s lived through it so far can tell you the following:

  1) It happens to every living thing, and it happens every time.

  When something dies, it gets back up. Person, dog, squirrel, or those goddamned deer. Doesn’t matter, it’s coming back, and when it does it will use whatever weapons it has to end other lives; teeth, nails, or horns.

  2) It takes exactly one minute and eighteen seconds for a Dead Thing to get back up and become dangerous.

  This part really screws things up for those of us who like our answers neat and logical, because that doesn't make sense. The Dead Thing can be five pounds or five hundred. It can be dead from old age or buckshot. It can be male, female, young, old, warm-blooded, cold-blooded, or cut in two. It’s still always one minute and eighteen seconds.

  One eighteen – that's the number that the amateur numerologists chew on. You have 78 seconds after death before a dead person becomes a Dead Thing.

  3) It's not contagious.

  Being scratched or bitten will not, (as far as we can tell,) turn a living person. It's the function of death that's changed, not any sort of disease or infection. Dead Things can't infect the living, but they don't need to.

  They're perfectly capable of biting, scratching, punching and gouging. They aren't here to eat, they're here to kill, and killing accomplishes reproduction with remar
kable efficiency.

  4) The dead don't rest, but they don't last forever, either.

  The fresh ones are as fast as they were when they were alive, but over time their speed and agility deteriorates . I'm no biologist, but my guess is that their bodies just don't repair themselves.

  However they're moving, they're using whatever they have left until they fall apart. (Best guess.) They go as best they can for as long as they can.

  5) The Dead Things are not exactly smart and not exactly stupid.

  I don't think they have thoughts, but they seem to make basic decisions that help them reach their goals. They look for ways in. They don't attack things that are unreasonably larger than they are. Undead mice don't usually attack a person. They're working under some perimeters, and we're not exactly sure what they are.

  They don't run until they see something they want, they just drift and wander until they come across something alive, and then they charge it and try to destroy it as best they can. It's not intelligence or mindlessness, it's just simplicity. They don't think a lot because it doesn't seem like they CAN think a lot.

  (At least I HOPE they can't. The idea of friends and family trapped inside- nope. Not going to entertain that thought. It's counterproductive to not dying.)

  6) Sometimes they eat some of what they kill, sometimes they don't.

  If something is living within the proximity of their senses, they'll try to kill it. They won't stop till they have, or they've lost track of it. It's like they have a magnetic attraction to life.

  But they always stop attacking when their prey dies. The biting seems to be more about teeth being a good weapon than hunger. They seem to sense the transition from person to Dead Thing, and they don't attack their own. They don't cooperate with them either, but the biting stops when it becomes like them. The eating seems to be a convenient way to kill quickly; the biting leads to blood loss which leads to death.