by Joshua Guess
We're doing the same thing. Steel cable isn't that hard to find, and if we run out there are always power lines. Frankfort isn't a big city, but there are hundreds of miles of power lines we can cut down and use for just about anything we want. Imagine constructing a forest of raised lines around New Haven, six feet high and ten deep. There's easily enough material to do it, and that would make it very, very hard for the undead to get anywhere near us.
Sorry. Kind of a tangent there. What I'm getting at is the grid of steel cables in place around the expansion, in front of the prefab walls, is awesome. It's two feet high and effective. Our assault teams even drove a group of New Breed in to test it. Worked like a dream. The zombies didn't know how to deal with it at first, and the handful of people behind the net were able to pick them off easily.
That much was accomplished because yesterday the first wave of settlers arrived. I'm not talking about the relatively small groups of fifty to a hundred here and there. This group is huge--five hundred. And nearly half of them hopped off the huge fleet of vehicles to help pound stakes into the ground and string up the cable. Took about four hours, mainly because we marked off the locations for the stakes beforehand.
The trip here from North Jackson took them nearly thirty hours. The way between here and there is relatively safe and definitely well-traveled, but moving so many people at once was a logistical challenge. The solution wasn't anything terribly creative, to be honest. Maybe a fourth of the new arrivals came in smaller vehicles like cars, trucks, vans, and the like. Many semi-trucks came with them, most carrying raw materials. Our migrants have known for a long time they've been headed this way, and many of them have scoured Michigan and surrounding areas for anything useful to bring with them. North Jackson got first dibs on most of it, but they're very generous allies. Lucky for all of us that the abandoned United States is a veritable gold mine of useful things left laying around.
Most of the first wave came in...well, for lack of a better word, trains. Not on-the-rails trains (though we're trying to find a way to make that happen) but rather a thrown-together set of mass transport vehicles. They look like a very angry child smashed a bunch of toys together, but they work. It's a hell of a thing seeing a swarm of hundred-foot long trailers, buses, and semi-trailers filled with tightly packed masses of people just pull up at the front door and spill out a sea of humanity.
One of those damn things was just three long flatbeds hooked together, the beds protected by chain link fence. Glad it's been cool for the last two days.
The trip took so long because they moved at a snail's pace. The makeshift mass transit vehicles aren't the safest thing on the road, and no one wanted any accidents. Slow and steady wins the race and all those cliche sayings. Obviously I couldn't say anything about this group coming until they got here, so I'm sorry about that. But this has been a part of the plan for a while now, since the stuff with the Louisville folks was happening. It was a consideration when we made our choice, though not one we could talk about.
This group is mostly adults, with only about fifty kids in it. We asked that they weight the early big waves that way since we'll need as many able-bodied adults to help annex new areas as quickly as possible.
That work begins tomorrow. They did a lot yesterday, and need today to settle in a bit. So far I haven't heard any complaints about the accommodations but that might change once they realize more people will be joining them and crowding their houses soon. Hopefully my brother will have the first of the big communal living spaces done by then to lessen the burden.
I will say that after a fairly bleak few weeks, it's a wonderful breath of fresh air to see so many new and happy faces around. And they brought a lot of dogs. But that's tomorrow's post.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Red Rover
Posted by Josh Guess
I said at the end of my post yesterday that the first big wave of settlers brought dogs with them. A large number of them. Some of you out there don't keep dogs in your communities owing to difficulties in feeding them. Blessed as we are with a bounty of small furry creatures hereabouts, that isn't such a big problem. Many of our dogs--not the new ones, they need a few days to get used to this as 'home'--go hunting out in the wild on their own if we don't have the spare food to feed them.
Usually that isn't a problem. Our hunting parties bring in a lot of deer and smaller animals. Takes a while since they're ranging pretty far to allow the local population to recover, but we can feed a lot of people on just a few of them. Stew. It's a win.
The spare parts and even some whole animals get set aside for the dogs and cats (and even my ferrets.) For us, the effort is well worth the reward, and the additional fifty dogs that came with our new arrivals are already paying for themselves. Some dogs, like my own, stay inside New Haven but run around free. I've mentioned before that they're excellent zombie alert systems, catching the smell of active undead well before we can see them coming. Most of you know how batshit crazy that smell makes them, clawing at the walls to try to attack them.
For that reason we've shied away from bringing dogs outside very often. Some do patrol with scouts nearby, but we've always thought it was too dangerous for them. The pups might have a serious hate for zombies and try to take them down, but that doesn't mean the zombies can't hurt them.
Except the assault teams found a group of undead, New Breed at that, huddling in terror down a steep embankment as a much smaller group of wild dogs. We tried out unleashing (pun completely intended) some of our own dogs on groups of zombies, and presto!
Instant terror. The undead ran as fast as they could, and when the dogs caught them they fought back, but the pack of canines seriously messed up the undead in the process. We had already asked the new arrivals to bring their dogs if they had any. Our intention was to have them do the same for the new sections that we have our dogs do. Patrol and warn.
Instead, we're sending dogs out with the assault teams. Any edge we can use to scare away the undead is something we can't ignore. It's in the early stages right now, testing and perfecting, but eventually we hope to have dogs along with every group that leaves New Haven for any reason.
I should point out here that the assault teams have been doing an excellent job. The county is getting very sparsely populated, zombie-wise. They still drift in from different directions, but there's only so much creativity and adaptation the New Breed are capable of. As it turns out, a certain level of force (mixed with a lot of training and dedication) is enough to overcome their advantages. Slowly but surely our people are cleaning the area of major threats, which is all we hoped for when this began. I don't know what the long-term outlook might be, since there are likely still tens of millions of undead out there, but this little corner of the world is a lot safer than it was even a few weeks ago.
Frankly, we're almost at a manageable level as far as the zombie population goes. That is, a situation where we can deal with any new zombies showing up (discounting vast swarms, of course) with regular heavy patrols rather than the extended offensive campaign we're using right now. Our hope is that including dogs in the mix, making the undead feel primal fear, will help make this a place they want to avoid. We've had that before, and it's awesome. If we're successful, the expansion can accelerate.
If not, we'll figure something else out. Whatever the case my be, things are moving forward.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Cheers
Posted by Josh Guess
Today is a good day. Truly good. They've been hard to come by lately. Because this is a happy day, there are some things I'm saving for my next post. Right now I want to stay as positive as I can, while I can.
One entire section of the expansion is fully walled and defended. Those five hundred people can get a lot accomplished when the end result will keep them alive. For that many workers, the remaining tasks were small and relatively easy. Since the newcomers brought many more segments of prefab wall than we needed to finish out this p
art of the expansion, they started on the next one.
It's hard to imagine that we've managed so much this quickly. Well, we as in the old guard citizens of New Haven didn't actually do it. The prefab walls were cut and bolted together by North Jackson, mostly by the people migrating here. Most of the materials are theirs, too. They've been the driving force behind this huge change, and it was their ingenuity that made it possible to provide a safe place for them to live in such a short time.
So, after so many weeks of fighting and heartache and backbreaking labor, we're taking a day off. The assault teams get to stay home for the whole day. All work shifts are cut down to the bare minimum of people and changed every two hours so no one has to work more than that. We've got fresh game to cook up and a slew of new friends and citizens to meet and get to know.
Basically, we're having an epic barbecue today. And it's nice.
Sure, we've got patrols out. That's just common sense. But this morning Will and the council decided that putting off all other work for today was just the thing we all needed. We've made more progress than we could have hoped for, and it just feels like the right thing to do. The new arrivals busted ass as soon as they got here, and then worked when they were supposed to be acclimating. It's a good sign in new citizens, at least in my book.
In fact, the only reason I'm even writing a post today is to keep with my schedule. I've been a creature of habit all my life, and only the habits have changed with the end of the world. Not writing on a day I should be feels weird and wrong to me, like laughing during a sermon or seeing Luke Skywalker make out with his sister in the first Star Wars movie.
Well, maybe that's not the only reason.
I've been feeling the creeping edges of depression since the situation with Louisville got out of hand. I've got a handle on it--no worries for me, please--because I recognize the root cause. I'm very lucky that way, because many people affected by this problem don't have that option. They can only feel the anguish and suffer through it. I've been there, too.
It's not guilt. I don't feel that what we did was wrong. It's not rooted in anger, either. Just sadness at the waste of it all. Those were good people we killed, and there are still more good ones out there, many of them suffering and dying because their brethren wasted the small chance we gave them.
I don't expect the remnants of the Louisville crew to apologize, nor do I want them to. They've paid ten times over for any harm they caused. Instead, I want to say what's in my heart, what has been eating me up:
We did what we had to do. It was the necessary thing, but it wasn't the right thing. Today is a happy day for most people in New Haven, but I can't join them while this weighs me down.
We killed your friends and family to protect our own. I hate that it had to happen, and if any of you are reading this, please believe that I'm terribly sorry. Truly, deeply, infinitely sorry. I would give almost anything to wind back the clock and offer earlier and better help. Maybe take a larger risk.
I don't know that we could have done any differently. I just know that I had to say it. It hurts. Not just me, but a lot of people. I can't express the regret I feel. And yeah, I know that I'm probably just making myself feel better and not accomplishing any real good. There isn't much else I can do, though.
So I'll head back out and socialize. I'll crack open one of my brother's questionable home-brewed beers and be thankful for a day without zombies or marauders, and I'll toast to you. For your recovery and well-being, for survival and better days.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Broken
Posted by Josh Guess
This is Will Price. I need to share some bad news with you. I was chosen to write this post because the people closest to the situation are in no shape to do it. Even Kincaid is shaken, having spent so much time working with Josh lately.
First, let me say that Josh is still alive. I know as well as anyone that the first thing most of us think when we hear the phrase 'bad news' is that someone has died. But Josh isn't well. Not at all.
The other night when we had our big day off, Josh wrote a fairly emotional post. None of us knew how badly he was hurting. It was much worse than his words led us to believe. Throughout the day and into the evening, he made an effort to socialize. I could see how hard a time he was having keeping up his smile. He drank more and more as the day wore on. By nightfall he could barely walk, and somehow we lost track of him.
No one was worried then, not really. Some people dwell on bitter things when they drink, but...
We didn't know. Maybe we should have seen it. Maybe we could have helped.
When Jessica noticed he was gone she asked that I look for him. Patrick helped. We found him down the road from his house on the edge of the first expansion. There are places where the walls butt up against the shipping container that serves as a gate between the two sections. Josh was there, bottle in hand. More of them were on the ground, some of them broken. His feet were badly cut. He didn't seem to notice. Tears were streaming down his face, but he wasn't making a noise. He just stood there, half slumped against the corner, bare feet grinding into the shards littering the small patch of concrete under him.
He wouldn't talk to us. Even when Patrick and I picked him up and carried him to the clinic he stayed silent. I've seen men get stitches before, but Josh curled into the fetal position and didn't even flinch.
I was a soldier. In many ways I still am. I lead New Haven not because of ego, but from a desire to serve. Part of that service is seeing to the health and well-being of our citizens. Josh was the first citizen, he and his wife. Yet I do not know what I can do to help him. I have seen people in this state before. In the old days before the military began to truly integrate psychiatry into the service, they called it 'battlefield fatigue.' Later it was known as PTSD.
I stayed with him all night and well into the morning. I was there as he sobered up and began to realize how injured he was. What I didn't see was a spark of his old self. His eyes had the same desolate look as any shell-shocked infantryman. Trauma comes in many forms. Some of it is immediate, but sometimes it takes a thousand cuts to finally make the damage clear.
When I finally coaxed him into talking I began to see how deep it goes. He told me that for a long time now he has felt more and more empty, like all the little pains have been wearing him away inside. It makes sense. On the outside he seemed fine, but it only took one tiny crack in the exterior to shatter the facade.
There is no easy solution here. There may not be a solution at all. What we know, right now, is that one of our own is ill and that we care for our people when they need it. It isn't the new plague or the flu or whatever the Louisville people carry, but it's a sickness and an injury at the same time.
If he can recover from this, he will. We will dedicate whatever resources are needed to make sure that happens. On a practical level I couldn't make that promise for a large number of people, but Josh is one person. I have yet to hear anyone disagree. None of us would be here physically or be on the cusp of such a transformative moment without him. We owe him.
I personally owe him more than I will ever be able to repay. He stood by me when few others would. He trusted me when he had every reason not to. When I was shunned and hungry, he fed me.
He would argue against all those things, I have no doubt. But this is my decision to make and I'll deal with any potential problems as they come. We've had enough hard choices lately. I won't abandon a friend again.
From what I have been able to gather, this...breakdown involves many factors. His workload, his predisposition toward depression, the constant stress of his daily life. And the decisions. God, the terrible things we've all done. He made more stone-cold choices in the early days than any three people combined. What happens when a decent person is forced by circumstance to do evil things by necessity time and again? Even people farther down the moral scale begin to break apart.
I'm rambling. I apologize. This isn't easy for any of us and I am no
exception. It probably goes without saying, but Josh will not be posting for the near future. Kincaid is taking over the management of the assault teams and most of the blog responsibilities for now. The rest of Josh's work will be absorbed by others.
I should have seen it. I'm his friend, and he used to spend so much time with his friends. He used to talk about us on here all the time. He has become more isolated over time and we should have noticed. Almost all he talked about was current events and work and Jess. We missed him pulling away.
And now he's being watched around the clock, because it took this to make us realize we were about to lose him.