American Recovery

by Joshua Guess

  The zombies that came against the wall were almost all New Breed. We know they've been herding old school zombies into the county (or so our scouts report) and the assumption is that they're keeping them in reserve either as a surprise force to bring against us, or as a stockpile of food for the winter. Which is gross.

  Whatever the reason, the New Breed have been doing the attacking themselves over the last several days, but only in small groups. These guys look to be the slower and weaker New Breed, though. Some kind of culling in the ranks, maybe? Whatever the reason, I'm happy for it. I got to run to the wall and open fire right along with the rest of my response group today. Couple of the undead actually came close to cresting the wall close to me, too, when two zombies crouched with hands against it so a third could jump on their backs and get his fingers on the edge to climb up.

  I broke a knife blade off in that one's head. Not my best work and Pat is sure to yell at me for breaking one of his blades, but effective. I didn't feel a battle lust or anything like that. Just the same calm sense of necessity I felt when I pulled that trigger. In the equation that decides whether my actions are called for, protecting and serving my people always comes out as a win.

  It feels a little like going back in time, saying these things, like I'm Marty McFly or something and channeling my younger self. But I like it. Feels good to not be crushed by the fear of failure any more.

  Friday, October 5, 2012

  Old School

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Over the last few years there have been discussions among New Haven citizens about how to best expand. We've created and discarded plan after plan as circumstances change, but one constant that we've always seen as a necessity is taking over the abandoned schools not far from here. We've housed people there before but without a solid perimeter around them--a wall, in other words--we've felt it was too dangerous to keep any sizable population there.

  That has changed. With autumn making its way in and winter sure to come early and hard, we need to make room for the rest of our new arrivals. It's not an option any more. The good news is that most of the work is already done; the schools have had their windows reinforced or replaced to make them secure and they're stocked up with supplies. They're one of the places we use as a dump site for extra stuff we gather so there won't be a lack of candles, blankets, and the like.

  The rough part is going to be that lack of a wall. The football and baseball fields have fences around them and with the right effort can be made very secure. Since there's a small parking lot that houses a bunch of school buses, we'll start there. Using the buses to reinforce the football field's fence is step one in turning it into an enclosed area for farming in the spring.

  Ideally we'd like to construct a wall that connects the big island of land the three schools sit on to the rest of New Haven proper, but that just isn't feasible yet. Instead we're going to move people in fairly soon and focus on putting up just enough barriers to keep the buildings themselves secure. Using the walls of the schools themselves as part of the barrier will save us time and material and allow us to give at least a moderately sized space between them as a sort of courtyard.

  This will have the effect of creating a small community separate from us. They won't be in the social sense, but physically there will be uncovered ground in between. It's only a few hundred feet, but in an emergency that can matter a lot.

  That's the plan for the rest of the expansion. Between the grade school, middle school, and high school we could house somewhere around three or four thousand people. There's a lot of space. And that's a comfortable number. If need be we could squeeze in a whole lot more, though that probably wouldn't be a lot of fun.

  Which reminds me that I've been promising to tell you what the sections of New Haven will be called for the sake of easy reference. The original New Haven, made up from my old neighborhood, is designated as Central. The western expansion (made up of all the shipping containers) is West (duh).

  The annex used for farming is still going to be called the annex, the eastern expansion connected to it and sprawling east and south beyond it is called East. The schools don't yet have an official super-cool name of their own, but given they're to the east and we've already used that one, my guess is we'll just call them the schools or something like that. It's easy.

  I know, we didn't exactly shoot for the moon when naming things, but this way is simple and informative. My hope is that when the new waves of settlers make it here from the north we'll be set to put them to work. Without the possibility of much farming--though Jess has a few ideas on how to do some of that during the winter--we're hoping to utilize that huge workforce into salvaging enough materials to make headway on a much larger and more encompassing wall. Covering those few hundred feet is important to us. If we can't do it before winter, then at least we can try to get a head start on the project so it'll be an easy job come spring.

  That's all I have for today. I've been talking with Pat and Will about this all night. I need a good, long nap.

  Saturday, October 6, 2012

  Access Denied

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The first teams left out this morning to start the laborious process of clearing away any zombies from around the schools to cover the workers who'll be erecting the makeshift wall between the three of them. It's going to be a barrier of the roughest sort, mostly made up of abandoned vehicles and whatever materials are easily available. We've got enough experience with that kind of thing that it'll serve well enough even if it isn't very pretty.

  I volunteered to help with the effort. I'm good to go on the zombie-killing front. No shakes or doubts left in me. But Dodger and Will informed me together (I assume to make it harder to gravitate toward just one of them to be angry at) that I wasn't allowed to go. There are more than enough people to see to the job and my assistance isn't needed. My work is here, on the blog and putting together the longer and more detailed history for the masses.

  It was sobering to be told I couldn't go. At first I thought I was being coddled again, but Will explained that there was a lot of discussion on the council about this. Apparently a lot of people have expressed interest in reading an honest history of New Haven and the larger community of our new world.

  I guess what really struck me is that I'm not just being shunted into an easy job because my friends run this place and they want me safe. Keeping a history of our lives is seen as truly important and interesting, and no one comes close to my level of detailed knowledge.

  It's not just the facts I'm interested in. I know those and the ones I'm fuzzy on are easy enough to look up. I want to start including posts from other people with pieces of their stories. We've suffered a lot of setbacks and reversals in our fortunes since The Fall, but New Haven and the survivor community seem to have a trajectory that trends upward on the scale of hope. We have problems and there will always be threats, but the future looks a lot brighter now than it did even three months ago.

  That's why I want to tell bits and pieces of individual stories along with keeping track of our mutual experiences. Just as every person's life is a collected series of isolated events, so is our community's history composed of those separate parts that come together like a thousand notes to build a symphony.

  Which I'll start doing soon, but not today. Right now I'm going back to bed. I was excited because I thought I was going to fight today. I went to bed late and woke up early. I can barely keep my eyes open. At least I have the freedom to work whatever hours I like now. It makes taking naps a lot easier and much more guilt-free.

  Sunday, October 7, 2012

  Justified

  Posted by Josh Guess

  There's no way to say this gently, so I'll just lay it out there: yesterday a woman murdered a man. And she's not going to be punished for it. In fact, I almost wish we could give her a medal.

  I'm not going to use names out of respect for the privacy of all parties--the woman, who was a victim first, and the famil
y the man left behind. The long and short of what happened isn't a new story to the world. They were working together over at the middle school helping with the cleanup effort and things got very bad. The inner classrooms there haven't been touched since The Fall, only checked by our people during quick sweeps to make sure no undead were wandering about. They're dark and musty and need the junk in them hauled out. That's what was happening when the man began making unwanted advances.

  He didn't try to rape her, exactly. She says that he became very aggressive and pulled her close but that she rebuffed him sharply enough that he backed off. It says something about her that the lady kept working with him, though warily, I'm sure. She said she was worried that if she immediately left to speak to someone about him, he would have become more violent.

  During a break the man asked to be reassigned after claiming he was going to use the bathroom, which the woman only discovered after returning to their work site. Upon seeing a new person in the man's place, the woman went to the project leader and inquired about his whereabouts.

  So she tracked him down and found him doing the same thing to the girl he was working with there. His second attempted victim was seventeen and thin, but was putting up a good fight when the woman showed up. She pulled the man off the girl, earning a punch in the face which she repaid with a violent kick to the groin. As the fellow lay moaning on the ground, the woman drew her belt knife and slashed his throat, clean as that.

  Better than he deserved if you ask me. You didn't, but I'm sharing my opinion anyway.

  As a male I understand the incredible power hormones have over my gender. It's a hard thing to explain to people who don't experience the sensation of overwhelming need trying to wrest control of your brain. The thing is, most men learn to control it and not let that urge turn to violence. Because rape is about violence, as the old saw goes. It's never acceptable, full stop.

  In the world as it was, some estimates claimed that one in six women would suffer some form of sexual assault in their lifetimes. I hope the apparent enormous drop in that number (apparent because I'm afraid many women still may not report the deed, which would be tragic) has to do with how untamed and wild justice has become.

  Before, there existed a biased and slowly evolving legal system that made the victims of these kinds of crimes feel ostracized for bringing charges against their attackers. Not always--hell, maybe not even mostly--but enough that a meme existed in society that standing up and demanding justice was as good as painting yourself with a scarlet letter. That always pissed me off beyond comprehension.

  I hope that the way things are now help deal with that. There is no complicated legal structure. Sexual misconduct is one of those things that we as a community simply do not tolerate. If you do it, you face the consequences. In this case there were some factors that played into the man's actions, reasons for an escalation in his sexual frustration and advances. Not excuses, because no matter how bad things were at home, and they were, there is never an excuse for what he did.

  As far as everyone that has heard about this is concerned, there's no reason to even question the victims beyond simple fact-finding. Two women suffered hateful attacks by the same man. He signed his own death warrant. By leaving his corpse lying there while she took the girl to a safe place where she could be made comfortable, the woman was guilty of not piercing his brain to keep him from rising. Maybe she wanted to go back so she could kill him a second time. If so, she forgot.

  But she did leave him there, so I guess she's guilty of...what, littering, maybe?

  I really wanted to do my last post for this four-day cycle on something positive, but I couldn't leave this event untouched. There are very few instances of violence of any kind between citizens, and in general they're so minor that they don't even reach my attention for days after. This, however, is a big deal. And it should be noted for anyone out there who may find themselves fighting similar urges that the same consequences will be on you should you give in to that urge. Either at the hands of your victim or at the hands of the law.

  I need a day to get the awful texture of this out of my brain. I thought we were better people than this. I really had hoped this kind of behavior had been weeded out. I'm an idiot. Human nature is too stubborn, strong, and awful. The evidence of that is clear to see.

  Tuesday, October 9, 2012

  Deep Blue Need

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The worst thing about making detailed plans is that the more dominoes you line up, the more pieces and parts you have to organize to make something big and awesome happen, the easier it is for something to come in and knock the whole thing over.

  It has been very, very cold here the last few days. After cooking in our skins all summer long, we're not even a third the way into October and already we're getting frost. Kentucky has always had really strange weather, but this early cold snap is making everything harder. The zombies aren't being affected by the cold as much as we'd like, making defense of New Haven more difficult as well as hampering the last bit of repairs to the wall and buffer. Worse, our teams of people out at the schools are having to move about in near-freezing temperatures to fight the undead with little time to warm up and rest.

  The worst part of all is that we're in the south. Granted it isn't the far south, but we aren't getting it nearly as bad as North Jackson is. Which brings me to the bad news.

  The decision was made this morning to abandon our work on the schools for the time being. The effort required to make those buildings what we need them to be isn't overwhelming, but it would take longer than we have. The second wave was supposed to be coming this way in a matter of weeks. With the sudden, sharp turn toward winter conditions in the north, we have no choice but to bring in as many newcomers as possible, and quickly. Instead of jamming them into the schools which are single-story and dark (and will be until some modifications can be made to the windows) we're going to be turning our efforts to the local hospital.

  Which is conveniently right across the street from the schools. The awesome thing about the hospital is that the ground floor isn't all glass or anything. There are a lot of windows, yeah, but we can cover most of them in a day or so if we put our task force on it. Plus they're super heavy-duty glass, which means as long as we cover the lower parts that a zombie might attack, there is no good reason we can't leave the upper quarter of the ground floor windows unprotected. At ten feet off the ground they'll let in very little light but will be safe from attack. Better than nothing.

  It's a huge building and can hold a lot of people. We're not sure yet how it's all going to play out but our hope is to have it ready to go by the end of the week. We can't risk the next wave of settlers being snowed in up north. We have to move now.

  And one last thing I should mention about the hospital. This bit goes out to the Exiles.

  We caught the sniper you had camped out on the roof. He was watching our people for days, we know that based on the amount of trash we found in his little perch on top of the hospital. He is still alive. He didn't kill any of our people. Just watched. Maybe he was gathering information for you, maybe he's a plant to gain our trust or something. I don't have the slightest. I was told to mention it on here. You should know that we're desperate to get this project ready for our newcomers. No lies or subterfuge here. Just blunt honesty.

  If you want a reminder of what we'll do when desperate actions are our only choice, then keep on with this kind of thing. You know roughly when the newcomers will be here. There will be a lot of us and a lot of them, we'll all be armed, and you might be able to hurt us. Just remember if you choose that path that we've been known to...overreact when our citizens are attacked.

  Just saying, keep it in mind.

  ...As for me personally, I'm begging Will and the council to let me help out in some way with our work at the hospital. I mean, give me a hammer and nails, something! Don't just make me sit here and write about it. I don't need to do violence to do my part. I know it won't do a
ny good, suppose I'm just feeling a bit constrained by the rules and such. Not mad about it, either. I'm being given a lot of leeway to do this thing, and if that comes with some basic requirements I won't break the trust of the people who gave me this literally life-saving project.

  Doesn't mean I won't whine about it and hope for the best, though. Because all joking aside, weneed to get the hospital ready for action ASAP. All hands on deck, right?

  Wednesday, October 10, 2012

  By Example

  Posted by Josh Guess

  The more I observe the people I know, the more clear it becomes that they are simply better people than me. I don't say that with even a hint of anger or hate at myself, only a deep appreciation of how far my friends and family have come since The Fall.

  It's not that I haven't evolved with them, just that they've adapted better and faster than I have. I think most people have. Not something I'm ashamed of. That's just how it is.

  I know, this is all vague and boring, but I don't have a lot to talk about today. The truth is that I'm sitting here at the house with no news updates about what's going on outside because so many people are out working at the hospital that New Haven feels like a ghost town.

  Will is out, as are Jess and Patrick. Pat is missing a hand, and his skills with metalworking are critical--yet he's out there working with the rest of them. It makes sense, after all: there are a lot of little pieces of metalwork that have to be done to make the hospital habitable in the long-term. Pat has to do his thing.