American Recovery

by Joshua Guess

  We’ve been called cowards for staying in our bunker. We used tools to survive the same as everyone else did. We had the option of a safe, secure location and we used it. That does not make our survival less than yours and it does not make us cowards. We’ve been called arrogant for declaring ourselves the legitimate government of this still-great nation. That is not arrogance. Our population includes lawfully and democratically elected officials. We were chosen to lead by you in free elections and we will not shirk our responsibility simply because the world has grown dangerous. That truly would be cowardly. We sent our declaration as a way to foster calm, to inform that this time of anarchy has passed. Yet it has been labeled entitlement. It is not entitlement for a doctor to state that he will treat patients. We are bureaucrats. We can create infrastructure and policy. It is our skill the same as your blacksmiths and sharpshooters. And you would wave us away and deny our worth? Truth be told I thought people would welcome the government’s declaration, would welcome the call to normalcy and to rebuilding this nation. I thought people would want the UAS to take over the infrastructure and the rule of law, allowing you to focus on the skills you’ve developed: farming, crafting, defense. But instead the UAS been maligned and declared impotent. We make overtures of medical care to show that we can in fact create this infrastructure, that we can rebuild, that we can care for all our people. And what is the response? Implications that we were involved in atrocities. How dare all of you frighten needy people away from needed medical care because of your own prejudice against us.

  I’ve written far too much and do apologize. Not all us bureaucrats are demagogues after all. But I could not allow the insults against the UAS to go continually unanswered. The United American Survivors are here to aid because that is our duty as the lawfully elected government of this nation. And we will continue to carry out that duty even when insulted and maligned. God bless all survivors across this still-great nation. Out of the many, we are one."

  The second comment was posted in response to "Cleaning House", and while I consider it well-written and thoughtful, just as the firs one was, it's also kind of funny and dirty. I can't help but be reminded of me. This one is pretty long:

  "The powers that be in the UAS didn’t mind me posting before to defend our government and have told me that I may continue to do so at my own discretion. They did say that they felt my efforts were useless, that people’s prejudices would blind them to such an extent that they won’t be able to see us as anything but cartoon villains. Personally I have more faith in what remains of humanity. Incidentally, it was mentioned that my defenses mean nothing because I don’t speak for or create UAS policy. I would respond that if you only want to listen to policy creators, then why are you on this blog? Josh doesn’t create New Haven policy, but his opinions are valid. My opinions and defenses are just as valid. Also, I don’t need your approval.

  I’m not going to address the kidnapping of our citizens as I’m not privy to what occurred to drive our people off course and into your territory. I’d imagine they were trying to avoid a zombie swarm. All I know is that we are not aggressors. Still, the government has been in touch with you regarding this, so there’s nothing for me to add. What I do want to say is that there’s been a lot of negative talk about our abilities to care for our people. And I know that this reflects on our plans for Farlane. It actually saddens me. We are creating something new here. Something exciting. And make no mistake, we do have the capacity, skill, and resources to follow through on this project. We are not only demonstrating that the government of this nation is not defunct but that it can take an active role in improving the lives of its citizens. Even an outlying settlement that was once filled with the sick and dying will thrive under the UAS. You may not believe this, but you will see it for yourself in the near future. With the hard-working heroes of Farlane we will raise this town up into a thriving metropolis. And make no mistake, the people of Farlane are heroes. Not only heroes that have survived this cataclysm, but they are heroes who stood up and took a moral stand and recognized the UAS as the proper and legal government. They did this even as their friends and neighbors continue to slander us. The strength of character that took is humbling and their bravery has not and will not go unrewarded. Farlane will be a thriving hub of commerce, culture, and education. And truth be told, for all the posturing, I don’t believe that everyone in this “Union” will boycott Farlane. Because even those that hate us will see that Farlane is a symbol. A clear demonstration that the time for fear has ended and that we are united underneath this great government once again. The people of Farlane will thrive, and through them, this great nation will follow and thrive as well. God bless us all.

  Oh, there was also some talk about a week ago about small dicks. In the interests of diplomacy, I will dispense with the customary, “that’s not what your mom said” joke. I will note, though, that I’ve heard people write about what they know. Also, speaking for myself, when I unzipped to piss off our walls the other day, I accidentally bludgeoned three New Breed to death. So there’s that. Good day."

  I'm not going to judge these here and now. I want you to read them and decide what you think on your own without my own biases interfering. It's so easy to fall into the group mentality so many of us live by, and of course we all feel that our own ways of doing things are the morally correct ways. These comments were refreshingly honest and straightforward, and I felt that deserved some consideration.

  Saturday, January 12, 2013

  Boomerang

  Posted by Josh Guess

  There are immutable laws in the universe. Newton--probably the most intelligent human being to ever live, and I'll argue that to the end of time--knew this and even sussed out the physical laws. I've mentioned them before, but today I'm again reminded of equal and opposite reactions.

  It's January the twelfth, and it should be cold enough to freeze our blood. Instead it's currently fifty-seven degrees outside, and the local zombie population is reminding us that Karma is a bitch. It would be one thing if the New Breed and their old school cronies were hitting us at one point, even a weak point, but they aren't. They're being slow and cautious in some spots as they wiggle through the buffer, and dangerously reckless in others where the buffer is weak or nonexistent. There are portions of the wall they can climb. There are places they can't get any purchase.

  There are more than a thousand of them, so there isn't much of New Haven's main parts they aren't testing. All of that would be pretty easy to manage and not all that worthy of mention if they weren't also using weapons. Rocks, branches, pieces of asphalt, pretty much anything they can get a hold of is being chucked at our defenders. They're organized--very organized--and are making a good show. Many of them are getting through the buffer because of the hail of projectiles raining down on our people, distracting them and keeping them from being able to maintain a constant presence on the wall. Those undead doing the throwing are being constantly resupplied by other zombies acting as runners.

  If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say this has been a long time coming. It was obviously planned, and while we've known for a long while now that the New Breed have superior mental abilities in comparison to the original recipe zombies, complex plans like today's attack are something new.

  If I seem calm about the whole thing, it's because so far there haven't been any fatalities. Between our defenders inside the sections of New Haven and the ones running around picking off the enemy outside, we're doing fine. I'm off pretty much right now to do my part for a few hours. We're all rotating in and out until the danger is gone. I may post again later if anything major changes.

  Or not, if it's so major I don't have time...

  Sunday, January 13, 2013

  Demonology

  Posted by Josh Guess

  A group of six fighters died yesterday, and their loss will be felt among all those that knew them. I had never met any of them, but they were some of the bravest people here. All were part of our full-time
security force, former soldiers, and put themselves at greater risk in a given day than any other group in New Haven.

  Those lives weren't wasted. Aside from the very real fact that they died protecting us from the undead, they participated in a raid--the one that killed them--that netted us a new group of undead. Still moving zombies to study.

  I'm not the one doing the studying this time, but there are enough people here interested in the cause of the zombie plague that volunteers aren't hard to find. I'm a little torn about research being performed on the undead again, but far be it from me to stand in the way of progress. I've said many times that our research capabilities here are very limited. Now that the Box is producing wind turbines from all that copper laying around in old power lines, we can set up a lab with at least some basic equipment.

  I should say, for the sake of accuracy, that we can now power that equipment. The lab itself has been ready for a while. Becky will be putting in some time there, but there are four other people living over in East who can make our efforts more realistic. Two are biologists of one type or another, one a lab tech with a lot of experience reading and understanding many kinds of blood and tissue tests, and the other...

  Well, the other is a geneticist. Don't ask me how we missed that. I blame the sheer number of people living here. Hard to catalog so many skills and forms of education. Probably didn't help that until the last few days we haven't had any way to use those kinds of talents. I know we won't be able to do any cutting-edge work, but anything that might help us is welcome.

  People are afraid of what they don't understand. That's the nature of the survival instinct. This is another big step in a series of big steps. Not just for New Haven or even the Union. For all of us. I'm sure the UAS has the capability to do far more than we do, but if they have been brave enough to study the enemy, they aren't sharing. Every small erg of data we gather, every tiny bit further our understanding stretches, will make a difference. We may not find a way to defeat the plague in this decade. Maybe not in my lifetime.

  We'll work at it anyway. Enough people have survived and gathered together to build something like the ghost of civilization. In an ironic twist, it's almost as if we're resurrecting society. Who'd have thought?

  Tuesday, January 15, 2013

  The Other Shoe

  Posted by Josh Guess

  Part of living in the world nowadays is the constant effort to work and improve while understanding on a deep, almost fundamental level that Bad Things are going to happen. I've written about that before, and it remains true. The other shoe is always waiting to drop. Fate seems to have an infinite closet full of them.

  There's no easy way to say it, so I'll just say it: this morning we lost twenty people in less than five seconds. Twenty. Human. Beings.

  It wasn't zombies that did it. The weather has decided to shift back into winter for now, and at any rate the local population is at an ebb since our last big fight with them. The cold is preventing very many from wandering into the county. We're basically free from the dangerous dead for the moment. No, this tragedy was committed by living hands.

  Those twenty people were working in the fallback point, completing the tedious room-by room search of the old hotel and the large office building that serve--served, I should say--as the primary safe zones and living quarters. The trap was brilliant and simple but obviously professional; shaped explosive charges cleverly hidden among the supports of both buildings. They were rigged to blow when a specific door was opened. That door was at the top of the office building, clearly somewhere not prone to random wandering. Who the hell wants to climb twenty stories worth of steps?

  We know this because the search teams were in constant radio contact with watchers up on the hill. Yes, the Exiles are dead and gone except for Henry, but the watchers listened in as the search teams kept up a constant monologue of every step they took. The concern was that bad guys might have crept in under the lessened security at the fallback point in an effort to take the position from us. We didn't expect sabotage.

  At any rate, the office building blew first. the charges were placed in such a way that the whole office building toppled directly onto the hotel exactly when the hotel's own charges went off. The result was a total loss of life in the fallback point. The few people who weren't inside were hit by chunks of concrete the size of cars. Debris scattered all the way across the river, destroying our makeshift bridge as it killed our people.

  There's no way to know if those explosives were already there, perhaps put in place by the guards who murdered the Exiles or if someone managed to sneak in since then and set this trap. My first instinct was the blame the UAS, but after the initial shock and white-hot spear of anger mixed with sadness tearing through my head, I began to doubt that. Not because I don't think they're capable of it or because they aren't a bunch of conniving bastards. They would and they are. But it doesn't seem to fit. Why go to such lengths and risk war with us for such small gains? We lost twenty people, yes, real human beings whose lives mattered to us. Friends and family and citizens.

  But the macro scale says the effort wasn't worth it. We lost less than one percent of our population, and the attack has only made us more cautious. Destroying the fallback point didn't even do much harm to our provisions. We had people remove everything of value weeks ago, making the long trip to bridges in other counties that are still intact.

  No, it doesn't fit for me, but I'm just one guy with general knowledge facts to go by. I could be completely wrong here. In light of the fact that we can't do much investigating because of the destruction and the supreme unlikelihood that anyone will step forward to claim responsibility, we're at a dead end.

  Just when you think humans can't get much worse...

  Wednesday, January 16, 2013

  Sifting Through

  Posted by Josh Guess

  There was a minor ice storm last night and a hard freeze this morning. The world is covered in crystal, and that's going to delay our efforts to comb through the destruction in the fallback point. It may be an exercise in futility, but the citizens of New Haven are adamant that the bodies of the fallen be located. It's going to be a big job and will take a long time, but it'll get done. We'll haul truckloads of the debris here as the search teams work. We can break down the rubble for a variety of uses.

  God, I just reread that last part and it makes me want to vomit. Trying to find a silver lining, trying to be practical, trying not to find an enemy and tear their throat our for killing so many of our people. I'm terrible at coping sometimes.

  The expected response from the UAS came yesterday evening. It was, of course, a denial that they had anything at all to do with the destruction. I'm still leaning toward believing them right now but my shock has totally given way to anger. I want them to be responsible, because then we'd be more than justified in killing twenty of their people.

  Of all people to commiserate with me, my brother Dave was the last I'd have expected to show up visibly upset and toting a crate of booze. Dave has always been a deeply rational person, rarely given to displaying the deeper emotions. He's fun and pleasant and gets annoyed easily, but overwhelming joy, rage, and despair aren't things he lets show very often.

  The deaths weren't the hardest part for him, he explained. Though of course he was as upset as any of us to suffer the loss of fellow survivors, people who had stood every test we had, Dave is used to that. It doesn't catch him off guard. The worst part for my brother was when he got home and was blindsided by his children. All three of them wanted to understand what happened. They needed concrete reasons why those people were dead and why someone would commit such an act.

  We've all asked those questions when people around us have died, and indeed Dave's kids have asked them before. But this was different. This was cold, calculated murder. This wasn't nature taking its course or even the undead. David's kids weren't asking what death was--this world answered that question for them years ago--but rather why someone would do this
thing.

  How do you answer that? Think hard before respond. Dave did.

  Though he keeps it fairly private (and you wouldn't know it unless you shared a meal with him and heard him pray in the earnest way he does), my brother is a man of deep and wide faith. He's the kind of Christian I adore; truly selfless in many ways, fair to all, loving without condition. The reason for his unexpected visit and the resulting unexpected bender flowed from his inability to explain the actions of truly awful people to his kids. How do you tell a child who has learned to love the world even as bad as it is now that there are people who will kill wholesale for no good reason?

  I can't wrap my mind around explaining that kind of evil to my nieces and nephew. I really, really can't. I wish I could have done more for my brother than be someone to lean on. A piece of wisdom, perhaps, or some brilliant idea to make the whole thing easier. That's the way it goes in stories, but in real life we sadly have to live with the truth that there are rarely easy explanations. A child's need for absolutes crumbles to dust as they grow, but part of that mindset grants them a wonderful sense of optimism. Maybe that's what Dave was trying to avoid, killing that positive outlook. Such a rare thing now and almost solely found in the hearts of children.

  How could he break them?

  Friday, January 18, 2013

  Interference

  Posted by Josh Guess

  So, yesterday was a weird day. No idea why, but all the electronics in New Haven went on the fritz. Thus no blog post or communication in any form. Impulse told me it was some kind of attack, but there are several facts that argue against that.

  One: that kind of large-scale electromagnetic disturbance is usually the result of a nuclear weapon going off. I'm still here to write this, so we can rule out atomic weapons.