With Spring Comes the Fall (2 page)

Posted by Josh Guess at
11:26 AM

Saturday, March 6, 2010

This will likely be a multiple update day, and this one is going to be short. Just wanted to ask everyone who has confirmed info of outbreak locations to let me know. I will be working on a map, trying to work out movement patterns, maybe find a safe place for a large group of folks to gather.
Also, a plea.
Anyone out there that has a secure location, please keep your fellow man in mind. Trust is always an issue, and food will become a problem, but try to keep in mind that as this plague spreads, regular folks will become fewer and fewer. So do your best to help those in need. Safety in numbers.
More to come later today, be safe.

Posted by Josh Guess at
7:18 AM

Weaponology

The house is as safe as we can make it for now.
Jess is out with Patrick, doing some last minute shopping, and I felt it was necessary to send the six foot three, two hundred eighty pound Alaskan with her, because it's getting crazy around here. The stores are being rushed, people are panicked, and while there have been only minor reports of outbreaks in Lexington and Louisville, those outbreaks mean the clock is ticking. For now I am more worried about actual riots and looters than I am the zombies. 
Mom is refusing to leave her house to come stay with us. We did some quick shoring up, enough that her doors are going nowhere and the windows are secure, but I'm worried it won't be enough. Pat assures me that he will keep watch on her, try to check in. He is more of a friend than I probably deserve. 
I expect it to spread here in less than two days. I truly hope that we will have to wait for the undead to walk here from the bigger cities, that some bitten person doesn't bring it to our doorstep before nature does, but somehow I doubt it. With that in mind, here is another, smaller list of things to have. (Note: we have ALL of these)
Buck knives, machetes, compound bows with lots of arrows, lengths of quality wood to make bows with (thanks, internet, for showing us how, right
Here
), woodworking tools, strong hemp twine, lots of rope ( we have a variety of types, to climb with, secure things, and make nets), tons of dowels for new arrows, bag of goose feathers and glue, hatchets, axes, sledgehammer, drywall hammers, crowbars, baseball bats, shotguns, pistols, rifles, a few tasers, and an entire closet full of ammo.
We also bought some bullet molds, a bunch of gunpowder, and some lead shot. But any way you cut it, we will eventually run out of bullets, so we will likely try to perfect making bows and arrows.
It's looking like full-on panic is coming to Frankfort, and we just this morning got the portable solar panels up. We will tackle the wind turbine later, and the crank generator is getting hooked up to our stationary bike. I feel sort of bad, but the guy that owned the Green Shop in Versailles must have had kin in Ohio, because his shop was closed.
We opened it with bricks.
If he makes it through, I will pay him back for all the things we stole. But right now I have to think about myself, and my family. His battery packs will keep us cooking indoors after the gas is shut off, and any juice left over will let me tap away at my netbook, allowing some sort of record of this insanity.
For as long as we last, anyway.

Posted by Josh Guess at
12:58 PM

Sunday, March 7, 2010

The calm before

(Photos Lost)

I snapped a few pictures at the store the other day, before I bought a bunch of these. It just struck me so hard while I was standing there that it would be a long time before I saw anything so normal again. If

ever.

I couldn't help but think, as I saw this wall in front of me, that in such a short time, my perceptions had shifted so much. I didn't see a wall with hammers, and hatchets, and nail pullers, crowbars, mallets and steel wedges. I wanted to see things to make with, to build, but all that came to me was what use it would be as an instrument of violence.

Not just against zombies, either, but how effective against a person trying to hurt my family, come into my home. The thought froze me. All of a sudden the reality of it slammed into me. This is what
will
happen. Our existence is going to shift into something a lot more basic. We are going to have to do things that will make us sick. Those tools in front of me might be my only option to save my life. Or Patrick, Jess, or my mom.

Maybe the metal plates over the windows will keep people away. Or they might be like a beacon to some desperate person seeking shelter. It's an agonizing dilemma. Beefing up our home makes us safe, but does it make us a target? We live in the back part of our neighborhood, almost at the top of the hill. We are just outside the city limits, but not so far into the county that we are saved by distance. Lexington is getting bad, the outbreak hitting UK like wildfire. My guess is that the first of them will hit Frankfort tonight or early tomorrow. I like to think we are prepared. Physically, we are. We are so stocked with supplies and back-ups that I think we can last for months here without leaving the property. Not that I think it will come to that, since we want to start on our planting and working on the back yard.

We're ready, I guess. Loaded up with so many weapons that we couldn't even carry them all if we had to. What remains to be seen is whether or not we can use them, when the time comes.

Jess is a quiet woman, a gentle soul. She has never been in a fight, never been attacked. I have always avoided conflict when I could, sorted out those who wouldn't let me run. But I have never had to fight with weapons, much less kill a person.

Patrick is older, and more experienced in things like that. If our luck goes south, and I can't do my duty and finish the job, I know he will have my back.

Mom is scared now, and I am pretty sure she will be coming here to stay with us tomorrow. Pat is there now, trying to convince her to come today.

I am on the couch, tying on my laptop. Next to me is an old hatchet, a loaded glock, and my cell phone. Strange how used to it I am already becoming. None of those things seems out of place.

My phone is jangling at me. A text from my friend Joe, just three miles down the road:

They're here.

Posted by Josh Guess at
1:38 PM

Just a short update while I have time--things are about to get seriously out of hand.

Joe called me to let me know he was OK. His text freaked us all out. But south Frankfort is infected, and badly. Apparently a bunch of people were out in the nice weather grilling out when some poor bastard from Lexington crashed his car into the ones parked in front of their house. Joe wasn't sure what went down, but the result was that several people were bitten, because the driver didn't survive the crash. Now there is a hoard of forty or fifty of them on Shelby street, and the local cops are crowding the area.

The worst part is, some folks down there must have called around, because several folks on my street have left to go down and check it out. Idiots.

The results should be clear enough to predict. Very shortly, we are going to be neck deep in it. Looks like we are in for a long, long night.

I gave up on praying a long time ago. But if anyone out there has one for us, feel free. Every little bit helps. 

Posted by Josh Guess at
5:23 PM

Monday, March 8, 2010

It was pretty much a worst case scenario.

Less than an hour after my last post, they started appearing at the bottom of the neighborhood, in ones and twos at first. I don't know how many people in south Frankfort have died, but enough of them became infected that we are seeing them here. I can't explain how it spread so fast, unless they were here before Joe contacted me.

The first few zombies walked through the subdivision basically unnoticed for a while. Kids were outside playing, but not down at the base of the hill. By the time they were noticed, it was too late. Many more had come, and those folks that were unaware if their nature were killed, and joined them.

We have had a fairly easy time of it, all things considered. Patrick stayed with my mom, and went above and beyond, staying on her deck behind the gates we built to keep watch. He tells me that it was cake, that all he had to do was keep his eyes open. Mom tells me that he kept her safe by taking out more than a dozen of them with a crowbar.

The wife and I had a few episodes, but for the most part our neighbors have done the work for us. Our road is littered with the bodies of zombies, most shot before they could get near front doors. A few of the folks that live on our road have tried to come by and ask us to stay in our house, which is the only secure one around...we accepted their shouted apologies for looking at us funny as we turned our home into something out of a mad max movie, but we did not let anyone in. I know I have said to be conscious of the needs of those around you, but they clearly know what needs to be done, and have the will to do it. Plus, No room for all of them.

The guy next door to us took his family and ran. If he stays gone long enough, I think we're going to annex his yard, and maybe his house. His yard isn't fenced in, though, so that could be a problem.

Jess displayed a shocking efficiency in taking down the undead. She took a piece of rebar that we cut down and reinforced and was busting heads in our driveway after all the other people on the street had retreated inside or fled for safer ground. I was with her, though I used my pistol first and my hatchet as a last resort. Jess hates guns, and I despair of ever getting her to use one.

I am surprised at how quickly she was willing to go out and defend the house. I guess it must have set something off inside her, to see them so close to out home. Today definitely showed us that the front of the house is our weak area, so we're going to have to block it off somehow.

We left our Norwegian Elk hound, Bigby, out on the the front deck. He barks whenever one of them gets within a hundred feet, so at least we have warning. This is the first real break we have had in the last twelve hours. Hoping it will last long enough for me to get some sleep, Jess is napping now.

My eyes are getting heavy, might have to go wake her to take a turn at watch.

Posted by Josh Guess at
6:19 AM

It's calm right now, it has been more of the same since my last post. People are fleeing the neighborhood in droves, and others for some reason are pulling their cars in and then abandoning them. Someone left a school bus running on the next road down. I took the keys.
We are planning on using abandoned cars to make a rough wall around the yard, and fill in the spaces with whatever we can find. More on that later.
Right now I want to address an issue that was brought up to me by a reader. There has been some confusion by some folks out there how the virus spreads. Here is what we have theorized so far:
The virus, if that is what it is, has already spread pretty much everywhere. It does not kill of itself (so far) but everyone is a carrier. Zombie bites
do
seem to kill, though it seems to take varying lengths of time. Either way, you come back as one, and it seems to be universally quick.
Also, a few people have asked what types of zombies I have seen. In other words, do they fit the classical zombie profile, the slow and shambling ghoul, or the modern type that is fast, strong, and smart. In fiction, the classic zombie is only stopped by severe head trauma, while the modern ones can be taken out by normal means, though they can take a lot of punishment.
Here is what we have seen: The "types" of zombies seem as varied as people themselves. We have seen some that move like living people, but believe me, they were really, really dead. Missing limbs, organs, that type of thing. We've seen them slow and steady, like the old Romero movies, and everything in between. The good news is that none of them seems very smart, unable to grasp the concept of door handles or any type of logical manipulation. So far, all we have seen suggests that the only way to stop them is severe head trauma, or piercing the brain.
I know that doesn't seem very helpful, but there it is. There are a variety of them out there. None of them are super strong or anything, not able to do things they normally wouldn't be able to. That is as much as we know. I hope it helps some of you out there.
Back to the watch, Jess is yelling at me because I have been in here too long.
Patrick got us several rolls of heavy duty, tall fencing, and stuff to put it up with. And a truck. I didn't ask where he got all of that, because at this point, I just don't care.