Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land (7 page)

Thursday, March 24, 2011

An End

Posted by Josh Guess

I've always believed that every person should have the right to end their own life if they choose. It isn't something that comes up a lot nowadays. I think that's due to the fact that the zombie plague burned away the people most prone to killing themselves, leaving only those with the strongest survival instinct.
There are some pains, however, that are too much for any person to bear.
This morning one of our guards didn't show up for his shift. It was the guy who was manning the heavy gun the other day, when the group of starving people were killed at our gate. When his room was searched, his body was found.
I'm deliberately not mentioning his name here, because it isn't important. His actions were his to take right along with his life, but that doesn't mean that he will be named as some kind of example to others out there, for good or ill. His note was short and to the point, describing the sleepless nights he had over the last several days. He felt overwhelming guilt about killing those starving people, and he couldn't live with it any more.
I can understand that. I think all of us can. No one feels good about what happened, but the rest of us are realists enough to understand that while the deaths of those people were tragic, ultimately they were unavoidable. The hunger had damaged their judgment, as far as we can tell. They were, from our perspective, a threat that had to be eliminated. It doesn't matter what the truth of the situation was--they were at our door with weapons drawn. Action was needed.
I'm of two minds on this man's choice. On the one hand I recognize the pain he was in and his inherent right to make the decision to end his life. On the other, I see his reaction to the threat as completely reasonable given the circumstances, and committing suicide only weakened the compound. His loss is a loss to all of us, which makes me angry. It makes a lot of us angry.
Again, it's one of those situations that you can't just feel one way about. The zombies outside the walls have destroyed the world, made it almost impossible for us to manage. We've buckled down and worked our asses off to get where we are, and we've lost a lot of good people in the struggle along the way. I hate to think that the hard and awful choices we've steeled ourselves and made over the last year plus have been toward a purpose. This man's death seems to cheapen that in my mind, as if to say that there is some upper limit to the idea that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
I hate that those people had to die. All the same, I would have killed six times as many starving people in the full knowledge that they weren't in control of their actions, if they posed a direct threat to my home. Honestly, I can't imagine many things I wouldn't do to protect this place and the people in it. I feel like I've failed them already by running with the other refugees when the Richmond soldiers came. That's a scar that runs deep, still red and swollen, and I lose some sleep myself with the ache of it.
I have no intention to let the people here down again. My resolve is strong on that. I choose to live, because that is the only way that I can make sure that everything possible is being done for the residents here. I choose life, though it is harsh and painful, because it gives me chance after chance to do better. To balance the guilt I feel for running away, little by little.
The gunner will always have a negative balance. He folded under the pain, and chose to go quietly into the night. His debt to the people he killed can never be met now. Instead of choosing a life with purpose, to make amends for the lives he took, justified though it was, he gave up. I see people around me every day that shoulder heavier burdens than mine by far, heavier than his was. They try and try to do good. Sometimes they fail, but I see them push themselves harder every time they do.
They're better people than me. Better than the nameless body that met the fire this morning, his duty forgotten in the midst of the turmoil in his heart.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Becky

Posted by Josh Guess

About ten o'clock last night, a single person walked up to the front gate and knocked. Swathed in layers of clothing and pieces of fabric obviously cadged from many places over time, this lone wanderer carried no weapon other than a worn machete and hatchet.
The sentries on duty opened the gate and let Becky in.
She asked to see me. I was awakened after just having fallen asleep by the incessant pounding on my front door. When I opened it, the shock that hit me on seeing her left me speechless. Both of us moved at the same time, hugging each other and bawling like children.
Those weird phone calls have apparently been coming from her. She's got a satellite phone, and has been trying to use it to reach me for a long while now. Her journey here is one that deserves a full post of its own, so I'm saving that for tomorrow. For now, let me tell you who she is.
Becky and I have been friends for a long time. She was in Iraq serving as a combat medic during The Fall. I remember her as an incredibly geeky science nerd who was bubbly and positive with her friends, a witty conversationalist and creative thinker, while also being a snarky asshole to people that annoyed her. In short, she's a smaller, blonde version of me with boobs.
You can see why I love her.
She's been trying to get back to the states all this time. She heard about the blog, and she made her way here. Jess and I have invited her to live with us for as long as she wants. It's almost a half day after she got here right now, and I'm still so blown away by it that I can barely write. Sorry if this is disjointed and scattered, my words are just reflections of my state of mind.
It's not all butterflies and bunny rabbits, though. She's more grim, now. She's darker. The childlike joy that used to dance in her eyes only comes in flashes. The rest of the time, she broods. Might just be the trip here, still shaking off the stress and pressure. I don't know. I'm just worried.
But my Becky is here, and Jess and I couldn't be happier.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Journey To The West

Posted by Josh Guess

Before The Fall scoured the earth with a plague of undead, the purpose of my life was stories. Rather, my goal was to unite my dream, my desire, to be a storyteller with the practical needs of survival--paying the bills, getting ahead, that sort of thing. In short, I wanted to be a full-time writer. 

Though I didn't read it until I reached adulthood, one of the most important stories that I've ever read is "Journey To The West", the greatest classical novel to ever come from China. Probably the greatest work of fiction written, period, until the modern age. This post isn't about that book, but the idea of such epic, detailed characters resonates with the true story I want to tell you. This is about Becky, and how she made her own journey west. 

When The Fall hit, Becky was in Iraq, as I mentioned yesterday. It took a few days from the outbreak in Cincinnati for the military to order a mass recall of all of their troops, and when it came Becky was far away from her base, tending to members of her unit. Just a few minutes after the order came down, you see, Becky and her unit were victims of an IED. Several of them died, and Becky was left to tend to the wounded. 

Chaos was everywhere. At the time, there wasn't anywhere in the world that hadn't started to see the zombie plague for what it was--a game changer for the entire human race. In the middle east, the chaos was more due to a sudden uprising in response to the news that all US troops would immediately be withdrawn. 

Stranded in the middle of a riot, far away from any of her countrymen, all she could do was tend to her wounded and hope for the best. Becky ended up being stuck in Iraq for more than a month, the rest of her fellow soldiers dead by that time, either from the injuries they'd sustained from the homemade bomb, violence at the hands of those Iraqis that wanted them dead, or from the growing number of zombies roaming the dusty streets. 

It was a desperate time for her, trying to move her injured friends to safe places, stealing what food she could to keep them alive. By the end of those four weeks, the baby fat that I remembered filling out her cheeks was gone. She looked as she does now--whipcord thin, darkly tanned (after weeks of nursing sunburns. Becky is fair skinned, like me) and well toned. Hauling around three injured men will make you strong or kill you. It was after the last of them died that she decided to move on, get as far away from Iraq as she could. Though her tan had helped her blend in somewhat, most of the time she had to move around at night. It was then that she started swathing herself in scarves and whatever fabric she could find. Not only did it protect her from the sun, but the thick layers saved her from more than one zombie bite. 

She's told me all of this twice now, but I still have a hard time imagining the sweet geeky girl that used to get into arguments with me about physics and biology stealing out of town in the middle of the night, dressed in rags with a knife her only weapon. The determination it must have taken to trudge from point to point through city and desert alike simply escapes my comprehension. 

She did it, though. Through northern Iraq into Turkey where she spent several months, trying to survive and find a way to continue. Much of her time there was spent in hiding, as many groups of marauders rampaged across the country looking for supplies and victims. Becky scraped by, killing when she had to and amassing what stores she could. When she had enough food and water for a few days' trek, she'd move on until she had to stop and do it all over again. Sometimes it was a few hours, sometimes weeks. 

When she got to Istanbul, she had a little luck. That was where she found a largish group of survivors who had set up shop in a huge apartment building, and were doing a damn good job of growing food there, setting up a small trade center. One thing they were lacking was someone with medical knowledge. Becky was a good fit for them. 

I have to interject a bit here to say that combat medics are a different breed than what you might be thinking. No matter what the regulations said, no matter what limitations the military might put on their practice of medicine and scope of care, nine out of ten of them went beyond. Not because they wanted to break the rules, but because of the necessities they faced in the madness of war. Not that there were a lot of regulations, though, given that Medics were the ones capable of keeping people alive. I say all this so you understand--Becky has more training and knowledge than some doctors I've met. She's got a brain that hums along like a Ferrari engine, and she used to spend hours in a given day learning biology, anatomy, and anything she could use to help a person. She's not some back country fireman who got EMT certified because she had to. She's the real deal. 

Two months with the group in Istanbul, working on their injured and training up a few people to take her place. That situation came to an abrupt end when a huge group of marauders attacked and her group had to scatter to stay alive. Becky traveled with three refugees from that group, moving through Bulgaria and Serbia together before parting ways, the others heading toward a set rendezvous in southern Romania. Becky continued on, better armed and better provisioned through Hungary and into Slovenia. 

Along the way she helped groups of people that desperately needed her skills. One such group was composed of Israeli soldiers, of all things. One of their brothers needed weeks of care and frequent checks, causing Becky to stay with them (I think this was in northern Italy) for a few weeks. During that time, she spent about half of any given day monitoring and treating the injured man, nursing his broken limbs and working on the infection that raged through him. 

In return, his brother soldiers taught Becky many things. Tips on surviving in different climates. How to turn ordinary items into weapons. Lots of different things. They made a sort of game of it, seeing what far-flung but useful skill one of them had to share with her. The one lesson she got every day, though, was the most important one: self defense. In the weeks she was with those men, Becky got a very thorough grounding in Krav Maga, the weird and eclectic set of defensive techniques the Israeli Defense Forces used to neutralize threats. It's a strange martial art that takes from many others, and works without set rules. Someone who is very good at it, with a lot of practice and experience, will be well prepared to face most threats. 

It was weeks later, in France, that Becky had to use her new fighting skills for the first time. She was only a few miles away from the border with Spain, and she was caught off guard by a group of three men. It had been a while since she'd had a bath or a shower, and Becky had scouted out a small stream far away from the main roads to risk a bath in. 

When the three men appeared, she was just stepping out of the water, stark naked. You can imagine what reactions they had. 

They went for her, and it says something about Becky that she never hesitated in her exposed condition. Palms and elbows shot out, stiffened fingers finding eyes and throats. One of them managed to get hold of her breast and squeezed it with all his might, trying to overwhelm her with pain. She screamed at him, and put an elbow into his temple with such force that his eye socket collapsed, and popped his eyeball out like a slippery grape. 

Naked as a jaybird, she killed three men with her bare hands. This from a girl that used to giggle like a five year old when I farted. 

All alone, she made her way across Spain to Portugal. There, after a long search, she found what she was looking for. A ship. And men to sail it.