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Sep. 3rd, 2006 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bzarcherForumopolis is doing a contest for a copy of World War Z, so I had to step up. It's supposed to be stories about a traveling reporter, getting stories about the survivors of Z-day. Had to go for it.
When she told me I had to strip naked, I'll have to admit it was the high point of my day, regardless of the rifle she was holding.
"Don't get any ideas - we let someone in who had hidden a bite under his trousers. When he turned..." The look in her eyes finishes the sentence for me, and I nod understanding as I finished stripping down.
She gave me a once over, had me turn around, arms and legs spread, and finally I heard the click of a safety being switched on from behind me. “OK, you’re clean. Get your clothes back on.”
A few minutes later, “Sharon” was leading me up a nasty hillside, covered in rocks and branches. If I hadn’t been in decent shape, I’d probably not have been able to climb it, and I’d doubt that one of the zombies could have made it up easily. It was obviously a natural defense that whomever I was about to meet had scouted out before building their hidey-hole.
I felt like I’d been climbing for at least a half hour when we finally reached the top of the ridge, and I while I wanted a short rest, I couldn’t allow myself to stop with the sun so low in the sky. My guide, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice the time or my condition – she simply pressed ahead until we reached a clearing, and to my surprise, a heavy concrete wall.
“Jesus, how long had you people been planning for this?”
Her laugh came hollow. “A lot longer than most would care to admit. We used to meet in Ken’s basement. He’d talk about how the Cold War was over, and nuclear terrorists weren’t a big threat, but how someday, the dead would get out of control. At first I thought he was kidding, and then I saw the news articles about Parkersburg.”
Rather than interrupt her, I searched my memory for a second as we marched to a barred gate. Parkersburg, I recalled, had been a small outbreak that had been hushed up. The official story was that after taking in a vagrant as part of an outreach program, a preacher had fallen ill. Shortly afterwards, neighbors called the police due to gunfire in the house. Police stated that the preacher had suffered “some form of psychotic episode” due to his illness, and that the vagrant, the Preacher’s wife, and their daughter had all been killed. The preacher himself had supposedly been shot by the police in self defense.
Sharon had continued as the gate was opened for us. “…got serious, we’d already been working on this place. We got out here in ones and twos, and worked hard to finish it before everything went to hell. Then we locked ourselves in and waited.”
I’d seen other survivalist style compounds in my exploration of the Dead World, but I had to admit I was quite impressed by this one. The buildings all looked to be solid concrete and mortar construction, though painted and touched up by the residents. I could see vegetable gardens, and at the edge of my view, what looked to be some larger fields for food and livestock. A sign here and there stood at the intersection of various paths. “ARMORY->”
“<-FIRE DEPARTMENT”
“CITY HALL”
We were headed straight for the last one. It was a fairly plain building – a few windows, a heavy door, and built larger than the others. It wasn’t hard to figure out that it was meant for a last stand situation – get the clean citizens into the bunker and try to survive. A heavy steel door with solid bolts on the inside only confirmed that for me.
The office I was lead into looked like a slice of history – a couple of sports posters, clean white walls, big wooden desk (that my mind annotated as ‘instant barricade’), and comfortable looking leather chairs. Somehow, Ken was even managing to wear a suit and tie.
“Welcome to our little town, Mr. Lono.” I took his hand, and there was the usual sizing up as Sharon settled into a corner of the office, her rifle resting against her shoulder.
”I hope you don’t mind the precautions we’re taking. We’ve reason not to trust strangers, and you have to admit that when you managed to reach us by radio, your odyssey sounded pretty damn crazy.”
“Oh, it probably is, but it keeps me a bit saner than staying holed up in Colorado.” I waved my hand around the room. “It is a nice place you’ve got here…but I did have a few questions.”
Ken gave a nod, and I continued. “You folks have a pretty impressive stack here – but what do you intend to do if you get too big to hole up in it? After all, if you’ve taken people in before, no matter how it ended, it’ll happen again. And I’m sure some of you expect to have children eventually.”
The way Ken’s expression darkened, I got the impression he’d been wrestling with those questions - and hadn’t liked the answers he was seeing. “At the moment, our plans are to expand the clearing, and to see if we can get the supplies we need to build a second barricade wall from the trees we’ll fell. It won’t be as secure as the current one, but it will let us have an inner stronghold. I don’t like it as much, but we don’t have much else we can do for now.”
He went on, raising a hand. “But, I’m hoping it won’t come to that – I studied the outbreaks, back in World War Two and over the years. Even the ones who managed to survive being hunted would decompose, regardless of whether they had food or not. It’s been five years, now. A lot of them must be starting to go – you made it here, after all! Someone doing what you’re trying would have been committing suicide a year or two after Z-day.”
“So you’re hoping that you’ll be able to safely venture out, then?”
“Someday. We keep in radio contact with other survivors – they’re all saying the same things, for the most part. If things keep looking better, we’re training some volunteers to take mountain bikes and start some limited scouting missions. There’s things I’d not mind being able to bring back here.”
We went on with a few other questions – medical care (they had a doctor, who was trying to teach a few younger survivors on the job), livestock (cattle, pigs, some fish farming), and if they’d had much population growth (4 babies born just this year).
When we left city hall, twilight was settling in. Sharon, who I now knew was going to be watching me for every minute I was in this little fortress, walked me to a building marked “QUARANTINE.”
They sure did know how to make a man feel welcome.
She locked us in for the night, and showed me to a small cell with a bed, toilet, and shower. She brought some food in from somewhere, and I had my first meal that wasn’t out of a MRE pouch in 3 weeks. Thanking her for the food, she took the plates, and let me know that she’d be watching me from outside the quarantine room, but I just had to yell and she’d come in.
As I settle down to write this entry in my journal, I feel sorry for these people. You and I both know that the world is starting to slowly crawl back – not very many, not very easily. But the zombies are starting to finally fade off, decomposing past danger levels. That’s why I decided to see how many survivors I could haul myself to on my old bicycle, and how many stories I could find, even if I doubt anyone will ever read this, let alone reproduce it.
And yet, in this village, I doubt they’ll ever really leave. For all the talk of scouting or reaching out, everything seems to end with “and we’ll bring it back here.” I can’t blame them for it – if I was holed up in somewhere I knew was just about perfectly safe since Z-Day, why risk losing it? But it’s a sad thing to see how these people have become so scared and insular that the only people I was allowed to see today were my guard, and the “mayor” – not even a sign of a man working the fields or a child playing, though if I strain I can hear sounds of them coming back to their homes, now that I am safely locked away.
Does anyone else even know that I’m here? Or will I simply be a legend? A phantom stranger who supposedly wandered into town, and then wandered back out with nobody the wiser.
I suppose I’ll never know. I’ve found 14 settlements so far, and I’ve made contact with another 9 that I think I can reach before I have to try another month on the radio.
Mahalo.
-Lono, 666 miles from New York City.
That was actually really fun to write.
Also, happy birthday, Planty! Hope you have a good one.
When she told me I had to strip naked, I'll have to admit it was the high point of my day, regardless of the rifle she was holding.
"Don't get any ideas - we let someone in who had hidden a bite under his trousers. When he turned..." The look in her eyes finishes the sentence for me, and I nod understanding as I finished stripping down.
She gave me a once over, had me turn around, arms and legs spread, and finally I heard the click of a safety being switched on from behind me. “OK, you’re clean. Get your clothes back on.”
A few minutes later, “Sharon” was leading me up a nasty hillside, covered in rocks and branches. If I hadn’t been in decent shape, I’d probably not have been able to climb it, and I’d doubt that one of the zombies could have made it up easily. It was obviously a natural defense that whomever I was about to meet had scouted out before building their hidey-hole.
I felt like I’d been climbing for at least a half hour when we finally reached the top of the ridge, and I while I wanted a short rest, I couldn’t allow myself to stop with the sun so low in the sky. My guide, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice the time or my condition – she simply pressed ahead until we reached a clearing, and to my surprise, a heavy concrete wall.
“Jesus, how long had you people been planning for this?”
Her laugh came hollow. “A lot longer than most would care to admit. We used to meet in Ken’s basement. He’d talk about how the Cold War was over, and nuclear terrorists weren’t a big threat, but how someday, the dead would get out of control. At first I thought he was kidding, and then I saw the news articles about Parkersburg.”
Rather than interrupt her, I searched my memory for a second as we marched to a barred gate. Parkersburg, I recalled, had been a small outbreak that had been hushed up. The official story was that after taking in a vagrant as part of an outreach program, a preacher had fallen ill. Shortly afterwards, neighbors called the police due to gunfire in the house. Police stated that the preacher had suffered “some form of psychotic episode” due to his illness, and that the vagrant, the Preacher’s wife, and their daughter had all been killed. The preacher himself had supposedly been shot by the police in self defense.
Sharon had continued as the gate was opened for us. “…got serious, we’d already been working on this place. We got out here in ones and twos, and worked hard to finish it before everything went to hell. Then we locked ourselves in and waited.”
I’d seen other survivalist style compounds in my exploration of the Dead World, but I had to admit I was quite impressed by this one. The buildings all looked to be solid concrete and mortar construction, though painted and touched up by the residents. I could see vegetable gardens, and at the edge of my view, what looked to be some larger fields for food and livestock. A sign here and there stood at the intersection of various paths. “ARMORY->”
“<-FIRE DEPARTMENT”
“CITY HALL”
We were headed straight for the last one. It was a fairly plain building – a few windows, a heavy door, and built larger than the others. It wasn’t hard to figure out that it was meant for a last stand situation – get the clean citizens into the bunker and try to survive. A heavy steel door with solid bolts on the inside only confirmed that for me.
The office I was lead into looked like a slice of history – a couple of sports posters, clean white walls, big wooden desk (that my mind annotated as ‘instant barricade’), and comfortable looking leather chairs. Somehow, Ken was even managing to wear a suit and tie.
“Welcome to our little town, Mr. Lono.” I took his hand, and there was the usual sizing up as Sharon settled into a corner of the office, her rifle resting against her shoulder.
”I hope you don’t mind the precautions we’re taking. We’ve reason not to trust strangers, and you have to admit that when you managed to reach us by radio, your odyssey sounded pretty damn crazy.”
“Oh, it probably is, but it keeps me a bit saner than staying holed up in Colorado.” I waved my hand around the room. “It is a nice place you’ve got here…but I did have a few questions.”
Ken gave a nod, and I continued. “You folks have a pretty impressive stack here – but what do you intend to do if you get too big to hole up in it? After all, if you’ve taken people in before, no matter how it ended, it’ll happen again. And I’m sure some of you expect to have children eventually.”
The way Ken’s expression darkened, I got the impression he’d been wrestling with those questions - and hadn’t liked the answers he was seeing. “At the moment, our plans are to expand the clearing, and to see if we can get the supplies we need to build a second barricade wall from the trees we’ll fell. It won’t be as secure as the current one, but it will let us have an inner stronghold. I don’t like it as much, but we don’t have much else we can do for now.”
He went on, raising a hand. “But, I’m hoping it won’t come to that – I studied the outbreaks, back in World War Two and over the years. Even the ones who managed to survive being hunted would decompose, regardless of whether they had food or not. It’s been five years, now. A lot of them must be starting to go – you made it here, after all! Someone doing what you’re trying would have been committing suicide a year or two after Z-day.”
“So you’re hoping that you’ll be able to safely venture out, then?”
“Someday. We keep in radio contact with other survivors – they’re all saying the same things, for the most part. If things keep looking better, we’re training some volunteers to take mountain bikes and start some limited scouting missions. There’s things I’d not mind being able to bring back here.”
We went on with a few other questions – medical care (they had a doctor, who was trying to teach a few younger survivors on the job), livestock (cattle, pigs, some fish farming), and if they’d had much population growth (4 babies born just this year).
When we left city hall, twilight was settling in. Sharon, who I now knew was going to be watching me for every minute I was in this little fortress, walked me to a building marked “QUARANTINE.”
They sure did know how to make a man feel welcome.
She locked us in for the night, and showed me to a small cell with a bed, toilet, and shower. She brought some food in from somewhere, and I had my first meal that wasn’t out of a MRE pouch in 3 weeks. Thanking her for the food, she took the plates, and let me know that she’d be watching me from outside the quarantine room, but I just had to yell and she’d come in.
As I settle down to write this entry in my journal, I feel sorry for these people. You and I both know that the world is starting to slowly crawl back – not very many, not very easily. But the zombies are starting to finally fade off, decomposing past danger levels. That’s why I decided to see how many survivors I could haul myself to on my old bicycle, and how many stories I could find, even if I doubt anyone will ever read this, let alone reproduce it.
And yet, in this village, I doubt they’ll ever really leave. For all the talk of scouting or reaching out, everything seems to end with “and we’ll bring it back here.” I can’t blame them for it – if I was holed up in somewhere I knew was just about perfectly safe since Z-Day, why risk losing it? But it’s a sad thing to see how these people have become so scared and insular that the only people I was allowed to see today were my guard, and the “mayor” – not even a sign of a man working the fields or a child playing, though if I strain I can hear sounds of them coming back to their homes, now that I am safely locked away.
Does anyone else even know that I’m here? Or will I simply be a legend? A phantom stranger who supposedly wandered into town, and then wandered back out with nobody the wiser.
I suppose I’ll never know. I’ve found 14 settlements so far, and I’ve made contact with another 9 that I think I can reach before I have to try another month on the radio.
Mahalo.
-Lono, 666 miles from New York City.
That was actually really fun to write.
Also, happy birthday, Planty! Hope you have a good one.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-04 05:21 am (UTC)