Edges

It was a small group, only about a dozen. Jess is a good enough shot with a rifle that I feel pretty safe out there in the crowd, swinging something that doesn't need reloading. Part of the reason I took up Aikido in the first place was so I could learn to use a katana effectively. I'm a nerd like that.

Don't let me give you the wrong idea about the wife. She is a very good shot, but she's not a sniper or anything. She takes a few seconds to aim and fire, and she's pretty good at hitting the heads of zombies without very many misses. I tell you this because in the process of condensing a day's events into the bite-sized chunks I put out to read, I realize that sometimes I don't convey the real details to all of you. Jess is a good shot, but deals with nerves and imperfections like all of us. I am no Musashi with a blade, but where other folks find them too heavy or awkward, I am comfortable. Practice makes passable, I guess.

There is no news on the looters, and that concerns all of us. That we haven't found any more of them means that either A) they are getting clever enough to avoid the crazy security measures we have taken or B) they no longer feel that they need to spy on us, because they have all the information they need, which scares the hell out of me. We have raided every store we can for walkie-talkies, and are trying to keep each other updated as often as possible.

Mine is squawking at me right now, Pat calling in to let us know all's clear where he is.

It's a bit of a job to keep people on their toes, due to the strikingly powerful need for the human mind to relax and blow off the tension in times of stress. When your life is nothing but stress, your brain tries to shut off any time you feel even remotely safe. It also does something to the libido. I can verify this personally, and corroborate through observation, since it seems like almost everyone here pairs off when not on guard duty and vanishes into bedrooms for long periods of time. Elizabeth is an exception to that, but she keeps eying me. Maybe it's because she isn't comfortable meeting new people, and she sees me as safe. Jess is the same way. I guess you could call them my type.

I am doing what I can to keep everyone sharp, but it can be hard. Between guard duty, all the daily chores that are much harder without much of the technology we were so used to, attempting some basic training in various things, and sorting all the stuff we got from the hotel, I have virtually no time. Makes it pretty hard to stay sharp myself, to be honest.

Jess is making it a pet project to find as many books on as many subjects as possible. She got a bunch of military field manuals from the flea market, and a huge load from the library, bookstores, and abandoned houses. She is obsessed with it, which sort of makes sense. The whole time we've been together, she has taken to gathering a huge variety of skills and the knowledge associated with them. She is an herbalist, she can make leather from scratch, a ton of stuff. But the most useful to us, in the long run, is probably that she can make chain mail. With enough people learning, and helping her make and set up rings, we will be able to make biteproof coverings for everyone. It will take a long time, but well worth the huge pain in the ass it was to find all that different wire. Especially the aluminum.

Crap. Walkie-talkie is spitting beeps and static at me.

No. No, no, no...It's an attack. The front of the compound is being attacked.