"Patrick said...
I hate to be the one that pisses in your oatmeal, but I've got bad news on the home front. Do you remember John Hastings the small minded preacher that did all the graffiti last month and got exiled naked last month? Well he's been slipping into the compound for the last two weeks recruiting people to come to the new camp he found. I only found out about this late this after noon, when one of the people he tried to recruit came and told me that about 10 people, and 3 kids were going to leave with him. I said no sweat if they want to leave no one was going to stop them. Thats when I was told they planned to take as much of the food and weapons that they could smuggle out over the next couple of nights. I kept my self in check and went and found Treesong so a clear head could go and talk to these people. When we went up to the house with John and most of his people, some one opened fire. I swear we had no weapons on us we just went to talk. I got grazed in the arm, but Treesong was hit in the hip and was bleeding badly. I got him out of their as fast as I could. Evens worked on him, got the bullet out and the bleeding stopped. As of a few minutes ago he was conscious and talking so he should be ok. When I got back to the house it was empty. So I ran straight to the armory and was fired on as soon as I was in sight. Guess Evens told some one what was going on because some body on the tower returned fire and saved my ass. Thats how it sits now the armory is surrounded, John and his crew won't come out. Treesong is trying to be brave and stupid at the same time by wanting to go negotiate. Me and Evens won't let him. I've tried talking but only get bullets in response. Want to starve them out but they've got kids in there. Don't know what to do brother. Got any ideas?"
He was in an understandable rush, and I wish he had been able to get in touch with me. But events transpired while I slept, and the outcome...
John and his followers apparently realized that we weren't just going to let them go with our weapons and supplies. He came out holding one of the children in front of himself, gun to the poor kid's head. I don't know which one of the folks in the watchtower took the shot, but I am very glad they did. Any man that would threaten a child deserves death.
It turns out that none of the others took to kindly to his actions, but all of them were too afraid of hitting the little boy, Brendan, to try and take him out. I'm not in charge anymore, but my suggestion to the council was to think hard about the options here. Any time you involve kids, the morality of your choices alters. I don't want to keep people that don't want to stay, but I don't want to exile children with their parents to almost certainly die out among the zombies.
No decisions have been made yet, but all options are being considered. I hope the people back home are wise enough to come up with a solution.
Brendan is physically ok but it has been very traumatic for a two year old. I only hope that he is to young to remember being covered in another man blood. Darrell was the man that saved the Brendan's life and ended this with out further blood shed. As far as we can tell, while others went along with John's ideas he was the only one to take action. Whats known for sure is that these people want to leave and have a place to go to, but this camp has little food and protection. If it was just adults I wouldn't lose a nights sleep over this, but they want to take their children with them. Right now we are trying to talk things out. I hope cooler heads prevail, they say you know you've reached compromise when no one is happy, if that is the case we are there but I hope we can do better.
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