Saturday, July 17, 2010

Numbers Game

My brother Dave and I are downtown again, after a good night's sleep in our own beds. I have already had a good look at the area, of course, but we need Dave's more experienced and critical eye to figure out what steps we will need to take to make this part of town safe. We're moving about on foot for the most part, though we drove down here in his old truck. I'm having to keep a sharp eye out for zombies, since they still filter down here from the hills. 

We have finished clearing out the three major buildings in this area, the ones we want to use, but it might be hoping for too much to think that we can make the streets in this relatively small piece of real estate secure. It's not that we couldn't build walls (we could) and it's not that we couldn't man them (we can, more on that shortly...) but the problem is that this area is at the bottom of a lot of hills, and all roads for the undead lead to it. 

To make it clear: Dave, Roger and I came down here this morning loaded with ammo and several firearms each. Between us all we've exhausted a hundred .40 caliber rounds, six clips of 9mm, pockets full of shotgun shells, and twenty or so shells for Dave's frighteningly powerful rifle. The zombies come in twos or threes right now, but they keep coming. And they don't do it mostly from one side of the place like at the compound, but from every direction. It's a logistical nightmare, and isn't looking pretty. At least we can use the buildings for storage and housing folks if we want to. But I would rather make it a permanent housing area, a place for people to live and grow.

So, on to other news. 

No more power at all around here. The last vestiges of energy from outside of town petered out last night. We got in touch with the last few folks at the power station, and they tell us that they are on the way here. We have enough solar power and batteries to give us light and to power a few computers, and solar chargers for our phones, but the days of refrigeration and microwave ovens are over for a while. 

Really, we have a lot of available power, twenty kilowatts at least. That is enough to power about twenty houses, but we are stretching that across the entire compound. I am posting from my phone for the most part to save power, but we still need some computers for much of what we do to run our little community. You have no idea how hard it is to track all of the data that we have to watch, I can't imagine doing it by hand.

The biggest news by magnitudes is that another large group of survivors has contacted us. They aren't very far from us, actually, though I have been asked not to mention the location, other than to say that it is in Kentucky somewhere. These folks have apparently been holed up in a large building, housed with dozens of tons of canned food. I can't tell too much about their situation without giving away where they are, but I can tell you that while they went through hell itself securing the shelter they live in, losing huge numbers of men and women, once they got there it was truly a prime location to hide in. 

But fortunately for all of us, long term thinking led them to come out of hiding. They still have a lot of food left, but no way to farm, no way to do anything really constructive. They found out about us when one enterprising member of their group went out in search of some way to look and see if others had survived in the outside world. Naturally, he found a computer, got on google, and through the huge set of links the folks at google have set up since the fall of society, got in touch with us. 

They want to come here, be a part of the community. They come with open arms and under reasonable terms, and we welcome them. 

All one hundred and fifty of them. 

They have no mass transit vehicles, so we will be the ones doing the transporting. It's going to be an exciting week, getting them here and getting to know them. Right now, all we know is that they are there and want to be here badly, and are willing to submit to any reasonable precautions on our part to make that happen. 

Signs are good right now, and hope is on the rise. 

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