Monday, October 11, 2010

Heat Wave

Damn weather.

I would love to give you a detailed update on what's going on up north, but all Courtney had time to read was that larger zombie attacks were being warded off by the defenders there. That's about all I had time to read, since the weather here has gotten frustratingly...tropical.

It's a third the way into October, and it's just before noon. It's also seventy seven degrees outside and climbing. Which brings angry, hungry undead beating at our walls and surprising our scouts out in town and beyond. Two teams were attacked this morning with casualties from both. Three people dead even as we were being attacked here. We had some people working outside when the swarm can in. One of the farmers died trying to keep his sheep from panicking.

I wasn't there, but the report was disturbing. The zombies must be ravenous by now, they tore him apart in seconds. I call that a small blessing for him since he didn't have to suffer long.

The zombies also started going after the sheep. Thankfully we've spread them out around our farms, so they didn't get a large number of them, but about twenty were taken away. To be shared with other zombies to fend off starvation, maybe? I don't know. It seems pretty difficult to reconcile the vicious rending of a man with the careful abduction of woolly snacks. But there it is.

The compound itself was hit as well, and mostly at the new wall around the annexes. There were smarties among them, so it pretty much goes without saying that they were testing our defenses. All seven times they hit us. Never the same stretch of fence twice, and never a similar set of circumstances.

I estimate about two hundred of them total, and the attacks were easily repelled. Many of the zombies had fresh blood on them, some of the ones we killed showing a slim dusting of loose hairs on them and chunks of fur in their teeth. I have to wonder if they came out of their cold-induced stupor and hunted down the first moving thing to regain lost energy...

We held them off here, but the clever nature that defines the smarties and their ability to lead other zombies makes them an insidious threat. Our teams and people out on the farms will have to be especially careful to look for ambushes.

I hate to think that the smarties can make regular zombies hold off their desperate hunger in this way. It means greater and more subtle danger for all of us. The good news, I suppose, is that it has to get and stay cold eventually, and that will mean hibernating zombies.

It's looking to be eighty degrees today. In October. Bet all those global warming deniers are smacking their foreheads in whatever bit of the afterlife they ended up in.

2 comments:

  1. I love warm weather. Not hot weather, but warm weather. Usually, I'd be thrilled with this resurgence of warmth as the days are getting shorter. I never thought I'd be cursing an eighty degree high in October — but that's exactly what I've been doing. I can't wait for the cold Samhain rains to wash over the land, cleansing this world of these walking mockeries of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

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