Gears of War

As you can tell from the previous two posts, Patrick has left the compound. We all knew he was going to leave, and while it irks me a little that he didn't even say goodbye, I understand why he did it. While I would love to talk about his experiences outside the walls of the compound (which is why I gave him access to the blog to begin with, weeks ago...) something else has come up that makes everything else unimportant.

We've been worried as hell that the Richmond soldiers would come for us. So worried that the council secretly sent out one of our people to live covertly in Richmond to keep an eye on the situation. You'll understand why I never mentioned that fact. The bad news is that our spy has come home, telling us that the soldiers there have already mobilized and started to move out.

He saw some heavy gear being moved out, and while there were plenty of smaller and faster vehicles along with the armored and armed ones, everyone seemed to be sticking together. If that holds true, they should be here sometime around noon or one. I think we have a little longer than that, though.

When they hit us a few weeks ago, they avoided our scout patrols and sentries along the highway by getting here by back roads and over land. With the ridiculous amount of rain the last few days, there is zero chance that some of those vehicles could go across the land around us to hit the compound. And I doubt too many of those back roads will be able to handle the weight of many of those vehicles.

So it's the highway all the way here. They can afford to be obvious--after all, they are coming in force and well protected.

Then again, we've left some surprises for them along their path to us. Hope you fuckers are reading this. Have fun finding them.

If I sound reasonably calm about this, don't consider it very surprising. We've dealt with enough insane shit since March that this is just another nasty bump in the road. Yeah, we are being threatened by a military force that is heavily armed with unknown goals. But we have the advantage of home turf, high ground, and a degree of innovative thinking that, when combined with our general sneakiness, is formidable at the least.

It helps that we have more than three times their numbers as well. There are plans set up for nearly any contingency, and I think we'll have until tomorrow before we have to face them head on. I don't know if it's going to come to a firefight, but since the idea seems to be conquest rather than destruction, you can call it a safe bet that they probably won't shell us with heavy artillery or anything...

I'm terribly glad now that so many of us are away from the compound right now. I'm confident that we have made ourselves too difficult to take, but the danger is still very real. One of my favorite authors, Raymond E. Feist, has a quote that he likes to use in some of his books.

"The best battle plan in the world means nothing once the first arrow is fired."

Something like that, anyway. And it's true. The great thing about fighting mostly zombies up until this point is that the majority of them are predicable and therefore relatively easy to beat. People are different--creative and efficient in finding ways to kill each other. It's almost a racial superpower for us. Which means that Mr. Feist's quote is Truth with a capital 'T'. We've planned and designed defense after defense, but the hard reality is that once the fighting starts, anything could happen.

The only really comforting thought there is that it goes both ways...

At any rate, we're on red alert here (thanks for that phrase, Star Trek) so I need to scoot. If I'm alive tomorrow, I will update you on what's going on if possible. We might be fighting, but I will try to do something to at least let you know I'm alive. Wish us luck, and stay away from here if you want to be safe.