Onward To Ragnarok

Sometimes it's easy to forget that people read this blog and find hope in it. I began Living With the Dead as a warning when I and others around me saw the violence around the country for what it was. We hoped we were wrong, we hoped that we would be made fun of in a few days when the whole thing blew over. We didn't expect it to happen. We were right.

In the time I've been writing this, it has transformed from a basic log of my life, my perspective, during The Fall into something else. Many of you have been there from early on, reading about the lives of the handful of people who formed what would become the compound. You followed along as we struggled to wall in our home, to bring in more people. You watched as many others chose to join us and lend their strength to ours. It took months to make our home secure, and more cooperative effort than I had thought we were capable of. Eventually, though, we did it. We became a unified community, efficient and powerful in the needs that arose to ensure our survival.

We lost it all in a single day.

We've fought the undead in the thousands. Killed and outsmarted marauders and raiders time and time again. The citizens of the compound have always struggled to retain the hope for peaceful coexistence during the violent times that define us. We've been practical and sacrificing when necessary. Today is the day when that gets put to the test.

I've told you that I have been in contact with numerous people still inside the compound and under the thumb of the Richmond soldiers who took it from us. I've been talking with them at every opportunity to feel out their views on what the next move of those who escaped should be. All of us on the outside have been cautious to the extreme, doing everything we can to make sure that our actions don't put those left at home in danger.

The overwhelming response I've gotten from our trapped citizens whose safety has been paramount for we refugees?

"Take back the compound. By any means necessary."

Understand what I'm telling you here: our folks at home are willing to risk everything to oust the Richmond soldiers from our home. And they want the soldiers to know it. To see it coming. To know that they will be reaping the consequences of taking our home.

I wish it were that simple. I don't have a personal army to call on, no troops to send at them to reclaim what's ours. However, I am done with pussyfooting around the issue. Every refugee is now clear on the facts. The folks back home want their oppressors to know that somewhere down the road, there will be a fight. We're fine with them knowing that.

Now that the majority of survivor groups we've worked with or been in contact with have agreed to embargo the Richmond soldiers, the situation has changed. Now there are 250 hostages back home as the only barrier for us taking the place back. There won't be anyone joining the soldiers in the fight when it begins. They will be a little less than a hundred against whatever we can throw at them.

Someday, we'll have the weapons and people, transports and fuel needed to make that happen. Because this blog represents who we are as a community. It represents the mindset and desires of the people who made the compound, who helped it grow. It gives hope to some people out there that people still exist who listen to the voices of the better angels of their nature.

The message is clear: We will allow no tyrants. Though the soldiers might kill every last person left at the compound, the only purpose such an act would serve would be to make us angry and remove the last barriers for us to level the place around them. We will teach them someday that death is better than enslavement.

But not today. We don't have the resources, and the season is against us.

So the refugees are gathering at a place that can handle our numbers. A place we promised not to endanger with our presence, yet has offered us refuge time and again. Now, we accept that offer. Our hosts are welcome allies in our eventual plans to take back our home. Jack and his people welcomed us to his compound in Michigan last night.

Within a week, the rest of us should have made it here. Hopefully the few who have been out of touch will get here as well. There is work to be done in the way of paying our fair share to Jack and his people. We need to help look for food and supplies, and come the spring work to clear fields and plant crops. For now, this is our home, and we will defend it to the death.

Someday, we'll be back home. No more threats. No more promises. Only a simple statement of fact.

You've seen what our determination can do. It lead us to survive when others fell, to fight against the swarms of zombies and men who would kill us. It made us learn and grow, to adapt to the needs of a struggle to live.

Now we're focusing on taking back the compound. God help you.