Friday, February 4, 2011

Thinking Inside The Box

I don't know what kind of glass this place is made of, but it's a lot tougher than it looks. The zombies outside have been beating the hell out of it for most of the last day with rocks. There are scratches all over, but no spiderwebbing or cracks that I can see.

We haven't been able to get any sleep since yesterday. The sound of stone against glass has been constant and in this small space it rings like a church bell every time. I haven't seen that creepy smart zombie for a while. I'm hoping he's given up and moved on. I doubt it--the numbers outside don't seem smaller, which means he's probably around here somewhere, waiting in some dark corner to jump out and scare the shit out of me. That smile reminds me of a clown. I fucking hate clowns.

Jess and I are going to have to figure out a way to escape soon. There isn't any water here, and the soda in the machine isn't really a solution for thirst in anything but a short term sense. We need water, real water, and soon. We're used to dealing with hunger, and we can survive a long time without food. I'm hoping it doesn't get that bad, honestly. I've been thinking of ways to escape since yesterday morning. None of the options so far are very pleasant to think about, and all of them are stupid risky. We're going to work on it today, and decide something by tomorrow morning if the situation here doesn't change drastically before then.

Mason offered to lead a team up here to get us. I declined the offer (so far) because of two very important facts: the people at Jack's need him and his knowledge along with the training he's providing them. And, because while I can't get a solid count on how many zombies are out here, I am relatively sure that there are over a hundred. It would take a good sized team to distract that many of them, a much larger one to kill them. Which would risk every member of the team that did it. I'm just not willing to let so many people risk their lives for my wife and I.

I'm not being a self-sacrificing douchebag, here. I'm all about getting out of this and heading back to Jack's. I just look at the situation with the proper math, and it tells me that as long as we are safely locked in here, there is no need to risk others to get us out. Two aren't worth the lives of a dozen. Not even two people as fantastically good looking as Jess and I.

Mason didn't like it, really, but he agreed with me. He's so busy right now teaching SO many things to everyone at Jack's that he really doesn't have the time to come here. I mean, he could, certainly, but he's trying to cram a lifetime of skills and knowledge into a few months at best. He knows what happened to my people at the compound, and he's eager to help the people at Jack's (and we refugees) learn all they and we can in the hopes that such catastrophes can be avoided in the future. It's not perfect, of course--there's no way anyone can perfect any of the things that he's teaching in such a short time. He is giving people a good basic knowledge of a lot of things--woodland survival, urban and wilderness movement training (so you don't get caught), some down and dirty fighting techniques, how to make weapons out of just about anything...plus a wide strata of knowledge about all kinds of things--materials that are commonly found most places and how they can be utilized for survival, weapons, etc. The weakest parts of the human body and how to exploit them.

There's a LOT o stuff. There are people working with him to copy it all down to use as the basis for some manuals. Aaron is working especially closely with Mason to try and unify all of the different pieces of what he knows into one big, scary lesson on how to survive. How to kill.

And damn it, how to be creative about it. That's important.

I talk a whole lot about "the world as it is" and "the world we now live in". It's a delineation that most of us make without thinking about it, but it's vital that we DO think about it. Right now we're like kids in a giant, zombie infested candy store: the world ended less than a year ago, and the corpse of society is still fresh enough that we can pick off the best parts. Gasoline is still around, metals are still plentiful. There are, as you read yesterday, still literally hundreds of tons of usable, cut wood to be taken. There's even canned food to be found, though it's starting to get a lot harder to do that.

We have to be creative to survive in the long term. We have to think around corners, outside of boxes, and be five steps ahead of our enemies. The situation Jess and I are in is proof of that--it's Darwin plain and simple. More, survivors have to start looking into the far future and start thinking about what problems will be ahead once the easy stockpiles of supplies, the useful but finite leftovers of a society that was, are gone.

I'm worried that we won't get out of this building for a lot of reasons. I love my wife and I want to be with her, safe. That's the biggest one. I love my friends and family, and I want to grow old with them (as unlikely as that seems at times). That's close behind.

Also--I love people. In general. I love humanity for every flaw and every virtue. I want so much to see how we move along from here. I can't do that if I die in a glass cage surrounded by an army of the hungry dead, and one smirking bastard intent on creeping me out.

I guess it's time I get creative, too...

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