Click

I've just received a terrible phone call.

Jamie and his team set out a few hours ago to try and retrieve the mobile cell transmitters they found outside Louisville. They hadn't gotten very close to them on the previous trip due to the horrendous amount of debris around them. Whoever set up the safe zone the transmitters were in, which we assume was military, made sure that there were fortifications galore around them. Jamie knew that to get them out, he'd have to move hundreds of sandbags, portable barriers, vehicles, and dead bodies.

So this trip he took a team of a dozen with him. Four of those men won't be coming home today. Jamie himself is being rushed back to the compound, having taken some serious damage to one of his legs.

Apparently, Jamie and five others were attempting to clear away some of the junk piled near the transmitters when one of the men ahead of Jamie moved a body. There was either an unexploded mine beneath it or maybe a grenade whose pin got hung up and yanked out when the body was moved. I don't suppose it really matters now. What does matter is that the explosion killed four of our people instantly, and shredded Jamie's leg. I haven't gotten a follow-up call yet, but from what I was told it's questionable whether Jamie will live long enough to get home and receive medical care.

I know enough emergency medicine and human physiology to know that when a man's leg has to be tied off with a belt, it usually isn't good news. Whoever I talked to didn't say if the bleeding was arterial. If it is, I don't think any tourniquet will keep him alive long enough to reach us. I don't know...

The man that called me was the sixth member of Jamie's group. He heard the sharp click of whatever triggering mechanism set off the explosive. The other six men are waiting at with the transmitters for Mason, who left out as soon as word came in about the explosion. Mason is going to help the remaining team search very carefully for mines, grenades, IED's, and anything else that might have been left in place for the zombies that wander around the safe zone.

I hate to think of how many times we've probably passed right by stuff like this. I know that the scouts have encountered trapped caches before, but you have to wonder how many we've missed for every one that we've found. I can see some soldier, staring out across the safe zone as his brother soldiers and the civilians they were trying to save were overrun. I can imagine the gears clicking in his head as he realizes they'll be no escape this time. That the swarms are too large and fierce. I can't blame him for setting a mine or rigging a grenade. One last trap to make the world poorer a few undead.

Not just soldiers, either. I can see farmers and businesspeople doing exactly the same, and I can't say I blame them a bit. Seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is an understandable thing to do.

Unless, of course, you think that some living person might need what you no longer have a use for, you being dead. Then setting a trap for unwitting zombies has a new perspective. Maybe it's selfish, or shortsighted. Possibly dumb? Depending on the person setting the trap, it might even be hateful or nihilistic.

I don't think that was the case here, though. I can't feel anger at anyone for what might have been a simple accident. It's possible that no one set an intentional trap at all. I am angry, just not at a person. Simply at fate, or god, or whatever you want to call it. All of us are pretty tired of the constant flux between good and bad luck. None of us are happy about the terrible shifts in our outlook from day to day. We don't like losing friends and family after such a long struggle. Not to zombies. Not to enemies. Nor to weapons left on the ground.

It's a bad morning. And no matter what might happen throughout this day, no amount of good will bring back those lost men.