Trauma

Hey guys. If you missed my name under the post, this is Gabrielle. I'm writing this morning because Josh is injured and currently being stitched up, and I promised him I would tell everyone what happened.

Josh is the last of the wounded to be treated this morning. The large team that went out in the early hours decided that it would be best to get there a little before they planned. The teams were all in position by four A.M.

The reason they went out so early was because of the rain. The local zombies have been showing a lot of reluctance to go out in bad weather of any kind, and since it had started to shower around three, everyone wanted to take advantage of it to get in position in relative safety. Luck was with them, and the rain kept on going.

Fifty-six men and women went out to hunt this morning. Eleven of them didn't make it.

They had killed a fair number of animals by the time the trap was sprung. Some of our people had left the concealment of their blinds to collect their kills. Some were still in the trees. It was just light enough to see out when the zombies appeared in truly large numbers. At least two hundred of them.

Every one of our people had taken one of the weapons sent to us by North Jackson as a backup. The fact that each of our people had a strong, sharp, reliable blade was probably what saved more of them from being killed.

The thing is, it was still raining when the zombies attacked. I don't know if the large number of dead animals combined with the smell of so many people made them overcome their fear of the rain...but a few of the people I treated seem to think the whole area was a trap for us. Set by zombies. It makes sense to me, I guess. The smarties have been known to observe for long periods of time and act creatively with what they've learned. It certainly seems like a trap was sprung to me.

From what I've heard, none of the zombies that attacked our people showed the slightest fear at the worsening weather. If this was a trap, that piece of behavior scares me more than any other. Were they faking us out on that the whole time? Building our confidence up that they wouldn't come in numbers during a rainstorm? The implications are awful.

We did lost eleven people to the zombies, but it would have been a lot more if Jamie and Will hadn't drilled emergency orders into every person that went out. If an alarm went up, everyone was to move toward a predetermined spot and get into a box formation, weapons at the ready.

Most of the injuries we dealt with this morning are a result of that box formation. Forty-odd men and women swinging away at the undead around them with a new and unfamiliar weapon. There were cuts and scrapes all over. One woman lost three fingers. If half of them hadn't been inside the box formed by the other half of them, firing arrows out into the crowds of zombies, I think it would have been a lot worse. As it is, I have several people who might lose limbs. Seven with deep tissue lacerations that will take months to fully heal. Five with wounds that required dozens of stitches.

All in all, it's been a busy morning. I've been sent out of the clinic since I got off duty at three in the morning and was woken back up when the injuries came in. Luckily, we now have enough people trained in the basics that I wasn't needed for anything but the worst injuries. Having two doctors here to teach people is amazingly helpful.

Oh, and Josh. He was in a treestand when someone blew the foghorn to sound the alarm. He tried to climb down, but the dark and unfamiliar equipment got in the way. He fell the last ten feet out of the tree. Nothing broken that we can tell, but the arrow he had ready to draw snapped when he fell and the head went into his leg. He landed on his machete, which fortunately only slid about five inches out of it's sheath. The cut going up his wrist from that looks awful, but it's actually pretty shallow. I expect him to do very well, though it'll be a while before he can type at full speed again.

I guess the only good news is that a lot of our people survived what should have been certain death. It wasn't through brave heroics, though our hunters fought like devils to keep each other alive. It was because a few minutes into the fight, most of the undead that were still standing gave up and moved on. Our people didn't understand why until they started doing damage assessment in that lonely stretch of woods. The ones that had attacked our people might have just been a distraction.

All their kills were gone. We lost eleven priceless men and women, with not a scrap of meat to show for it.