Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Valley Girls

I don't think I mentioned it yesterday, but the population of people here in the valley is surprising in that the women outnumber the men. A lot. Like, three to one.

I could take this a lot of funny and possibly offensive places, but I won't.

On the one hand you might expect the men here to be excited about the prospect of being surrounded by so many women. I mean, it does get boring sometimes after the work is done and there isn't any television to watch or video games to play. You'd think that those fellas would be sitting pretty with a bunch of women with little else to do but think about ways to overcome that boredom...

Of course, I haven't asked. I don't know how people here manage their personal affairs, and I don't care. Not that I'm not curious, of course, just that in the end it has no bearing on why we're here.

Then again...I kind of feel sorry for these guys. I love women, all women, to one degree or another. I think women are amazing and wonderful creatures. That being said, I've also spent a frightening amount of my life being under the thumb of them. At the nursing home where I worked right up until the zombie plague broke out, I felt like the most henpecked son of a bitch on the face of the Earth. I know what those guys are dealing with.

That's bound to be taken the wrong way. Look, I'm truly not sexist. Well, I might be but only because I generally consider women to be superior to men. Women tend toward being smarter, more levelheaded, more meticulous and pragmatic. Also, women can have babies which pretty much gives them the win over guys even if all that other stuff wasn't true. I'm just saying that men, who usually think in straighter lines and with singular purpose, get annoyed with being told what to do even when it's the right thing to do. You feel me?

OK, so I got a bit off topic there. Sorry. I'm feeling unusually relaxed by the weird fact that I haven't seen a zombie since I got here. We've been extraordinarily lucky as far as I'm concerned, and we've used that freedom to work on some ideas for getting these folks and their food out of here.

One thought was the most simple and obvious: bring in more vehicles. Thanks to the flex-fuel fleet we took from the state parking lots, we certainly have enough of them to run a huge convoy if we wanted to. Add to that the tens of thousands of gallons of alcohol we have on hand in Frankfort that can be distilled down for fuel, and it makes perfect sense. Of course the downside is that such a convoy would be too tempting a target and would risk a large number of people from the compound. Not to mention the rather large dent it would take out of our fuel supplies even mixing it with 85% alcohol.

We've been looking at other options. Really, the hardest part is going to be keeping the people safe. We've thought about scouting the local areas for trailers to haul behind out trucks as well as harnessed onto some of the animals. The people here could walk if they had to, though how we would camp safely without drawing a swarm of zombies is beyond me.

We've even considered trying to find a train and using that to get us as far north as possible, but that would likely mean having to leave the vehicles behind, which isn't an option. We'll keep on thinking about it, and meanwhile meat is being dehydrated, veggies canned, and belongings parsed into what needs to be taken and what can be abandoned.

I'm sitting outside right now under a beautiful gazebo that looks older than me. The panels that make up the walls of it are single pieces of wood, each carved with different scenes. Some are of deer grazing in the woods, some of geese flying through the sky. There are holes all through them, in between the animals' legs and the ground. It's beautiful, and lets you see through the carvings like a screen. The valley beyond is idyllic and serene. It's a lovely place full of lovely people. I hate for them to have to leave.

Oh, and they have one thing in common with the people of the compound, at least. Lots of pregnant women here, too.

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