Slow Going

We're on the road again, and I've been lax in my duty to report on how our primary mission has been going. For obvious security reasons, I can't tell you where we were other than to say in southern Canada with a community of survivors.

It was a big place, about three hundred and fifty people. They'd taken refuge in an abandoned industrial facility, one with heavy steel walls and plenty of floor space. Over the last year and a half they built inside it, creating in interesting multiple level honeycomb of small, private residences as well as larger communal ones. The exterior of the building is surrounded by a wall made of gravel and large rock held together by wire mesh. It's big, intimidating, and pretty much impossible for zombies to get through.

I'd have thought people stuck in a place like that would have had a hard time farming and hunting, but that's not the case at all. The community near their new home was a small and relatively rural one. There are a lot of fields to farm that are fenced in and easy to defend. The hunting is plentiful, given how much of Canada was still wilderness even before The Fall.

The people there have ample food for trade, and they're also focusing on making light, strong blocks that interlock and don't need much mortar to hold them together. It's an interesting concept, one that several other groups have expressed interest in if they can make the idea work. There's transportation to consider, but I've got news on that front...

...because our next stop, which will take a while to get to, is a group that has been living quietly in a massive storage facility for gasoline. It's a reserve that holds untold thousands of gallons of fuel. I think it may have been a government depot at one time. They want to trade services for items, namely providing transport for many of the communities that wish to trade but don't have large reserves of fuel. Another good idea.

It's going to take us a while to get there for several reasons. One is that we have to circumvent the assholes who captured Will and Rachel, a route that took way longer than it should to plan out. Another is that we've been encountering zombies a lot more through the border states, which is why I couldn't update yesterday. The undead were so thick around us that I didn't even dare to climb into the bed of the truck through the back window to fire up the cell transmitter. We were worried the walls protecting the truck's bed wouldn't hold. We spent seven and a half hours in one spot, waiting for the crowd of zombies on the road to clear. If they hadn't thinned out by eight hours, we were going to hit them with a dose of ammonia. We've been trying to conserve our supplies. This is gonna be a long trip.

So far, no one in the group has an overwhelming desire to strangle anyone. Or, if they do, they aren't admitting it. Maybe eighteen months of living in close quarters has made us more tolerant, but I would have thought someone would have become frustrated with the tight confines of the truck and trailer. So far, all of us are staying professional and keeping our cool. Becky, who sleeps on the same shift (and on the same bunk) as me, has even ceased whacking me in the face with her elbow every time she turns over. That by itself is a minor miracle.

There are zombies on the road. Not enough to stop us or even threaten us, but enough to slow us down. Looks like a shift of standing in the bed of the truck with a section of wall lowered, putting machetes through skulls. The blade goes up, then down, the zombie falls. Repeat. A fucking lot. Tedious and boring, not to mention disturbingly mechanical. Those used to be people, after all...

A long, long day. Off to it.