Unlikely Allies

Well, I'll be damned.

Kincaid and his people accepted our terms wholly and without complaint. They're on the way. His group of marauders are going to be taking a large group of kids and two teachers all the way to New Haven. We made that one of the conditions, since New Haven's location is well known. I don't want to hand potential enemies the location of a group of survivors if I can help it.

Kincaid's bunch won't be going alone, of course. They'll be joined by a task force of our people heading this way even as I type this. There will also be some folks from Sparta and a few other places making that trip. Overall Kincaid's marauders will be outnumbered four to one if you include the people they're transporting. On top of that, his people won't have any guns, and only one in three will be allowed handheld melee weapons. We aren't even letting them have bows and arrows.

Oh, and when Kincaid's group gets to New Haven, they're staying. It remains to be seen whether or not they'll be allowed to move about freely or given sentences for the crimes they've admitted to, but either way New Haven is going to have some interesting new residents aside from the kids we're sending there.

And we need to send them soon. Fleets of vehicles have been moving in and out over the last day taking kids to safe locations at nearby communities. I feel a lot better about sending those young men and women to places I've been to live with people I've met. Time is a factor, however, and even if my team and I had to send them away with strangers, we'd do it.

The local zombies are already moving against the caravans leaving Black Mesa in groups of twelve to twenty. They're moving with purpose--fast, organized, and never attacking the same way twice. So far there haven't been any casualties, but we've only moved about forty people. Would be more, but we're trying to work all the logistics out while figuring ways to keep the zombies from doing any real damage.

Mason has been doing recon a few miles into the surrounding areas. He's the only person doing so, as he's not letting any of us join him. No matter how right that decision is, it never stops being irritating to be reminded he sees the rest of us as dead weight for things like this. Chalk it up to two decades of service, most of which were spent slipping into enemy territory undetected to gather intel.

He's a ghost. Comparatively, the rest of us are people with broken feet walking in very noisy armor. His recon trip yesterday wasn't enlightening as far as specifics go with the local zombies. He didn't see any of them drawing diagrams or anything, giving him some idea of what's in the works. In general terms, he thinks the local undead are building a strong force to assault the place. There's a lot of organization going on outside the limits of what we can see. Groups of three are systematically killing the weakest zombies, getting stronger. There's even a small copse of trees where, Mason swears, a small group of undead seem to be gathering the surviving trios for the purpose of deliberately spreading the mutations that are already so rampant here.

So, yeah. We think something just might be up. It's not a mystery. It's just going to make this especially dangerous. My people should be here in the next day. Kincaide and his early this evening. With luck we'll pull out before whatever is in the works can happen. Fingers crossed.