Monday, November 28, 2011

Letting Go

I'm afraid this stop and maybe the next will be kept completely undocumented on the blog. Citing security issues, the leadership is concerned about angry people coming after them for continuing trade with Georgetown now that their secret is out. 

I wanted to be angry about people keeping the status quo with no repercussions to Georgetown, but I found it almost impossible. I was still running hot when I wrote my last post, but I've had time to calm down and talk to some people. I've gotten a fair amount of perspective in the last day. 

Here's the thing: I think I'm more angry about them not being upfront about it than anything. I'm a strong believer in redemption and making choices, especially hard ones. I don't know what each and every one of the citizens of Georgetown have done, but they all made the decision to stop. To work together. To be better. 

I can't argue with that. I honestly don't want to know what crimes they may have committed. It isn't our place to act as executioners because of things people have done. That may not be fair to those who've had their lives ruined or ended by them, but survivors understand about dealing with the now. Can humanity afford to lose so many? I don't think so. 

On that note, something important has become apparent as we've headed further west. We saw it in Georgetown, and here at our current location it's even more obvious: there are way more living people out here than we expected. The community we're currently staying in as guests has almost a thousand people, and from what I'm told that isn't especially large for this neck of the woods. 

It's balmy and nice here, a comfy sixty degrees at night, and the land is farmed most of the year. It never snows (or almost never, at any rate) and the land is fertile. Lots of oranges and other fruits grow here easily. The network of survivors in just this group's immediate circles numbers close to ten thousand. 

I thought about that for a long time, and it makes sense. How else could the people here manage to trade enough food to keep the hundreds of hungry mouths in Georgetown fed as they mined the earth, unless there were many more here to work the land? I did the math, and it works out if you think about it. If the plague of zombies killed as much as 99% of the population, that would have left roughly three million people alive in America alone. 

I don't know if that's the case, but experience shows that larger groups tend to gather in areas that are easy to farm or have valuable trade resources. I can't imagine how many people are alive along the west coast. I mean, ten thousand within just a few dozen miles of each other. That's nuts. 

But all of them need metals. Georgetown might be full of criminals that have done awful things, but they're ones that all decided at one point or another to change that. They punish themselves with strict rules and a harsh, spartan way of life. From a pragmatic viewpoint, people need what they produce, and badly. There might come a time when it's logistically feasible to seek justice for the things they've done...but that time isn't now. 

My people accepted Kincaid and his bunch. Georgetown isn't asking anyone to take them in, to live next to people who've lived a lifestyle counter to what the rest of us stand for. They're doing it on their own, and for now we all have to focus on the needs they meet for thousands of people who are living and in need. Not their victims, who I imagine are mostly dead and beyond any help other than a prayer. 

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