Sunday, November 13, 2011

Mob Rules

The team and I are hiding. We had to make a run from the Bunker.

When we told them we weren't going to make the trip with them, the leadership (such as it is) understood but weren't happy about it. When the news hit the general population, there was a lot of grumbling and some angry talk about keeping us there. My team and I can deal with a lot of threats, but hundreds of people to our five made us a little wary. So we made sure to keep our gear ready to go just in case.

As it turns out, it takes about twelve hours for a group of twenty people to talk each other into doing something stupid. They tried to jump us in the night, while they thought it'd be easiest. All five of us were awake, and it was Rachel, the gentlest and least violent member of my group, that got her gun aimed at their faces first.

I won't lie. I was pretty damned proud of her.

Five armed veterans of the zombie plague are nothing to sneer at. Those people were, I have to assume, the most cowardly the Bunker had to offer. After all, they were the ones who decided it was fair to try and take us captive and steal our vehicle and supplies. Oh, sure, they tried to tell us they were coming to talk, to convince us to stay. I might have listened had they not all been carrying makeshift weapons. At two in the morning.

The situation became too unstable when a few of them yelled out when they realized we were going to leave. We had them disarmed at that point, laying face down. A few people showed up, and then it was all a mess. We were holding guns on their people, who were lying through their teeth saying they were checking out a disturbance. The whole ordeal got heated, and Will decided to break the tension by firing his .45 into the air.

Revolvers are loud. Definitely an attention grabber. He explained very calmly what the situation actually was, and when our erstwhile attackers tried to argue, he shot the sky a second time. Will told the second group of people to show up what happened, and that we were leaving.

And we left. Becky and I covered the lot of them from the top of the trailer as we drove away. Thank god none of those idiots had a firearm.

I don't feel bad about it. I wish I did, but any group of people so lax in discipline that they'd let guests who are trying to help them be threatened by their own people are probably doomed to die. I can't see them making the long trek across the flatlands out here. Period. If the Bunker's citizens leave as one group, I think they're going to fail. Unless they do the impossible and pull their heads out of their asses. If the more reasonable among them, especially the few who have made an effort to learn survival skills, splinter off into groups with each other, then they've got a shot.

I hate to think in these terms, but the safety of the Bunker didn't do these people any favors. The zombie plague killed a lot of capable people, but it killed a lot of cowardly, stupid, and selfish ones with them. Though there are always exceptions, most survivors are pretty good at staying alive, and making the effort and hard choices that entails.

The Bunker was an empty space, filled with locals who had no crucible to burn away the dross. Without the constant struggle, or even the initial shock of the zombie plague and the violence that swept across the world, these people have no...what's the word I'm looking for?

Hmm. They haven't been inoculated. They've lived in a shelter that has made them safe and kept them from building up an immunity to the world around them. It isn't their fault. It's just sad. I hope the best for them, but I also don't feel any responsibility to make it happen. My life is my own, and I won't risk it or those of my friends for them.

That might make me a bad person.

I don't care.


1 comment:

  1. I particularly pity the children that are left in there. They don't deserve to suffer like that. We need to talk sometime Josh. I have a few ideas rolling around in my head.

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