On Angel Wings

It shouldn't surprise anyone out there to learn that New Haven has been cut off from all trade for the time being. No one wants to send their people into what is sure to become a war zone soon, and our people aren't holding that against them. It does create a slew of potential problems down the road if we can't reestablish trade, but for the time being all is well.

One exception, though. We are connected with a group of survivors that are very secretive, and who have access to a large quantity of aviation fuel, a cargo plane, military air drop crates (with parachutes!) and a pilot brave enough to come this way. So yeah, we're working on having some trade goods we've been waiting on for a while dropped right on our doorstep. Okay, not actually anywhere near New Haven itself, because no one wants to be crushed by a huge box falling from the heavens. But still. Air drops. How freaking cool is that?

Yes, I'm excited. Inside every grown man is a boy still obsessed with 'army guys' and their associated toys.

Still, we'll be in a bad situation if we can't find a way to get goods out of here. We could subsidize all the items we ship out and just send team after team of people on long-term trips, but that would be stupidly inefficient. The whole point of the trade system is to spread the cost in fuel and effort among all the groups within it, saving any one group from having to use way more resources than they can spare. We'd only be able to manage for a short while before we had to stop. We've got a lot of fuel and a lot of ethanol to mix with it, but the future is a long time to go without...

We're the only producer of antibiotics of any kind, as far as I'm aware. Most of what we make it topical, but we live in a dirty world where wounds are incredibly prone to festering. I hate to think of the people out there who might suffer without our goods. Not that there's a lot we can do about it, since we don't have a skyhook just laying around, or for that matter anyone to do a flyby and grab it if we did.

Will is working with Dodger to come up with a solution. Safe routes are difficult to cultivate, but given how quiet things are with the Exiles at the moment, it's a problem we can work on. They're still holed up in the fallback point, and have given us no signs they're attempting to come across the river. Which of course makes me mad with curiosity, because why the hell would they be so nonviolent, so complacent, if they weren't up to something? It makes my brain hurt.

I will admit to one satisfying piece of good news. We've been pretty happy about the increasing number of zombies showing up around here, and the face that most of them are on our side of the river. The undead are dangerous, sure, but they make it much harder for the Exiles to move around in our part of town. At least, they would do that if the enemy were crossing over to it.

So, the scout team and I had a little fun yesterday. We trotted around town, gathering up a trail of zombies behind us. We must have had fifty or sixty following when we gunned our engines and left them all at the river bank. Right across from the fallback point. All those zombies, standing at the edge of the river, watching the tasty humans on the other side. Dangerous to the Exiles? No, probably not as long as they don't try to cross. Annoying as hell? Yep. I'd say that's likely.

Sometimes being petty is deeply, deeply gratifying.