Eastbound

Hello everyone. Aaron here. Miss me? Josh is being kind enough to let me post my little update on the actual blog here today for those that have been worried or concerned about me. As he mentioned, I left New Haven awhile ago. Now, it wasn't because there's anything wrong with New Haven. Quite the contrary. I miss New Haven greatly and love it so much. I left because I wanted to find a few people. See, before the Fall I was one of those people who did long distance dating via the internet. At the time of the fall, I was with a girl from New Jersey. We actually had been together for about two years and spent a great deal of time traveling back and forth to visit each other and what not. Heck, she even planned on eventually moving to Kentucky. However, the Fall had a funny way of ruining plans. I lost touch with her. I sent her a few messages but never got anything back. So I assumed the worst. She was one of the casualties of the Fall. 

So imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from her, not only telling me that she was fine, but had heard about New Haven and wanted to come down here. The only real problem was that she didn't really know how to get here, nor did she feel safe to try to on her own. So I packed what I could and with the permission of the (now defunct) council grabbed one of the trucks and began to make my way toward New Jersey. This was back in the beginning of November.

Now on top of my own personal mission, I had been asked to make contact with a few known groups of survivors to set up possible trade arrangements. Probably why I was allowed to go at all.  Not that they would've genuinely stopped me, but there would've been many more attempts to persuade me to stay and it was already difficult for me to do so. Plus they wouldn't have let me have the truck.

So my first stop was a group of survivors who had decided to hole up in one of the old coal mining towns in West Virginia. The first thing that really surprised the heck out of me was that they had electricity. Like street lights and stuff. It made everything seem so...bright. This was greatly offset by the thin layer of coal dust that seemed to cover most of everything. So in the end I chose the name Soot for it. I don't know. It seemed appropriate.

The people there seemed genuinely pleased to see me when I got there. I got the feeling I was expected. They were all a hardy lot, about hundred and fifty of them in all. They worked the mine in shifts and those not working in mine usually worked on other projects. Like the massive electrified fence that surrounded the entire town. It's their main means of defense. A large 15 foot tall metal fence they can keep electrified for when the zombies (or marauders back when they were more plentiful) attacked. It was a site to behold. I got to see it in action a few times. Seemed to even keep this New Breed at bay for the most part.

I ended up staying there until about the middle of March, for a number of reasons. The first was the chaotic weather. Not that it was overly cold there (though colder than how it was in Kentucky apparently) or there was a whole lot of snow, but it was enough. Plus it took awhile to work out the arrangement between New Haven and Soot. More so cause of the political turmoil in New Haven. That and communication was really tough. Despite having a more or less regular source electricity they did not have very consistent internet connection. In fact, it was downright impossible to stay on the net for more than an hour or so at a time. I'm amazed they were able to get in touch with the outside world at all. But they're a resourceful bunch.

So anyways, I took my leave a couple of weeks ago to head toward my next stop in Virginia and had the most damning of things happen. I let myself run out of gas. So I've been hoofing it ever since. I just finished crossing the Appalachians a couple of days ago and finally got signal today. I'm hoping to hit my destination sometime in the next week or so and assuming all goes well there, I might be able to check out D.C. area. I guess we'll see what happens.

I miss you guys back and New Haven and I look forward to when I can see you all again. Stay safe back there and I'll try to send more regular messages through Josh when I can.