Monday, May 14, 2012

Guesswork

There's something going on at the fallback point. We're not sure what the Exiles are up to because of the screens they erected all over the place, but the sounds drifting across the river are of heavy machinery and a lot of construction. Saws rasping through wood, hammers driving nails, trucks backing up. It's unnerving to know they're working in the rain, that whatever they're doing is important enough to get soaked to the skin to do it. 

Could just be building shelter, but since the fallback point has a hotel that's six or seven stories high as well as a twenty-story office building, I can't see them needing the space. Thing is, we have zero clue what it is and that's the really bothersome part. Maybe it's catapults? But why would they need them given the huge amount of weaponry at their disposal? Ugh. My brain hurts. 

The timing is a little scary as well. We're going through an extended lull between zombie attacks at the moment. Not many come together at once even though a lot of old school zombies as well as New Breed are out and about. We pick them off as we find them, but that's not a huge imposition. It's lucky for us since this illness has begun to spread, but that's why we're worried. The Exiles have to know about our people getting sick, and all of a sudden they've got a construction project that just can't wait. 

Honestly, I'm a little disappointed. If the Exiles are planning on breaking the truce, I'd have thought they would wait until more of us were too sick to fight. If they're going to hit us, this is too obvious. The construction has raised our hackles, made us ready for a fight. 

But we won't throw the first punch. 

Because every day we can put off any kind of battle is a day for our injured to regain their strength. It's time we can use to tinker with new ideas, work on the expansion, do any number of things that will help us in the long run. 

Not that we're going to ignore the activity going on over the river. Will is calling a council meeting this morning that I'll be attending. We're going to throw around ideas about what the Exiles are building. Our watchers can't see much past the screens, but they're moving around to find a better vantage point. The cliffs on our side of the river are huge and dangerous, some parts almost impossible to navigate. If they have any success by the time the meeting starts they'll send word. 

So far no more people have developed symptoms. That's a small miracle as far as I'm concerned. We've threaded the needle of disease for more than two years now. There are so few people and contact with outsiders is so limited that the usual suspects don't make many appearances. The flu isn't as prevalent as it once was, though I've fallen ill with various problems several times. On a longer time scale we're bound to run into outbreaks of disease. I don't think any of us expected it to be this. Maybe something like measles, which people tend to forget is a really awful and dangerous illness, but not a variation of the zombie plague. Dealing with zombies (and turning into them when we die) is bad enough without having to lose people to them because of the organism that makes them go. 

...Damn. Just got word that I'm wrong. Two more people found sick this morning when they didn't show up for work. I'll update again tomorrow. This meeting and trying to plan for the worst in the face of possibly seeing an epidemic hit us has me frazzled. Damn. 

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