Friday, July 13, 2012

Making Time

More than ever I'm trying to make time for little things. Jess getting sick and coming so close to disaster--hell, all of New Haven doing the same thing from time to time--makes those small moments together all the more important. As we treat the new arrivals and our own ill people I try to remember to enjoy the breaks when they come.

This whole expansion process is going to consume a lot of time and resources, and chances are that none of us will get a full night's sleep until it's done. Yeah, most of the physical work is going to be done by the people coming here, but that doesn't leave the rest of us off the hook. We aren't just expecting them to build a community for themselves and let that be the end of it. They're joining us and will be doing one hell of a lot of work that benefits everyone. We have to show willing. Do the groundwork and fill in the gaps. We're all in it together.

But it really is a lot of work. And time will be short. That's why I took some extra time this morning to give Jess a massage after we woke up and had breakfast. A little thing, maybe fifteen minutes, but it started her day off right. We'll be starting the cleanup around New Haven tomorrow afternoon if the number of ill newcomers stays where it is or drops. We weren't planning on sending them all out at once anyway, so at least starting the project is feasible.

Once we do, time for back rubs and shared meals might be hard to come by. Not only will we be dealing with managing the cleanup of the New Breed and other zombies around New Haven, but also the consequences of that. I'm to be in charge of constantly monitoring the cleanup reports and allotting resources for the teams, making their schedules and the like, but that's only half the problem. What happens when we send our people into the field and deliberately poke the undead with a stick? We've faced the New Breed before, and we've had to change tactics to fight them often. They watch us, they learn.

They figured out that hemming us in here while the new plague ravaged our people was a safe play. They seemed to know that while our home might not be an easy target, at the very least we couldn't manage any serious assaults on them.

The scout trip I took was quick and dirty, but it doesn't give us any idea how many of them are out there. We still have farmland in this county and a few of the surrounding ones that we haven't been able to tend. What if another huge mass of zombies has accumulated in Shelby county, for example? We're gunning for them on purpose, but it's not crazy to say that doing so is probably going to invite retaliation. To accomplish our goal of reducing the local population of undead to manageable levels so the real work can begin, we almost need them to do it. Flush them out, and hope to god we can deal with the flood.

So, yeah. Probably going to be a busy guy for a while. Even if everything goes as planned I'll still have to help oversee the expansion and the migration, right along with all the details that come with them. I think we have the food issues hammered out, but there are so many others...

I don't even want to think about how rough things will get if there are way more New Breed out there than we estimate. Doing all that and having to fight at the walls or in the field? Ugh. Just like old times.

I think I'll see if Jess wants to take a walk or something. I get the funny feeling we won't be doing normal things like that very much in the days ahead.

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