Demonology

A group of six fighters died yesterday, and their loss will be felt among all those that knew them. I had never met any of them, but they were some of the bravest people here. All were part of our full-time security force, former soldiers, and put themselves at greater risk in a given day than any other group in New Haven.

Those lives weren't wasted. Aside from the very real fact that they died protecting us from the undead, they participated in a raid--the one that killed them--that netted us a new group of undead. Still moving zombies to study.

I'm not the one doing the studying this time, but there are enough people here interested in the cause of the zombie plague that volunteers aren't hard to find. I'm a little torn about research being performed on the undead again, but far be it from me to stand in the way of progress. I've said many times that our research capabilities here are very limited. Now that the Box is producing wind turbines from all that copper laying around in old power lines, we can set up a lab with at least some basic equipment.

I should say, for the sake of accuracy, that we can now power that equipment. The lab itself has been ready for a while. Becky will be putting in some time there, but there are four other people living over in East who can make our efforts more realistic. Two are biologists of one type or another, one a lab tech with a lot of experience reading and understanding many kinds of blood and tissue tests, and the other...

Well, the other is a geneticist. Don't ask me how we missed that. I blame the sheer number of people living here. Hard to catalog so many skills and forms of education. Probably didn't help that until the last few days we haven't had any way to use those kinds of talents. I know we won't be able to do any cutting-edge work, but anything that might help us is welcome.

People are afraid of what they don't understand. That's the nature of the survival instinct. This is another big step in a series of big steps. Not just for New Haven or even the Union. For all of us. I'm sure the UAS has the capability to do far more than we do, but if they have been brave enough to study the enemy, they aren't sharing. Every small erg of data we gather, every tiny bit further our understanding stretches, will make a difference. We may not find a way to defeat the plague in this decade. Maybe not in my lifetime.

We'll work at it anyway. Enough people have survived and gathered together to build something like the ghost of civilization. In an ironic twist, it's almost as if we're resurrecting society. Who'd have thought?