The Fire's Edge

I missed posting yesterday because I was sick. Hell, still am sick. Sinus infections are sneaky motherfuckers, let me tell you. Was fighting a cold and then boom I'm out on my back. I still feel like crap, but my fever and other symptoms are easing up enough to let me sit in my office for a bit.

I probably wouldn't have posted yesterday regardless, to be frank. A lot is happening.

We're still sending out humanitarian aid to North Jackson. Being such a large community, they have access to medical staff and abundant housing. There are many, many injured there, but most have been taken care of in the days since the attack. The real problem NJ faces isn't what they're dealing with right now, though that's bad enough for anyone. When their food supplies run out, those people are going to starve. Too much of their capacity to feed themselves was destroyed in the attack.

It's simple math, really. Between caring for the wounded, trying to house those whose homes were destroyed in the attacks, and making an effort to salvage some of their manufacturing capacity, the people of NJ are having a hard time mustering the bodies to start new farmland. It isn't a matter of people wanting to do it, but rather having the sheer numbers needed to clear land while also keeping off whatever zombies have managed to overcome the cold to attack them. Even then I think NJ would manage it, but they're also sorely lacking in seed stock. Most of what they had was being stored in the greenhouse, which was totally destroyed by bomb and the fires that came from it.

So, yeah. We're sending people. Not just us, but many other communities that are part of the Union.

That alone is a big order to fill, but what happened to North Jackson is only the beginning of our problems, I'm afraid.

There have been reports of suspicious activity from all over the Union over the last several days. Supply caches burned or raided, sections of road sabotaged, zombies where it shouldn't even be possible for them to be. Many things that add up to an inevitable conclusion: the UAS has teams within our borders, probably several small units, who are causing chaos and trying to weaken us wherever they can.

Big K is sitting here next to me, reminding me that I've been trying to write this post for better than an hour. Big bastard is trying to make me go lay back down just because I'm kind of dizzy and wavering in my chair. Well, boo on that. I've survived much worse.

Because I want to make a point here before I go pass out again, maybe one the UAS hasn't fully considered. Yes, the UAS obviously has skilled operators who can sneak across the several-hundred-mile border we can't possibly patrol perfectly. I'll stipulate that they've likely got some dangerous military people trained to cause the kind of mayhem that wins wars. So yeah, they're here, inside our territory. Yeah, they'll hit us here and there, trying to demoralize our people and cripple our logistics. I admit that it borders on certain that those few handfuls of people are elite warriors who are deadlier than any single person in the Union, and capable of surviving off the land without being seen.

But, well...have you guys in the UAS really considered what we are capable of putting out there? I mean, you have some really talented military folks, I won't argue that. Hell, I wish they were on our side. What I'm saying is, while our people may not be ghosts in the way yours are, they have years of experience avoiding people when they want to, dead or alive. They've been singled out by the advanced natural selection of the world today as the smartest, strongest, most cunning survivors the species has to offer. They can live off the land, kill without hesitation, and melt into the background only to do it all over again.

We have thousands of people like that. And I can promise you one thing with total surety: if you decide to commit fully to dominating the rest of us and actually manage to win? You'll have a hell of a time stopping those many thousands from disappearing. How many of them would just give up and go live in the woods, do you think? I don't imagine it would be a high number. No, what I think is they'd dedicated themselves to dismantling your entire operation one piece at a time. You think we'll be disheartened by what looks like a few dozen people trying to give us the death of a thousand small cuts?

Nah. Because we know that if we fall, you'll be stung to death by the angry survivors you're attacking even now. I take a grim kind of satisfaction in that.

There. I feel better. I'm going back to bed.