Sprung

It's just past eleven in the morning here, and it's overcast and raining. The temperature is a comfortable if slightly less than ideal 54 degrees. Over the last two and a half days, we've seen Spring truly come in, and as of yet there have been no reported zombie sightings within visual range of any of our settlements in the county.

I don't think we're past the point of the undead being a threat to us by any means, but the constant efforts of our people over the last few months have worked out well for us. The county is mostly clear, and the smell of death that drives away zombie swarms seems to be playing a part in that. Now that Spring has sprung, the next step in our plan to drive away the constant swarms that threaten us can take shape.

Over the winter months every community in the Union has been methodically stripping the world bare of old resources. Chemicals, building materials, copper wiring, medical supplies, anything you can think of. We've all been stockpiling like crazy. Not because we necessarily need any of it right now, but because we never know when we will. New Haven in particular has been looking for chemicals of all types. Our scouts have been told to expend whatever effort is needed to bring in certain things, and our stockpiles have grown in enormous ways.

About a month ago we had a team bring in five tanker trucks full of ammonia. Can you see where this is going?

We have scout posts set up at the edges of the county, and every day our people are spraying the stuff on trees and houses. We're trying to make a bubble the undead won't want to walk through. It won't be perfect and it will only last as long as our supplies hold out, but we've bought ourselves a long, long time to work in peace.

Well. From the undead, anyway. We've been in and out of touch with the scouts closest to UAS territory, but we have had word from Steve since yesterday morning. He believes the UAS is about to make a major offensive toward the west. If that's the case, the Union can't be far behind. I hope it's not so, but reality has a way of making that case pretty bluntly. New Haven is going to be mostly free from zombies in the immediate future, but that only means the human threat gets our full attention.

I meant to write a lot more than this, but that last sentence kind of drew me up short. It's such a bald statement of fact, but the implications are rough. We're finally working out large-scale ways of dealing with the undead, and even then we have to worry about living people of all things. It's as wasteful and stupid as it will be necessary, and that sucks.

I'm gonna take a nap. I don't want to think about it much more this morning.