The Perch

I'm not allowed to go out and fight hand to hand yet. We've got no real doctors here, though several of us have a lot of medical training, so it's not an order handed down from a physician. It comes from my wife, and since I'd like to have sex again pretty much ever, I'm doing as she says.

My healing is nearly done, actually, but Jess wants me to keep totally out of combat until I'm finished. That could take a while. She's not against me firing a gun, though, so I've taken to sitting on the perch outside our bedroom window and picking off zombies.

Our house is still undergoing many of the modifications we have planned, but one of the first was to copy the changes Jess and I made to our old house. Wow. Just writing that brought back a flood of memories. Anyway, one of the first things we did after armoring the hell out of our house was cut a hole in the roof for escape access. Which became an easy way to get to the shooting/lookout platform we built there. Our new house actually has a balcony with double doors, but we've added other platforms all around to give us full coverage.

K has been working with me all day. Rather than shoot through the fence, which could damage sections of it, he goes up to a section and throws an ammonia bomb at it. The smell pushes the undead back far enough I'm able to fire at them over the top of the fence. I get to pick my shots, and thanks to the ludicrous amount of gear we took from the renegade UAS Jess and K took out, we're very good on ammo.

Aside from writing, this is pretty much all I can do. No one is desperate enough to let me try to cook, there's not much to clean, and Jess says farming is too rough on my wounds even though they're mostly closed. So i sit up here and shoot dead people--a vital safety measure for our people--and sip on tea. I hate tea, usually, and you'd think this hatred would fuel my annihilation of the zombies around us. But this is sweet tea with raspberry made by my wife, and it is worth killing for. How Jess found raspberry anything I have no idea. Maybe there are some growing nearby.

I'm about to go crazy. Not because I feel a little like a belltower shooter from some hackneyed story, though I do a little bit. Not because I'm bored, though I am at times. I can't shake the feeling that people I've known for years are going to drop by the house to talk to me. Just show up because they can, as they've done for as long as I've been writing this blog (with some notable exceptions due to journeys/occupations by enemy forces).

The weird thing is, I don't long for that. Oh, sure, I miss everyone. I want to see them, have the chance to chat at will, but it isn't killing me not to. It's an annoyance, really. No, my problem is sort of like the weird vibrating sensation in your hands after half an hour holding a weed trimmer. You get used to it, then when you cut the engine your nerves mimic the sensation because they're adapted to the chance. That's kind of what's going on here, and it's very jarring to feel like people could come around the corner any second--regardless of the flat and empty land around us--while looking down the iron sights of an assault rifle. Worse is the constant need to remind myself that isn't going to happen. It's like mental jet lag, I suppose.

I've been in touch with Haven, but that's something I want to save for tomorrow. I have things I need to say about it that deserve a post of their own.