Lyssa's Year

I needed a break from the house, so made sure my wife didn’t need the toilet or anything and escaped down the pub. I got talking so some of the guards who were off duty and they were still a bit grim about the food raid, talking about how next time they’d have to go through private houses. These guys were just normal businessmen and shop workers before, nobody special. Now they’re grizzled veterans drinking the best hooch because they earned it.

They realise now, like I do, that there’s a vestige of humanity left inside the infected and we got talking about it. I think it’s something more and more of us are realising, but which we’re keeping quiet.

When we kill them, we’re still killing people, and that takes a bigger toll on you than killing mindless monsters or a rabid animal. It’s like they ‘act’ rabid, whenever there’s a stimulus. You catch them in a passive state and they’re smart enough to open doors, solve problems, huddle for warmth, share food and even talk – though its nonsense like a fever dream babble.

It doesn’t make any difference in the end though, we still have to kill them, and we drank to that.

Fuck the army, we are going to hoard more supplies. We’re not going to have a decent amount of crops for some time so if we want to do anything but subsist and work, we’ve no choice. They didn’t really scour all our hidden supplies and people have been generous turning out their own remaining little hoards, but the whole business sucks.

April 29, 2015 (Wed), Day 119, Week 18

Just living isn’t enough. So we authorised another expedition, taking Bertha. Next time the army might start taking our fuel, so we might as well use it if we have it.

The guys took Bertha out and did a circuit of several of the local villages. They hit village stores and pubs in Stoke, Hurstbourne and Enham, as well as some of the sheltered housing in Enham. They came back pretty grim faced. They lost a couple of guys in Enham, the infected were in there pretty fierce and nobody had bothered to look out for the disabled people that lived there. They were lambs to the slaughter when everything went down and the infected were still there since they’d had such an easy time of it. They’d also spoiled a lot of supplies.

Still, those are the last of the really close stores of food and drink cleaned out and we can’t let the army take them. We formed a committee for food hoarding and set about storing as much as we could in safe places, known only to a handful of villagers. Hopefully that will do the trick.

904.

Fuck the army, we are going to hoard more supplies. We’re not going to have a decent amount of crops for some time so if we want to do anything but subsist and work, we’ve no choice. They didn’t really scour all our hidden supplies and people have been generous turning out their own remaining little hoards, but the whole business sucks.

It’s fucking terrifying beyond the banks at night. It’s so bloody dark, even with the stars and Moon. I felt like I was making myself a huge target just being out there and every noise you hear you think it’s some army scout or infected bastard lurking around.

I should have come out during the day, but I had to sneak out at night instead. The council doesn’t want to antagonise the army and everyone else just seems so beaten down, after things had been starting to look positive.

It wasn’t easy, quick flashes of light from my torch or phone to see, but I followed the tracks of the infected as best I could. We were lucky it rained, it made them easier to follow, lucky too that they all charged in en masse. I followed the churned mud all the way back, through the fields, up just over the hill. Not far then and they just stopped. Right by some big tyre tracks.

The army did this. They brought the infected here and they released them to make them attack us. To convince us. Even if they’re legitimate and this is a tactic meant to bring people into the fold, I’m fucking disgusted. I took some pictures and I came back.

Today I showed the council and we went back out there to get a look. There’s no doubt at all about what’s going on now, but what can we do about it? They have numbers, vehicles, machineguns, and there’s nothing we can really do to stop them.

The infected attacked again last night. We’re suspiciously fortunate that the army has been here the two times we’ve faced our most challenging attacks.

Our improved defences did a hell of a job, though I’d have preferred it if the army hadn’t been witness to the compressed air guns we’d put together. The extra barbed wire slowed them down and the army firepower put the attack to bed pretty fast.

To a lot of people that proved the army’s worth and suggested that the deal wasn’t so bad. Especially since, again, they took charge of burning the bodies for us. The duty that nobody ever wants.

I just find it suspicious.

Then they took everything they’d pilfered, and five men who had been working guard duty, and they rolled out, heading fuck knows where. A couple of the younger women left with them too. I guess they fancy a life with the soldiers more than a life of toil in the dirt, and who can blame them?

These cunts have reduced us back to the level of medieval serfdom. ‘Brave’ knights living off the backs of a virtual slave class.

I’m not bloody having it, when they figure out we have power they’ll be even worse and might take our tech-savvy people and our generator supplies. That infected attack was too bloody convenient. I stopped by the house to charge my phone and I’m going out tonight for a look.

906

The army rolled back into town today. In force. There were maybe twice as many of them as before and a lot of them were a motley looking bunch. Ill fitting uniforms, shotguns and rifles mixed in with the proper guns. A good bunch of them had these white rags tied around their arms and the other soldiers were obviously keeping an eye on them.

They rolled in in their trucks, and we let them in, of course and to start with it was all smiles and happiness. They’d brought us a truckload of chemical fertiliser, seed for wheat and other crops, garden crops too, a bunch of gardening supplies like forks and spades and so on and they dumped it all off and then started to take some ‘R&R’ around the village, flirting with the women, drinking the pub dry and helping at the perimeter.

I didn’t see much of this, I was at home with my wife, but then their commanding officer asked to speak to the council and so him and some other guy, a sergeant I think, we crowded into my bedroom on kitchen chairs with the rest of us.

I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop and this was it. They were going to take our supplies and we were going to grow more for them. Not a question, not asking, they were telling. They’d leave us enough until they came back but they expected us to keep no more than that, at least for now, and all our work in our own fields and from our own scavenging would have to go to them, for ‘protection’ and to help rebuild the government.

Captain Willoughby said he still answered to his own commanding officers and this was ‘the plan’ to rebuild on a national level. The army would dedicate itself to wiping out the infected and any bandits on the road, and it would stitch together the surviving communities back into a nation.

He also told us he’d be conscripting some of our guards to make up for some losses amongst his men.

Needless to say, we disagreed, and that’s when he showed his hand. If we didn’t agree he’d take the supplies by force and he’d shoot one villager every minute until we did agree.

We didn’t think he meant it, but then he led the rest of us – apart from my wife – outside and ordered his men to storm the nearest house and bring the people out. When he put a gun to the father’s head we knew he was serious and that we had no choice.

They went door to door, taking everything that they judged we didn’t ‘need’. A lot of alcohol and tobacco that was left, a lot of the food – leaving only the basics from the haul we’d taken the other day.

Tension rose.

Some idiot took a swing at them and got shot, then they shot another two people at the next house, just to teach us a lesson. They’re not checking for food hoarding this time, but Willoughby says if anyone’s found to be hiding food next time, they’ll be shot.

They’ve taken so much and I’ve never been so fucking angry in my life.

913

Blissfully, it rained today. The river’s been getting low and while the rain won’t make much difference to that it will make a difference to the lake. We were able to refill our water butts, catch as much of it as we could in bottles and tanks and drums.

Rainwater, fresh and clean, tastes a hell of a lot better than boiled water from the river – and saves us fuel. I try not to worry about whether all the nuclear plants were shut down safely or what kind of chemical muck might be in the rain, I just try to enjoy it.

Before everything we spent a lot of time apart. She would go to work, I would work from home. We both had a lot of space. It’s been hard since, but we both found our own niches – me being a busybody and sticking my nose into everything, her as part of the ‘tech clique’ that formed.

She’s frustrated that she isn’t helping fit the rest of the windmills and panels. I’m frustrated that I have to stick around here and look after her. I’m also frustrated that her being laid up means the bloody council members and their hangers-on are always – now – hanging out at our house.

I’ve got no time to think, or at least no time to properly formulate plans or ideas.

We both need space and now there’s no opportunity. Others must be feeling the strain too.

My wife’s pretty gung-ho, often to her detriment and to the detriment of other people too. She’ll go charging in to sort things out without thinking. So when she went back to help fix the solar panels today, she climbed up onto the roof, and fell off, and broke her ankle.

Doesn’t sound so serious, right? But we don’t have any bone specialists, or any surgical plaster, or any x-ray machines unless you count the one in the dentist’s office. So I spent all day worrying over her, with visions of how they used to have to put horse’s out of their misery at the races after they broke a leg.

We improvised. The doctors figured out as best as they could what to do. We got her drunk to save on the really good painkillers. We got a tiny x-ray from the dentist’s office and we used plaster from the school’s art supplies to improvise a cast. Still the doctor’s say no walking around on it, she has to stay in bed as much as possible for six weeks to let it heal. She’s mad at herself but she takes it out on me, she’s going to miss the fitting of the rest of the windmills and the solar panels.

They got it working just as we were finally heading home on the back of one of the horse wagons. The lights came on in that one house, just as the sun started to set. I cheered and whooped like everyone else to see it – we’ll be able to run a few appliances now and can save fuel from less generators (less noise too) but light is going to stand out for miles. Maybe we should be careful. The army already spotted us from the air and I don’t trust them. Who else is out there?

The first of the windmills is up, but, typically, there’s no wind. The house they fitted it to now has a ‘box’ power can go into though, so they’re hooking up the solar cells on the roof now. Hopefully we can see if it all actually works tomorrow. They say the panels are easier to fit than the windmill, now they’ve cracked it.