Saturday, November 10, 2012


I had a post all planned out today. It was going to be interesting and informative. Instead I've been asked to issue a warning we ourselves received only a short while ago. 

Coming up from the southwest--or at least southwest of here, a few hundred miles away--is a massive migration of the undead. It's sheer dumb luck that anyone saw the swarm in the first place since we don't have a lot of allies that direction. A trade caravan moving between two communities saw movement across a plain far below the high roadway they were on and stopped to check it out. They hoped it was a herd of animals that could be hunted for meat. 

It was people. Zombies. Several thousand of them and no small percentage New Breed. They're quite a ways from any known communities, and at the pace they're traveling they can't reach the closest for days. If you've got strong defenses, bulk them up even more and hunker down. If you don't, I suggest keeping your eyes open and a keen ear for messages. We'll try to keep a constant update going along our other means of communication as well as this blog. 

You may have to run. I know that won't be a problem for many of you given the time we've all spent worrying and planning for that possibility. This is a large swarm, big enough to pile atop each other and walk over the bodies and onto the walkways of our own walls. Be cautious and alert. Chances are they'll stick together and accumulate more undead as they travel through, but they can only move in so many directions. 

The way it looks at the moment, they're not heading toward anyone. The witnesses made a rough calculation, and a straight line following the highway they're on would take them rather far west of here, and there just aren't any other communities that we know of around that way. Not ones zombies could find without help, anyway.

The only other piece of info I have is that the zombies seemed to be moving pretty hurriedly away from something. I've seen them scatter and move miles away from a bad beating at our hands, but they always reorganize and come back in a few days. People are food to them, and even when food fights back you don't abandon the hunt that easily. So I doubt it's a band of marauders they're hightailing it from. 

My guess is something much bigger and more primal, like a prairie fire or some other catastrophic event. Maybe a chemical spill? I imagine a big enough ammonia spill would drift across the land and drive them like cattle. That's one thing I've seen firsthand, the effect of ammonia on their reactions. They'll bolt and keep moving for days from a big enough fire or smells that overwhelm their senses. 

I really hope they miss us. We've had less trouble dealing with our own local undead than is usual and I'd love to see it stay that way. That's an unlikely dream to have since the temperature was over forty degrees all night and is nearly sixty now. That's the range even the most sensitive zombie finds appealing. Above fifty, they don't suffer any slowing from the chill. Which means the next few days will become interesting and busy for all the wrong reasons if the weather stays nice. 

It's a bitch wishing for piercing wind and sub-zero temperatures, especially in the face of a potential threat as dangerous as the wandering swarm headed roughly this direction. But what can you do? That's the world today. Black is white, up is down. Good is bad, and pretty weather is a dangerous, hateful kind of climate to live in. 

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