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The Walking Dead Zombcast has been Robert Kirkman approved, only on zombcast.com!

The Walking dead Zombcast has been Robert Kirkman approved, only on zombcast.com!

None of us were worried. The move to the hotel had run pretty smoothly today.

We managed to get all of the people moved and in the process, moved quite a bit of the gear that we had managed to salvage. Knowing that most of whatever else we could possibly want was within easy reach was certainly a saving grace. We didn’t have to get it all done the same day.

Having the ability to take our time was something that many of us have missed over the past one hundred and sixty-eight days. We’ve been so consumed with saving our own asses, that we’ve missed out on the luxury of relaxation.

Don’t get worried however; there is nothing drastic going on. It’s just that the panic which has existed for such a long time in each moment has subsided to a certain degree. No one is taking chances or acting foolhardy. There is just an atmosphere of calm that has descended over the group.

We’ve lived through so much and while we are bound to love and lose over and over again, hope is returning. Thriving.

Hope makes us a little giddy, akin to the way you felt when growing up looking under the Christmas tree to see a huge present with your name on it. Like when the girl that you have had a crush on forever finally says yes once you’ve collected the courage to ask her out. Hope – it’s a renewing emotion. One that we desperately need.

We had just finished moving everyone over to the hotel when a noise sounded on the horizon. It was something that none of us had heard for a very long time; its absence making it almost foreign.

Could it be true?

Was it possible?

After radioing the Perimeter Guard our suspicions were confirmed.

It was a plane.

On the horizon and homing in on the settlement like it was a beacon. As I ran to the wall to get a closer look myself, the sound got louder and louder. Whoever was flying that plane was in complete control of it and they appeared to heading straight for us.

Ascending the stairs of the closest lookout post, I was rewarded with a glimpse of the craft. It was still some distance off but from the size, you could tell that it was a large commercial plane.

It would have been months since most aircraft had been grounded due to the outbreak and the sheer fact that there was no one left interested in taking a vacation to the hottest Undead locales. It seemed utterly impossible and yet, there it was, slicing through the air toward us.

The closest runway was just outside the wall’s limits. When Johanna had the walls erected, the airport was not included in their coverage. I’m assuming they weighed both the advantages and disadvantages of its inclusion. There was the possibility for something happening within the walls similar to what had happened in London and I’m sure many other cities. It was also a potential escape route. Apparently, Johanna had erred on the side of caution.

Someone had to make the hard decisions and Johanna had been formidable from what I have heard. She’s the reason that many of us are alive right now. Had there not been a place to come to, somewhere safe, free from the Undead, and self-sustaining to a point, we’d be dead. Of that I am certain. Ben, Julie and I were beyond trying to guess at a place that might be safe and Seattle had been our only option at the time.

Sometimes I wonder how the rest of the survivors we have met along the way are. There were so many of us that split ways after the cruise ship ran aground just off the coast of Georgia. What of the people we had rescued from the men that had collected survivors on their farm? So many survivors in a dwindling world of the living and we have no way of knowing how many of them are still alive.

The “what ifs” and the “maybes” cannot be dwelt upon however. So much time has passed and with it an eternity of life. There was once a time where days would pass without any real notice taken of them. I was certainly guilty of just living my life. Enjoying it but allowing the daily routine to steal something of it from me. Life should be a joy and now we can fully understand that. Joy. Simple yet hard to understand.

As I watched the plane, I could see it start to line itself with the runway of the airport to the west of us. At least that’s what I assumed it was doing when it turned in the air to come at us on a different angle.

I took a quick second to radio Lt. Lafferty who I knew was likely along the wall somewhere just like I was. Talking with her, I learned that she planned on waiting for them to land and then assessing the situation. As a group, we had decided to take in fellow survivors but not at the expense of our own survival. Each one would need to be checked over before being allowed inside. It was fair and just.

Their descent from the air was smooth. Whoever was flying the plane was skilled.

With the craft drawing nearer and nearer, I could almost make out the name on the tail. I think it said Air France but with a number of different airlines using white, blue, and red in their logos, I couldn’t be sure.

I swear I only looked away for a moment but it must have been more.

It was the sound that made me turn back at a speed which almost knocked me off the gangway.

When I looked back, the plane was on the ground.

Engulfed in flames and short of the runway.

They had crashed.

Perhaps they had run out of fuel. Or something worse.

Scanning the wreckage, I could just barely make out movement.

Figures exiting the burning fuselage, some on their own, others in groups.

There are survivors.

Survivors.

We have to help them.

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The Walking dead Zombcast has been Robert Kirkman approved, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

Kev sits down by himself, as Nicholas and Matthew are unavailable for the night, and briefs everyone for next weeks episode as The Walking Dead returns to AMC! He also talks about The Amazing Spider-Man Trailer and how impressed he was with it.

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Once we all gathered back at the empty warehouse, we knew that it was time to start planning our next move. But the planning took a backseat for the moment as we all rejoiced in being alive.

There were a number of reunions as well. Our small familial-esque unit made up of Julie, Jane, Lily, Liam and I were all elated to see Ben again and he was just as glad to find out that we had all survived. Our family is mismatched but all we have is each other and the thought of losing any of us is one that none of us want to consider.

Some of the children were lucky and relieved to be reunited with their parents, family or guardians. Many of them had been travelling, surviving, with random people they had met along the way. People that happened to be around them when their other family had met a less than desirable end. They were the people who could have turned their backs on them, left them for dead just to be rid of the potential hassle; instead the child or children were adopted, or in some cases, just allowed to tag along if they could keep up.

Children are incredibly resilient in some regards. I suppose that I should specify that some children are resilient; some just give up in the face of adversity. We have seen both on our journey. The striking dichotomy between the children of Minden and Lily and Liam, even Jane in her crazed state, is clear as day to those of us that have witnessed it all.

Perhaps it’s something bigger in the psyche of people; or a genetic initiative that clicks on in times of stress and hardship. A bona fide survival gene if you will. Whatever you want to call it, it results in the desire and will to survive. Given the state of our current world, some of us have it and others ended up dead or Undead.

Once we had spent some time relishing in the feeling of community the reunion created, we got down to business. We needed to decide what to do next.

Could we stay in the fortified city?

It is the safest place for us at the moment. Obviously there is some clean-up that needs to be done, but it is protected and in most instances, safe.

If we did decide to stay, one of the first things that we would need to do would be to reestablish the twenty-four hour perimeter guard. It is essential that we monitor what is going on outside of the walls. There is no way that we can afford to be unguarded like that again; no way that we can gamble with our lives a second time.

Replacing the perimeter guard also allows us the opportunity to help other survivors should the situation arise. It was a move that appeared to be against what the settlement stood for in the past; the only reason that our group had been let inside was because Johanna Herber thought we had something to offer. What that something was we will never know; she never got the opportunity to tell us.

Our new mandate is to help each and every survivor we can. No exceptions.

In true dictator style, Marcus attempted to usurp control over the plans we were making. Just because he had survived, did not automatically place him back in charge. The collective of the group decided that while we couldn’t hold him responsible for the existence of the Undead, his decision to dissolve the Perimeter Watch had contributed to the significant loss of life that the settlement had sustained.

Taking that singular fact into account, along with memory of how he came to be at the helm of our community, the group decided to move forward with none other than Lieutenant Mary Alice Lafferty leading them. Marcus was angry, upset, and indignant about the switch in leadership but there was nothing that he could say or do. The group had chosen.

Lt. Lafferty refused the role of leadership at first, but with the encouragement of the survivor’s trust in her abilities, she accepted.

Her first role of business was to ask the group what tasks they would like to do. It was the first time that many of them had been asked their opinion since the apocalypse and any member of the group that had been hesitant in the choice of Mary Alice was won over by her simple act of inclusion.

Some of the survivors chose clean-up duties, while others volunteered to watch the world outside the walls. A few opted to stay back and take care of the children and perform housekeeping related duties like cooking and cleaning. It was pleasant to see that everyone wanted to pull their own weight and put things right.

Knowing that we couldn’t stay in the warehouse for a long period of time, Lt. Lafferty proposed that we move to one of the hotels within the walls. It was a sound plan; a hotel would have the capacity to house all two hundred and forty-three of us, provide us with clean linens and have a kitchen where we could prepare meals for everyone.

Having a plan in place, the group who had signed up for clean-up duty went out to start clearing the area around the largest hotel. The sooner we moved the better.

I was on that crew, along with Julie. Once we got to the largest of the hotels, we were pleasantly surprised to see that it was relatively free of crawlers. The hotel is located in one of the areas of the city formerly known as Seattle that was uninhabited by survivors at the time of the breach so the incidence of the crawlers was thankfully low. It took us no time at all to clear the area for the move that was set to happen over the next few days.

We moved out from the hotel, clearing the surrounding areas of the crawlers. It is exhausting work; each one needs to be dealt a final, crushing blow and then you have to pile them so that you can dispose of the bodies. Trying to come up with a way to dispose of them all in the most efficient manner wasn’t difficult.

Burn them.

May they rest in peace.

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We continue to air our recaps of Season 1 of The Walking Dead, going over episode 3, Tell It To The Frogs. Matthew, Nicholas, and Kev analyze Shane’s decent into “asshole” and make predictions of what’s going to happen in The Walking Dead.

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Having located a safe place to stay and access to a food source, some of the survivors found by Lt. Lafferty’s team decided they would be better served helping with the children and making meals. The population of the warehouse grew and the children were relieved to see that more of the adults had survived. A number of them had no idea if other members of their families had survived; it was apparent though that having more people around them helped them to relax and gave them a sense of hope. There is nothing worse that staring at the faces of despondent children when they should be filled with joy. It was hard to keep joy in their faces given the fact that the world was in such a state of chaos but for the most part, you saw it as long as they felt safe.

A great number of the living adults went back out in the settlement to help clean up the streets. They were also looking for any survivors that we had yet to discover. It was a gruelling task; the crawlers had moved far and wide through the settlement. They weren’t terribly hard to kill again. One hard hit to the head was usually enough and they were easy enough to track; their slimy trails leading the way.

The only time it got difficult was if you happened along a fairly sizable group. You had to be careful in those instances because you wanted to ensure that each one was dead before you moved onto the next. Otherwise, you’d end up like Juan.

Juan was among the survivors that Lt. Lafferty had encountered and one of the first volunteers to go back out into the streets. He was a large man, both tall and wide, with a very soft demeanour. It was obvious that the events that brought about the end of our world weighed heavily on him; you could see it each and every time you looked into his face. What you also saw was the determination to reclaim what once belonged to humanity.

One might think that we would all be as careful as possible. Especially with the warnings given to us by others. From the story that was relayed to me, Juan was working through the throng of crawlers on one of the streets, taking one side while his partner Cillian handled the other. He was making great headway and had gotten a little bit in front of Cillian and into an area where the crawlers were a little closer together. To Cillian it appeared as if one of the crawlers managed to survive the blow that Juan dealt it. Once he moved on, the crawler followed slowly but methodically after him.

When Juan stopped for a moment to catch his breath, its bony hand reached out to take hold of his leg. The fear of the moment released a scream from Juan and caused him to stumble in his haste to extricate himself. He went down and into the fray of a number of crawlers who were on him before he could get back up again. They started to devour him and as Cillian responded to Juan’s screams, they stopped as suddenly as they started. As Cillian watched in horror, Juan got back up; only it wasn’t Juan that started in his direction.

Cillian will be the first to admit that it had been a very long time since he had seen one of the walking Undead but the sight chilled him to the bone. Juan was a big guy and he had no idea how he was ever going to be able to drop the giant coming toward him with a single baseball bat. As Undead Juan bore down on him, Cillian got ready to release the swing of his life. Forgotten was the horde of crawlers around him, his eyes were firmly planted on the walker.

With a strong swing of the bat, Cillian was able to propel Undead Juan backward and off the curb. The change in plane was enough to knock him back to the ground and as he slapped the asphalt of the road, Cillian heard an unnatural snap. Watching Undead Juan try to flip over without the use of his legs, he knew that something had actually gone his way. He was able to approach the corpse and used his bat to pulverize the cranium of what was once his friend.

With that done, Cillian decided that he needed to get back to the warehouse and report what had happened. He also needed a new partner to clear the streets with. We found him in the back of the warehouse, staring at the wall blankly. His story was sad but we all know the inherent dangers of our new world. He’ll get over it in time.

Lt. Lafferty, Julie and I decided that it was time we got back to the Police Station. There were a number of supplies in the station that would be of great use to us if we could readily get to them. We knew that it was going to be hard work clearing the station, especially with the room full of the Undead.

When we got to the doors of the conference room, we found that they were still closed. It was a good sign in a way; it meant that all of the Undead we’d encountered were still behind them. Once we opened the door, ready to start killing, we found the sight a little strange; they were all still in the same pile, it’s writhing like that of a pile of snakes you might see in a pet store.

It took us a while to make sure that all of the crawlers in that pile were truly dead. We had decided to lure them away from the pile and in doing that, not need to worry too much about being overrun. There was just no way that we could have handled them all as a pile; no way at all.

As the pile started to disperse, you could see that there was something at its bottom; up against the wall there was something that looked like a stout wooden cabinet.

It took us a while to kill them all but once we had, we gingerly stepped over the corpses to the blood smeared cabinet against the wall.

Opening it, ready to deal with anything that might happen to come out, we were surprised to see a contorted person on the inside.

It was Marcus and at first glance, he wasn’t looking too well. Dead even.

Julie reached out to touch him.

Just as she was about to make contact with the spot on his wrist where his radial pulse should be, he sputtered into consciousness; the look on his face one of abject terror.

Getting him out of the cabinet was difficult; he’d really wedged himself inside. All of his muscles were agonizingly taut and cramped and in the 25 minutes it took for us to pry him out of the cabinet, he swore like a sailor. Getting his cramped and contorted muscles to straighten was painful I’m sure but it needed to be done. We had to get Marcus back to the warehouse and there was no way we could carry him the distance. After about an hour, Marcus was able to stand, painful as the action was and we started to slowly backtrack our way to the warehouse.

The walk back was long and excruciating. Every step seemed to cause a great deal of pain but looking on the bright side, he was alive at least. A number of the others hadn’t been that lucky.

Back at the warehouse, we discovered that one of the teams had managed to get the power grid back online. It was great news as the dark was starting to unnerve quite a few of the children.

Just as the three of us were about to go out again, we got a call from the team at the hospital. After finding a way in, they had painstakingly scoured each floor of the ten storey building during the daylight hours. What they found was complete pandemonium; overturned beds, some small arms fire but very little blood.

As they cleared each floor, they didn’t find a lot of crawlers. They could see from the state of the place that the Undead rodents had managed to get inside but the amount of blood they saw did not add up to a massacre. As they wound their way downward into the bowels of the hospital, they wondered if the patients and staff had managed to get out the day of the breach, before the building was overrun.

In the basement, they found their answer.

The doors to the morgue had been fortified; barricaded against the menace the Undead rodents represented.

They called out through the doors, seeing no other way of getting through them. In response, there were the sounds of scraping making them unsure of what might be contained on the other side of the double doors.

The doors opened, revealing one hundred and twenty people, all alive and jammed into the expansive room. It was a moment of joy as everyone realized that they were a little less alone in a world full of the Undead.

As of this moment, two hundred and forty three survivors remain. Our hope is that the number only increases.

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The guys sit down to discuss Episode 2 from Season 1 of The Walking Dead. Before getting into the nitty gritty, Kev brings up news about the stellar performance from the pilot and it’s (already) renewed second season.

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Knowing that we had to find something to eat, Julie let us know there was a warehouse for the communal kitchens not too far away. We left at first light, making the decision to check out the warehouse as we began our search for the day. The truth of the matter was that we would need some form of nourishment in the event that we found the children. It would have been days since any of them had likely eaten as well.

Hunger can really affect a person negatively. The last thing that we wanted was for the children to go searching for food, only to be caught unaware by some of the crawlers. It was a worrisome point in that we had no idea in what state we would find them. We prayed they would be okay but the truth was that they could be delirious or even unconscious. They wouldn’t be able to communicate with us if they were passed out from dehydration or malnourishment. We could wander the streets for days calling out to them only to have passed them many times, their small bodies lying lifeless behind the walls, unable to call out for help. It was something we didn’t want to think about but we had to prepare ourselves for how we might eventually find them.

We did try to keep those frantic thoughts at bay. It wasn’t going to help us find them any faster if we panicked. Making our way to the warehouse in search of food was the first course of action that we had to take. Food was essential; it was a priority especially after considering all of the options.

As we travelled the relatively short distance to the warehouse, we noticed the trails of crawler slime ground into the asphalt. Our goal of searching for the children never wavered, we still called out to them as we walked to the warehouse, hoping that they were still close by. Perhaps we would locate them prior to reaching the warehouse. They could be hiding anywhere, in any of the vacant businesses. The trails of putrid slime seemed to point in the direction of the warehouse so we followed them. They were moving toward something, following something; perhaps the children.

Turning the last corner, bringing the warehouse into full view we could see that the crawlers had completely covered the front approach to it. They were so thick, like worms on the surface after the rain, writhing and rolling on top of each other.

Seeing the crawlers made each of us wonder if the children could be inside. While none of us tried to get our hopes up, the fact that the crawlers were there and for no apparent reason as of yet, made us believe that there was someone in the warehouse. We still had a field of crawlers to get through before we’d know for sure.

We put Liam into a vacant store around the corner, knowing there was no way that we could take him with us. He didn’t want to be left alone but in the end, he understood that he would be safer inside and alone while we cleared the crawlers from the front of the warehouse.

We took a moment to check in with the team that was still trying to get into the hospital. They had encountered quite a few obstacles once they got there and had yet to breach the building. From what they could tell, whoever was at the hospital when the Undead breach occurred had secured the doors as best as they could. I don’t blame them; I hadn’t wanted the Undead rodents inside with me either. The team couldn’t get anyone inside to respond to them either as they shouted from the perimeter; they had no idea if there were any survivors holed up inside. Each night they had to retreat to the safety of a vacant house they’d found nearby. Their update last night conveyed the message that they thought they’d finally found a way in.

The problem with just going through a window or some other constrained access point was the desirability for an easy egress. The hospital could very well be full of the Undead, either crawlers or walkers and none of them wanted to be trapped inside with them. The quick radio call revealed they had just gotten inside and were starting to search the different wards. They promised to let us know if they found anything just as we promised to let them know the outcome of our search for the day.

We made a second quick call to the other team searching for the children. They had nothing to share with us. They had no leads to where the children might be. The good news was that in the course of their search, they had discovered 47 other survivors hiding in buildings and vacant houses. They had started to clear some of the streets of the crawlers as they had the manpower to do it as well as look for the children. A group of them had even fragmented off on a mission to see if they could get the power grid back up. It was good news in some regards but the children were the most important thing to us at the moment. They consumed our every waking thought; none of us wanted them to think they had to survive without us, that all of the adults were dead.

We told them where they could find Liam, thinking it best just in case we couldn’t handle the crawlers. Or met something horrible in the warehouse that got the best of us. With that, we left Liam on his own and approached the cinder block facade.

We’d decided it would be better to call the crawlers to us, as opposed to trying to attack the mass of them. As we stood a fairly close distance to them and called, you could see their attention shifting from the building to us. They made a slow advance, allowing us to kill each of them quickly and efficiently. There was never a point where we found ourselves in the midst of being overrun. It was a perfect plan until the unexpected happened.

The door to the warehouse opened.

There were still quite a few crawlers that hadn’t turned their attention to us, intent solely on what was behind the red metal door.

Silhouetted in the doorway was one small figure. A little girl.

She must have heard our voices and recognized them.

Lily.

Standing in the doorway with crawlers only inches from her precious sneakered feet.

She started to come toward us, mistaking our shouts to get back inside as ones that directed her to come to us.

A frail arm, muscles almost completely eaten away, snaked up to take hold of her ankle.

A scream escaped her lips; surprise, fear, and revulsion all contained in a singular note.

I started to go to her immediately, not wanting anything to touch her. From the corner of my eye, I could see Julie making the same journey, quickly dispatching those crawlers in her way.

Alerted by the scream, an arm reached out the doorway and hauled Lily back, taking the arm of the crawler clear off of its body.

Jane.

The door slammed shut just as another crawler was about to close in.

Knowing the children were safe, we turned our attention back to the crawlers at our feet. We steadfastly put them all down in haste, wanted to get to the children as soon as possible.

As soon as the crawlers lay unmoving around the building, we called to Jane, letting her know that it was safe to open the door again.

The door opened and one by one the children came outside, gingerly stepped over and around the corpses at their feet.

It was a beautiful sight. They were all still alive. We collected Liam and started to move back toward the hospital, taking the time to radio the other groups that we had found them, safe and sound. It was good day, a good day indeed.

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Matthew, Nicholas, and Kev sit down to discuss the pilot of The Walking Dead, Days Gone Bye. They also ponder the existence of ghosts and aliens before talking about the episode and giving their review, theories, and more. The squeeze in some talk about Batman, Captain America, and Thor.

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Wanting to cover as much ground as possible, our group of eight split into groups of four. We reasoned that they would likely have travelled into areas where there would have been less people, if they knew which those areas might be. But then children can be children and as their reasoning skills aren’t as highly developed as those of most adults, we felt it was best that we also send a search party in the direction that we least thought they would have picked. We didn’t bother backtracking toward the police station; we already knew they hadn’t gone that way.

Seeing no reason to waste any time, each group set off in opposite directions with our radios. We were quickly losing light and had no desire to test the theory that the hordes had left. Plus we didn’t want to come across any of the crawlers in the darkness. Even to have one of them grab a hold of an ankle in the dark would be sure to render us full of panic!

Our group had chosen to search the direction that we felt the children would have been least likely to go. Even though we had Liam with us, one option didn’t have any better chance at being less dangerous than the other when the factor of the unknown was weighed in.

There were quite a few skeletal corpses that reached out to us as we passed. Not wanting to waste any time in our search for the rest of the children, we didn’t stop to alleviate their suffering. Once we had found the children and the rest of the survivors, we would come back and clean up the city. It just wasn’t possible for us to focus on them at the moment. And as long as you moved during the day, it was easy to avoid the crawlers and as we had yet to come across anything other than that, I hoped that there were no walkers up and about.

As the sun went down, we found a vacant store to spend the night in. Everything had been cleaned out of it long ago and inventoried for the settlement’s use. Luckily there were a number of bottles in one of the backrooms and we used the latent pressure in the pipes to fill them. We had to have water; it was essential to our survival. The amount that we had would last us until we had to stop again. At least that was a positive.

The night passed uneventfully and once the light broke in the east, we were on the move again. As we left the vacant store, Julie noticed the trails of bloody slime smeared into the pavement of the road. Last night we hadn’t seen it in the disappearing light but it was a lead so we chose to track it. If the crawlers were after the children, we had to find them first.

The trail was easy to follow. It lead us down the road, across a parking lot and into an overgrown field. Once I saw the field, I was sure that we were going to lose them. But if you kept your head at just the right angle, with the sun behind you, you could make out the distinct path of at least 7 crawlers all headed in the same direction.

Part of each of us wanted to call the other team, to get them to come and help us search but the truth was, we had no way of knowing if all of the 59 children had stayed together. They could have split into smaller groups like we did, thinking that it was easier to hide in smaller numbers. Perhaps they had figured that they had a higher chance to running into an adult if there were more groups out there; provided of course there were living adults left to run into.

Just as we were about to exit the field, Kevin spotted something ahead of us. It was the group of crawlers that we had been following; we’d caught up to them before getting a good read on where the kids might be headed. Kevin wondered if we could just wait and continue to track them but at the rate they were moving, it could be days before they caught up to the kids or worse, got distracted by something else; likely us.

So we aimed in the direction that they had been heading and continued to search. We weren’t silent either. We didn’t fear the crawlers and figured that the chance of there being any walking Undead was slim to none. So far we hadn’t seen any and the hordes of Undead rodents had reduced the former survivors of the Herber Settlement to the aberrations leaving slimy trails along the ground.

So we walked all day, crisscrossing the former streets of Seattle, calling out to the children in the hopes that they would hear us. We skirted the crawlers as they reached frail arms toward us, and continued to search the city in a grid-like pattern; up one street for two blocks, across the street for a block and then back up the previous two blocks. It wasn’t perfect, but it allowed us to cover the most ground. We even had the foresight to keep track of where we had searched on a street map, just in case we had to come back for any reason.

As it began to get dark on the second day of searching, we found a clue that we might be heading in the right direction. On the street ahead of us, in the offensive arms of a crawler, was a bright pink hoodie. It was too late for us to continue searching but it was a good sign. All of the crawlers in the general area were too large to be any of the children. Good sign indeed.

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Matthew and Kev discuss what Frank Darabont wanted to do with the Season 2 premiere of The Walking Dead, The spin off comic (of their dreams)- Carl Grimes: Bad-ass, The Doctor Who Christmas speical, and Torchwood for their return from the holidays!

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As we moved through the Herber Settlement, we stopped at the armoury in order to procure some weapons. One shotgun was not going to do us any good against a horde; especially one composed of chipmunks and other rodents in various stages of decomposition.

The street was littered with skeletal corpses; some of them still moving, others blessedly and completely dead. What a horrible death it must have been. The attack would have been swift but to feel all of those little mouths feeding off of your flesh would have been terrifying and so very, very painful. We took the time to bestow a final dignity to all of the former survivors of the Herber Settlement. There was no way that we could have determined who was laying (un)dead in the streets so we just kept moving forward.

It was really slow going once we got to those areas that had been more densely populated at the time of the breach. It reminded me of the photos I had once seen of a cemetery that had flooded. For some reason the flooding had caused the caskets of the inhabitants to rise to the surface. As a result of the age of the wood and it’s decomposition in the ground, some of the skeletons ended up exposed to the elements. To an individual who first saw the disturbance, perhaps it looked like the dead were rising. Perhaps they were aware that such a phenomenon could occur. Whatever the case, it must have been a creepy sight; I know the pictures certainly were.

As we were walking, it started to get dark and the street lights didn’t come on; the power grid must be offline. As a precaution for our own safety, we decided to stop for the night. It just wasn’t safe to move at night; we didn’t have any flashlights to light our way and we had no desire to get ambushed while traversing in the dark.

We chose one of the vacant houses fairly close to the school. Since it was vacant, it likely had not been breached by any unwanted visitors. Regardless of our logic, we were still extremely careful as we entered the house.

Once inside, we were greeted by a surprising sight; 9 other survivors had managed to escape the tide of undeath as it swept through the settlement. Among them was Lt. Lafferty. We were both surprised and elated to see her!

Lt. Lafferty told us that she had been working, doing rounds of the settlement as one of the peace officers when she happened to notice the commotion happening up the street. Not taking any chances, she had immediately thought to seek refuge indoors. Other like-minded individuals noticed what she was doing and followed along behind her. Her quick thinking has saved all of their lives that day.

Not that Lafferty thought of herself as a hero; far from it in fact. Privately she let us know that more people had followed them to the house. Unfortunately so had the furry harbingers of undeath. Having to choose between a horrible death and potential survival, she chose survival for herself and the eight people holed up with her. It was a hard decision and one I knew would weigh heavily on her mind. I had made a similar decision at the library and I haven’t yet told you about the cacophony of knocking and screaming that sounded off just beyond the threshold of the library’s oaken doors. The memory of those desperate, frantic pleas to open the door will haunt me for a very long time.

All of those ‘what if’ moments just collect in your subconscious until the moment you close your eyes. Then your mind does everything in its power to sabotage any effort at sleep you make. It certainly sucks, that’s for sure.

Our night passed uneventfully. Most of us tried to sleep but in the end, we found ourselves chasing away the ghosts of our friends. As each of us reached the point where we could no longer just lie there, we got up and gathered in the living room. We sat in silence, each of us likely thinking of those we had loved and lost. It was a sombre gathering somewhat akin to a funeral.

As the sun came up, we collectively gathered our stuff, carefully observing the outside world for any signs of the Undead. Everything appeared to be quiet so we opened the front door and congregated in the street.

Last night we had decided to form two search parties instead of staying together. We had one 2 way radio, given to us by Lt. Lafferty. One of the groups would take it, the other planned on stopping by the police station to hopefully find another. At this point it was essential for us to split up in order to cover more ground. We had to find more survivors; there had to be more of us that had survived this. None of us wanted to lose contact with the other group though. The reason for that was twofold; the psychological effect of knowing that you’re not completely alone is a good one. And having that auditory lifeline could potentially save the lives that were left in the event of another unexpected breach. None of us wanted to die but in the end, we were going to do whatever we could to preserve the lives that were left.

Since the police station was on the way to the school, we opted to let the other group have the radio. They were going to head toward the hospital, hoping to find more people who had survived. We all said our goodbyes and watched for a moment as they walked away. They all had the determined but wary gait of people used to being on their guard. I hoped that we would see them again.

We turned to move in the opposite direction, heading toward the police station. It was only a short walk away, perhaps a few blocks. Along the way, we stopped to end the suffering any of the remnants of people who deserved some dignity and respect.

Once we got to the police station, we were dismayed to find the front doors open. Wide open. It was a little unnerving to be perfectly frank. What would we find in the confined spaces inside? It was decided that only 2 people would enter the station; Lt. Lafferty and myself. Lt. Lafferty was chosen because she actually knew where we would need to look for a radio. I was chosen because I was the best shot out of all of the other people in the group. I didn’t mind having to go inside. I wanted to find that radio as soon as possible and keep on moving toward school.

Lafferty and I carefully entered the station, all of our senses on high alert. We moved slowly, meticulously clearing each room and cubicle as we passed them. Knowing that the radios were kept in the back of the station, Lafferty lead us there. That was where we found them all.

The pile of skeletal corpses was horrifying and something I’m not likely to forget for years to come (if I live that long). And it was moving. It reminded me of a pot of boiling water; you only really see the disturbance on the surface but if you look closely into the water, you can see the bubbles travelling upward. As the corpses on the bottom of the pile moved, the outer layer responded. Why they were all still in a pile was beyond me. Maybe there was the assumption that underneath all of that bloody mess was a tasty morsel that was missed…

Knowing that we couldn’t have possibly handled them all on our own, we took the easy route out and just closed the door to the conference room. We will go back for them, I promise.

After that, we moved a little faster. We wanted to collect the radio and get the heck out of the station. We really needed to get to the school and see what state it was in. My eyes had prepared me for the worst, but my heart still contained some hope.

Collecting the radio, and adding a second for good measure, we radioed the other group to let them know they could actually reach us now. They were almost to the hospital, only a few more blocks to travel and they would be there. Lafferty spied an open gun cabinet and went to investigate; you can never have too many guns or ammunition during an apocalypse. We loaded up with what was there, unfortunately not a whole heck of a lot and backtracked our way out of the station.

Now it was onto the school and hopefully good news.

As we travelled down the street, there were less and less bodies on the road and on the sidewalks. It appeared to be a promising sign until we noticed the trails of slime on the pavement, all of them leading us in the direction of the school. Was there something alive at the school; someone calling out to them without even realizing it?

We quickly caught up to them, mainly due to the fact that they couldn’t move very fast. Each of us set to work, ending their lives as quickly as we could. None of us wanted them to get any closer to the school.

The schoolyard was worse that we could have ever imagined or prepared ourselves for. From the size of the bloody skeletal corpses on the tarmac, it was obvious that they belonged to children. It was a horrible sight, especially since many of them were moving, heading toward places unknown.

It was hard but we knew we had to help them all find solace. One by one we started to kill them. It was an emotionally painful process and with the first strike, we all had tears streaming down our faces. In the end they may have been the lucky ones; never having to grow up in the world we live in today.

The closer we got to the doors of the school, the more apparent it became that some of the children had managed to escape and get inside to safety. The doors had been chained from the inside but since they open inward, there was just enough space for tiny undead bodies to get in. We prayed that some of the children had managed to get behind an impenetrable door.

With the door chained we had to break in, hoping that the unavoidable noise wouldn’t bring a tiny horde down on our heads. We cautiously entered the hallway lined with grey metal lockers. Coats and backpacks were strewn across the tiled floor; a tiled floor that was so far free from any signs of blood or gore. The deeper that we moved into the school, the more ominously silent that it became. We checked each of the classrooms, opening the doors as we came to them. Nothing. No one was alive, no one was dead. Having cleared the first floor, we moved to the second. It was tense. Each door that we opened, we prepared ourselves to find a massacre. We didn’t find one though.

In the last classroom on the second floor, we found our first clue that perhaps some of them survived the siege. On the blackboard was a list of names. And a message.

“We’ve gone to find a better place to hide.”

No date, no hint. Just the message and all of the names. The names of the children that had survived. Julie and I greedily devoured the names and by the end of the list we had our answer. It was bittersweet. Jane and Lily were on that list. Liam was not. He must have been one of the poor souls out in the playground. Sweet little Liam reduced to a pile of bloody bones.

Realizing that we would have to find the 59 children that had survived, we started to make our way out of the school. It was a joyous moment but one tinged with the ultimate sadness. None of us were really paying attention, most of us lost in our own thoughts. A door to a janitor’s closet opened behind us, the sound alerting me to the presence of someone or something. I turned quickly, bringing up my firearm preparing to take aim. Seeing my reaction, the rest of the group followed suit.

It was at that moment that Liam fainted. It could have been from exhaustion, dehydration, or perhaps the excitement and terror of the ordeal he had lived through. I personally think it was the 8 guns that almost simultaneously trained themselves on him. Fear can do funny things to a body sometimes. The good news is that he is alive and not one of the corpses in the schoolyard. Now it’s just time to find the rest of children.

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We take one more trip to the past for the Holiday season! Nicholas’ first appearance on the show also marks the first time Kev didn’t have a clue what he was doing as a producer for the show! The guys talk about The Walking Dead, Lord of the Rings, Batman and time bullets, and answer such questions as Is sex with a zombie necrophilia? If a zombie eats another zombie, do they become a super zombie? and more!

All this and more brain eating with The Walking Dead Time Lords, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

Don’t get me wrong, I was absolutely petrified at the thought of having to venture outside in any capacity. I had no idea what was going on out there and if the screams of yesterday were any indication, the chances that I was going to find that the outside world was a dangerous one was high.

I have spent the last few days learning every inch of this library that I’ve been calling home. The windows haven’t been able to give us an accurate picture of what is beyond the walls because they are all clouded and opaque. It must have been a modification that was added to protect the books from sun damage. Great for the books, not so great for observing the possible presence of the Undead.

My companions haven’t been of any help either. All of them are just so scared of what could be beyond the thick oaken doors and red bricked walls that they are against any and all plans to learn what it going on outside. It’s not like we can stay locked up in here forever. We had absolutely no food and limited water. The taps still worked but we had no way of knowing how long the water would last. We didn’t know if anyone was still working at the power generator and as a result, we had no way of knowing how long the pumps would continue to function.

We haven’t been taking any chances with the lights either; and there were two reasons for that. The first was that we didn’t want any of the Undead, whether they were chipmunks, other rodents or former members of the Herber Settlement to be attracted by the contrast of the illumination on an otherwise dark facade. The other was that we didn’t want any other survivors that happened to venture out to unwittingly attract any undead things to us either in the event they were caught unaware and unprotected.

It has been hard to survive here, not knowing what is going on. I keep thinking about Lily, Liam and Jane. About Julie. About Ben. Had any of them managed to survive? I had a fairly good feeling that Julie was alive; it seemed that she could survive anything. There was also a very good chance that Ben had survived as well. The hospital was located on the opposite side of town from where the breach had occurred and there might have been enough time for a warning to have reached them. The only thing I couldn’t get out of my mind for more than a few seconds at a time was the possibility that Jane and the twins had been unprotected and vulnerable at the school.

Children are remarkably adaptable. Look at how Lily and Liam had managed to survive. And how Jane has eluded the Undead out in the open for so long and in the state that she had been in was absolutely amazing. I’ve done my best to not jump to the worst possible outcome but it’s getting more difficult as the hours pass… All I can do is pray and hope that they are okay.

I have to admit to you all that I was more than a little afraid as I climbed the stairs to the top floor of the library. On my reconnaissance missions, I had spotted the hatch that gave workers access to the roof. It was tucked away in the back of the library amongst the classics of literature. Bronte, Chaucer, Dante, Eyre, Melville, Salinger, Tolstoy; they were all there, collecting dust. It saddens me to know that many will never read the classics again and that many books will never get written. A whole facet of our culture lost to the unyielding cycle of death and undeath and the fight for survival.

I stopped for a moment and picked up the leather-bound copy of Four Quartets by Eliot. As I opened the front cover, the smell of the leather and yellowing paper assaulted my senses. Turning to the first poem Burnt Norton, I started to read. The part that struck me as most poignant was:

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. [1]

It brought back memories of a life before the Undead but helped me to recognize that only this moment truly mattered. The past cannot be changed, and the future will always remain unknown. It affirmed that man, humankind, is capable of redemption. We will rise from these ashes, of that I am certain. It’s just up to all of us to decide how that’s going to happen.

My moment of reverie, melancholy and affirmation over, I started to climb the metal rungs of the ladder slightly recessed into the wall. I hoped that once I got to the top that the hatch would be easy to open. I hadn’t thought to look for a key until I was almost to the top but it wouldn’t have mattered, the hatch was designed to opnen on a spring system.

My heart was hammering in my chest. I could feel the drumming of the blood in my ears reminding me that these could very well be the last moments where my blood would signal my own existence. I hadn’t told the rest of the survivors in the library of my plan; I hadn’t wanted their fear to sway my decision. As I hung onto the rungs, high above the floor, my left hand on the latch of the hatch, I stopped to say a small prayer.

I prayed that the world outside would be less horrific than I was imagining it to be. I prayed that the roof was clear of any undead things. I prayed that my friends had all survived. I just prayed for the world and everyone still alive in it.

With the moment passed, I turned the latch and opened the hatch, my eyes squinting at the bright sunlight that assaulted me. I could hear nothing except the sounds of the wind rustling the leaves in the nearby trees and the faint birdsong from somewhere close by but also far away. There were no screams and no telltale scratching of tiny nails on masonry.

As I climbed out on the flat roof, I was petrified. Just because I couldn’t hear them didn’t mean that they were gone. I tentatively made my way over to the closest edge. Looking down, I was surprised by the cleanliness of the streets. There were almost no bodies and those that were left had been picked so clean that it was mainly just skeletons left. The horde had been voracious in their attack on us.

I caught sight of a lone figure walking down the road. From their gait and the fact that they were carrying a shotgun, I knew that they were alive. I watched and waited however; this would be the true test. If anything Undead was still left within the walls of the Herber Settlement, a confrontation would ensue.

The figure continued to stalk carefully down the street, eyes likely peeled for any sign of the Undead. It briefly stopped at each of the skeletons, pausing only to determine if they were in fact truly dead. It was hard to believe that a body so depleted could still move but I had heard of it happening before. There is still so much that we don’t know about the Undead and what allows them to function. From the way that the figure quickly got on its way, they all must have been dead.

In a moment that changed. As the figure was straightening back up to continue its journey down the street, a bony arm snaked out to grasp a fleshed ankle. The figure went down and the skeleton slowly tried to overtake it, its limbs moving but not in coordination with each other. The figure appeared to look back, its other foot coming up to deliver what was to be a fatal blow. The skeleton went completely slack and the figure took a moment to extricate itself from the bloody phalanges.

As it got up, the recognition of who it was flooded my brain. At least one of my friends had survived and the realization brought with it the hope that I would see them all again. My need and desire for caution in the face of the unknown was over. I climbed back down the ladder, making sure to tightly close the hatch and sprinted to the front doors. As I threw them open, Julie came into closer view, her shotgun up and pointed at me, likely alerted by the noise of the door.

Upon seeing me, her face broke into a smile. Two of us had survived. We were together again and now it was time to see who else had made it. We hugged briefly, knowing that we still needed to be on guard.

Having heard the front doors open from the recesses of the library, the 5 other survivors had ventured closer to see what had happened. It was time for us to leave the sanctity that we had found inside the walls and discover if there were more than 7 of us left alive. I stepped back inside only long enough to grab a laptop and then we all left together. Our first stop, the school. Hopefully the scene we find there is similar to the one that we lived in the library.

[1] from Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot

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I know many of you are waiting with bated breath for the continuation of Days with the Undead and I can now say, it’s coming soon!! I submitted Book One to my editor the middle of this month and then took a little time away to spend with family and friends over the holidays. Now it’s time to get back to it!

Expect the unexpected soon!

Check out Sirens Call Publications for news concerning the release of Days with the Undead: Book One!!

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We hope everyone had a great Christmas! We travel through space and time to the very first episode of The Walking Dead Time Lords (then known as The Walking Dead Zombcast) where Matthew and Kev sit down to discuss what they have in store for the show, what they think The Walking Dead TV show on AMC will be like, and some comic book movies!

All this and more zombie awesomeness with The Walking Dead Time Lords only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

All this and more time traveling with The Walking Dead Time Lords, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

All this and more time traveling with The Walking Dead Time Lords, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

All this and more of the time traveling Walking Dead Time Lords, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

All this and more BRRRRAAAAAIIINNNSSS from The Walking Dead Time Lords, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

So where have I left you all in Days with the Undead? Right now Max is trapped in the library after the breach of Undead rodents, afraid to venture outside but nervous that he needs to do something. What’s happened to the twins, Lily and Liam who were at school along with Jane when disaster struck? Ben was at the hospital and Julie was at home, did they manage to survive? What about some of the other survivors like Lt. Lafferty, Polly and baby Eduardo or even Marcus; what’s become of them? What’s become of everyone else? The answers to those questions will be coming in the next few weeks.

That’s correct, you all read that right. I need to take a bit of a break in order to get my first book ready for my editor so that it can be released! Initially I wrote Days with the Undead to be released as a book but decided to put it out there for people to read instead; sort of like an extended Beta Reading process. From my initial manuscript, the story has grown and transformed from what I had imagined in the beginning. What I’m working on for my editor, is the first in a series based on Days with the Undead but containing never before read material. There’s going to be something for old and new fans alike. I’m excited about it and I hope you are too!

So please bear with me while I take a short period of time to get this ready and you’ll have more than one new thing to read from me!

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I’ve been holed up in the library since it happened. There was no way that I would have been able to get anywhere else; I barely made it inside the library as it was. There are 6 of us here, all terrified of what is outside.

They came over the walls and through the small little holes that didn’t get patched. A veritable carpet of them like a wave of water just overtaking the landscape. One minute you could clearly see the ground around you and then in the next, the ground was covered.

They moved so quickly. So very, very quickly. One minute it was a lovely fall day, the next it was a massacre. The screams were the first indication that something wasn’t quite right.

I was just about the grab the door to the library, intending to go inside and write an update for everyone when I heard the first of the screams. they were blood-curdling. The kind of screams that raise all of the hairs on the back of your neck. The kind of screams that raise all of the ancillary hairs over your entire body. The kind of scream that settles deep into your psyche and changes you forever. It’s the kind of scream that you never forget but search for words to explain. I’ve heard it far too many times; more times that I care to even remember.

When I looked to see what was causing the panic and terror, I saw them. It was the largest group that I had ever seen. The Undead rodents were everywhere; cutting down every living thing that was in their path.

Knowing that I didn’t have a second to spare, I ducked inside the library and closed the door quickly behind me. I turned the lock, knowing that if I didn’t I ran the risk of allowing someone else trying to escape the horde the means to let them in. It may seem heartless but what good was it to sacrifice myself and anyone else that might have been in the library with me.

I heard the panicked and pained screams continue down the street, knowing that the tide of undeath was flowing in that direction. I had no way to warn anyone of their advance.

I could only sit and stare in horror as the seconds ticked by. Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes into hours. The worst was the waiting. Fairly soon the screams died down completely. None of us dared to look out the windows. The fear of attracting them was palpable.

What I didn’t know about the Herber Settlement was that it had suffered a breach just like this about 2 months before we got here. From what I understand there used to be quite a few more people here. The attack by the Undead critters dropped the population down to less than one-third of what it once was. And when Marcus had decided to patch the gaps and disband the Perimeter Guard completely, he did so not realizing what else the PGs had been assigned to look for.

Was it his fault that we’re in this position? No, how was he to know that we were in the path of their carnage. But the sad thing is that if we had known they were coming, we could have gotten in doors. We could have saved more people.

I have no idea who is dead or alive. I can’t even get out of this library. They could still be out there, waiting for us…

The wait is beginning to get to me. I need to find out if my friends made it. I know that Ben was at the hospital, Julie was at the house and the twins and Jane were all in school. The stress of not knowing is wearing me down. I can’t help but realize that while I want to know, I don’t want to know.

And all I can do is sit here and wait. Either they get in and devour us as well, or they’re long gone.

Oh sh*t! More screams… Someone must have ventured outside thinking it was safe only to find out it’s not. At least now we know for sure.

So we wait. And pray.

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All this and more BRRRAAAIIINNNNSSSS on The Walking Dead Time Lords only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

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Our unrelenting pursuers. They never stopped. Never got tired. Sometimes you were lucky and someone or something else would steal their attention away from you. But there were always more of them. They were everywhere and their numbers just kept growing.

I liken the experience to a river taking over the landscape. You don’t really know where the source is; all you know is that it just keep coming. Everything in their path is consumed and tainted by their encroaching tide of death and subsequent undeath.

Being at the settlement has eased some of the fears that we once had but didn’t erase them completely. Sure, there was no immediate threat related to the Undead behind the walls but things are strained. Marcus still has his minions observing the other survivors in the settlement at every possible moment.

People are not allowed to meet in groups larger than ten and our communal meals are always watched over by someone from Marcus’ camp. There must be something that he is afraid of but the question is what might that thing be? If it’s the possibility that someone might decide to rise up against him, I don’t think he has anything to fear. None of us are interested in seeing any more death. We’ve all seen so much of that; enough to last us 10 lifetimes.

Marcus does have bigger problems though. The supplies at the settlement are dwindling and he has yet to figure out a way that he can send people out and still maintain his hold on the people left behind. If it were me, I would just send a team out to forage for supplies but he’s so paranoid that he’ll send the wrong people that he’s chosen to do nothing. We have about 4 more days of food left before we’ll be eating the types of things that no one knows that to do with. Things like canned mushrooms and Spam. We have nothing fresh that much is obvious. No one is growing anything anymore and the canned goods are going to begin to expire in a few short months. We need to come up with a plan of self-sustainment for the long term. Otherwise, what’s the point in maintaining a semblance of normalcy behind the concrete walls.

In some ways, life is getting better though. Marcus has eased some of his restrictions. We’re allowed more time on the computers. It’s not that there is much to look at or even do but the fact that we have a way to escape for a few more moments a week is good. Most people have just been playing the games that come preloaded. The truth of the matter is that you can only play so much solitaire and minesweeper before your brain goes completely numb.

It’s probable that Marcus is coming to the realization that the people are losing their tenuous grip on reality…

There is a shock that settles in at some point. I’ve seen it first hand while fighting  in Afghanistan but what I’m seeing now is on a much larger scale. The survivors are walking around as if they are lost. They have the same looks on their faces as the people of Minden. It’s chilling really. Some of you might not remember what happened to us in Minden but the experience is burned into our psyches. As much as we might have wanted to forget, the vacant faces we see behind the walls of the Herber Settlement bring those memories back to the forefront.

We’ve seen vacancy before but it’s nothing like the widespread phenomenon that you can see as you walk down the street. It’s like every face is a mirror image of the one before. Each morning I get up and look in the mirror hoping that my face doesn’t look back at me with the same vacancy. The day that it does, I know I’m done. I’ve seen what happens when you just stop caring. Once you reach that point, it’s only a matter of time before the Undead accept you into their flock.

I’m hoping that day never comes for me. Or my friends. It would be horrible to survive the things that we have survived for the last 5 to 6 months only to give up now. We have to figure out how to keep our minds strong and in the game. The answer might be to leave the settlement. It would be dangerous of course. We have none of our weapons and no real way to travel quickly and safely but we’ve been at that point before. If the need arises, I’m positive that we’ll be able to stay alive. We have to. There is no other option. The Undead will not be the death of me or my friends.

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Then the moment turned sour. While we were singing a song that I was sure everyone would know we all forgot the words. It was like a switch turned off in our minds and we just forgot what it was that we were doing.

I want to believe that the arts are going to live beyond the Apocalypse but the case may be that they will not. Think of all of the works of art, just hanging in museums and galleries with no one to appreciate them. The songs that will no longer be heard. The books that will no longer be read. It’s a depressing thought if you think on it too long… Art is an expression of a culture’s creativity and at the moment, we are so busy trying to survive that we have no time to be creative. I would like to think the world will be able to get back to that but I do believe that the chances of that happening are slim to none. I hope I’m wrong; I hope that people need to create in order to understand, to process, to heal. I think it would be good for us, for all of us.

Life with Marcus in charge hasn’t actually been all that bad. Despite the way in which he came to power and the deaths that had to occur for it to happen, he has been a good thing for the settlement. He has taken on the task of patching all of the gaps in the wall. It’s freed up a lot of time for the Perimeter Guards to do other tasks that needed to be done. Now all we do it patrol the perimeter just in case the patches don’t hold.

Having the gaps patched up has actually prevented the Undead from hanging around the wall too much. Of course, we get the odd group that passes by but without an entrance they don’t bother too much with us and move along.

With Marcus, everyone has a say. It’s not a true democracy, that’s plainly obvious but he at least listens to what you have to say and then weighs the pros and cons before making a decision. With Johanna and the Council, it was a dictatorship pure and simple. Whatever Johanna wanted to put into law, she did and the Council never stopped her. I can’t fault the woman completely however; she did protect the city of Seattle from the Undead with her plan.

In the days following the riot, coup d’état, whatever you want to call it, Marcus officially apologized for the atrocities that were committed. While it’s interesting to see that he has a heart and I don’t believe that he genuinely feels bad about what happened. No one dares to speak out against him. What’s done is done and people are choosing to let sleeping dogs lie.

Even though he has apologized, people still feel the threat of violence that hides just beneath the surface. It’s an eerie feeling to be completely honest, like you’re never able to get comfortable. Like a pair of eyes are always on you at every moment.

We live with a number of restrictions as well. There is a curfew and you’re only allowed out after dark if you have special permission. If you’re caught out once the sun goes down and you have no proof that you’re allowed to be there, you spend an obligatory week in jail.

I’m not sure what it is that Marcus is worried about. No one is going to try to usurp his new role. I mean there might be a few people that want him gone, but there are no plans to make that happen. At least none that I know of anyways.

The worst of the restrictions might be that we are now only allowed to have one hour per week on the communal computers. And I have seen that our laptop has been put into circulation there. It’s hard to only have contact once per week as I know that some of you are out there thinking that something awful has happened. Well it has, but somehow we always manage to pull through it and survive.

The worst thing is that internet is beginning to die. That’s that only way that I can explain it. There seems to be a systematic shutting down of sites and well I can’t really fault that it‘s happening. At some point, we all knew that it was bound to happen. With no one to run the power stations, the servers would eventually go down. And we’ve been experiencing sites going missing all along but now it just seems that the internet is getting smaller. The once infinite space for information and the like is imploding; folding in on itself and swallowing the information that it once readily provided for us.

The funny thing is that porn sites are still very much alive. And I don’t mean alive in the sense that there is new content or anything. I just mean that the servers were still active and streaming content for the people that had either paid for it, or were willing to pay for it. I saw it a lot at the communal computer bank. The fact that it was the only thing left on the internet to really see meant that everyone was going to go there. And it wasn’t about the sex; it was the fact that they were the only images left to see of a world before all of this.

At some point, those sites will die as well. Lost to the world forever. Some of you might wonder if we will miss them. The truth is we will miss it all. Everything that we lose will be a painful reminder of the world that we once lived in.

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Marcus was one of those unlucky people to have been locked up in the old jail until it could be determined if the wounds they had posed any risk to the entire settlement. He didn’t appreciate the forced confinement; none of them did but Marcus was different. He had a voice, he had charisma and the angry outcasts of the Herber Settlement were ready to listen to someone. Johanna and the Council certainly hadn’t done them any favours by locking them up with potentially infected people.

As a result of the fire that Marcus stoked, the disenfranchised members of the settlement started to rebel. At first, they would just engage the guards in heated debates but soon it turned to violence. That’s the way with our society, if you can’t solve it through (educated) discourse; the one that strikes first usually has the upper hand. And the self-proclaimed outcasts struck first.

It was an organized attack. They moved all of the children into one section of the jail as their safety was never to be jeopardized and then staged a mock fight in the cafeteria. They knew the fight would draw the attention of the guards, and would likely bring them all down into the cafeteria to break it up.

The Herber Settlement Police Force wasn’t made up of your brightest of individuals. None of them actually had any police experience (most of the real officers had either left the city to help other forces quell the uprising of the dead or they had died themselves keeping the Undead out of the city in the early days). What stood for officers now were untrained men and women granted the “honour” of police work by Johanna and the Council. It had worked in the interim when no one did anything to jeopardize safety. And now it worked to the advantage of Marcus and his followers. Once all of the guards had responded, and left the doors open in their inexperience, the outcasts turned on them. They were soon overpowered. It really wasn’t a fair fight, 157 grown men and women against 20 guards ill-equipped to handle any kind of crisis.

In the end, 13 of the guards had been beaten so badly that they died of their injuries. No one even knew to respond to them in the jail; their bodies were found after the fact. The remaining 7 guards were locked in cells and Marcus and the rest of the mob left the jail in search of a fight.

They didn’t have to go too far to find one. Seeing the group burst forth from the jail, panic exploded through the settlement. The assumption was that the infection had spread through the jail like wildfire and now the Undead were loose. It was a fearful reaction but one that had been ingrained so many times before.

A number of the braver inhabitants picked up whatever weapons they could lay their hands readily on; gardening implements, cleaning tools, even spare pieces of wood still present after one of the buildings had been repaired. But the mob was too big for them. While they did some damage, they were quickly disarmed and granted no mercy.

The mob moved through the city, intent in its goal. They wanted the source of their anger, their frustration and they didn’t plan on letting anyone stop them in their pursuit.

The Council all lived in the same area of the city; in the houses that surrounded Johanna’s estate. They were easy to find and naturally were at home at that time of day. The mob dispersed to each of the houses as they came upon them; the group getting smaller as it stalked up the road to its final destination.

The shouts and screams from the houses left behind could be heard as the mob surprised each of the Council members and their families. But onward the shifting mob moved. They found Johanna and her granddaughter in the back of the house, just sitting down to eat dinner. There was an exclamation of surprise, then outrage out of Johanna.

Marcus struck her with a shovel that he had picked up along the way, her skull crumbling in upon itself. Her death was instant and her granddaughter’s followed shortly. By that time, the rest of the mob had finished with the rest of the Council. They were all dead, along with their families.

Marcus proclaimed himself the new mayor of the settlement on the steps of Johanna’s estate, still holding the shovel covered in her blood in his right hand. He raised it high in the air to the exclamations of support from the crowd.

The rest of us found out about the change in power shortly thereafter. Marcus made sure that we all knew he was in charge now. Nothing really changed for a number of us; we went about our normal tasks  of protecting, feeding and cleaning the settlement. There was no time for us to express anything other than blind acceptance.

Marcus is a very fluid speaker. Listening to him is like listening to music; the melody of his voice and the lilt of his words made you want to believe in the things he was promising. I can remember the last time I was present for one of his speeches.

He was standing in front of the doors to City Hall proclaiming that this was the new age of civilization. At the time, I wasn’t entirely sure he understood what he was saying but soon we would find out just what he meant. If anyone thought that Johanna was bad, they should have been warned about charismatic charlatans.

Well, myy allotted time is almost up; I had better get this up before it’s lost forever…

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Anytime people are seen with visible wounds, there is a panic! People will change to the opposite side of the street, ply them with vicious words, even turn tail and run. The strange thing is the newly offensive person may not have even been outside of the walls since they were erected. But that didn’t seem to matter; if you had a wound, you became a pariah.

The council decided it was time to take action. They enlisted all of the medical staff and had them conducting around the clock visual examinations on each and every person that lived in the settlement. The fear was palpable. No one wanted to submit but was afraid of how it would look if they did not. Dissension was not an option; there had been a breach and the council wasn’t about to take any more chances.

They had even gone as far as setting up a Quarantine Zone for anyone having a cut, laceration, or scrape on their bodies. The used the jail that had been cleared shortly after the Apocalypse; each person had a cell to retreat to and common areas to interact with everyone else if they chose to. They used the settlement police department to man the jail, though none of the officers really wanted to deal with the inmates.

It was beginning to border on the ridiculous! Putting all of those people, and there ended up being quite a few, into one place to work each other up was madness, in my honest opinion. But consider the ramifications if just one of them turned out to be infected?

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We had been assigned 3 houses in one of the outlying suburbs close to downtown once we had been properly cleared for entry. I was living in the larger house with Ben, Julie, the twins and Jane while everyone else in our group had split themselves up between the 2 other houses.

It was early in the morning, maybe about 7:30, when they knocked on the front door. Only Julie and I were up; Julie because she was getting ready for her shift at one of the Food Kitchens (restaurants turned into cafeterias of sorts that feed all of the people at the settlement) and I was just unwinding after another harrowing night assigned to a gap. When I answered the door, the two officers demanded immediate entry into the house. Unsure of what was going on and considering the potential for a city-wide breach, I let them in.

Their gruff and militant demeanor made me wonder what had happened. Before closing the door, I scanned the neighbourhood around the house for signs of the Undead. The only thing out of the ordinary was the squad car in the driveway and the second one across the street. The second squad car was parked directly in front of the house and was inhabited by two other officers, both intently watching it

Feeling slightly puzzled at the strangeness of the situation, I closed the front door and walked into the living room. Julie was already engaged in a conversation, if you could call their frantic and intimidating line of questioning a conversation, as I entered the room. Once I joined the group, the officers turned their attention to me, fixing me with their hardened and suspicious eyes.

From the line of their questioning, it became evident they had received a tip that we were harbouring a member of the Undead. Hearing such a preposterous claim, I welcomed their demand to search the house.

We had absolutely nothing to hide. In fact, we had even taken on the responsibility of ending the lives of our friends and family that had succumbed to the infection. There was absolutely no way that we would have harboured anyone that was infected or worse. Our pasts had shown us firsthand how dangerous those actions could turn out to be.

The officers searched the house, starting in the basement, with their guns drawn; expecting at any moment to be face to decomposing face with one of the Undead. When they reached the upstairs bedrooms, their tense anxiety was palpable. Not wanting them to wake Jane and the twins, we quietly told them to keep it down. Our polite request only seemed to fuel them more.

They burst into the room they twins shared with Jane, their guns held out before them; the safety’s off. The noise and commotion of their entry jarred the twins awake and made Jane scream in terror. The twins started to cry and tried to become as small as they could in their shared bed. Jane backed up so far in her own bed that it looked like she was being crucified on the wall behind her headboard.

Seeing that the room was in fact only inhabited by children, the officers lowered their weapons and adopted a somewhat sheepish look. They did not apologize however. They just backed out of the room and milled in the hallway. From the looks on their faces, I could tell they realized they had been made to look like fools.

I escorted the officers down the stairs and out of the house without allowing them access to the rest of the house; not that they even asked. In fact, during the short trip down the stairs, they didn’t say a word to me. There were no apologies, not even a justification as to why they had to search the house. I’m not sure if the silence was worse than the potential false platitudes and excuses.

Once the door was shut and the outside world was locked away once again, we met as a group to discuss what had just happened. Thankfully the twins and Jane were so used to startles and scares that it was relatively easy to calm them down. That was the reality that we faced; kids became even more adaptive in tense situations.

It didn’t help that none of us could figure out why someone had accused us of something so heinous. As one of the only doctors in the settlement, Ben had gained a level of something akin to prestige once he started working at the hospital. Medicine is one of those things that people tend to hold in high regard and as it’s unlikely that there would be anymore doctors graduating from Medical Schools anytime soon, the doctors that were still around were precious commodities. And as a Perimeter Guard, I have a level of respect that is bestowed upon me as well. It just didn’t make any sense for someone within the settlement to be working against us…

We’ve been keeping our eyes and ears open on the off-chance that we can gather a little intel. Finding out who was behind the accusation is important but it has since taken a back seat to the events that occurred later that evening.

In order to keep a huge group of survivors like this fed and well, happy, it takes quite a lot. As a result, the council had organized a group of men and women that had special skills; orienteering, Parkour, observation, and weaponry. It was their job to leave the settlement at regular times in order to forage for supplies. Everything that was already behind the walls had been stockpiled and it would last for a while but it never hurt to be even better prepared than what you already were. Now they had to go farther and farther afield for supplies in our dwindling world. Sometimes they would get a lucky break and find a transport truck full of non-perishables on their way to a supermarket when the Apocalypse hit. They had everything that you could ever imagine at their fingertips to obtain supplies; weapons, vehicles, battery chargers. Everything.

The Supply Team came back a few nights ago with two trucks that had been on their way to a grocery store in Vancouver. Two trucks full of groceries and something else. Something a little more insidious. It appears that one of the group had come into contact with some infected blood. No one really knows how it happened since the man swears that he hadn’t been bitten and there were no bite marks on his body. Upon their return, each of them was checked for bites; the full-body check was part of the price for entry. Everyone had to submit to it or risk being left on the outside of the walls.

The man whose name was Dean, had come back with a long but shallow cut on his leg that he said he had gotten while navigating a tricky spot between two buildings. At first no one really paid much attention to it, after all it was just aroutine laceration; something that the Supply Team was used to dealing with in the line of duty.

The problem was that after a few days, Dean started to get sick. It turns out that the wound got dangerously infected even though it had been properly cleaned and bandaged. The doctors hadn’t seen anything like that. What would have been useful information for everyone at the settlement was the fact that the sharp edge that Dean had come into contact with had been covered in dried blood. Infected blood.

While the doctors valiantly tried to save Dean’s life, they were puzzled that they couldn’t stop what they assumed was just a simple infection of the tissues surrounding the gash. Within 2 days, Dean was dead. Precautions were taken to ensure that he didn’t come back but under careful study in the lab, it was determined that he had been infected.

It was a sobering lesson for the council. An infected person had gotten past their safeguards. Until further notice, the Council had placed the entire settlement on lock down. No one comes in, no one goes out. I’m not sure how this is going to pan out for us…

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I found this interesting; even though the Regenerations were horribly done until 2005

Johanna Herber came to personally thank me for sounding the alarm when the Undead managed to get through the breach in the north wall. It was a nice gesture but I didn’t think that I needed a personal visit. I was just doing what I would assume anyone else would have done. And it was done with so much pomp and circumstance that you would have thought they were giving me a key to the city!

Having finally met Johanna, I have to say I’m a little bit disappointed. She’s made out to be this larger than life hero; like someone who no one could possibly ever live up to. Instead she’s just this little diminutive woman of about 80 years of age. Her face is a map of the life that she has lived; all of the trials and tribulations carved deeply into the freckled skin. She has arthritis so severe that she walks with a cane and the assistance of another woman; someone much younger than herself but from the familial resemblance, likely her granddaughter.

When you meet her, you get the impression that she would be ineffective at anything that she tried. You would have been wrong the moment she opened her mouth. The authority that oozed out the woman was palpable. And when she fixed her eyes on you for the first time, you got the impression that she enjoyed being underestimated. The fire that blazed behind those eyes was very evident and you soon realized why Seattle stood relatively unchanged 125 days after the Apocalypse.

It also became readily apparent why so many people just did everything that she asked of them. Her wisdom and knowledge on any subject was astounding. One might even begin to wonder if she had worked to get herself into a position of power in order to prepare for such an event.

We’ve been hearing rumours and snippets of information about Johanna from other survivors that have been here longer than us. Apparently, in the 30 years (yes that’s correct, 30 years) she has been the mayor of Seattle, she had amassed the multitude of concrete barriers that are currently surrounding the city. Amassing and stockpiling them in warehouses maintained by the city located on the outskirts of town. How she managed to stay in power, with all of the money that she must have diverted, I cannot even begin to comment on.

Once Johanna heard the news that Brooks VanReit had reawakened, she didn’t waste any time in turning all of the city’s manpower to the task of enclosing the city. She figured that it was better to be safe than sorry in any situation that involved the Undead. And all of us were extremely lucky that she did; none of us would have a place to stay safe otherwise.

What I don’t understand is why she leaves the gaps open, it’s not like it would take a lot to patch them up. And she has to know about them; there have been too many breaches to believe otherwise… Perhaps in the beginning the workers that had constructed the wall had hidden the fact that there were gaps but with all of the alarms and the need for Perimeter Guards, it would have become obvious there was an issue.

And after the breach that we had along the north wall the other night, Johanna and the council have even allowed us to have a source of illumination. It’s not a true light because they still don’t want us to inadvertently attract the Undead to the weak parts along the walls. What they have supplied us with are small LED lights similar to what you would find attached to a key ring. It gives off the weakest of bluish tinges and only illuminates the smallest of areas. It’s not enough to really see by but it is better than nothing.

I will say the first time my light was cast upon the face of one of the Undead, I recoiled in abject horror. The light made them look even more ghastly than I thought was possible given the greyish pallor of their rotting visages. It was positively ghoulish. I am not ashamed to say that it caught me by surprise as there were no telltale sounds to accompany its arrival.

The noises may have been missing purely because this particular Undead used to be a toddler; its face now half eaten and right arm ending in a putrid stump just above the wrist. It didn’t take me long to kill it, but I will say that you never get used to the kids…

If I had to choose the kinds of Undead I would prefer to encounter, children would be at the bottom of said list. Sure they are smaller and can be killed slightly easier depending on your method but they are more voracious and just a little more cunning. That might just be because of the creep factor though…

At least with the full-sized Undead, for lack of a better word, you can see them coming. They tend to be taller than or at least as tall as the cars clogging the roadways. And unless they are scraping themselves across the ground after you, you can usually track them in tight spots. Children, on the other hand, can come out of nowhere sometimes. As you make your way around a car or through an area that has some congestion, they can suddenly just be there, their undead eyes fixed on you and their undead arms reaching out as if to be picked up. In the first few days, I can see how a number of people might have easily reached down out of habit to pick up a child. An instinctual move that might well have been their demise; who wouldn’t have wanted to help a child in distress? We’ve been taught that it’s the right thing to do.

Once the Apocalypse hit, the right thing quickly became what you rarely did. Unless of course it was something that you deemed was safe to do. No one went out of their way to help anyone else; doing so could mean death. You had no idea who was infected, who might want to do you harm, and who might end up being completely useless.

We’ve been hearing that the settlement has been turning away other survivors since we got here. And in fact they hadn’t let anyone inside after they were fully enclosed. That leaves us to wonder why they decided to let us inside…

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All this and more flesh eating on The Walking Dead Time Lords, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

All this and more time traveling madness on The Walking Dead Time Lords, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

The Walking Dead Time Lords, part of a balanced diet, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

As you know, I’ve been working as one of the PGs (Perimeter Guards). It’s an 8 hour shift of just staring at a gap in the wall. A boring, tedious, exhausting 8 hours but you knew that you were doing something that greatly benefited our community. This is mainly why I cannot fathom how someone managed to fall asleep at their post.

It happened a few nights ago. Sunday morning to be more exact. Gregory, an older gentleman probably in his 60s, was given one of the more solitary gaps to guard against. It was along the north wall and in an area of the city that wasn’t inhabited by too many families.

The worst thing about the duty was that we didn’t have the luxury of light to help us. The council thought that using light to highlight the gaps at night would only attract more of the Undead to them. I could see the logic behind that, really I could, but you have no idea what it’s like to be standing in the inky darkness of night with only your ears as a warning system. After a while your eyes would adjust to the darkness but it wasn’t a perfect system by any means.

I know a bunch of guys that rigged up different types of warning systems just to help them out. Strings with bells across the openings. Cans stacked up in front of the gaps. Anything that you can really think of to make noise in the event that one of the Undead decided to come through your gap.

That must have been what Gregory was relying on. He’d probably been using his system for quite a while and it had worked thus far so why would he think about changing it? The scary thing is that you cannot rely on the Undead to be predictable…

To a certain extent they are. They will come after you relentlessly until you either kill them or they kill you. It’s pretty simple; they are driven by their need to feed and assimilate. What you cannot bank on however is that they can come at you from all different angles, in any way, shape, or form that they can. As long as one of the Undead is mobile, it’s going to pursue you. It might get waylaid if something else crosses its path, but it will keep moving in the last direction that it saw you going.

Poor Gregory. Underestimating your most voracious enemy is dangerous and he definitely learned his lesson.

It was about 3:30am on Sunday morning and I was keeping my eyes glued tp my gap. I was stationed on the west wall that night but I was close to where the north and west walls met. It was a quiet night. Sometimes you heard people out and about in the streets, acting as if nothing was wrong with the world. A little bit of security can put the blinders up for people. That was pretty scary to deal with as well because there were people living in the Herber Settlement that didn’t believe that anything was really wrong with the world. It was like they had selective memories of what had happened and were choosing to forget that there was a world on the other side of the wall.

The night was quiet and incredibly dark… We didn’t even have the benefit of the stars to help illuminate the tiny gaps we watched. I heard a slight scraping along the concrete close to my gap and knew that soon I would have a visitor to turn away. Within a moment, the scraping got louder and from experience I could tell that pretty soon the rotting corpse would be all the way through. It was easy to tell when you had something about the come through; the smell usually gave them away if you didn’t pick up on the noise. I quickly put the invader to rest and went back to listening. My mind started to wander and I began to wonder why The Council didn’t just patch the gaps. It would make life a whole heck of a lot easier. But then I guess maybe they wanted to make sure that people had a job to do… It was a risky choice but one I wasn’t about to argue with; I had no desire to leave the settlement.

As I was listening and smelling for my next invader, I heard a noise off to my right. It sounded a little far away but it was like I instantly knew that it had something to do with one of the gaps. We had an alarm system in case we got into trouble. It consisted of an air horn (a super annoying sound but effective). We each had a specific call signal which was a b*tch to learn each night to be honest…

I blasted my horn 3 short bursts to signify that I was on the west wall and followed it up with a 4 second long burst. The long bursts were meant to tell the Response Team which gap you were guarding. There were only 4 along this stretch of the wall so I only had to deploy the button for 4 seconds as I was the farthest out. In my mind, it would have been easier to have us just continued to press the button until someone came to your rescue but I’m sure they had their own Morse Code of sorts just in case the PG got taken down by one of the Undead.

Once the response team got to my location, I quickly explained that I had heard a strange noise coming from the north portion of the wall. Since I couldn’t leave my post to go and check it out, it was up to them to get over there and investigate. I didn’t feel bad about calling a false alarm; there were usually about 5 or 6 a night. But in my mind it was better to be safe than sorry.

I turned my attention back to my gap and tried to put the possibility that one of the Undead could have gotten through the wall out of my mind. I was doing a pretty good job until all of the shouting started. From what I could make out, it appeared as if Gregory had been surprised by one of the Undead while he had been asleep and the Response Team had happened upon the offender while it was feeding off of Gregory’s now dead body. It was a good thing that I had blown my horn since there was already another member of the Undead army almost through the unattended gap and another one just waiting to push its way through after it.

The Response Team managed to get the situation under control fairly quickly (did I mention that they get to carry flashlights?). Poor Gregory met him demise unfortunately but it drove the point home to all of us watching our respective gaps. Paying attention was of the utmost importance.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully and I was granted a week’s vacation by The Council from my job as a Perimeter Guard for averting what could have been a huge crisis. I’m not sure if a week off is what I need though. I’ll be able to recover from the stress of the job, only to have to go back on active duty in a few days. I pray that someone on The Council will come to their senses and just patch the gaps. I’d rather watch a patched gap than an open one. Until next time, stay safe my friends.

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It’s a very militant world that we are now living in. Everyone has a place and a purpose and if you don’t tow the line, you could be cast out to fend for yourself. Consider this the end of the “free” world. Sure you are guaranteed protection from the Undead but that is not infallible. The Undead are able to breach the wall and they do so often. My second day in the Herber Settlement, named for the mayor of the city formerly known as Seattle who had devised the idea for this fortress, I was scheduled for sentry duty. Mainly it was my job to ensure that nothing came through the 4 inch space between two of the concrete slabs on the West side of the settlement. There were many such gaps and they had to be manned 24 hours a day.

At first I thought they were kidding. What could possibly get through such small a space? Apparently the Undead can. I guess with their lack of pain or need for a properly articulated skeleton it allows them to fit through just about any space imaginable. At the sight of the first skull pushing its way through, I was instantly creeped out! I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even react at first mainly because what I was seeing seemed so unbelievable.

The Undead man was almost all the way through the gap before I remembered that I had a job to do. Once I regained my wits and came to my senses, I placed the blade of the machete that they gave me at the base of its skull, brought it up and then quickly down, severing the head completely from his rotting body.

I would have loved to have had a gun for encounters such as this but the council in charge of the settlement didn’t believe that guns were required for this duty. As long as you took care of all of the Undead trying to breach the perimeter in good time, there would be no need for firepower.

In a way it was a solid place but you couldn’t help but wonder what happened if you missed one. Or if something smaller and infinitely creepier made it through the gap quicker than you could dispose of it… I hoped that we would never have to find out.

Everyone else was put to work as well. Some went to work at the local Laundromat (that God my laundry duties were over even though it was a much safer job). Others went to work at local restaurants preparing food for delivery to all of the survivors.

Herber Settlement was a fairly well oiled machine by the time that we arrived there. Everyone had a place and a use. Everything that they had been carefully inventoried and measured. The power plant for the city was still functioning so we had lights for when it got dark, and electricity to run hot water heaters, washing machines, ovens, dishwashers. You name it; if it needed electricity, it could be  used for some purpose.

It really was a Utopian society compared to the hell that we had been living for so long. There were numerous safety protocols in place and regular resupply missions undertaken. There was a council of individuals that were charged with deciding what was best for the settlement made up of the former mayor, Johanna Herber (who singlehandedly fought to protect the city of Seattle from the Undead) and 9 other people. Some of those 9 people were other survivors that had been accepted into the settlement. And actually the council was about to name one of our group to it to ensure that we had a voice.

It was a democracy of sorts. Not perfect of course as we were beginning to learn but they were making an effort. The main problem was no one was willing to go against anything that Johanna Herber suggested. There was a bit of a messiah complex that surrounded her. Everyone here revered her and I can understand the belief that she is a hero. If it hadn’t been for her and her plan to protect the city, tens of thousands of people would have been enlisted into the growing army of the Undead. But the constant deference to her and her ideas had gotten the settlement into some trouble along the way.

From what I’ve been told, in hushed voices of course as people are somewhat paranoid around here, is that there used to be a lot more people at the settlement. Anyone that disagrees with the council, and therefore disagrees with Johanna’s decrees is asked to leave immediately. It was similar to what we experienced with Thomas Rosenberg on the ship but this was just a little bit worse.

On the ship, everyone was in agreement that no “upper” class should exist. In the new world order, each person started off as equals.

That wasn’t the case at the Herber Settlement. There was an elite and those in the elite didn’t have to contribute much of anything to the day-to-day maintenance of the community. Their free rides had been bought and paid for by their monetary support in building the settlement once the apocalypse started. Was it a fair system? Of course nor but parts of the world had remained intact, that was readily obvious.

What began to truly scare us was the way in which a number of people acted when they thought no one was looking. You know the kind of activity that makes you pause and just say to yourself, something doesn’t seem right about that… Each of us is keeping an eye out for the bizarre but it’s hard to tell with a large group of people what truly is just bizarre and what is a potential threat.

After risking our lives to get here, we still have some uneasiness in staying. Only time will tell what the future holds for us. Let’s pray that the cards are stacked in our favour for once.

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All this and more time travel on The Walking Dead Time Lords, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

The only positive thing that has happened to us in the last 5 days is that we finally made it to Seattle. It was a long journey and one that was filled with many pitfalls. In the end, we walked the last 100 miles. That wasn’t the brightest of ideas but all we had left were our feet. The bus that we had been travelling in finally quit on us. It was already down a tire from having run over something that was in the roadway and the strain on the engine was just too much for it. We did try to make a few other vehicles serviceable but none of their batteries were interested in recharging.

We had to keep moving. Anytime that we stopped we ran the risk of attracting the Undead. There were already some following us. When you looked back you could see them on the horizon, moving toward us in a never-ending shuffle. While they were likely a long way back, it meant that we had to keep moving. To stop for any length of time would only give them the advantage; they don’t stop to recuperate like we needed to.

It took us 49 straight hours of walking to complete that 100 kilometres. By the end, we were all so exhausted and so utterly terrified from having to traverse the landscape in the complete darkness. Both of the nights that we had to stay on the move were overcast and there was no celestial illumination for us to see by.

There were moments of heart stopping terror every time we came upon a car or truck positioned haphazardly on the road. Each stumble or touch of the foot against something that was suspiciously soft and smelled terrible elicited a tiny scream. It was slow going and at any point in time, our movements could have attracted the Undead. We never would have known that they were there until we heard the whisper silent shuffling of their feet on the asphalt or the sound of them bumping into one of the many obstacles. Or perhaps the brushing of Undead finger tips across our faces and bodies. They could have come out of the dark at us at any moment and we would have been powerless to avoid them.

Having to walk under those conditions actually slowed us down more than quicken our step. It was the fear of the unknown that practically paralyzed us. There were many times that each of us stopped and declared that it would be better just to let the Undead claim us. To sit down and wait in the dark for undeath. And each time, the collective power of the group continued to propel us forward.

At one point, we came across a mother cat with a litter of kittens that were likely no more than a few days old. It happened to be in the dark (of course!) and as we got closer she let out the loudest growl that we had heard. In the dark, the sound was magnified tenfold. It instantly brought back memories of the pride of Undead lions that we had encountered at the gas station. If I’d have had any food in my stomach at that moment, I would have lost it.

There have been times where I’ve been scared, I will admit that. Many a time in Afghanistan; so very often in the world that we currently live in. But this was different, my heart and stomach actually relocated into my throat and the noise utterly paralyzed me. Once we figured out that it wasn’t a real threat, it took me long minutes before I was able to keep moving.

While there was a desire for us to try to save the mother cat and her kittens, to bring them with us, we knew that we couldn’t. She was going to have to sort out a life for herself and her offspring, just like we trying to do. I didn’t hold out much hope that she would survive. If the Undead happened to pass her and she let out a growl, her kittens and likely herself would make a tasty meal. It was good to see that the cycle of life was continuing unchecked however. Maybe, just maybe some part of the world could rebuild.

Dawn was just breaking this morning when we saw our destination. The walled city of Seattle. It looked just like it had when we had passed it so many days ago. We had made it to our Mecca; now we just had to figure out how to get inside. It wasn’t going to be easy. We knew from driving all of the way around it that there was no discernible door. And to make matters worse, you could just make out the rotting bodies of the Undead shuffling around the concrete barriers.

We were going to need to be crafty. With the Undead ahead of us and behind us, and surely to our sides as well, it was a hard decision on what direction to take. Forward was really our only option and we could only hope for the best.

Once we had gotten closer, almost within a kilometre of the Undead, a truck came around the side of the walled city and drove right by the Undead that were lingering there. The Undead, seeing something mobile, immediately started to follow the truck. Could luck actually be on our side?

Once the Undead were clear around the other side of the building, we moved slightly faster than we had been (we were exhausted and really could only move so fast). We knew that we had very little time to cover all of that ground and disappear around the side of city that the truck had come from. We were hoping that the truck was a good omen; that there was a door or something on that side.

We were met by another car and some men on foot. They made us stop and strip down to nothing. I knew it was necessary that they look for bites but it was dehumanizing all the same. This was what we had become; a new society where you didn’t take a chance in trusting anyone.

Once they had sufficiently checked all of us over, we were led to a door built into the wall. It was cleverly painted to look like the rest of the concrete. No wonder we didn’t notice it at the time. Being in a car and driving somewhat quickly would have made it impossible to distinguish.

We were led through the door and into a world that looked and felt like it had never stopped. People were cutting their lawns and going about their business as if the death on the outside of their wall didn’t even exist. The word utopia came to mind; that mythical place that was meant to be perfection…

The tears could not be stopped. Each of us, with the exception of the children, had ourselves a mini-breakdown. To know that life still existed was so hard to process. While we were thankful, it reminded us of all of the people we had loved and lost. Of the way the world used to be. Of the months staring into the face of undeath.

And here in this idyllic place, life went on. Practically undisturbed.

It’s going to take some getting used to; living again. We’ve spent so much time surviving, we’d forgotten to live our days as well. Such a pitiful existence but it was over. At least for the moment. You can never get too comfortable in an Undead world.

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All this and more BRRRAAAIIIINNNS on The Walking Dead Zombcast, only on hhwst.net (it’s ALSO dot com)!

As for what we’ve been up to; just moving toward Seattle. Our intent is to put as many miles behind us every day so it’s slow going because we are doing our best to avoid the major cities. And it doesn’t help that the roads are congested with vehicles. It’s funny to me actually when I think about it; you never would have thought that there were so many cars and trucks in North America. Everywhere you look is a stationary car; maybe burned out or a twisted metallic mass. In each case, you knew that someone had likely lost their lives, either at the hands of the Undead or as a direct result of their presence.

It’s beginning to seem like the number of survivors is just a fraction of the population. It makes sense, when you think of all of the Undead that you encounter in the space of a few hours. We are definitely the minority now.

Actually I wanted to share with you something that Julie found on the internet. She’s been searching more and more for any other stories of survival; of people desperate to stay alive. The story comes to us out of Hong Kong.

I wish that I could supply you with the link so that you could go and read for yourselves but as soon as Julie had finished reading it, the site disappeared. We don’t know if it’s because the server has gone down or if someone removed the site altogether. All we know is this…

A moderate sized group of people had managed to barricade themselves inside an English school in the heart of Hong Kong. They were a multi-generational group and mainly made up of either students or school employees. The Undead has found the school as the students were outside for recess. Many of the children froze on the spot and as a result they succumbed to the growing tide of death as it washed toward them.

A few of the students closer to the building as well as a few teachers had managed to get inside and lock the doors before the Undead could breach the entrance. The scene was one of utter panic. No one really knew what was happening, the news had not warned them of anything despite the fact that the airport had been compromised when a plane from New York had landed full of the Undead, ready and willing to unleash hell on earth. The pilots had lost contact with the passenger section but really had no idea why. All they knew was that there was constant noise from the first class and beyond. They were terrified that they had been hijacked and had refused to go out to have a look at what was transpiring beyond the cockpit door.

As a result all of the emergency vehicles and first responders had met the plane on the tarmac and were unprepared for the walking death that assaulted them once the plane door was opened. At first they thought that the passengers were in a daze from some sort of contagion or poison that was released on board the plane. Once the former passengers started attacking the emergency personnel, the situation drastically changed. There were limited police on the scene despite the possibility of terrorism. The ones that were present opened fire but their bullets did nothing to deflect the coming undead flesh.

From there the infection spread like wildfire through the crowded streets of Hong Kong. News outlets chose not to broadcast the situation, thinking it best not to fight the government’s constant propaganda. So the tide of death moved deeper and deeper into the city, fanning out until there was nowhere else for them to go but follow the roads out of town. And that brings us back to the Hong Kong School for English Studies.

There were 23 survivors, locked in the school with a growing horde of the Undead on the other of the walls.

And they were pretty well off inside the walls of the school. It was powered by a generator that was replenished by solar panels on the roof. And the school’s freezer was full of food as well as the pantry being fully stocked with canned goods. If you had to choose a place to hunker down during an apocalypse this was an ideal place to do it.

It was great (in relative terms of course) in the beginning. There was no need to go outside in order to search for supplies. Each of the survivors was content to sit in relative safety and wait for the Chinese Military to straighten out the situation.

The only person that didn’t have much faith in the military was Paul Holmes, an English as a Second Language teacher that hailed from London, England. This was supposed to be his first year in Hong Kong as he’s already decided it was going to be his last. The experience of being an ESL teacher had been great but living in Hong Kong with the language barrier was just wearing too hard on him. He had longed for the comforts that he could find in his neighbourhood in London as well as the companionship of some English-speaking people.

After looking at the carnage all over the internet, he had decided to write a journal of what was happening in his part of the world; much like we had decided to do. Even if no one read it, it would be there for history’s sake.

Within a week or so, some of the other survivors started to get restless. They wanted to venture out to look for family or just make a break to get out of the city altogether. It was becoming quite clear that the military was not coming for them. The feeling of being trapped was just too much for some of them to handle. It was the desperation that eventually drove them outside.

The first group that decided to leave didn’t make it very far. They only got a few feet from the door before the Undead were upon them. And it’s not like the weaponry they had was very sophisticated; just a few long knives from the kitchen and gym equipment.

After that incident the morale of the group started to break down. They were running out of food and other supplies without any way of replenishing them. That’s when the fighting started. It kept escalating and getting more intense until the group fractured and the different factions set up camp in opposite parts of the school. And all the while the Undead continued to collect outside the school.

Fairly soon the different factions of people decided to leave the school, waiting until they thought it was safe. No one really knew of the movements of the others. It just became apparent that they were gone when they stopped coming to collect the daily rations. By the end, it was just Paul and another man, one of the janitors, who name was Jian.

Paul and Jian stayed in the school, living off the little food that they had left until the moment that Jian went crazy. The stress of the situation had finally worn through his fragile resolve. Jian’s final act was to run out of the doors of the school into the arms of the Undead. Seeing the open door, the Undead swarmed into the building searching out every nook and cranny that they could. Our last update from Paul had him holed up in a janitor’s closet, frantically typing out his last words to the word.

God help us all.

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