Day 205 or 205 - 3
Out walked six black-clad figures with their hands clasped above their head. From the sidelines I could just see a seventh figure, also in black, on the ground beside a … well, at the time it looked to me like a black humvee with a camper type of thing on the back. I’ve since found out it is the NRSC version of a humvee communication vehicle.
I hoped they were roasting in those black uniforms. I know it was rather ungallant of me but I couldn’t help but snicker a bit at the large sweat stains they all had under their arms and across their backs. It’s not that I hold a personal grudge against individual members of the NRSC but it’s awful hard to forget how they treated us back in August and how they basically cut Florida off from the rest of the country. My rational side says that had I been in their shoes I may very well have done the same thing but I keep imagining I would have found some way to lighten the burden of the people who were left behind. Supply drops, civilian evacuation points, something.
After the four men and two women were searched, their vehicle was searched and then driven into the compound so that the gate could be re-secured. Samuel ran by and straight to the clinic; within moments Waleski had come out with his kit. He looked pale which I at first attributed to helping Terra and dealing with Laura. He shut the clinic door but instead of heading straight for the NRSC folks he looked around and then came over to me. His mouth was set in a tight line and it took clearing his throat twice before he could get anything out.
He asked if I would lend him a hand with the NRSC. He’d set the girls and Rilla some tasks in the clinic so they could be close at hand for Terra and Tina who was watching a very groggy Laura. I said I’d do what I could, of course. What he said next puzzled me, “It’s like some damn sappy movie.”
Well, it puzzled me until I got close enough to really make out the faces of our new “guests.” Holy crap!
Talk about a blast from the past. Junie. Now I understand Waleski’s reference to sappy movies. Lover leaves, probably never to be heard from again under less than desirable conditions. Lover left behind eventually gets their life back together, gets over their heartbreak, falls in love again, and starts new life. Right after some commitment or other big deal, old lover returns. Talk about cliché.
But the look on Junie’s face didn’t leave me the feeling that she was happy to see us. As a matter of fact as I helped Waleski treat the relatively minor injuries that every member of that patrol had suffered, I listened to Matlock and Dix question her and the rest of that group. Junie’s answers left me in no doubt that returning to Sanctuary was the last thing she wanted to do and in fact only did so due to the extreme threat to her own life. You know, I’m not fond of swearing but particular word springs to mind … Bitch!
And you, dear reader, can have no way of understanding … not in your future and hopefully secure lives … understand how we felt upon hearing what was going on. We were on the inside, doing our best to survive day to day. They were observing from the outside, like scientists studying a particularly virulent bug.
First, the NRSC basically runs everything these days. Well, I suspect not everything or they wouldn’t have to bring to brook so much rough stuff. Free people, free to choose, will generally prove to abide by law and order that is just and reasonably fair. People who feel unjustly constrained will act out with greater and greater force. That’s the state that our country currently exists in; strict martial law enacted by an appointed rather than elected body, supported by a quasi-governmental agency from whom the supposedly “fairly appointed” new leaders came from. A snake eating its tail.
The NRSC controls the government now rather than the other way around. The NRSC troops provide protection for government officials and lead the “national planning” exercises. The regular US military and the remaining National Guard troops are the cannon fodder.
There are breakaway factions of the government as well as the US Military but our NRSC group didn’t seem to take them very seriously. As a matter of fact they were quite scornful of them, calling them no better than some of the “survivor groups” mucking around in the quarantine zones.
While talking to these blowhards I frequently got the sensation of biting on tinfoil or fingernails across a blackboard. Their indoctrination to their employer was complete. I hated how easy it was to compare them in my mind to the SS of World War II. Another cliché perhaps, but this one all too real for us. And the black uniforms certainly didn’t help.
I asked Junie how her shoulder was and she got a closed look on her face. She finally responded that she had been cut from the military personnel rosters. Then added, out of self-defense or perhaps spite, that she went into communications with the NRSC because she’d had no choice but that their doctor’s told her despite the “poor care” she received after the initial injury they would be able to fix most of the damage after she had earned enough credits to qualify for the procedure.
Apparently “earning credits” is what had her back in Florida. You got extra points for serving in the quarantine zones; sort of a hazardous duty bonus. Her prior experience in Florida earned her a higher rank in the communication patrol she was in.
But enough of this personal touchy-feely stuff, what I want to write about is how the fire, the horde, and these nuckleheads are all connected.
See it all started out innocently enough. The NRSC … or at least its personnel … isn’t all bad. I may not like their tactics but I’m sure most of them, at least at the lower rungs of their organization, really believe they are working towards the greater good against a monstrous enemy of the human species. Supposedly they were trying to find ways to knock the number of infected corpses down to a more manageable level until a “cure” or preventative could be found.
The only known, 100% positive “cure” is destruction of the infected brain. Enter middle-management thinking. Individual destruction of each corpse would be a very labor and resource intensive program. It would not be “cost effective.” Insurance costs would be hell as well so go back to the drawing board and find us a better plan.
Next came the realization by the NRSC’s research branch that individual infected corpses were easy to dispose of. While they were dangerous in a confrontation they were still easy to sanitize for a prepared opponent. Problems begin to arise when you get a higher infected population. It’s like fighting a battle on too many fronts. It’s not that the individual infecteds are any more dangerous, it’s that they can quickly overrun existing defenses.
But then to their horror … and this has apparently been kept from the general public … at some point when enough infected get together you get a “school of fish” effect. There doesn’t appear to be any true intelligence to it nor does the behavior appear to be linked to any mutation of the original NRS virus. The point … as yet unquantifiable using current research data … has more to do with group make up than number of zombies. It takes quite a few plain ‘ol zombies to create a “school” of zombies; what we would call shambler groups. However, if you add in a runner, climber, or other “non-standard” zombie you lower the number of infecteds needed to get the “school” effect.
Even worse was the discovery that if you get a large enough “school” of zombies they appear to develop a “hive mentality.” Again, there is no true intelligence, no change in the NRS virus itself but somehow the way the zombies interact within the group and with the environment they are in changes. What the NRSC calls a “hive” we call a large horde. The smaller hordes correspond to what they call “schools of infected.”
Having that information is good but some Einstein thought they could use it to bring the zombies together to make it more “cost effective” and give them a more constructive opportunity to destroy large numbers of infected corpses with a single mission or program. Their test case was the island that Newport, RI sits on. Using simple techniques they “herded” the zombies to one end of the island where they were sanitized en mass.
Their next two experiments involved the island of the Dominican Republic/Haiti and on Cuba. In the DR/Haiti case they ran into problems with the mountains that separate the two countries that share the same small island. In Cuba they gained more experience in turning large groups of zombies, guiding them in the direction they wanted them to go. That mission involved herding a hive of infecteds from one end of the island to the other and then back again; doing this several times to gain more data on hive movement. They were marginally successful on both of these missions and learned that rather than wasting bombs and ammunition that they could just use … you guessed it, fire.
Out walked six black-clad figures with their hands clasped above their head. From the sidelines I could just see a seventh figure, also in black, on the ground beside a … well, at the time it looked to me like a black humvee with a camper type of thing on the back. I’ve since found out it is the NRSC version of a humvee communication vehicle.
I hoped they were roasting in those black uniforms. I know it was rather ungallant of me but I couldn’t help but snicker a bit at the large sweat stains they all had under their arms and across their backs. It’s not that I hold a personal grudge against individual members of the NRSC but it’s awful hard to forget how they treated us back in August and how they basically cut Florida off from the rest of the country. My rational side says that had I been in their shoes I may very well have done the same thing but I keep imagining I would have found some way to lighten the burden of the people who were left behind. Supply drops, civilian evacuation points, something.
After the four men and two women were searched, their vehicle was searched and then driven into the compound so that the gate could be re-secured. Samuel ran by and straight to the clinic; within moments Waleski had come out with his kit. He looked pale which I at first attributed to helping Terra and dealing with Laura. He shut the clinic door but instead of heading straight for the NRSC folks he looked around and then came over to me. His mouth was set in a tight line and it took clearing his throat twice before he could get anything out.
He asked if I would lend him a hand with the NRSC. He’d set the girls and Rilla some tasks in the clinic so they could be close at hand for Terra and Tina who was watching a very groggy Laura. I said I’d do what I could, of course. What he said next puzzled me, “It’s like some damn sappy movie.”
Well, it puzzled me until I got close enough to really make out the faces of our new “guests.” Holy crap!
Talk about a blast from the past. Junie. Now I understand Waleski’s reference to sappy movies. Lover leaves, probably never to be heard from again under less than desirable conditions. Lover left behind eventually gets their life back together, gets over their heartbreak, falls in love again, and starts new life. Right after some commitment or other big deal, old lover returns. Talk about cliché.
But the look on Junie’s face didn’t leave me the feeling that she was happy to see us. As a matter of fact as I helped Waleski treat the relatively minor injuries that every member of that patrol had suffered, I listened to Matlock and Dix question her and the rest of that group. Junie’s answers left me in no doubt that returning to Sanctuary was the last thing she wanted to do and in fact only did so due to the extreme threat to her own life. You know, I’m not fond of swearing but particular word springs to mind … Bitch!
And you, dear reader, can have no way of understanding … not in your future and hopefully secure lives … understand how we felt upon hearing what was going on. We were on the inside, doing our best to survive day to day. They were observing from the outside, like scientists studying a particularly virulent bug.
First, the NRSC basically runs everything these days. Well, I suspect not everything or they wouldn’t have to bring to brook so much rough stuff. Free people, free to choose, will generally prove to abide by law and order that is just and reasonably fair. People who feel unjustly constrained will act out with greater and greater force. That’s the state that our country currently exists in; strict martial law enacted by an appointed rather than elected body, supported by a quasi-governmental agency from whom the supposedly “fairly appointed” new leaders came from. A snake eating its tail.
The NRSC controls the government now rather than the other way around. The NRSC troops provide protection for government officials and lead the “national planning” exercises. The regular US military and the remaining National Guard troops are the cannon fodder.
There are breakaway factions of the government as well as the US Military but our NRSC group didn’t seem to take them very seriously. As a matter of fact they were quite scornful of them, calling them no better than some of the “survivor groups” mucking around in the quarantine zones.
While talking to these blowhards I frequently got the sensation of biting on tinfoil or fingernails across a blackboard. Their indoctrination to their employer was complete. I hated how easy it was to compare them in my mind to the SS of World War II. Another cliché perhaps, but this one all too real for us. And the black uniforms certainly didn’t help.
I asked Junie how her shoulder was and she got a closed look on her face. She finally responded that she had been cut from the military personnel rosters. Then added, out of self-defense or perhaps spite, that she went into communications with the NRSC because she’d had no choice but that their doctor’s told her despite the “poor care” she received after the initial injury they would be able to fix most of the damage after she had earned enough credits to qualify for the procedure.
Apparently “earning credits” is what had her back in Florida. You got extra points for serving in the quarantine zones; sort of a hazardous duty bonus. Her prior experience in Florida earned her a higher rank in the communication patrol she was in.
But enough of this personal touchy-feely stuff, what I want to write about is how the fire, the horde, and these nuckleheads are all connected.
See it all started out innocently enough. The NRSC … or at least its personnel … isn’t all bad. I may not like their tactics but I’m sure most of them, at least at the lower rungs of their organization, really believe they are working towards the greater good against a monstrous enemy of the human species. Supposedly they were trying to find ways to knock the number of infected corpses down to a more manageable level until a “cure” or preventative could be found.
The only known, 100% positive “cure” is destruction of the infected brain. Enter middle-management thinking. Individual destruction of each corpse would be a very labor and resource intensive program. It would not be “cost effective.” Insurance costs would be hell as well so go back to the drawing board and find us a better plan.
Next came the realization by the NRSC’s research branch that individual infected corpses were easy to dispose of. While they were dangerous in a confrontation they were still easy to sanitize for a prepared opponent. Problems begin to arise when you get a higher infected population. It’s like fighting a battle on too many fronts. It’s not that the individual infecteds are any more dangerous, it’s that they can quickly overrun existing defenses.
But then to their horror … and this has apparently been kept from the general public … at some point when enough infected get together you get a “school of fish” effect. There doesn’t appear to be any true intelligence to it nor does the behavior appear to be linked to any mutation of the original NRS virus. The point … as yet unquantifiable using current research data … has more to do with group make up than number of zombies. It takes quite a few plain ‘ol zombies to create a “school” of zombies; what we would call shambler groups. However, if you add in a runner, climber, or other “non-standard” zombie you lower the number of infecteds needed to get the “school” effect.
Even worse was the discovery that if you get a large enough “school” of zombies they appear to develop a “hive mentality.” Again, there is no true intelligence, no change in the NRS virus itself but somehow the way the zombies interact within the group and with the environment they are in changes. What the NRSC calls a “hive” we call a large horde. The smaller hordes correspond to what they call “schools of infected.”
Having that information is good but some Einstein thought they could use it to bring the zombies together to make it more “cost effective” and give them a more constructive opportunity to destroy large numbers of infected corpses with a single mission or program. Their test case was the island that Newport, RI sits on. Using simple techniques they “herded” the zombies to one end of the island where they were sanitized en mass.
Their next two experiments involved the island of the Dominican Republic/Haiti and on Cuba. In the DR/Haiti case they ran into problems with the mountains that separate the two countries that share the same small island. In Cuba they gained more experience in turning large groups of zombies, guiding them in the direction they wanted them to go. That mission involved herding a hive of infecteds from one end of the island to the other and then back again; doing this several times to gain more data on hive movement. They were marginally successful on both of these missions and learned that rather than wasting bombs and ammunition that they could just use … you guessed it, fire.