who
loved building blocks for all the permutations they could be shaped
into.
I smiled with him, and realized that not only would we
be building something from nothing, but also something new. Not
a repurposed building from before The Fall, or a wall made of old
materials. The expansion will be something born of the adversity we
face, created by us in an era with no easy solutions. That's a hell
of a thing. It makes me proud. Proud for what we've achieved, and for
the willingness of our people to manage greater things.
Thursday,
April 5, 2012
Birds
Posted
by Josh
Guess Once
upon a time, there was a guy named Josh who never hunted because he
didn't like to kill animals. Then the zombie plague came and made it
impossible to live without killing creatures great and small. But
still, he didn't enjoy the act. Until
the birds started showing up and attacking his food supply, and then
Josh was like, 'Fuck these birds!'.
Yeah, you get the basic
idea. Like most people, I've never thought about birds all that much,
save for the occasional flash of irritation when one of them tried to
dive-bomb me for walking too close to a nest. Turns out that in the
absence of population-control measures (like plane engines or vast
hordes of angry farmers with guns, I guess. I have no idea what
affects bird populations) the damn things tend to swarm in a fashion
not unlike zombies.
Really, I don't know if it's because of a
swing in population or if we just got unlucky, but the flocks
blackening the sky in Franklin county are creepily huge. It's good
that we have sentries that actually do their job and who manage to
think on their feet, because the annex is full of recently planted
seeds and sprouts. When the massive swarm of birds came in, two or
three guards fired off their guns to scare them away.
Which
worked. For maybe a minute.
Of course, several clustered
gunshots also sent many people inside New Haven into high-alert mode,
and more shots rang out over the next several minutes. I was asleep
at the time, and woke up scrambling for my clothes. Naturally I
assumed we were under attack, so I didn't think about the pain in my
knees from where I fell off the bed as I threw myself over Jess.
Didn't worry that I kicked Becky kind of hard in the hip doing it,
either. Steve was also crammed in the bed since Courtney stayed up
all night at their place working, and he wanted to rest quietly. I
dream of a day when my friends won't crash on my mattress on a
regular basis. That's what I get for having a king-size bed.
At
any rate, I yanked on my clothes and grabbed my bow as the others
started working their way toward something resembling consciousness.
I forgot my glasses and smacked my face on the corner of my door,
which gave me a lovely bruise. At the time I was laser-focused on
helping fight whatever threat was bearing down on us.
There
were no warning bells. I realized that before I made it twenty steps
from my house. At about the same time, I noticed that I hadn't put on
a shirt, and it was cold. Confused, with a throbbing face and aching
knees, I wandered back inside to dress. Because I can only take so
much irritation right when I wake up, and my nipples were dangerously
close to getting chapped.
In due time Jess and I made our way
to the annex to see what was happening, and we were told about the
birds. Total elapsed time from the first gunshots, maybe fifteen
minutes. By then the sentries were walking around the rows of plants
with pieces of wood, slapping them together to scare away the birds.
Crude but effective.
We'll come up with some kind of deterrent
today, I'm sure. But that doesn't stop me from wishing we could take
the lot of them down and cook them up for supper. I don't know if
birds (I think they're starlings) taste good, but I do know this:
I
don't mind being injured while protecting others or during the course
of my other duties. My pride and dignity can take one hell of a
beating for the well-being of the community.
loved building blocks for all the permutations they could be shaped
into.
I smiled with him, and realized that not only would we
be building something from nothing, but also something new. Not
a repurposed building from before The Fall, or a wall made of old
materials. The expansion will be something born of the adversity we
face, created by us in an era with no easy solutions. That's a hell
of a thing. It makes me proud. Proud for what we've achieved, and for
the willingness of our people to manage greater things.
Thursday,
April 5, 2012
Birds
Posted
by Josh
Guess Once
upon a time, there was a guy named Josh who never hunted because he
didn't like to kill animals. Then the zombie plague came and made it
impossible to live without killing creatures great and small. But
still, he didn't enjoy the act. Until
the birds started showing up and attacking his food supply, and then
Josh was like, 'Fuck these birds!'.
Yeah, you get the basic
idea. Like most people, I've never thought about birds all that much,
save for the occasional flash of irritation when one of them tried to
dive-bomb me for walking too close to a nest. Turns out that in the
absence of population-control measures (like plane engines or vast
hordes of angry farmers with guns, I guess. I have no idea what
affects bird populations) the damn things tend to swarm in a fashion
not unlike zombies.
Really, I don't know if it's because of a
swing in population or if we just got unlucky, but the flocks
blackening the sky in Franklin county are creepily huge. It's good
that we have sentries that actually do their job and who manage to
think on their feet, because the annex is full of recently planted
seeds and sprouts. When the massive swarm of birds came in, two or
three guards fired off their guns to scare them away.
Which
worked. For maybe a minute.
Of course, several clustered
gunshots also sent many people inside New Haven into high-alert mode,
and more shots rang out over the next several minutes. I was asleep
at the time, and woke up scrambling for my clothes. Naturally I
assumed we were under attack, so I didn't think about the pain in my
knees from where I fell off the bed as I threw myself over Jess.
Didn't worry that I kicked Becky kind of hard in the hip doing it,
either. Steve was also crammed in the bed since Courtney stayed up
all night at their place working, and he wanted to rest quietly. I
dream of a day when my friends won't crash on my mattress on a
regular basis. That's what I get for having a king-size bed.
At
any rate, I yanked on my clothes and grabbed my bow as the others
started working their way toward something resembling consciousness.
I forgot my glasses and smacked my face on the corner of my door,
which gave me a lovely bruise. At the time I was laser-focused on
helping fight whatever threat was bearing down on us.
There
were no warning bells. I realized that before I made it twenty steps
from my house. At about the same time, I noticed that I hadn't put on
a shirt, and it was cold. Confused, with a throbbing face and aching
knees, I wandered back inside to dress. Because I can only take so
much irritation right when I wake up, and my nipples were dangerously
close to getting chapped.
In due time Jess and I made our way
to the annex to see what was happening, and we were told about the
birds. Total elapsed time from the first gunshots, maybe fifteen
minutes. By then the sentries were walking around the rows of plants
with pieces of wood, slapping them together to scare away the birds.
Crude but effective.
We'll come up with some kind of deterrent
today, I'm sure. But that doesn't stop me from wishing we could take
the lot of them down and cook them up for supper. I don't know if
birds (I think they're starlings) taste good, but I do know this:
I
don't mind being injured while protecting others or during the course
of my other duties. My pride and dignity can take one hell of a
beating for the well-being of the community.
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