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last shelter.

It wasn't anything I'd
want to stay in long-term, but with some hard work and innovative
ideas, Dave and the ladies from Shelbyville managed to turn a big
corn silo into a decent defensive position. The silo itself is
concrete, with a ground-level door. Just one, because why the hell
would you need more than one door in a silo?

Dave and the
ladies gutted the place, put in ladders and platforms, knocked a few
small holes in the curving wall for archers or riflemen to fire from.
The door itself was heavy steel, the area just outside it semicircle
of raised earth six feet high with wooden breastworks rising another
five feet. The whole area sloped gently down toward the silo itself,
meaning men could walk to easily up the rise without too much effort.
The entire defensive position wasn't more than forty feet across. A
tight fit for so many fighters.

We abandoned the trucks a few
dozen feet from the breastworks. We had a few minutes on the New
Breed, enough time to get everyone where they needed to be. All but
one of the stragglers from Shelbyville were pregnant, and they
weren't happy that we wouldn't let them fight. Those ladies
freaking  stay  pregnant,
and like old-fashioned settlers they don't stop working until they
absolutely have to.

Instead we gave them bows and told them to
man the arrowslits. They were happy to comply.

About half my
people had shields of one kind or another, most of them made from old
stop signs. You can't beat a stop sign for strength, weight, and ease
of use as a weapon itself. Patrick makes sure the bottom edge of
every one of them is sharpened, and reinforcing strips added to keep
them from bending when cutting through a neck.

Those with
shields took the front, forming a loose wall leaning up against the
wooden portion of the breastworks. Every man held a short
weapon--hatchet, hammer, most commonly machetes made for us by the
good people of North Jackson. Behind them, the women who had
volunteered for guard duty held spears. Most of the women from New
Haven have had some spear training with the little group we call our
Spartans. Not to be confused with the people of Sparta, who provide
much needed fuel.

Well, shit. I've used up all the time I've
set aside to write this. Looks like I'll have to continue this
tomorrow.

Wednesday,
March 14, 2012
Ground
War (Part Two)
    Posted
by  Josh
Guess We
stood ready, waiting for the zombie swarm to show up in force. From
the breastwork it was difficult to tell how many there were, but the
lookouts higher up in the silo shouted out estimates. As I stood in
my place on a far side of the raised circle of earth, I wondered if
it would have been better to try to run. We could definitely have
gone faster than the undead in our vehicles, but that brought its own
set of risks. One mistake and an overturned vehicle could block the
road. That would have been a death sentence.

I was tucked in
one of the corners where the silo and the breastwork met. As the
zombies coming from the direction of Shelbyville grew closer, a
second group came over a hill from the direction we'd been heading.
Damn. The New Breed had split their forces, left an ambush
waiting.

The main force got close enough for the ladies
manning the arrowslits to see things the undead were trying to hide.
I heard one of them yell out that the approaching swarm--appearing to
be at least a hundred and fifty strong--was dragging several large
logs with it. I'd seen that tactic before.

The smart thing to
do, the cautious thing, would have been to wait for the enemy to
close and fight them from as strong a defensive position as possible.
We would figure out a way to neutralize the logs, which would surely
be raised vertical and then dropped over the breastwork to make a
breach and an easy path upward.

We totally didn't do
that.

Whoever was leading the center unit called for
firebombs, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a dozen small flames
come to life. Disposable lighters are a