Read With Spring Comes the Fall for Free Online Page B

the windows on the basement level seemed to have been boarded up.

We were taking no chances.

They might have kept a watch, as we do, but if they did, the man was so drunk that he wasn't going to notice anything. They all were, after sitting outside for hours guzzling their way through the apocalypse. None of them woke as Patrick and I made circles around the building, checking for any bolt holes. We saw none.

As I was watching the first Molotov cocktail arc away from my hand, I could not help but think of the beauty of its movement, flashing and flickering as it spun in that mathematically perfect curve, starkly drawn against the consequences of the act.

We threw a lot of them. Pat stayed at the door, the only normal way out, and I walked around it, watching for movement in case any of them pulled off the plywood covering the plate glass windows. The idea was to cut them down if it came to that.

But it didn't. I consider it a blessing. I have to assume that they all died in their sleep, small comfort though it is. We decided to end the threat decisively, to ensure our safety from those looters not only today, but for every day to come.

You may realize by now, that I feel a strange combination of depression and numb disbelief at our actions. But no surprise. I don't know if the fact that I can do these things mean that I am changing, or only that I always could and was only lacking the right (or wrong, I suppose...) context and situation. I don't feel different. I still love my wife, my mother, my friends. I hate what I have done, and that it was necessary.

I can't imagine that this will be the last of these sort of actions I will have to take. I only wonder if doing them will ever become easier.

God, do I want them to?
    Posted by Josh Guess at 8:49 AM

Sunday, March 21, 2010
     

Building Blocks
    You may be wondering why there was no update yesterday. I apologize to those of you out there who have told me that you take some solace in this blog, as a reminder that others are out there. But Saturday was a necessary exception to my "at least" daily update rule.

The reality is that once in a while, situations come up where there is simply too much to do, little warning that we have to do it, and no time to set up a back up plan...So, I missed.

Yesterday morning, before dawn, two of my best friends finally managed to get in touch with me. They live in southern Illinois, and basically, we HAD to get there to pick them up. That area of the country has been hit harder than most; I chalk it up to the incredible flatness of the landscape making it very easy for the zombies to travel.

Courtney and Steve were holed up in their house, in a bad situation: out of food, entrances weakened from constant attack, and unable to find any other survivors at all. I know a lot of people in that area, and from what I have been able to glean, many of my other friends fled.

I would have asked Pat or Little David to post something for me, but everyone was so busy trying to make this neighborhood more secure that my blog was the last thing on anyone's mind. So while the rest of the group was going into town to scavenge gas and ferry cars and supplies in, Jess and I took a long, long road trip.

There was no great drama to it. The drive used to take about five hours, and surprisingly, this time it only took about an extra hour and a half. Once we got out of Louisville, the interstate was fairly clear. We passed one other car in Indiana, but they were as wary of us as we of them. Courtney and Steve were fully capable of getting to us if they had thought it possible, but after seeing the desolation around them, I'm not surprised that they believed the trip to our little safe haven would take them days, if not weeks. And they had no supplies for that, because every store was burned down, almost every home looted, and enormous droves of zombies milled about nearly everywhere.

So we got them. More than thirteen hours of driving, skirting dangerous