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Post by Sophie on Nov 10, 2013 13:15:52 GMT -5
February 2014
Expeditionary Force Commander Emily Ortiz looked up from the endless production and potential reports that Command required and let out a long sigh – so far Bolivia lived up to its reputation of being a shithole at the ass end of the world. Every pocket of found survivors seemed to fall under the Walker hordes before her forces could swoop in and find the prize. The head of her predecessor seemed to glare down with glee at her angst, not only Colonel Diaz, but Generals Hernandez and Diego as well. She learned early on that her handlers didn’t tolerate any failure. And, not producing any viable breeders came pretty close to that failure threshold. If it hadn’t for the reclaimed office building in Cochabamba with those lovely assets, Commander Ortiz’s head would accompany the leering wall.
The teletype’s chitter drew her attention. Another damned threat, no doubt. She turned, tapping a spit-polished toe on the tile as her aide scurried in with the latest from Command, and ripped the printout from the man’s hands. “Interesting, very interesting.” She murmured as she read the report.
“It seems, Alexandre, that Eyes in the Skies is not dead.” Without another word, Commander Ortiz added a bright red pushpin to the forest near Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Further east than the troops had moved, but with the forests, and indigenous peoples, it had been planned for later in 2014.
“Send word to the outpost in Vallegrande and tell them to prepare for Operation…” Tapping one finger on the vast nothingness of the map, “…Operation Rus.”
“Rus, Ma’am?”
“Are you questioning me, soldier?”
“Ma’am, no Ma’am.”
As Corporal Alexandre headed back into the other room, Ortiz smiled wickedly at the heads on the wall, “it seems my dear Colonel that your suspicions about the Santa Cruz region might have saved your life, that is if you’d had the balls to deal with the natives. I don’t hold any of those sentiments.” Laughing to herself, “those Ruskie bastards were good for something after all. Russian Mennonites, who ever would have thunk it?”
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Post by Portia Horschact on Nov 10, 2013 15:03:35 GMT -5
January 18, 2013
My dearest Aerin,
So Bolivia is gorgeous in the summertime, and it’s midsummer here. It’s not as bad down here as we expected it was going to be. Everything is so spread out, that the plague is spread out as well. Of course, once it gets into a community, the isolation means the community is really lost, but I’ve been assigned to a Mennonite community that has established very effective protections, to be honest. These are hard-working people who aren’t phased so much by any loss of the technology that we take so much for granted in the States. Of course, Bolivia isn’t really on the top of the technological ladder, either, so many of the communities here are faring better than some of the suburban communities outside of Houston were.
On the other hand, I’ve seen the decimation here when a community gets hit, and I keep hoping that we’ll get those shipments of vaccine we’ve been promised. When a community goes down, here, they just isolate them and burn the whole thing. The government here is merciless, and there is enough Agent Orange and napalm dropped in the forests here to rival the jungles of Vietnam. I've spent more time cleaning burns and watching poisoned children die from the Agent Orange damage than I'm seeing out of the plague, and that's saying something.
I expect that this is a rude awakening for some of the native Bolivian tribes who are still living much as their ancestors did, on the mountainsides and in the jungles. It’s also going to wreak havoc on the coffee shipments around the world, since so much of the local economy, especially here in the mountains, revolves around coffee. Napalming the plantations to kill the hordes of risen dead certainly isn’t going to do much for the local economy.
I hope that things are settling down for you at home. I wish I were with you, or maybe even that we’d bailed on our little condo in Houston and gone back to D’s place, though you know how much I missed the activity of the city. Still, if we’d gone back to the retreat, we’d probably still be together. I hope that your work is going as well as mine, and that you’re getting the epidemic under control there. With so many resources, I know that you and the other research nurses are probably trying new drugs weekly to get us something to stem the plague.
I love you with all my heart, and can’t wait to come home to you when I rotate out in June. Maybe we’ll go and spend a couple weeks out on the Retreat, touch base with D and L, and just laze around for a few days — but promise me that you’re not going to get any ideas about moving back out there permanently, ok? As much as I love those two, I would miss our wine-bar suppers, and our privacy.
All my love always,
Tia
February 14, 2013
My beloved Aerin,
It is Valentine’s day, and I am thinking of you. I haven’t gotten a letter back since the last one I sent you, but I have some news, and I wish I could share it with you in person, instead of through letters that, apparently, are going to take months to get back and forth. I don’t know how people managed, before there was telephone and texting — when good news took months and bad news just as long.
This, my love, is GOOD news. At least, I hope you think it is good news. I know that I am over the MOON ecstatic about it. You know that baby we were hoping for and pleading with the Divine Hands for? Well… I’m pregnant. It must have been from right before I left. I didn’t think too much when I missed my January period. I mean, I had been traveling, and that can throw things off.. but I’ve missed two cycles now, so I had Polly, the young Mennonite girl who works in the clinic, run the test for me. Positive! I am unbelievably happy. I’m also glad that I’ll be home MONTHS before the baby is due, since I’m due to rotate out of here in June.
I hope you are as happy as I am. I wish I could see your face, and kiss you. We’ll have to tell D and L, of course… I know they’ll be ecstatic too. I am so glad you’re in my life, and now we have this beautiful creation between the two of us, and I’ve never been so happy, even in the midst of all of this horror.
You are my love and my beating heart,
Tia
February 17, 2013
I am keeping this journal because I don’t know how else to do this. I don’t know how to go on, and I don’t know how to make a life. I hope that, by writing this down, I will at least be able to go back through all of this hell, and make some sense of it, someday.
They’re gone.
Aerin’s gone.
Every last hope for my life, my future, my dreams, is scattered on the winds of a holocaust. I remember thinking that the governments here in Bolivia were cruel, to use Agent Orange to defoliate the forests, and napalm to burn out the Walkers and the infected alike. They’re not the worst things out there though, when it comes to unthinking cruelty.
According to the Diocese of Phoenix ,the Archdiocese of Galveston and Houston, which was supplying about 15% of our supplies and equipment, along with the Diocese of Dallas and Austin, no longer exist on the face of the planet. In their infinite wisdom, the government — nobody knows whether it was the state government or the Feds — nuked them into a pile of slag about three weeks ago.
That means that right about the same time that I was busy cleaning burns on napalmed children and handing out supplies and waiting for vaccine, our supply lines were already being severed by bureaucrats who were more interested in saving their own skins than in saving people’s lives.
That means that Aerin will never know he had a child on the way.
That means that D, L, and everyone we knew and gave two shits about is probably dead and gone.
According to Phoenix, Houston wasn't alone. Apparently, a good chunk of Southern and Central California also fell to nuclear holocaust, and they're inundated with refugees -- hence them sending a letter to let us know that they can't POSSIBLY replace the supply-line that Houston was keeping up for us.
In other words, "Sorry, but everyone you love is dead, and we're cutting you off".
May 11, 2013
I’ve been very negligent about journaling. Frankly, I think I’ve been trying not to think to very much. I thought maybe I’d write a bit tonight, though. I felt the baby move for the first time tonight. There had been flutters before, but this was a REAL movement — a real kick. My first thought was to tell Aerin, and I literally fell to my knees with the pain of it all.
I’ve been pushing it to the back of my mind, and trying just to work and keep going. This week has been a week of belly-blows, though.
First, the discovery that the UNICEF offices in Sao Paolo, Brazil — the source of about half of our aid supplies — had been over-run and decimated over the past couple of weeks. Our independent aid group is now without a major sponsor and without substantial and dependable resources, aside from what we have here. Not that we’re completely out on a limb, you understand — there are still minor donors. Which brings in a new pile of issues.
The families here are very self-reliant and very strong. It took me a while to learn their dialect, since they preferentially speak the Old Dutch that most of the Amish and Mennonites stick to — it’s not that hard, though, once you learn the key words, and I think I’ve become a dab hand at making sausages and planting a garden. Who would ever have thought I could do that without Miracle Gro and a hired gardener, right?
They’ve been so conciliatory since learning that I was pregnant. I told them that my husband was in Houston, and they understand that Houston, the whole big city of it, looks like one of the alien landscapes of the burned out villages in the jungles in the valley below. The women cry with me, sometimes, and a couple of the men have offered to make me a “sister” and let me stay in their homes, as they would one of their own sisters who had been widowed, until, of course, I found a new husband.
I’m grateful for their compassion, and it’s helped — far more than I thought it would, considering how little time I’ve spent writing in my journal and how much time I’ve spent sitting and sewing at their kitchen tables and crying over coffee and Kaffee Kuchen, with firm, Mennonite housewives patting my shoulder and my tummy and whispering that we will be alright.
The feeling of maybe fitting in here makes the second blow even harder. Our group wasn’t a part of Unicef OR the Diocese. They’re an independent unit, that is, apparently, still taking donations and moving us around according to where they can get the next dribble of funding. So this morning, I come down to our briefing to learn that we have to leave. We’ve been asked by the local diocese to join in a ‘salvage’ operation into Cochabamba, one of the larger cities in the region.
We’ve been assured that the plague situation is not as dire there as the need to assist in restoring services to populations in the city itself. I debated saying that I wouldn’t go, but the only thing I have left to live for is the baby I have inside of me — and if both of us die, well, then, the fates decided that I was better off with Aerin than wandering around down here, and so be it.
I’ve said my goodbyes. I’ll miss the people here. I never thought I’d ever NOT want to go to the city, but there. I’ve said it. I wish I could stay here, but I’m not a citizen of Bolivia, and if I leave the relief group, the government can deport me with no transit. There’s no air travel, and I have no money. We haven’t gotten paid a red cent since we’ve been down here, and even if we had been paid, I can’t access it, since there hasn’t been a working computer since the end of January. I guess my diary will be hearing more from me now.
May 17, 2013
We're in Cochabamba, and set up in an old skyscraper. UNICEF has facilities on the bottom 20 floors and everything above us is abandoned. We've been told that it was a four month campaign to clear all of the dead and ‘should-have-been-but-weren’t-dead' from the building, but it still leaves me paranoid, wondering if they missed someone or something.
The skyscraper and the remaining building on the block have supposedly been cleaned out to within an inch of their structural integrity, and a concertina-wire fence made up of multiple rolls of concertina, stretched out and piled atop one another surrounds the entire block. The second building is completely uninhabitable, after an underground insurgence by the raging sick several weeks back forced the security team here to literally blow the building up to bury them, and then torch the place with an entire tanker of gasoline. In some parts of the building we are in, you can literally taste the bitter, oily ash floating in the air.
Its a long haul up the stairs with our gear. Our group is on the 11th floor, and every morning we have to haul our stuff down, and then back up at night. At least I won't have to worry about having plenty of exercise for this pregnancy.
We're trying to do health checks in the community, and they've turned the lowest floors of the place into a combination shelter, soup kitchen, and hospital, where the sickest come to die, really. It's becoming increasingly difficult to get medicine and supplies, and surgery is only for the most dire of emergencies, now, for those who would likely die either way, but who might have a slightly better chance with postoperative infection than they will with their injury. It's never done for illness. If you're sick enough to have surgery, you're too sick to live in this new world. It's devastating to watch, and even harder as a healer, when there is nothing you can do.
Our biggest enemies now are the same enemies this part of the world has struggled with for centuries -- except now, there is little international aid. We were informed today that we can't go home. The US has closed its borders and is using unmanned drones with laser weaponry to take out any moving target with a body temperature between the ambient and 105F. Technically, they're supposed to be taking out zombies -- at least, that's apparently what the few remaining government transmission sites are telling people on the borders.... but the upper limit makes it pretty clear that they're going for not only the zombies, whose body temperature quickly falls to the ambient, but healthy living humans, and those who are sick as well.
So I am a new permanent resident, resentfully accepted by the Bolivian government, and because we, at least our group here, are philosophically incapable of ignoring the hardship we’re seeing, we’re doing our best to find novel ways of managing cholera, dysentery, parasites, malnutrition, and horrific sanitation, with few resources and fewer alternatives.
As the power grid progressively fails, and fuel trucks never make it into the city, and food trucks are over-run on the roads by guerrillas or zombies or government troops trying to make sure their own larders are filled, we struggle to find edible food to feed the crowding masses who are shoving their way into our facility. I guess it doesn't help much to know that the rest of the "civilized" world is dealing with those too, and apparently with as little success as we are.
September 4, 2013
I haven’t written in a long time. First, we ran out of ink pens, and then we started using every scrap of available paper to keep patient records. I donated my journal to the cause. That lasted all of three weeks, and then we stopped bothering to keep records at all. The people here are transients, and usually, they’d only stay long enough to get the first or second dose of some medicine, or some to carry with them, and they’d head back out into the jungle to try to find family or to get out of the country entirely.
Not that there’s anywhere else to go. Brazil is apparently a hell-hole of violent gangs and large pockets of the sick and the dead. Chile is war-torn and tattered, and not even safe to cross to get to the ocean — you’d be safer crossing the mountains and going through Brazil. For the most part, the jungles provide good cover and the natives, at least according to rumor, are nominally helpful. Plus the roads in Brazil are being kept up for their army, which is apparently still pretty active. At least, there’s been a relatively strong military or para-military presence noted in the region by aid workers traveling through the area and ending up here.
The team consensus was that I needed to be down on the lower floors, so with considerable rearranging, our entire team was moved to the 3rd floor, displacing the group of nuns who had been rotating through the hospital wing, giving last rites and doing the messiest of the tending to the sick and dying. I felt bad about it, but only until the first day that I didn’t have to drag my 9-months-pregnant belly plus all of our gear up 11 and a half flights of stairs to OUR floor. I would have bunked with the nuns, no problem — but apparently our leadership likes keeping the various aid groups in their own separate corners. I don’t understand it, but frankly, I’m too damned exhausted most days to complain much.
I’m due in about two and a half weeks. I have no idea how this is going to work out. I’m malnourished and have had several instances of dysentery since coming to Cochabamba. That being said, I’m in no worse shape than any of the other pregnant women coming through here, and, to be honest, we’re seeing an extraordinarily high pregnancy success rate. I expected high pregnancy losses, with the horrific conditions, but it’s almost like the precipitous death rate has caused some airborne hormonal surge that is somehow allowing a large proportion of women with the crappiest diets and poorest sanitation I have ever seen to give birth to healthy, full-sized babies at term.
Even more interesting, with near 100% nursing now, and the use of wet-nurses for the women who can’t nurse themselves—a number far, far below 1% of those birthing — we’re seeing a lot less neonatal and infant death than I would have expected in such a decimated population.
I don’t know that it will last. I’m not so worried about my own birth, but I worry every day for the stick-figure women who find their way to the compound, their bellies the only round thing about them besides their near-bald heads from the hair-loss of malnutrition. I’m not that bad, at least. Inside, pregnant women and those doing manual or heavy labor get extra rations when we have them, and we’ve become connoisseurs of rat, dog, cat, fox, lynx, wolf… you name it. There have even been a couple of fishing excursions to nearby lakes and rivers.
The jungle and the burned out areas of the hillsides have started generating food-bearing plants, now that the weather is warming up again, and it seems strange to be having a baby in September and thinking about names that mean ‘spring’, but here I am, doing it all the same.
I still miss Aerin, nearly every single day, but the pain has softened, beaten into a fuzzy haze of ache against the hard stones of our current existence. I think of him when the baby moves, and wonder what he would have thought of this little creature growing inside of me.
I had really wanted to take that job in Phoenix — I understand that Aerin didn’t want to be so far away from the Retreat, but honestly, if we’d moved to Phoenix, maybe I wouldn’t be having this baby in the squalor of a dump of a decaying high-rise in the middle of a country that doesn’t even want us, no matter how hard we work or how diligently we care for their people. My child will be a Bolivian, not an American, and there is this huge part of me that, as much as I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, blames D and that stupid retreat for this. I know — it’s not rational… but there it is.
September 27, 2013
I have a son. He is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve watched some of these other women who walk for days to get here to give birth, and then turn around a few hours later and pick up their babies and walk back out through the gates. I don’t know how they do it.
It’s not just that I’m wiped out. I am. Birth was hard, and long, and painful, and those women who tell you it’s this glory-filled, uplifting experience must be either delusional, whacked out on endorphins, or lying through their teeth. Birth was hard, messy, and the only satisfying part of it came afterwards, when I woke up after passing out right at the end from holding my breath too long during pushing and having the woman who was sitting with me put my son in my arms.
We don’t have the luxury here of obstetricians or even midwives. We’re back to the old way of doing things, where a bunch of women sit with the birthing woman and you hope to hell that nothing goes wrong. In my case, nothing really did, except for some hypoglycemia, which gave me the shakes for about four hours after the birth, and passing out from holding my breath for too long, I did fine.
Breeze Aerin Horschact did even better than his momma. He apparently came out hollering a blue streak, with a feisty set of lungs, and his daddy’s Scottish Highlands fair skin and jet locks. Once he was born and had a bit of breakfast, though, he settled right down, and he’s been a perfect baby ever since — quiet, awake, alert, and watching everything.
I hate the sanitation issues. I hate not knowing whether the water that I wash his diapering cloths in is even clean -- though the women say that sunshine is the world’s best bleach, and I guess I have to believe it, since I don’t really have any choice. It helps that we breastfeed. At least when I can get enough to eat, I know that what he’s getting is sterile and not made with toxic water and who knows what additives.
I’m putting this up now that I’ve documented Breeze’s arrival — I’d much rather just lay here and watch him than expend the energy to continue to write about him. I am so angry at the Universe that kept me from sharing this amazingly beautiful being with his father. It is horrific and cruel and somehow, I am going to protect him from ever having to realize that such a cruel world can possibly exist.
November 12, 2013
I am afraid that I will lose my place here. After today, I am never setting foot outside the gates again — not to go take care of a sick person, or bury the dead, or hunt for food.
It’s not fair to blame it on anyone else. I’d become complacent. We all had. It had been so long since we’d had to deal with a zombie or a Rager that I think we’d believed that the horror was over. It’s not.
I left Breeze with the childcare co-op to do my requisite hours of community labor. I was assigned to a food-search group. There are still plenty of places around town to get food, though we’re widening our circle judiciously, in a planned pattern, so that we use what is closest first and gradually widen our perimeter as necessary. That way, we know where we’ve been, and don’t make the mistake of trying to harvest an area that is already picked clean — or forgetting that we’ve done a building or skipping an area thinking it’s already done.
Anyway, we’d started a new quadrant this week, and things looked pretty good. We’d had a harvest of both canned and packaged goods in sufficient quantities from a couple of stores that we were finally feeling full after meals. Everyone set out this morning in good spirits.
The world came crashing down just after noon. In every zombie movie, the dead like night-time. Nobody expects them in the bright light of mid-day, on a gorgeous early-spring day.
The smell should have given them away. The wind was gusty, and every few gusts, we’d get this horrible stench of rotting flesh. Honestly, we figured that we should expect that. It was getting warm, and rotting things were gonna, well, rot.
We heard the sounds, too. A peculiar squishing crunch, combined with these low, grunting noises. I think we’d gotten so used to tuning out the over-sharing sounds of being in such close proximity with so many people for such a long time that the grinding, squishing, and moaning didn’t register.
We came around a corner into a horde of them. There must have been fifty or sixty of them. At first, I thought they were all zombies, but then, when we started to back away and run, from the back of the pack, a few creatures broke away and came after us at a pace that was much faster than those poor shambling corpses could manage. They had to be Ragers who were close to death — My theory is that the ones who are close to dying must be sticking close to the zombies, and using them as an easy source of protein/food. I know, I don’t think about it too much, because it makes me retch, but that’s the best theory I can come up with.
We ran for about five blocks before we lost them in the twists and turns of trying to make sure that we didn’t lead them back to the high-rise. A couple of us fell. At least I’m not the person who has to make that report — they “you can’t let them back in because they’ve probably been bitten” report.
It just occurred to me. I don’t think we even check to see if anyone we’ve brought inside has been bitten. I think we’ve been horribly lucky. I need to go downstairs and find Mathias — if we have any hope of surviving this, we need to start screening people for bites before we let them in. We’ve been playing on borrowed time, and until to day, it hadn’t even occurred to me. I could have been leaving my son here, and someone could have been brought in with the flu, and turned and destroyed everything and killed Breeze while I was out on one of these runs.
You know, there’s another thing. I don’t think I can leave him behind any more. I think, if I have to go out, I’m going to have to be like the Guatemalan ladies with those wraps they use, who strap their babies to their backs and do everything with their kid snugged up against them. It doesn’t seem like it slows them down any, and I can’t leave him here and then worry for hours about whether I’m going to come back and find him dead. I can’t do it.
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Post by Sophie on Nov 23, 2013 13:45:02 GMT -5
December 2013
The infiltration had gone well, and they hadn’t known what happened until it was too late. Or, so we thought. God damned piece of shit foot soldiers that couldn’t even contain a bunch of pre-industrial whackjobs who didn’t even have an electric lamps.
If it hadn’t been for the tracker we’d stuck in that bitch’s neck after we promised to give her whining whelp the vaccine, and ensure that he was well taken care of, we’d have no idea where they were headed. Across the fucking jungle. The JUNGLE!!! Why the fuck had Command put me here with these imbeciles? Maybe it was because they were idiots who couldn’t even follow a simple command like DON’T LET ANY ESCAPE.
But they had, and it was up to that traitor bitch and her belief that we still had her son. Well, we did have him. Technically. No one promised that he’s stay in one piece, just that we’d take good care of him. The videos we’d taken were priceless and with our tech gurus, at least those who were left, we could ensure any ‘proof of life’ necessary to get continued compliance.
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Post by Portia Horschact on Nov 23, 2013 18:25:24 GMT -5
December 21, 2013
I’ve been stumbling through the jungle for hours, with no sign, whatsoever, of the people I’m supposed to be following. I had to take a break, but I’m wet, chilled, and exhausted.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written, since my journal hasn't exactly been accessible, so I suppose I should go back to the beginning.
It’s so easy to get complacent. Right after our encounter with the zombie horde, I’d managed to convince myself and the leadership running the shelter in Cochamba that we needed a better plan, and needed better protections against the zombies. We kinda did that. There were security patrols and night watches and nobody went out alone any more. We all went out in groups. I carried Breeze Aerin with me everywhere, just like the local women, in long cotton wraps that strapped him to my body, either in front or in back, depending on what I was doing and whether he needed to nurse or not. At first, he was in slings in front, to support his head and neck. The ladies were great, showing me how to wrap, and I’ve been getting much better with the local dialects — we can almost speak with one another fluently now, with only the occasional round of broken Spanglish slipping in — usually from me.
Anyway, I was in the clinic today, and it became rapidly clear that I, and everyone else around here, despite this being a country plagued by warlords and guerrilla fighting, had neglected a much more serious threat than zombies.
It was early. I’m usually in the clinic right after Breeze’s first nursing, around 5:30 AM. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but it was light out, and the ‘short guard’ were on the gates. There was a flurry of activity on the floor below me, and what sounded like a crap-TON of foot-steps on the stairs. That was unusual. The building wasn’t in great shape, and we avoided patterned footsteps on the stairs, since the regular vibrations were more damaging in terms of shaking the stairs from their broken concrete moorings — so the sound of at LEAST dozens of feet hitting those stairs in a measured cadence, yeah, I shuddered wondering what could be so all-fired important.
Turns out, I had a lot to worry about. They poured into the room in pairs — too many for me to even count. The first ones through the door were wearing black suits with gas masks and that should have clued me in, but I just sort of stood there, dumbfounded.
When I came to, Breeze Aerin was in a hospital bassinet next to my bed, and I was strapped with restraints to a hospital bed, with an IV in my arm. Whoever they were, they had good old fashioned fluorescent electric lights, and they were so bright in my eyes that I couldn’t stop blinking, after months of firelight or battery-powered lamps.
There were what appeared to be medical personnel everywhere,and at first, I thought we’d been rescued—that one of the groups that we were allied with had finally come in and were getting us cleaned up and ready to ship back to the States. I figured that the restraints were probably precautionary, until they were sure that we weren’t infected with the zombie plague.
It wasn’t until they refused to give me Breeze, and this male nurse came in, didn’t even talk to me, and fed my son from a bottle of formula, while my breasts ACHED from not being able to nurse, that I realized that something was wrong. I’ll admit, I started hollering and being a stone bitch, at the top of my lungs.
Some woman with a shiny gold something on her shoulders came in. I don’t know anything about rank, but from the behavior of the nurse who was feeding my son, I’d hazarded the woman was pretty high ranked. She motioned to the soldier, the soldier propped the bottle with one hand and started wheeling out the bassinet with the other. I yanked at the straps and hollered up a storm, but it was apparent that I wasn’t moving. I didn’t even SEE the two other nurses, until the strap on my head was ratcheted down tight and I felt the sting of an injection at my neck and felt a buzzing warmth and found that I was groggy and couldn’t move.
Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of the conversation with the woman with the rank. I only really remember it WAS a conversation because I remember myself talking, though I didn't plan on talking and I had no interest whatsoever in actually talking to this whore bitch daughter of a whore out nine generations, who took my son away from me. One thing I -do- remember, though, and I remember it because she made sure that the drug they clearly gave me was mostly worn off.
The general gist was that around 20 people, including a dozen women, had escaped while the group was being rounded up from Cochamba and herded to wherever THIS place was. My son was in “protective custody”. They’d vaccinated him, and were going to take good care of him, and I would get him back once I returned to Cochamba and signaled this group, who called themselves the Zulu Expeditionary Force, so that they could re-capture the escapees. No escapees, no son. What was I going to do? Of course, I agreed. There was no way that I could leave my son with these people and never see him again. I had no real loyalty to the migrants, vagrants, and jungle soldiers who populated Cochamba looking for care. I had no problem at -all- trading their lives for my son’s. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, it’s the truth.
When they let me go, they dropped me out of a chopper, about 5 blocks from the clinic. Noise attracted the zombies, and choppers are fucking NOISY, so I hit the ground running, despite twisting my ankle on the jump out of the chopper. It hurt like daggers up my leg, but I kept moving.
When I made it to the clinic, the place was completely and utterly abandoned. Just about everything of any worth whatsoever had been either taken or destroyed. I wasn’t sure if the Zulu people had done, it, or if anyone who had escaped had come back and ransacked the place, in any case, the escapees didn’t come back here, and everything useful had been taken. One thing I -was- able to find, though, was my journal and pen, hidden its little cubby behind the paneling next to where my bed had been.
I didn’t know where to start looking to round up the escapees, so I took the most likely road out of town — back into the forest. The forest slowed the zombies down, and because they were about as intelligent as a block of wood, and the Ragers were only nominally more intelligent by the time they were showing symptoms, neither group really grasped the concept of ‘paths’, one of the big advantages down here was using the jungle paths while letting the massively thick underbrush slow down any zombie or Rager pursuers. We'd used the technique quite a bit while hunting. If it had been me, and I was on the run, that’s where I would have taken a group of escapees or refugees or whatever you wanted to call them, so that’s where I went… and that’s how I ended up here, wandering around, completely lost, and completely unable to find my own ass with two hands and a map at this point — much less a bunch of escaping locals.
December 25, 2013
I am warm and dry and safe, and my baby is still in the hands of those people, whoever they are. At least he didn’t have to suffer through the jungle with me. It’s rained every single day, and I don’t think I could be more wet than I was.
The evening of my second day after being released, I underestimated how quickly darkness falls under the canopy. I hadn’t even remotely started trying to find shelter when, suddenly, it was pitch black. I stumbled around for while, the damned backpack that Zulu’d sent me back out with yanking on my shoulders, the straps digging in and drawing blood, leaving massive abrasions across the top of my shoulders from every time it had been yanked by passing branches or caught in bushes. I stumbled around, and tripped over something. I still don’t know what it was, but my ‘twisted’ ankle took the whole brunt of the incident and I don’t know if I sprained it or broke it, but it was damaged to much to walk on.
I climbed a tree — no mean feat with abraded shoulders and one leg, let me tell you — and I was cussing God and thanking him for having forced me to develop good upper body strength at the same time. When I got myself off the ground, which was nominally safer than being ON the ground, but not much, I wrestled off the pack and pulled out a small portable wrap-splint and an ace bandage and wrapped the ankle.
Two things were pretty clear. One — nobody was going to rescue me, because I hadn’t done the job. Until I signaled them that I had the escapees, nobody was going to give a rat’s ass whether I lived or died. Two — I wasn’t going to be able to sit around in a tree and wait for my leg to heal. I could give it a day, tops, and I was going to run out of food and water, and then I was going to HAVE to be down on the ground and moving, unless I wanted to be something (or someone) else’s food.
I wrapped the ankle, got a little sleep, because yeah, sleeping up in a tree is so damned easy, right? I ended up staying up in the tree for another day, because by the morning, my ankle was the size of my thigh and more colorful than a tie-dye shirt, though the colors were plain fugly. I did my best to elevate it, tried to stay dry when the inevitable rains hit, and the next morning, I sucked up the still-swollen ankle and made my way down to ground level and did my best to keep moving.
I managed to cut myself something between a cane and a crutch, and wasted two rolls of valuable Kerlix bandage to cushion it so that my underarm wasn’t quite as raw as my shoulder blades. About mid-morning, I recognized a couple of landmarks, and realized where I was. I was on the farmlands that belonged to that Mennonite community. I headed towards what I remembered of their community center. I’m not sure you could really call it a ‘town’ or whatever, but it was where they gathered to worship, and to trade food and animals and such. I hobbled my way in that direction, though, and fell in a heap in the middle of the “square”. I couldn’t help it… it was like my legs just gave out. Two of the ladies who knew me found me, and they brought me inside. They didn’t ask if I was infected, they didn’t shun me or shut me away — they just brought me inside and did their best to keep me warm and get me dried and fed and tucked in with one of their beautiful handmade quilts in front of a warm fire.
I didn’t realize the significance of the date, really, until the ladies insisted on having one of the local widowers carry me to the building they use for worship. It is Christmas. I don’t really celebrate a religious thing. Aerin was some kind of earth-religion person, so he and Darlene and Luc celebrated the winter solstice together, and I went through the motions, but honestly, I’m pretty much agnostic. Thing is, if the people who just saved your life take you to church, well, you go to church.
While I was sitting there, minding my own business, it finally clicked in my head that this wasn’t like church-church. I mean… there wasn’t a priest or minister standing up there preaching at everyone. People just stood up and spoke a bit, and then sat down and everyone just contemplated what they’d said. Mostly, it was men getting up to talk, but two ladies did, and while I couldn’t understand what they were saying too well, even with the improved “Pennsylvania Dutch” I’d picked up here before (though, can you call it Pennsylvania Dutch if these folks have never even seen Pennsylvania? Well, that’s what we call their special language in the States, so there it is), and it occurred to me that the last time I was here, I hadn’t really ever been to one of their services.
It also occurred to me, while I was sitting there, that these people might be able to help me get Aerin back. We weren’t more than a few days from where he was being held, and I was pretty sure I could find my way back. The Mennonite men were strong, and so were the women. They did backbreaking labor all day, every day, by hand. With a little planning, and a little stealth, I was sure we could get into the facility, get my son, and get away without raising too much of a ruckus. Sure, they had security — but it was friggin’ Bolivia after the zombie apocalypse — cut off their power and they’d be as all-fucked as the rest of us, right?
I stood up, and everyone looked at me. Nobody told me to sit down. Nobody told me to shut up. I guess that they were waiting for me to ‘witness’, as they call it. Instead, I started telling the story — from what happened when I left here the first time, through the people we helped in the clinic, to Zulu coming and wiping that all away, to them taking my son and sending me out to round up the runaways — and then I begged. I begged for them to come and help me get my baby back. I begged, and I pleaded and I cried and I hoped and I begged some more. Finally, like a rung-out dishcloth, I just let myself sink to the floor in front of my pew. I’m pretty sure I was still begging in whispers and under my breath.
Thing is, everyone else was stone quiet, except for the man who carried me in here. He came over, picked me up, wrapped me back in the quilt they’d sent me over in, pushed my head down against his shoulder, and carried me back to the house where I was staying, shushing me and petting me and letting me cry on his shoulder and talking to me in Old Dutch with soothing words that I didn’t understand.
December 27, 2013
We’re leaving. Lock, stock, hen, ewe, and barrel. Apparently, once I’d been taken from the building on Christmas night, the Elders met, and they decided that me coming here had put the entire community at risk — that there was a chance that Zulu would track me down and find the community, and that they could no longer safely stay here.
My new friend told me this. He also told me that he and several of his friends, who had been from a new-order community before all of this had happened, had argued that they -should- help me get my baby. That God would never forgive them for letting a mother be separated from her child when they could help, but that the Elders and the remaining grown men of the community had decided that helping me would be a potentially violent endeavor, and that they were ill-equipped in body, mind, and spirit, for violence. Instead, they’d decided that they needed to run.
I wasn’t going to go with them, but my new friend told me that when they traveled through the forests and jungles, they often encountered soldier groups from local militia-type organizations, and that, when that happened, they could negotiate on my behalf to have these soldiering types help me to get my baby back.
I’m still crippled. The ankle is, apparently, broken — at least, that’s what the vet who is one of only a few English (non-Mennonite) who are staying in the yungas regions around the community. Fortunately, my ‘savior’ seems inclined to be helpful, and has been providing transportation in his own arms, to places like the building where they hold services and the town square, where I am questioned to find out what I know about the Zulu people — unfortunately, less than nothing, it turns out. I didn’t know how little I knew until they started asking questions, and then I realized that I was woefully ignorant of what we might actually be facing.
I’m not surprised that they said ‘No’ to my request to go rescue my son, but I’m disappointed, and I can’t really think of any better plan than my friend’s suggestion to travel with them, especially all busted up like I am, in the hopes of finding people who will be able to help me get my son back. I have to do my best to keep some kind of map of where I am, and where I think the Zulu compound was. It doesn’t help that part of the trip was by helicopter — I have no idea how to cover some of that territory on foot, though it really didn’t seem too terribly far from here, provided a person was mobile. Again, that whole mobility thing. Yeah, that.
December 30, 2013.
Rain slowed us down today. We’ve got people falling behind, and some of the men go back and ride with them while they catch up, but yesterday, an entire family went missing. Though the sweep riders went back nearly half a day, nobody could find them. They may have gotten lost on one of the side-paths, but by the time the rain hit, any sign of them was washed away. We knew there would be losses, but nobody thought we’d lose entire families so soon.
The Elders have decided that we’re going to head east. If nothing else, on the other side of the mountains there is some nice, temperate farmland, with good but not excessive rainfall, apparently. We’re heading in that direction, since the Elders think that will be far enough that they’ll be out of the range of this group of Zulu whatever-they-are. I’m not thrilled about being on the other side of the Andes from Breeze, but I can certainly understand wanting to put a mountain range between Zulu and the community. Besides, we’re supposed to cross the mountains by mid fall. That will still leave me time to come back and get Breeze, and get back across the mountains before the passes close — at least, that’s what my friend tells me. He says that there are guides who travel through the passes until at least mid-April, and sometimes the passes are open until almost May. I’m hoping for a “warm” year, and little snow, until we can find a group to help me, and that I can catch up with the community on the other side of the Andes before the heavy snows hit. Nathan — my friend — assures me that that is not an unrealistic hope, and so I cling to it with everything I have… nearly as well as I cling to Nathan’s back as he carries me, since my ankle won’t allow me to trudge along with all of the other community members, and certainly won’t allow me to do anything as helpful as herd their swine or birds or sheep, or fetch water or any other damned thing. Ok. I feel useless now.
March 17, 2014
So far, we’ve lost nine families, four ‘unmarrieds’, and a half-dozen children, not to mention several pigs, an entire hutch of chickens, a dozen sheep, and three milk cows.
We know what happened to some of them. For example, one family’s wagon went over the side on a switchback, when a hawk spooked their ox. Three children were killed by either wolves or coyotes — I don’t really know one from the other. In any case, they were a pack of doglike animals and apparently, men had to literally chase them off the corpses to get them to stop eating. Two more children died eating some kind of poison berries.
That doesn’t account for nearly all of the people we’ve lost, though. Strangest part is that, for most of them, usually whole families at a time, they disappear without a trace. Even with the sweep riders, we’ve lost six families and two unmarried people who simply can’t be accounted for. We’ve lost kids, mostly kids under the age of five, who also can’t be accounted for, and for which no bodies have been found.
It’s giving everyone the creeps. I am pretty sure we’re being followed, and I’m pretty sure I know who’s doing the following, and all I can hope is that we get through the mountains and the people who are following us — ok, following ME — from Zulu aren’t able to make it through the pass before the snow falls.
I am afraid that I’ve lost my son. These people won’t take me back to get him, and that’s completely understandable now. I failed in my mission to get the escapees back, and I keep hoping, though I’d never say this, that once Zulu replaces the number of escapees plus me, they’ll just consider their losses cut, and go back where they came from with their stolen people — because I know it’s them. There’s no other way to account for six whole families, dammit.
April 21, 2014
I’m expected to put my hours into child-tending and food preparation, even though we’re traveling. Seriously. the women peel ROOTS while they’re walking, passing a bag up and down the line for peeled and cut potatoes and turnips, so we have them when we make camp at the end of the day.
And even worse news… we made it through the first pass this morning, with heavy snow clouds right on our heels. There are still two more passes to get through to get to the other side of the mountains, and the general consensus is that we’re not going to make it. The highest of the passes is the next one, and we just sent scouts on ahead, because the Elders are concerned that it may have already snowed up there. We’ll be lucky if it hasn’t, but I still think that we need to keep moving — if the snow isn’t too bad yet, we may be able to get through that pass, and trap whomever is following us — ok, I know who it is, but I am so sick of hearing Zulu this and Zulu that. Fuck Zulu. In any case, if we can get through a pass that they can’t get through, then maybe we’ll be good till spring and can disappear into this farm country that the Elders keep talking about and never be seen again.
So far, we haven’t crossed paths with a single military outfit, either. I’m nearly certain… ok, I am certain in my heart, but my brain still keeps jabbering for alternatives… that I’ve lost both Aerin and Breeze. Perhaps this pregnancy is a peace offering from whatever idiot runs the Universe. If so, it’s not nearly good enough. Not that Nathan isn’t a good man. He is. But he’s not Aerin, and honestly, I kind of resent losing Breeze and being given this “consolation prize” baby to make up for it. Do you hear that, you fucktard who runs the Universe???
Journaling isn’t really helping. I’m angry, and now, this is the only place that the anger can come out, because my new role as a Mennonite hausfrau means that I don’t get to use that kind of language in common company, and I don’t get to rail against “God” and I don’t get to argue with idiots who have no idea what they’re doing and can’t figure out how to keep us safe in the first place, the second place, or the third place, and who clearly don’t give a turd’s warmth in a snowfall about helping me go back and get my English baby out of the hands of some extortionist military faction. But spilling my anger out here only seems to make it rise up more in my heart and spill out my mouth at the most inopportune moments. I am beginning to suspect that I'd be better off bailing on the journal and just 'submitting to my life' as the older women have been counseling. I don't know how to do that. I've never really submitted to anything, ever. How can a person just yield up a whole LIFE? I haven't got a clue.
I wonder if they still stone women who can't get their shit together -- I'm pretty sure I'm in that group.
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Post by Sophie on Nov 24, 2013 13:51:59 GMT -5
April 2014
Mountains? Seriously? Who the fuck walks across the God damned continent of South America? WHO? Granted, we knew where they were within a few dozen feet, but that didn’t help. They were still in the Andes Mountains! What a fuck up!
Checking the reports, it seemed we’d come up with a few useful specimens. The women were proven fertile, so the scientists were having their way with the walking wombs. All the better to grow the next generation in. Living, breathing wombs.
Scuttlebutt had it that some experiments weren’t quite as successful as expected, but my turning over the wombs would help, and perhaps that was what had kept me alive and in this fucking cold-assed hell hole.
The original force would continue after the traitor bitch. And if they died in the passes, who the fuck cared? They should have overtaken this pissant little group long before they got to this position. However, several calls had let ‘friends’ know that they might have company somewhere on the other side. And, that they could share in my glory of all those wombs and experimental subjects.
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Post by Portia Horschact on Nov 24, 2013 18:15:01 GMT -5
April 30, 2014
We’re stuck. One more pass to get through, and we’re up to our hips in snow. Today is clear, which isn’t really helpful, since the sun on the snowpack is literally blinding. We’ve had a couple of people and more than a few animals end up in predicaments, because we can’t see where the hell we’re going in the glare. We shot an ox an hour ago. Normally, we’d butcher it, but we lost two more families in the past two days, lock, stock, and wagon.
This time, with the snow, there were clues, and there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind who the culprits are. There were gas canisters for nitrous oxide gas, and the snow was packed down by more footsteps than anyone can count. Obviously, they don’t give a crap whether we know they’re following us now. They’ve more than exceeded the number of escapees from the Cochabamba raid, so it’s pretty apparent to me that they’re planning on picking us off a few at a time. I have no idea what they’re after, or why the hell they’re not just taking all of us at once. Maybe it’s fun to bait us and let us think we’re escaping, only to snatch our slowest members out from behind us.
The snow is hampering our sweep riders, and the group is getting further and further strung out behind each and every day that we continue through the snow. We can’t stop here, though. Even though the Elders implied that, if the snow got too bad, we’d hunker down, it’s pretty clear that we don’t have the food, shelter, or resources to keep more than a handful of people alive through the winter in these mountains — so it’s push on or die.
I’m starting to show, now. No idea how far along I am. I know I can’t have gotten pregnant much before mid January, because…. well… that’s sorta when Nathan’s and my ‘comfort’ strayed over into that area. But who gets pregnant the first time having sex? Anyway, since they add 2 weeks back in, I suppose they’d count anywhere from my last period, which was the week of Dec 25th — same week I was released to go hunt for the refugees, as a matter of fact— to two weeks before we knew for sure I was pregnant, which, surprisingly, was just 2 weeks ago.
I suspect I’m further along than just 2 weeks, though. I didn’t start to show with Breeze till I was almost 5 months, but the women all say that you show sooner with the next ones. Wild-ass guess… about 3 months, I guess. I’m not showing a LOT, but there’s definitely a little round poochie thing below my waistband. Not like it makes much difference. It’ll be months before anything will show in these sack-like dresses and aprons we wear.
May 12, 2014
We’re through. The weather on the other side of the mountains is as different from where we came from as midnight is from noon. And I’m not kidding on that. It was FREEZING in the mountains, with snow sometimes waist-deep. We lost our wagons, and have been carrying what we could packed on our backs or on the backs of the few donkeys and ox that have made it this far… a minuscule fraction of the number we left with. Only a half dozen of the chickens have survived, and none of the rabbits.
That being said, I’m pretty sure there is a chance we can live off the land now. It’s a good thing, since our food stores have gone the way of the wagons and most of our animals. Gone, gone, and even more gone. Below us, though, once we hit the tree-line, it’s pretty apparent that the climate is changing. Already, the winds blowing through the mountains are warmer. Warm is good. I’m pretty sure that I’m never going to be warm again, much less dry.
Several of our group have succumbed to infections from frostbite, and it’s been my sad duty to amputate toes, fingers, and even a foot. The man whose foot we had to amputate probably isn’t going to make it much further. I think he’s given up. He’s having to be carried on another man’s back, and according to Nathan, he’s suffering badly from the idea that he won’t be able to take care of his family.
The community here, though, is unlike much I’ve ever seen. The Elders and men take time to talk to him, and to help him find solutions, and his wife is both deferent and helpful, though I know that she must have some of the same worries that he has, about what will happen to them once they have to settle and try to wrest a living from the land again.
For myself, I’ve made myself somewhat useful as a medical person. The Mennonites have almost always accepted modern medical care, as long as the doctors treat them fairly and recognize the limits of their ability to pay for their care—don’t get me wrong. they WANT to pay for their care…they just often pay through trade… eggs, chickens, quilts.
That’s no longer an issue. Nobody has any money, so care is free, and my pack, while not an endless supply, still has a good bit of useful stuff from antibiotics to antitussives to pain medicines. Honestly, I wish I’d listened at least a little more to D’s ramblings about the herbs in her gardens and what they were useful for — ‘cause once these are gone, I won’t have a clue how to help these people besides sticking on a band-aid.
May 30, 2014
I don’t think we’re in Bolivia any more. Not that anyone pays attention to that stuff these days, but we’re clearly into jungle — dense jungle that has slowed us down even more than the snow in the passes. Even with machetes, we have to keep stopping to sharpen the blades. The vines here dull a blade faster than you can choke a monkey.
Food is more plentiful, but nobody here has a clue what to do with it. For all that they’re very self-sufficient people, these folk are clearly not innovators. Speaking of choking monkeys, we killed some monkeys the other day for food, and nobody knew what to do to make them the least bit edible. In the end, we just skinned them, roasted them, and everyone sort of gagged through dinner.
There’s some fruit on the trees, even though it’s winter — the cold of the mountains definitely doesn’t get down below the tree-line. It’s a furnace here. The winds are thick, hot, and muggy, and don’t really refresh anything. We’ve got mangoes, bananas, dates, and cashew fruit. I haven’t figured out how to get the nuts out of the funky shell — whatever is around them is some nasty-ass shit, and if you crack the shell, you better be able to neutralize it, ‘cause it’s vile. After a dozen tries, I gave up, and we just ate the fruit, which is also edible, and has sort of a bland, apple-like taste which is improved by heating/baking. The difference between the different sides of the Andes is interesting — all of the cold and dry seems to stay to the west. The further east we go, the more tropical the climate.
We’re traveling north and east. If we ARE still in Bolivia, which I wouldn’t swear on my grandmother’s grave to, we’re hitting the occasional area which was clear-cut and burned for farmland. I’m hearing from our Elders that we’re less than a day’s hike from where we’ll finally settle, and that’s all hunky dory to me.
June 9, 2014
It’s for sure. I’m pregnant. According to my upbringing, I was pretty sure that the Elders would tear me and Nathan a new one, but apparently, this was some kind of “sign” that validated mine and Nathan’s relationship. I don’t know how I feel about it all. It wasn’t a ‘wedding’ per se. Apparently, the Mennonites don’t believe in big weddings. We stood before the elders, there were no rings, there were no dresses outside of the regular dress, except that one of the women let me wear this beautiful blue shirt. I’ve never seen a color like it in fabric. It’s something they dye themselves and they were, at one time, actually sort of famous in the area for it, to the point where the locals call it azul mennonite.
I miss Aerin, and I miss him even more now that I’m married to Nathan. It’s not that Nathan isn’t a good and kind man, and very willing to allow me to take comfort from him. Now that I’m a ‘married woman’ in the eyes of the community, and pregnant to boot, everything is changing. I’ve been “counseled” three times in the past week for my ‘brazen tongue’. Apparently, women aren’t supposed to cuss or question men’s decisions, even when they’re completely fucked up.
For every good thing we get, something good worth even more gets stripped away. I get a husband (nominally good, considering I'm pregnant) and we’re on the run again (truly horrific -- for me and for the community).
True to the Elders’ word, we stopped around the 3rd, and started laying stakes on some open land that had clearly been farmed at least a couple of times since it had been wrested free of the jungle. It hadn’t been kept up for at least a few months, though, with no sign of what happened to the previous tenants. There are less than a hundred of us left now, and less than 1/3 of the animals we started to cross with. I didn’t know enough about animal husbandry to know if that was enough to sustain us, but it turned out to be a moot point.
Yesterday morning, just at sunrise, several of the youngsters who had gone out to milk the couple remaining cows reported streamers of smoke at several points around us. There was only one area that was free of the smoke, and within half an hour, the smell of fire was clear in the smoke-filled air, and the sky was full of soot.
The Elders have some brains in their head. They figured out pretty quickly that the fire-less area was meant to be that way— the fires had been set to herd us, probably for collection. Instead, the Elders told us to scatter, and gave us a rendezvous point, outside of those grasping arms of fire. We ran, with only what we could carry. All of us who were able had arms full of babies, and a few of us carried those who had frostbite injuries from the trek through the mountains.
We were super lucky for the early nature of the Mennonites — they often set to work before the first light of morning, and I think that’s the only thing that allowed us to escape the trap. If the fire had been able to burn another hour, we’d never have been able to escape the flames except right into the waiting arms of our pursuers.
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Post by Sophie on Nov 24, 2013 20:00:02 GMT -5
July 2014
All of South America was mine now. The blithering idiot who had the east side had died a lovely death in the test pits in Central America. That’s what you get for letting them get away. I, on the other hand, still tracked them constantly eastward.
My safety was an illusion I refused to recognize. After all, one small slip and I could easily find my way into those pits. But, hey, I’d gotten out of the cold hell hole and into the warm hell hole so a small improvement.
I snarled at the radio, throwing it across the room after barking out, “what do you mean they got a boat?”
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Post by Portia Horschact on Nov 25, 2013 18:51:41 GMT -5
July 6, 2014
We are at the mouth of the Amazon. With fewer hands touching it, it is easy to see how this was one of the wonders of the natural world. Its beauty is marred slightly by the bedraggled remnants of our community. Yes, it has happened. These people have become my community, and I have become part of theirs. Not having been born in their world, there may be some habits from outside their community that I will always struggle with -- but I do my best to be part of this, and it breaks my heart to see our decimation.
There were over 200 of us who left the compound in western Boliva about eight months ago. Now, there are less than sixty of us. I don't know what will happen to us now, as we are literally pinched between the jungle and the ocean, and as far as we can tell, our pursuers are still back there; hyenas, too vile and filthy to come out into the open and fight with any kind of honor, but ready to snatch up any who fall too far from the group.
So far, both Nathan and I have survived. I expect that we will head down the coast towards the south... At least, I hope that is the plan, since we have far more options to circle around and back into Bolivia if we do that. It is the one thing that I cannot really let go of, despite the pregnancy and despite my love for this community -- I cannot, and will not, let Breeze Aerin become a part of the group of ruthless individuals who are determinedly running another group of humans into the ground for whatever nefarious reasoning they attempt to justify their behavior.
We are waiting on the word of the Elders, and I presume that they are praying to figure out which way we will go next. Though I love the community, I will never understand their belief or their affection for a divine being who would allow "his" people to be tortured and run at bay like this, for no good reason. If it is the same "god", as they tell me it must be for there is, supposedly, only -one-, who would cruelly rip me from my beloved, then blow him to radioactive dust just to make sure I got the message, and then tear my baby from my side and allow him to be stolen away by the very essence of evil -- I can find no place in my mind or my heart to allow him any worship.
Fortunately, women here are only rarely called 'to witness' in services, and so I find that time useful for planning meals, thinking about things, contemplating how to do medicine with no remaining supplies and only a handful of remaining drugs, and other only nominally more useful mental exercises.
July 9, 2014
I. Will. Not. Go! As insistent as Nathan is, I will not leave South America without my son. There is no force on earth that can make me leave here and leave him behind with those monsters. If I leave, I would be admitting, beyond a reasonable doubt, that my son is as good as dead to me. I will not leave my son.
Though it breaks my heart to do so, I will abandon the group first, leave Nathan, leave the community. I have no doubt that I can slip into the jungle -- despite our months of travel, these people are still not what I would call 'woodsworthy'. It is unlikely they would even come back after me, in any case, out of fear of encountering our pursuers.
So what if I am captured? It is no loss. At the very least, I can beg to be imprisoned with my son, and put my medical expertise to work for them in exchange for his life and the life of my unborn child. Hopefully, I will live long enough that they will become old enough to market their own skill-set to these people. It is not better to die with honor than to live as a slave. I would sooner myself and my children live as slaves than to see our lives end now, with no chance at joy, hope, or any kind of future.
There. I've said it.
July 10, 2014
Nathan untied my hands today, and returned my journal to me. This book has become my home to rage against the machine, and so, today, my fury drives my writing.
I will never be able to forgive him for this. it is a betrayal of the deepest kind. He is also lucky that he did not kill me in the process, and I believe it is only that he selected pre-filled PEDIATRIC syringes to adult syringes that prevented catastrophe.
Long story short, in order to get me aboard the pitiful excuse for a boat that the Elders hired to take the community away from their pursuers, my husband drugged the crap out of me and hauled me aboard, wrapped in blankets, to disguise my bound hands and feet. I lost over an entire day, unconscious and tied in a damned bunk, and he still didn’t untie my feet until the Elders made him. Apparently, he was afraid I’d — I don’t know — jump off the boat and swim the 50 miles back to shore?
I don’t think the Elders would have approved of those tactics if they’d known about it in advance. They’re anti-violence to a fault, from what I’ve seen, and would sooner run than fight, and would have left me rather than abduct me. Apparently, my husband is of a different mind on the matter. I have to say, though, that I -am- bothered by the community’s reaction to what happened, though. My husband was “counseled” about his behavior by the Elders, and forced to listen to about a hundred pages of scripture about honoring your wife, and as soon as he said he was sorry, they -completely -backed off.
There was no talk of divorce, no asking me if I wanted to move to another part of the ship or stay with a different family. When I talked to the other women, after he finally let me mingle again, I was told that violence against a spouse or child is almost unheard of among their people, and when it does happen, they usually do a lot of counseling first, and then move the couple in with an older couple who can watch things and the couple with problems can see how things are done properly. Only if that doesn’t work is the marriage annulled, because, well hell, what God has joined let no man put asunder, even if one of the parties is a homicidal maniac. The one lady, who was trying to calm me down, I think, did tell me that they’ve never had a record of an Amish or Mennonite spousal murder where both parties were in the faith. That was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t.
I don’t think he meant to kill me. That’s not the point. The point is he used a dangerous drug, sedated me with NO medical knowledge to know how much to use or what the drug he was using would do to me or the baby. He also stole from the community some of the LAST injectable sedatives we had left — sedatives that -should- have gone to managing violent seizures or sedating a child for a critical operation, but which were used to abduct me and tear me from the country where my SON is being equally held hostage by an EQUALLY insensitive and assholish bunch of freaks. Yeah, you heard me right. I just tossed my husband in the same pool as my son’s abductors — those jackals who hounded this group of people and abducted family after family for who knows what reason.
I don’t know what I’m going to do at this point. I mean, what CAN I do. It’s not like I can swim back to shore, especially not being pregnant, as I am. Everything looks pretty normal, at least for someone who’s been running for their life through a jungle, I guess. At least staying fit hasn’t been an issue.
August 18, 2014
I can’t decide if I am the luckiest damned person alive, or if someone is just baiting me to see how terrified they can make me before they just finally kill me off.
Two and a half days ago, the winds started picking up. Now mind you, we’re all crammed on this boat like sardines, and the boat is riding about as low in the water as it can get without water swamping the deck, so the wind starts to pick up, and the waves rise, and then the rain starts.
Any kind of storm on the water is too much for me. I’ve never really liked sailing. It’s one reason that I -loved- going out to The Retreat .It was in an area that was pretty much desert and mountains. I do NOT like water, hate the ocean, and despise boats. I’ve developed NO reason to change my opinion on that matter, and this past couple of days has pretty much clinched that the Little Mermaid can go suck a CLAM before she’ll convince me that there is anything worthwhile “under the sea”.
The storm lasted for HOURS, and then, suddenly, everything was calm, and I thought it was all over. I got out of the hammock and was immediately told by the crew to get back in and strap down. I was just getting huffy when the storm started up again. I found out later, from Nathan, who was on the deck with about half the men, that it had been a hurricane. Great. Apparently, we, like totally f’ing idiots, set sail into the Caribbean and southern Atlantic right in the middle of hurricane season.
We lost nine men, and four of the older boys. These people have no clue what to do on a damned boat, and yet, the sailors sent THEM to do stuff like hauling lines or dropping the sheets, whatever that is, while they tied themselves to the masts and storm-holds on the deck. People suck. It’s the truth. They suck, they’re selfish, and there is nothing you can do about it except do your very best to protect yourself. Even coin can’t buy loyalty. Apparently, this trip was paid for in pure, solid gold bouillon. I guess it wasn’t enough to include getting us there in one piece as part of the contract, huh?
September 6, 2014
This place stinks like a sewer. I’ve been trying like HELL to keep everyone clean, but dysentary struck, and people are dropping like flies from the fever, starvation, and dehydration. We ran out of food stores three days ago, but nobody knew, because the guy who was tracking all of that stuff died. We have two barrels of rain-water, but I think the barrels themselves might be infected with something, because of the stench — old sock mated with festering swamp ooze. We drink it anyway. There aren’t nearly enough antibiotics.
I started developing a fever this morning.
October 3, 2014
There are only twenty-two of us left.
I’m staying above-decks most of the time now, in the fresh air. I’m terrified that I’ll pick up something below decks, from the filth and stench. Nathan has been catching fish for me — one of the fishermen on the crew showed him how. We cook them in cast iron skillets on these strange little stoves that take tiny pellets of fuel. There still isn’t enough water, though I think Nathan is giving me part of his ration, and the loss of such a huge number of our group has actually helped to make sure there’s at least SOME water for the rest of us. I make him boil it on that little stove and cool it with a cloth cover over it. It’s the best I can do.
October 6, 2014
We’ve made landfall. The captain says that we’re somewhere near Charleston, SC. But I wouldn't know Carolina from Cuba at this point, and I’m just taking his word for it. He shoved us off the ship and took off in less than 24 hours from landfall… like he was in an f’ing hurry to get back to Brazil or something. Well, I suppose 10 kilos of gold from some other poor suckers who you don’t have to feed or provide proper sanitation for, and who are mostly dead by the end of the trip is a pretty decent profit margin.
Several of the women got their land-legs a lot faster than I did. They’ve been foraging, and found food. None of our animals survived the journey. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone seems surprisingly grateful to their god for the scraps he’s tossed in our direction by getting us back on solid ground in something close to one or two pieces.
I’m not grateful. I’m just exhausted and disappointed and scared. I’m scared for us, scared for my baby, and even though I know he’s trying so hard, I can’t get past what Nathan did to me to get me here.
October 9, 2014
Well -- now we know why Mr. Captain of the SS Screw You All was in such an all-fired hurry to get the hell outta Dodge. Turns out that the sound of boat engines -- or any real noise at all -- literally wakes the dead around here.
Last night, a mob of zombies stretching further than the eye can see chased us into the sea. There are 18 of us now. They pushed and pushed until we were literally in the water.
Nathan has something that looks suspiciously like a bite. He said he didn’t think any of them got him, but when we got out of the water and onto a boat that was floating in the harbor, but away from the docks — good thing zombies can’t swim — I noticed a tear in his calf. It’s possible he cut it on something underwater, though it looks suspiciously round to me.
I hate being back on a boat, but I never really lost my sea legs. This boat is nicer than the trawler we crossed the Atlantic on, but the cupboards are bare. At least the fresh water tanks are full.
None of us knows how to sail this thing, so I think we’re winging it. My husband is the oldest man here, now, and as an Elder, he’s at the helm. See... look at that. An appropriately nautical term. Too bad that pretty much exhausts my nautical knowledge, right?
It took us a while to figure out how to start the thing. We’re heading north and east… who knows where we’ll end up landing.
October 12, 2014
Nathan has a fever. He blew up at the young men who were helping him up top — had a violent shouting match and actually hit one of the boys — I can’t help but think of them as boys, even though they’re married men. There’s nobody aboard any more over the age of 23. They’re all practically babies.
They sent Nathan downstairs. His fever is so high. I’ve seen this too many times. I know what it is, and my only question is what to do about it. Really, I haven’t any choice.
October 15, 2014
Nathan tried to bite me today. It was a close call, but I used the last three syringes of adult anesthetics to knock him out. I am numb now. The rest of the decision process and implementation seem like they were done by someone else, using my hands and my muscles and ripping MY heart out as I did what had to be done.
I used a fish-gutting knife to cut his head off and threw both pieces overboard. Zombies can’t swim, but Ragers still can — I don’t think a headless Rager can swim, though .Will he follow us through the water like the Headless Horseman.
He’s my husband. I keep waiting for it to sink in. I didn’t have choice, right? Once they develop the mental symptoms, there’s never any hope… right?
October 31, 2014, 3:27 PM
I’m cowering below-decks as the boat heaves on waves that are taller than I am. The boat has tipped damned near sideways several times, and not ONE of us knows what to do to keep us from capsizing.
Two of us were washed overboard today, so there are only 15 of us left. Most of us are women - 12 of the 15. The other three are 19 year old boys, still unmarried. Well, there are plenty of wives to choose from, right?
The point, though, is that none of us knows how to steer, how to keep us afloat or how to land us anywhere.
I’ve been having pains for about four hours, very close together. It’s too soon to be in labor, though. I’m only around 27 weeks, and there’s no such thing as a neonatal ICU — hell, we don’t even have a damned midwife and none of the women remaining have ever even HAD a baby yet. Isn’t that a kicker — married and widowed before they ever had kids.
Hell, what am I talking about — I’m about to be a mother twice, and twice widowed. There IS no God. And yet these women still get on their knees and pray twice a day, like someone is actually listening. AAAAAGGGhhhhhh… dammit all.
October 31, 11:27pm
I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. There was nobody on board to help with the labor, not that it mattered. There were no tocolytics nor even any alcohol to slow or stop the labor. It was nothing like my last birth -- more like bad menstruation and horrific cramps -- no rhythm, no rhyme, no 'beat going on' -- just internal begging and pleading for it to stop, screamed to a universe where nobody was listening, in a hold full of women who were white-eyed and useless. When he was born, he was completely grey-white, and limp.
At first, I thought he was stillborn, but I couldn’t have gone through all of this, and just let him go that way. I blew in his tiny lungs and pumped his tiny chest for what seemed like hours. Damned clock on the dashboard, or whatever they call that thing where the instruments were, said it was at least twenty minutes.
Finally, there was a fluttering little pulse under my fingers. His heart was beating. I won, but I think I may also have lost. I want, just this once, for there to actually BE a god out there, who will make my little boy not be brain damaged from something longer than 20 minutes without oxygen to his little brain.
He’s only about 27 weeks old, in terms of gestational age, and weighs a mere two and a half pounds on the fish scale. He still has the baby fuzz they call lanugo, and his skin is nearly translucent. He’s too weak to nurse well, and I end up having to express my colostrum into a cup, and put it in his mouth by droppers-full, and hope he’s getting enough. It’s encouraging to see, though, that sometimes he tries to suck on the dropper — that means that he’s got at least part of a chance to survive.
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Post by Sophie on Nov 25, 2013 19:17:58 GMT -5
November 2014
We’d followed. We’d tracked. I’d made call after call after call, and pulled nearly every string I had, but the fact that we had a newborn on the boat helped me with a bit more capital. And, I did have the ultimate lure.
That lure sat in the van with the video camera focused on his little face. Was he the same kid? Would the mother even know after this many months? But, he was a smart one. He tested high aptitude for the next round of vaccines.
We’d waited until dark and then silently swept in and brought back the woman, and her brat. What a pitiful excuse for an infant. In the darkness, the cruel smirk wasn’t illuminated, but I’m sure she heard it in my voice as I commented on the changes to her body and the waste of time that she’d caused. After all, it was obvious that she didn’t care about…Breeze. She’d already had another brat, and he wasn’t going to get anything at all.
Her begging made me nauseous. As if we’d actually waste anything on that lump of damaged cells. The coup de gras was when Ms Lee said ‘wave bye-bye to Momma, bye-bye’ and the little brat acted just as he’d been trained. And then that van drove off.
"You know what we need." And with that, I turned on my heel and got into the truck and drove off, leaving my team to return her back to where she'd been captured.
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Post by Portia Horschact on Nov 26, 2013 22:11:15 GMT -5
November 12, 2014
We have a direction now. After two weeks of barely scraping by, catching fish on wires stuck in the water and eating cat-tail roots for starch. Water was easy. It’s been pouring for days. Every time it looks like the sun is coming out, it’s just a tease for another nasty storm a few hours behind.
Staying dry IS a problem. But not any more.
I saw Breeze last night. Zulu found us. I don’t know how, or why, or how they managed to get all the way here. Though the had helicopters down in Bolivia, so they probably have better boats than we had.
In any case, they found us, and gave us direction. They’ve also given me a purpose. They want women — women to breed soldiers. I’m guessing that they need soldiers to fight the zombies.Sure, I know they probably also need them to establish a new world order, but dammit, if they make someplace where I can take a bubble bath, is that so damned bad? This world is screwed up beyond words -- a little order, new or otherwise, wouldn't be such a bad thing, right? And if someone can yank this crap-can into shape and turn it into a civilized world again, that's worth just about any price, right? Little things like, I don't know, returning mothers to their children and stupid little stuff like that? Or a pair of shoes with no holes, or a waterproof raincoat -- I don't care who runs the place -- I just want a hot meal, a warm bed, and my boy. Ok, so I want Aerin back, but there's only so much a new world order can do, right?
Nobody else had a plan, so I decided for us. The operative said that there’s a compound up one of these rivers — they even towed us to the right one and fueled us up. All I had to do was tell my companions that they were a local tug trying to help survivors who grounded around here, and nobody said 'boo' -- yeah, like ANYONE helps ANYONE for nothing anymore and helpful tugboats just pop up out of the blue sky. I bet they're giving credit to their non-existent god.
The Zulu operative gave me a landmark — a cemetery right next to the water, and then, just up from that, a dock. It should only take a few days to get there, and all I have to do is make sure we don't run aground again. I'm fairly sure I can handle that. One of the crew from the other boat showed me how to use the steering wheel on this damned thing and how to go faster, but I don't think I'm gonna worry about 'faster' right now -- "just stay in the middle of the river", he said. So that's what I'm gonna do. Slow, and stay in the middle of the river, and eat concentrated food bars, which taste a crap TON better than catfish, frogs, wild rice and wild onions, let me tell YOU. MREs and protein bars are a ste UP in the world.
I don’t know if the baby will survive. He’s still breathing. I’m wearing him right next to my skin, under my shirt, with an old fisherman’s jacket that I found in one of the closets on top of that, because it’s absolutely frigid and wet and miserable and even a full-term baby shouldn’t be able to survive this, right? And every night, when exhaustion takes me, I wonder if he’ll be awake when I wake up, and he is, and I don’t know why. Even if I survive this, the operative was very clear -- they're not going to waste vaccine on a baby who was clearly not healthy enough to survive a whole pregnancy. It's funny. I understand that. I'm sorry for him, but not sorry enough to jeopardize everything else. I mean... I begged as long as seemed appropriate, but when she -- the operative -- started to walk away, yeah, I basically decided that they have their reasons, and from a family nurse practitioner's perspective, they're sound ones. This baby is so unlikely to survive without a NICU and a lot of specialized treatment that it's crazy to waste valuable care on him. Right?
Anyway, all I care about right now is getting back to Breeze Aerin — for that, I have to turn at least 40 women of childbearing age who have proven themselves to be fertile over to Zulu. How hard can it be. If these people are anything like the people I’ve encountered since this was all over, they’ll have no real protections and no paranoia — sitting ducks, really.
My Zulu contact assured me that the location is guaranteed, and that they’re well established, so I won’t have to go hungry any more while I handle my mission. When it’s over, I get to be with my son. Yes, that means turning myself over to Zulu as well — clearly, I can have babies. I offered myself up almost right away, really — what else do I have to live for. Certainly not a husband and more babies. I’ve already lost two of those. Who wants to go through that kind of pain again… I offered up the other women here, too -- but none of them have had a baby and there's no way of knowing whether they're fertile or not, so my contact didn't consider that sufficient 'trade' for Breeze -- just me and a dozen women of questionable fertility.
But Breeze-Aerin… he’s adorable, and SO smart! They won’t do anything for Nathan’s son, but the Zulu contact was right. He’s really pretty much hopeless. He can’t survive in this world, and I can’t let myself get attached to him. Even if he survives his untimely birth, he’ll always be weak and fragile, and there is no place in this world for anything weak and fragile. His father is dead. It would be a mercy for him to join his father. If I were a decent person, instead of letting him suffer, I’d help him find his dad, but I can’t make myself do it. He’ll eventually stop breathing on his own anyway. Babies that tiny, they just don’t survive, especially being born right at the start of what looks to be a hellish winter.
I hear the women on deck, cooking up wild rice, cat-tail roots, frogs, and fish for supper again. God, what I wouldn’t give for coffee and a bagel with schmear. But I've got a half dozen MREs and a box of protein bars stashed under the captain's seat -- so no nasty fish crap for me tonight.
December 1, 2015
Well, the past three days have been without my journal — Unfortunately, I forgot to rescue it from the supplies outside the Quarantine Area. This is a mistake that I CANNOT afford to make again -- this Journal needs to become like my own personal Talmud... perhaps I'll carry it on me, to make sure it isn't left in the wrong place... it was scary wondering if they'd go through our things and read it.
They’re serious about quarantine, and I have to give them credit for that. They ALSO apparently have some kind of blood test to test for the Rager virus. Now THAT is interesting. I wonder if Zulu knows this yet? If not, that may be some information that might be useful in furthering my goals.
I think that it would be wonderful to acquit myself well enough at this little task that they find me a position in the organization — one where I can have my son, of course, even if they are training him for some important task in the future.
For now, though, things are about as horrible as one could ask. That baby kept me up all night long, with that thin little wail at all hours and taking a drop here and a drop there of milk. It was a relief when they brought the tube feeding system. As if it matters whether he develops a suck reflex. It’s not like he’s going to live past a few months anyway. If he doesn’t die outright from the birth, which it seems as if he might not, the first good winter cold will crush his lungs. I’m sure of it. Oh well — as may be, I’ve solved that little problem in any case, which I’ll go into more detail about later.
As if life couldn’t suck any more than it already does, you’ll never guess who I ran into down at the Old Country Buffet. Yes that’s right… the old Balls and Chains… Well… not exactly. I mean, yes, I did go through the ceremony with Luc, but mother always told me that if you want to keep a man, you let him have his way until the children are born… and then, you remind him that he has responsibilities now, and that his behavior reflects on his children… and slowly, you wean him from all of those… unfathomably gauche activities that men insist on participating in.
I never asked my mother whether a homosexual act with a racially-divergent partner constituted a ‘gauche’ activity. I mean, really, common logic. I mean, there’s nothing intrinsically WRONG with gay people or people of other races — its just… they’re happier with their own kind, you know. It’s not fair to them, or to the children, to have to deal with all of the stress of getting things so… confused… for everyone.
Before you say word one, Aerin was NOT gay. He was perfectly happy being in a LEGAL and religiously approved marriage to a woman — it was just a… phase… an experiment, you know. That thing we did with Luc — he was just humoring the man. I mean, nobody is that superstitious, right ? It was a phase. Just like the whole mixing of the races thing, and his insistence on associating with people who are clearly our intellectual and social inferiors — everyone needs to rebel while they’re young, and he was still sowing his wild oats. Once we had children, he would have given it up and been a wonderful father. I mean, I certainly shouldn’t have turned down a safe place to stay during the outbreak. I may have been a LITTLE hasty in insisting that we go back to the city and volunteer, and I’ll be the FIRST one to admit that.
That being said, I saw no point whatsoever in encouraging a continuation of the relationship now that things have… evolved the way that they have. Darlene was her usual obsessively countrified, clingy self, hanging all over me like a darned wet CARPET and patting on me like I was some kind of six year old who had a boo boo and needed her comforting.
Luc at least has better sense than his wife. He made it a point to disappear shortly after my arrival, claiming some excuse of a sick friend or some such thing — of course, just a little while later, he was sitting in the kitchen with one girl draped over his lap and another snuggled up against him. I’m sure he’s got a sweet little harem going.
Darlene, poor thing, actually asked me to move IN and join their little orgy. Like that was EVER going to happen. Even when she had her claws in Aerin, there was only just the four of us. This little pimp-house Luc’s gotten going here is someplace I would NEVER be caught dead, and that’s the G-d’s honest truth. Which brings me to a rather sorry state, on the one hand, but may also have solved a few issues on the other.
Because of my need to be as far away from Darlene and Luc as possible, I opted to move out to the Back 40 with Farmer Holy John and his band of Pious Dairymaids. There is literally NOTHING out there... A few near-falling-down shacks, and a central shower that has something close to hot water — if everyone doesn’t try to bathe at once. (Though at the moment, it seems I am the ONLY one interested in cleanliness — they still bathe in copper tubs, for heavens’ sakes!). For now, though, it has provided an interesting solution to the Darlene and Luc situation.
When I arrived over here this evening, I had a VERY long talk with Geifried. He is, understandably, a little overwhelmed at the responsibilities of being an Elder, and I graciously offered to lend a hand. I suggested that such assistance might go over more… smoothly with his people if he and I were actually “married in the sight of G-d”… Of course, I haven't truly converted -- you're BORN a Jew, you know -- it's not something you can just take off like dirty underwear -- not that I want to, mind you. I'm really rather ambivalent on the whole G-d thing, but... it does have its uses. Anyway, marrying Elder Geifried, you know… put a nice polish on us as "models of the community".
He was quite eager, actually, poor thing, and since there is a vast language gulf, there is little chance that anyone will even think to say anything about this being MY idea — I, of course, like a good wife, will give ALL of the credit to my most insightful husband, who certainly received the directive straight from G-d himself.
In a rather interesting second turn of events, as I mentioned earlier, I managed to get rid of the albatross around my neck in the form of my dying premature son-with-no-name. I was rather smooth about it. Fortunately, the limits of communication make it relatively easy to make something seem like a simple mis-understanding. I mentioned, rather casually, that I was just taking care of the baby because it had the misfortune of surviving its mother's death -- and no, it was simply FAR too hard for me to keep him... not that I was heartless, but the only reason I'd been able to help him at all was that I was still making milk from losing my OWN child, you know. Yes... it was technically a lie -- but for the greater good, really. Why invest in a child who is never going to be anything more than a burden to whomever takes him on.
It was easier than I thought it would be, though at one point, wouldn’t it figure that Darlene almost completely tried to ruin it. You see, there was this lady — Russian or Ukranian or some kind of Eastern European person. They’re all pretty much alike, right? In any case, she apparently decided that she just HAD to have that little lump of wasted flesh to call her own. Honestly, I have no idea what these people are thinking. Clearly, there are some screws loose somewhere.
Originally, when he... she... came over, butting into my conversation with Sophia... Sophie? (Anyway, I'll talk more about her later), I thought she was a boy — but a little bit into the conversation, someone mentioned that she had a daughter. A DAUGHTER? She didn’t even have enough curves to have had a PERIOD much less a BABY — in any case, I added her to the tally list of fertile women -- you don't need a big brain to breed soldiers, after all -- , AND she’s going to take that little mistake off my hands as well — downright eager and near peeing her pants to get him. Maybe she’s retarded or something. Who knows. Anyway, he has a name now. I can’t even TRY to pronounce it, but with any luck at all, I’ll never even have to SEE the little lump.
There is this other little girl there — the one that I was talking to when the foreigner interrupted -- Sophie or Sophia or something like that… maybe… 16 or so, if THAT old. Very bright, though. In fact, quite brilliant. Clearly of good stock and intellectually advanced. She also has a look about her that says that she has high-society blood in her veins. She’s got wonderful bone structure and a great deal of poise, even though she’s been sadly neglected. I might need to cultivate her.
She’s got a little sister who is absolutely adorable, too. From the way they were dressed, though, I suspect that they either don't have a mother, or their mother doesn’t really know how to show a young lady off to her best advantage, because the poor girl’s wardrobe was sad beyond belief. Absolutely no style whatsoever, and she was quite the bright and pretty little thing, too. With proper grooming, I’m sure she’d make a fine lady of society as such is re-built, and I’m certain that I can cull through the wasted men and find her at least ONE civilized man to marry, given sufficient time.
The woman in charge is a woman named Selsie, and she may be a force to be reckoned with. She is clearly one of Us — a woman of culture and upbringing. It is apparent that she’s doing her best to try to bring some kind of order to this rag-tag bunch of misfits, but truth will out… you can only work so much magic, regardless of culture. Some people are never going to be capable of mastering the arts of fine society. It’s in the blood, you see.
I suspect, though, that down the road, if it comes to that, I will be able to negotiate with Selsie to weed out the weaker elements of her society. The breeding human sheep, misfits, the lackadaisical and the "takers". Though it may sound horrible, the more that I look over the community, the more I realize that getting 40 pregnant women will be an insignificant task. There are pregnant women everywhere — if I have some time, I can afford to be… selective. Turn over the ones who are clearly absent of any kind of refinement, and let a new society develop that is intellectually, culturally, and socially pure, built on the efforts of "makers", and weeding out the "takers".
In a way, it seems like nearly a divine calling, actually, if I actually believed that G-d sent us on little errands. Even so, in a way it is like walking into Canaan and being given the opportunity to help turn it into a New Eden, if by no other means than by turning over those breeding females who really are going to produce nothing more than drones anyway — so they might as well produce them for the people who are going to restore a PROPER society, with cities, and opera, and museums and fine artwork and clean bathrooms and electric lights and running water… I shudder at how far I’ve fallen. Interestingly, it was Selsie who gave me my direction and my hope. If SHE can try to do this with no support, imagine what I can accomplish with the Zulu leadership behind me. And Breeze Aerin, of course… Hmm… Maybe he will be a good match for that Sophia girl’s little sister…
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