2100 Hours, May 7th, 2010.
Survivor Total: 12 Adults, 10 Children.
Fran hung herself last night. We found her hanging in the showers this morning. Luckily she didn't turn, so we cut her down, and buried her behind the barn, in a small patch of earth.
Vicky was understandably upset at the death of her sister. We've had more then enough drama today, so I won't go into the details of it here.
Chicago's still burning, worse the zombie's are smart enough to get the hell outta dodge, their fleeing the burning city right behind the few survivor's managing to get out of town.
That was the last bit of news we got, Detroit experienced total electrical failure today, guess the power station blew or something. We have a generator here that's running, and keeping the lights on, but a massive section of the city's down. We can't get online anymore, mainly because with the power out the server's are down, and no one can log into the internet. Well without a direct satellite up-link anyway.
With the power out over most of the city, we can see the glow of dozens of Ley Lines. We can also make out half a dozen Nexus points. None near us, but we can see them when we climb up on the barn. Did that before the rain started.
There just like Palladium always described, which is funny, who would have thought that a RPG could educate you? I mean those things are suppose to be complete works of fiction. Kinda depressing in a way though. I Figure it's only a matter of time before we find ourselves living in Rifts Earth. Unfortunately for us, we don't have juicer's, glitterboy's, or cyberknights. Hell we don't even have the shitty ass Chipwell suits from Rifts, which let me tell you I'd be a plenty happy with.
Scarier thought just occurred to me. In Rifts, the ruins of Detroit are called the Demon haunted ruins. That's because with so many rifts open in the city, demons just poured out and now live in the ruins. I wonder how long before rifts start to open and fill the ruins with those same demons? Since Palladium's pretty much nailed everything else about magic, me and Stevie are betting they're going to be proven correct about the demons to. I wonder what happens when the Stiff's meet some demons? According to the stats in the books, Demons have a whole lot more P.P.E, or life energy then the average human. I bet more then a few meatbag's try to eat them to. Won't that be funny? Our world won't be infested with demons, only because the dead eat them to! Ironic in a way.
We're hoping tomorrow to discover something more. Figure if we can find a server to connect to we can get back on Survivor Net. It's funny, but that damn website has sort of become the center for everything in life anymore. Our society is so dependent on information now that we can't survive without it.
I'm not outside tonight, it's raining, and the damn zombie's are singing. Well maybe not singing, more like a droning, moaning thing then an actual song, but that's about the only term I have for it. Seems that the Ley Lines loose the ability to feed the undead during the day, I'm not really sure why, but the Zombies leave them right about sunrise, and move back to the fence. Then as soon as the sun dips below the horizon we see the line flare, and they move away from the fence to stand on the line,sucking in the energy. They started this damn singing noise about an hour ago. It's haunting, and depressing, just what you'd expect from a mob of walking corpses who have been eating people.
We finished the modifications and repairs today. We're planning on leaving tomorrow night. We figure if the line distracts them so damn much, we might as well use that to our advantage. Hopefully we can drive right past the bastards . Gabe's gonna drive the plow truck, and hopefully its got enough power to push us a path clear.
We've added ram/plows to the humvees as well, and Betsy has a plow on her already. Doc's found an old ambulance that we got running again. Him and the Nurses are currently packing it with what little medical gear we have, as well as our medical supplies.
Me and Tiffany got it running again, when the Doc found it, it was just sitting in the weeds rusting. Took me a couple of hours to get the thing up and going, and thankfully Tiffany was there to help me, she's got small hands that fit into the little places in the engine compartment better then my big ones.
It took some work, but there's four other old trucks and vans sitting around back here. All of them are the old Ford industrial vehicles, with the 560 Ci Ford big-blocks in them. We took a set of heads off a truck that was near by, and a manifold intake off it as well. Vehicle cannibalization at it's best. The ambulance purr's like a tiger now, and she's got more then a little get up and go.
Course she's been sitting there rusting now for at least a decade or more. So we had to do a lot of body work as well. There isn't any bond o around here, so we had to actually cut and wield on pieces of sheet metal to fix the holes, and shore up the thing. It looks like Frankenstein, with all the rivets, and wielding lines on it, but it's got it where it matters. Those old Ford 560's will run till they melt down, and even then, they might just surprise you and keep going. We also had to flush the fuel, and brake lines, years of sitting didn't leave them in the best condition. She leaks a bit here and there, those rubber seals shrink after sitting for as long as it did. They should expand out some with fluids running through it again, but they're probably cracked in more then a few places. I'm hoping she's just not to leaky you know?
Tiffany seems to be enjoying our relationship so far, and to be honest so am I. It keeps me from thinking about whats happened. She reminds me a lot of Heidi, but she's her own person, not a carbon copy of her if that makes sense. I think if they ever meet they'll like each other, except they're both my wife......err....never mind, they'll hate each other.
I made a ring for Tiffany today, since she's suppose to be my pretend wife, I figured she needed a ring. I cut a piece of stainless steel pipe that fit around her finger nice. Then I buffed, and polished it out, and filed it so that it wasn't sharp, but rounded on the edges. Thing sparkles like a diamond, and she cried when I put it on her finger. That made me feel kinda bad at first, and I started to apologize for giving her a bad ring. But she shakes her head, and hugs me, telling me that she's not upset, she's just happy. She say's its the prettiest ring she's ever seen and she loves it.
Now I know women cry when they're happy, but I still find it weird. And I worried about having hurt her feelings all day, but she's laying here beside me, with it still on her hand, and refusing to ever take it off. She say's its better then any gold and diamond ring, because I made it for her with my own hands. Not sure about that, but I'll go with it.
Me and Tiffany got the trailer finished today as well. We've packed the food and stuff away inside it. Pretty nice little set up, should make life easier on us. We're hoping to be able to store some fresh meat in the fridge as we go. There's livestock, and wild animals still out there, even if Zombie's are killing them to.
We gathered every gas can we could find and filled them up with fuel. These we divided up between the vehicles. We've got some jugs filled with water as well so we should be OK on that for a little while. We go through a lot of water in a day. Luckily we got the water jugs filled before the city power went out, else we wouldn't have gotten anything, the water-pumps are down all across the city and ain't anyone getting water anymore.
Needless to say you don't wanna spend much time in the restrooms tonight, we don't wanna waste the water we have stored to flush them, so we're living with the smell. But it's nasty. I pity anyone else if they come along and find this place, we've picked it over pretty good, and made a mess, ain't we great?
Doc's been checking our wounds, and they seem to be healing good. Tiffany's thigh is still pretty bad, but she's making do without complaint. Doc figures he can take the stitches out of it in another week or so. He did stress that we have to have adequate food and water for us to keep healing. Plus with the kids, and Maria pregnant we gotta be double sure to have enough food and water. Poor girl drinks water like a fish, and when she can get it she downs 7up like its crack.
Me and Tiffany climbed on top of the southern most barn today, to get a look around. We found some binoculars in the locker room, and we used those to take a look at our surroundings. We spotted a pawnshop west of us that we're gonna hit tomorrow night. We figure it's got guns and ammo, and other stuff we can use, so we better get it. We want to avoid going into towns as much as possible on our trip, so since we're here we might as well get what we can.
Tiffany spotted a mini-mall not far from the pawn shop, and she wants to get some more cloths. I figure we might as well, and besides she keeps hinting she wants to get some special outfits for herself, my eyes only if you know what I mean. I gotta admit the idea of her in something skimpy is freaking exciting, so that's probably got something to do with me decision. Also there's the fact that me and most of the other people only have one set of cloths, and at this point my boxers are starting to get a little funky, a change of pair is in order I think.
Plus the Mini-Mall's got an outdoor sport-shop in it. We figure they'll have some camping gear, and that's in high demand with us planning on spending some time in the great outdoors. From what we've heard zombies aren't as plentiful out in the rural areas, and damn near a none-factor out in the boonies. Guess that's cause there's not as many people for them to have spawned from. Zombies congregate where there's people, makes sense when you think they come from us, and we're their food supply. Plus the sports shop will have some other items that will prove useful, football and hockey pads will make pretty decent armor against the walking dead. Hockey is insanely popular up here, so we figure they got at-least one set in everyone's sizes, or close enough to work with. True Stevie and I are wearing combat armor that we snagged from the cops, but it'd be nice to get some for the rest of our band.
We've decided to travel at night from here on out. Two reasons for this, one is if there's a ley line nearby, the damn things just stand there, and ignore you. I shot a few of them tonight, just to see what they'd do. Well they ignored it, for all intents and purposes, it was as if nothing was happening. Doc says they're like sharks when they eat, they don't notice anything.
The second reason for traveling at night is simple. A Zombie's eyes glow red in the dark, making spotting them easier then in the daylight. We figure this will give us some advantage when it comes to moving around and keeping away from them.
We did have a strange conversation at dinner tonight. We took a head count, and found the number of men, to women is pretty damn low. Doc say's that's because more women are born then men. Plus since most guy's tried to defend their families, they died first.
We talked about what we planned to do once we reached my house in Arizona. I explained that we had mostly farm and cattle around us. So food isn't going to be to problematic to raise. Since the weather's a bit hotter out west, we can grow crops damn near year long. I've seen the farms around me putting down cotton, wheat and corn in October, and harvesting it in December. Only time the farms are without a crop is in January and February, which are the coldest months out there.
Well with everyone being from here in the midwest, they have certain expectations from movies and such of what the west is like. Most think of it as a scrubland, or desert with cactus and little to any rain. So they wondered just how we'd farm. Me and Stevie laughed at that, told them the same way they've done it for hundreds of years, irrigation. For those not from the southwest, here's a little heads up, it has one of the largest aquifers under it. Since the days of the old west, people have been drilling down into that aquifer, and setting up real simple waterpumps. In the old west these were all wind powered, hence all the windmills you see out that way.
Well that excited most of them, suddenly realizing we'd not only survive, but maybe even thrive. Except ain't none of us farmers. But we figure we'll learn as we go, sink or swim you know?
Well then the subject turned to what we do once we reach Arizona. From what we've been hearing, humanity isn't to numerous now a days. That brought us to April and Melissa's current sharing of Stevie, seems that's going to become a very common arrangement. Doc said that once we get to Arizona, and establish ourselves, he'd do his best to keep geneology charts. He figure's we're going to need to knock more then one woman up, since there's so few men anymore. He's hopeful that in a few generations, our group will have grown enough to return to the single man, single woman arrangement we all know today.
We decided that we'll build a military complex like area, where everyone lives. We figure there won't be room enough for us to build individual homes, so we'll have to build barrack style places. We'll have to surround the place with a wall or some kind. A few guard towers and other little additions will be added as well. We figure that we're gonna have a hard enough time housing everyone, so it'll be best to build a sort of cafeteria like place to feed everyone. We also figure that will make the collection, and storage of food easier in the long run. Since we'll be planning and preparing massive group sized meals. It also means we're gonna have a huge demand for food.
The barracks we're thinking will be sort of a military dorm style thing. Most likely we'll do a nice size living room, with three or four bedrooms off it, and maybe a bathroom or two. Since we're of the opinion that women are going to outnumber us men by at least two to one, we're figuring it'd be best to give the women the bedrooms, and have the man kinda float around between them. We figure that with the number of women in a household, added to the lack of any form of birth control will lead to a massive baby boom. Without TV, or other forms of entertainment, most folks are going to turn to everyone's favorite past time, sex. Well that and part of our goal is to re-build the species. So the extra bedrooms in each dorm will be handed over to the children.
Strangely enough the women didn't seem that upset with the idea of having to share their menfolk with another lady. In Tiffany's case she already knew I was married, so I guess that had already set her mind to accept this. But I think it also has to do with the fact that the women don't want to be alone anymore then anyone else. With the ratio of men to women out of whack the way it is, it's kinda the only way that everyone can have someone. I guess most women figure it's better to half a man then nothing at all you know?
But who knows, we may find that the males of our species survived better then we think. We may run across more then a few on our journey, and I'm hopeful we do. I figure it's going to be hard enough to repopulate the world. Doc says the more males we have, the better we can keep our genetic lines safe from inbreeding. He figure's we may end up having to make assignments for breeding groups of men and women. He's pointed out for example that me and Stevie's offsrping can't ever mate with each other. Whether our kids, or our great, great grand kids, our lines, since they originate the same, can't breed. He's given us some scenerio's of what will happen if we have several related people in our group, as each one eliminates another pairing for fear of inbreeding. His recommendation is to pair up siblings with one mate. Like a pair of sisters both married to the same dude. He figure's that way, you can keep the chains of eligiable pairs pretty strong.
Kinda creepy to think we might actually have to tell people who they have to marry, or breed with. I mean the choice of marriage is pretty much a basic freedom that we all took for granted I suppose. But since we're discussing long term survival of the species we may be forced to do just that. Just imagine what would happen if Tiffany had a sister? Not only could my descendents not breed with them, but they couldn't breed with any of Stevie's either. That means two genetic bases are pretty much out the window before we even begin.
Now imagine if we had ten men, and three of them are brothers, add in twenty women and say six of them are sisters, and you can see how the math shows us that we die out in only two, or three generations.
This shortage of men is going to become a problem I can tell already. Not that it takes a genius to figure that out or anything.
Guess I'm going to head to bed, Tiffany's wanting to turn the light out, and she's had a hard day and could use the sleep. Me to for that matter, we're gonna have a big day ahead of us.