July 9, 2080
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Today's response is going to be short and sweet because I don't have time for much more than a short update. Today there was an attack. If you check the timestamp you'll see that I've been here all of 2 days. Barely even had time to set up an office in the school when our advanced scouts spotted an incoming dump truck.
Honestly I'm very very glad that I sent some men with radios down the road. Normally, due to the high positioning of the school, they give about 10 minutes warning. Enough time to drop what you're doing and retreat for cover. With our advanced scouts on the side of the mountain with police radios we were able to almost triple that giving everyone enough time to retreat safely to the cover of the school.
While I really wanted to try and stop them at the bridges, it was ultimately agreed that we'd make better use of our forces by setting up a series of ambushes to thin their numbers. The results were positive but not by as much as we'd have liked. Hell, we even managed to bring a building down on the fucking dump truck and guess what, it shook it off like a duck and drove out of the goddamned rubble! Who built those goddamned things? Well, at least they're dead now.
Conventional fire netted us much more success. We managed to repel them with only minimal casualties. Five injured mostly shrapnel and one fatality. One of the local kids got a bit overly enthusiastic when he saw we were winning and gave away his firing position. They hit him with everything they had. Poor kid. Dumb little shit probably didn't even see it coming.
I hate to say it, but I was one of those casualties. I caught a fragment in the shoulder. Body armor too the brunt of it, but it's still fucking painful and has me in a sling. Really, its nothing serious but to say Bear is displease is an understatement. He made it clear, with all due respect, that it's not a good idea for the commanding officer to take undue risk. Kelly's even less please and sent me a very passionate message about how I better be wearing the same face when I get home.
But as is I'll probably be laid up for the next few weeks while my arm heals. The real bitch is for that time I'm going to be stuck using my off hand, but bear seems pleased that I won't be able to get into trouble because during the meantime.
Next time though, I don't expect it to be so easy. From the sound of it, they normally only get light resistance. THey were spread out more concerned with finding stragglers than the were with fighting an actual coherent defense. They were expecting some assholes to take pot shots at them. They got what these days can only be described as a small army.
We killed seven outright, injured several more, and managed to force the Pale Riders to withdraw and were even blessed with a survivor. Bear and Cyrus are currently working him over. I have to say one thing, while he's a vile psychopath, he's very good at getting information out of people. The thing is, with him around, Bear's the Good Cop. If that doesn't frighten you, it should.
I'm looking for numbers, and more importantly, where they're based out of. Hopefully I'll know that by next reply.
Now for some quick responses.
I don't know if Hope can regenerate, and frankly I'm in no great hurry to find out.
I don't want to kill Fletcher. That's for the heads up about Lithium. I asked Kelly if she knows a source of metallic Lithium and she said it's pretty heavily used in reactor technology. Would take some effort and but literally every dead car on the road contains like a pound of the stuff, and it shouldn't be contaminated.
We're also going to see it there are any psychologists or psychiatrist among any of our surviving groups, but we'd also like to know if anyone here can get me any information on making any of the Lithium compounds commonly used as treatments. Otherwise we'll probably be sticking with the Lithium water.
One other thing, I'd still like info on homemade prozac. We all could probably use some fucking antidepressants around here.
Not killing Cyrus either. He's too useful alive. I might revise my stance later but chances are he's getting 'exiled' when we're done.
In the meantime, I'm doubling up efforts to secure the bridges. There's plenty of scrap steel around here so for once, Hedgehogs are a viable idea. We can also probably scavenge up some Jersey barriers to use as improved cover. The bridges of course are being rigged to blow. Next time they come here they're going to find us ready.
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