A Thousand Nights with You - 24. Correspondences by the cliff

Day 288

Hey Dan, you really got to hear this.

This morning I saw something really strange at the barricades. I walked past there on my way home from the hunt and I heard gun shots. Grey was on duty and he was coming out from the sentry post when he heard it too. We thought it was another assault. Then as we go closer, we saw only four infected poking their heads above the rubble. Normally when you have an infected shows up, it doesn’t take long for the rest to follow. But there is only four of them.

Now, this is the strange bit. They ducked when the soldiers fired, it’s like they have self-preservation instincts. This is something that we had never seen before. All along, the bullets are like mere raindrops to them, they don’t feel a single thing.

Besides, how did they even get up there? Climbing across the rubble is difficult for a normal man. Grey blasted off the mountain road and made it inaccessible. Some of the rocks are loose and doesn’t even give you a proper foothold. From that distance, I can’t tell if they are one of those super-blackies or just the normal dark infected that can run real fast. And because they are so far away, the shots are not hitting them as well.

Grey ordered the sentry guards to stop firing. They are wasting precious bullets. It is normal protocol for them to shoot any approaching infected. Then it gets freakier.

The infected did not approach the barricade after we stop firing. They merely pop their head up again. It was highly unusual for them to hold back when they see a fresh human. Somehow, Grey doesn’t seem too surprised.

I asked him what are the infected doing, and he said, “They are taunting us to shoot, or they are observing.”

Either way, it scares the shit out of us. So far, surviving the infected horde has depended on one factor – their predictability. They hunt like animals without even the slightest sense of cunning. But if things start to change…. Well, I hope we are not scaring ourselves to shit.

“Observing? For what?” I asked Grey.

He looked at them intently, and they look back at him. That is not supposed to happen.

“Sizing us up? I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s just a gut feeling.”

For the past few days, I have been hearing the same shit from the other people as well. Our commune isn’t too high up in the mountain, so at some parts you can get halfway up the slope where it is not too steep. Otherwise, you would need a hand axe and some rope to get up the steeper parts of the slope. Some of the hunters go close to these areas because rabbits always made their burrows there.

At the black market where we peddle our hunts, I chatted up with some of these hunters and they told me they saw something strange as well. A few straggling infected attempting to get up, as if trying to see which part of the slope is accessible to them. I never heard of such a thing, the infected is actually thinking? I thought those hunters are just freaking themselves out. But after I saw it at the barricade myself, I am not too sure.

Eventually, the four infected went away as if they lost interest or something. I had a chat with Grey at his sentry post. He was looking all spooked ever since the assault happened.

“Still wondering if you had actually heard them speak?” I asked him. He looked at me and shook his head, as if he has a bigger concern.

“The air supply drops had been late for many days. Our ammo is running really low.”

I don’t get what he means at first. So what if the supply is late? We don’t have an impending attack or anything. And I told him that.

“Just now when they look at us, it’s as if they know our ammo is low and it is making us waste bullets to shoot them.”

Now, that is something to worry about. Do you know what’s going on Dan? Are they evolving to be that smart or the ‘super-blackies’ are leading them?

Later in the day, Major Payne calls for a town hall meeting with the residents in the black commune zone. He never does that. Usually, he will delegate it to Grey or one of his officers if there are any important messages to relay. Payne likes to hide under piles of paperwork and he would avoid meeting the residents as much as possible. Every time you pass by his office, you will see a long queue of disgruntled residents waiting to barge in and bang his table to complain about food, water, sanitation and all other bread and butter issues. He’s more like a mayor than a military commander.

Anyway, we held it outside at the carpark near the barricade compound. He was waiting for everyone to gather. That’s the problem when there are no more phones or internet and most of us doesn’t own a clock or a watch. The soldiers had to knock door to door to remind everyone that a meeting is taking place. It took quite some time to do that.

The sun was pretty hot and you can see droplets of sweat on Payne’s forehead. While waiting, Felicia and I were decided to entertain ourselves and privately joked about his comb-over and the paunch under his tight uniform. She’s in such a bitchy mood today and I almost rolled over laughing when she said that his belly is famine-proof. Like as in fire-proof, you know. I mean the man is thin everywhere except for his tummy. That alone (staying pudgy) is an accomplishment by itself considering that we don’t always get to eat, even for the soldiers.

But anyway, my point is that it’s hard to take that man seriously. He doesn’t look like a soldier in the least bit. Not even a mayor. Maybe more like an accountant or someone who rarely steps out from his office.

We didn’t have a stage, or a mic to make announcements. So he climbed up onto the back of a pick-up truck and used one of those battery operated megaphone to address us. After making some pompous introduction about an esteemed architect from Atlantis, a tiny bespectacled woman took over.

“You need to tear down your houses and rebuild them.”

That was the first thing she said and you can see half of our jaws sank all the way to the ground.

She shared with us how to reinforce our homes using timber and mud-bricks. Most of the make-shift houses we built can barely withstand a storm, much less a siege from the horde. She was saying that many settlements with access to wood are already rebuilding their homes using this blueprint. It involves constructing the house on stilts with retractable ladders and connecting bridges to our neighbor’s home.

It sounds like a massive reconstruction project. Many of us are skeptical about it. It does sound like a sturdy housing model but it will take weeks if not months to build it. We are talking about chopping off lots of wood, carrying the mud from mid-mountain to our homes. We would need to tear down what we built so as to make space for it. And what are we going to eat in the meantime? All that time spent building could be used on hunting or farming. With all that chopping going on, the animals will move away. Those who are growing crops for spring will need to relocate their plot for farming.

The crowd reacted exactly the same way as I did. Some of us see the merits of her plan, but food and temporary housing arrangements are very real problems. None of us wanted to stay in plastic tents ever again. Major Payne took over the megaphone from her and said, “The weather is warmer now. Staying tents would not be so unbearable. The army would lift the ban on food stock pile for now. This would let you focus on the construction.”

What about families with only women and children? Are they all going to roll up their sleeves and become lumberjacks too? Besides, wouldn’t it make more sense to fortify the barricade instead? If the infected can’t get through, then none of us have to worry about an incursion.

The barrage of questions stretched Payne’s eloquence to the limit. He goes into his school principal mode, telling us off like little school children – saying that we are ungrateful and can’t see the bigger picture. Just as the town hall meeting is about to devolve into a shouting match, Grey spoke up. You know something about celebrities is that when they speak everybody listens. With him being a hero and all, the hall quiets down enough to at least hear what he has to say.

“We are not the only ones attacked.” His announcement silenced all of us immediately. He looked around, making sure that he had all our attention before he continued, “Just a few hours ago, we contacted HQ at Atlantis to ask them why our ammo supplies are late. They told us that the settlements all over the country are being attacked. Some are still holding the siege as we speak and two have fallen. We believe… that it might be coordinated.”

It is quite clear from the displeasure in Payne’s face that he didn’t want us to know this. In fact, from the sound of it, HQ didn’t really want us to know either. Last thing we need is panic and that’s what happening right now.

You can literally see the shock in people’s faces, they just turned white suddenly. I’ve known Grey for some time, and I had rarely seen him being afraid. He is a professional soldier and he knows how to hide his fear. I also known him long enough to know what he implies by saying that the attack is coordinated. The fact that our ammo is running dangerously low could be something that the infected had intended all along.

It didn’t make sense but all signs seem to point towards it. There are a million questions running through our heads at that time. How do they communicate over such vast distances? They have no phones, no internet, and no radios. The fact that they did, shows us how little we knew about them. And since when they are capable of such cunning? I have seen the super-blackies myself. They might be a tad smarter than your house cat and they seem to be able to influence the rest like the way you did. But this is a whole new level. We are talking about war strategies here and these mushroom heads knew what they were doing?

Suddenly, all the strange sightings we had seen or heard feel a lot more insidious. Grey communicated the message loud and clear to us. The infected is getting smarter. And one day, they might just outsmart all of us.

Soon after the army left, the residents stayed behind to talk about the new housing plan. Everyone is confused and the town hall chatter is soon turning into chaos. It’s like the early settling days when winter is approaching and all of us are still living in army-issued plastic tents. We were trying to sort out the living arrangements all over again.

When we first came, there were so many disputes over land space ownership – which one of us gets the best spot and the boundaries between your neighbors. The army didn’t assign our specific lots and tell us exactly how much land space we can use. At that time, Payne doesn’t have a municipal council working for him yet and they were busy keeping the infected away from the barricades.

We have no title deeds and no lawyers. A lot of it is settled through consensus, negotiations, making friends and even outright bribing. As a result, crimes and fights were pretty rampant.

Fortunately for us, this time round they learnt from the past. Nancy, the Atlantis architect stayed behind to explain how they plan to execute the construction. Oh, by the way, we have a goat named Nancy too… but I digress.

She told us that the housing model is laid out in concentric circles. All the houses are elevated at least six feet above the ground and connected to the inner circles as well as to the concentric rings. If an incursion occurs, we would all retract our ladders. The connecting bridges to our neighbor’s home will be cut off if the infected gets up to your home somehow. It is also a defensive structure. With the elevation, we can strike them down with pikes and spears from safety. That is the real reason why Payne wanted us to build this urgently. Our ammunition is running low. When it is totally gone, the barricade won’t hold for too long.

Not many of us know how to build a home like that, or have the strength to cut down trees and turn them into timber. Nancy organized us into work teams based on our profession and skills. The stronger guys would cut down the trees and move them into a shed. The women would collect the mud from the alpine lake and bake them into bricks. The carpenters and engineers would process the timber and get ready a construction team to lay down the foundation.

The way she puts it sounds a lot more doable. But one fellow asked if it was really worth the time. Then she told us that a survivor from one of the red zone came up with this model. They held off the infected horde for four solid months. In the end, winter came and they spent one whole month to dispose the corpses build up around their houses. While isolated, they survived on the gardens grown on their roofs. They used straw and mud to turn the roof into a garden. So instead of tiles, you can see all kinds of plants and vegetables on top of their houses. It insulates during winter and cools off the houses during summer as well. And apparently, this isn’t new. They did this for a few hundred years in the Scandinavian countries.

After that, Felicia thought of putting Adam at Grace’s place for a while. Other than the fact that both of us would be busy, we don’t really feel safe with him sleeping here in a plastic tent with us. They are giving us three days before we start tearing down our house.

Later in the afternoon, I met this crazy farmer from the blue zone uphill who grew corn instead of more ‘durable’ crops. Everyone thought it was insane because corn is so picky about its soil and you can’t grow them unless it’s warm. You also can’t keep corn for more than a day because all that sugar is going to turn into starch. But I tell you, this old man is an entrepreneur. He sells most of the excess corn at the black market and a few months before winter, he turns them into flour and moonshine. Those shit sells like hotcakes and he’s like a billionaire now. He got TV, radio and he even has a clock!

After building the house, I’m going to try my hand at growing some corn myself. Then I am going to start a distillery and make my own moonshine. I will replace him as the new kingpin of the booze cartel in New Sandpoint! Maybe I will grow some weed too, and then I will be a total badass like you. See? We do have something in common now. Booze and dope, brother. We are such total badasses.

Crazy day huh?

How are things going on at your side? What is it like… to be whatever you are? Are you eating well? Ok wait, let me take that back. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. But anyway, I got you some moonshine this time. I hope it makes you feel better…

***

Day 290

Badasses? You think this is cool? You are such a douche that you really deserve to be eaten, Tristan. It is not fun, being what I am right now. Try having two minds in your body and one of them want to gobble up your family member. Although I must say sometimes both of them are probably thinking the same way about you.

But anyway, thanks for the booze. It helps to keep us lucid. And talking to you like this is a lot easier. You didn’t see catch us on our best. We had to travel further to find supplies to tame the nastier parts of ourselves. Hearing your inane banters instead of seeing your face makes me just want to inflict physical violence as opposed to… well, eating you.

Having said all that, I’m still glad to see you again. Believe me, even though I didn’t show it on my face. Half of the time I’m worrying about your safety – from others as well as from us. There are times when we are completely lost in the hive mind, and we might have been gone for days or weeks. We know this because of the changes in weather.

Ever since we met, we feel a lot more human. I think you showed up in time to remind us that we were one. Correction – that we are one.

It takes some time to get used to talking again. Mark and I can understand each other without using words, it’s the same way we can understand and communicate with the other infected. After a while, we stopped talking altogether. Words can be confusing and misleading sometimes.

What you said about the coordinated attacks is pretty disturbing. I’m not sure if the ‘super-blackies’, as you call them, are responsible for this. Those creatures are cunning and they lead the hunt like a pack of wolves. But none of them we met are capable of such intellect.

You asked how it’s like for us. By ‘us’, I hope you are referring to me and Mark. We are nothing like them. The one thing we had in common with the rest is that we are part of the infected hive mind. We called it the ‘Hunger’ but it is much more than an instinct. It’s more like a personality. And to set the record straight, Mark and I are not cannibals. The hive mind is extremely strong and that’s why we need those drugs to suppress its influence. We can’t digest normal food, but… let’s just say we have other means to sustain ourselves without killing.

For the last six months, we are living in and out of the hive mind. Sometimes, it tempts us. Sometimes it tries to dominate us, especially when we are near other humans. At times, we enter the hive mind out of necessity. Doing so allows us to see what they see. We can communicate and influence the others. But at the same time, we also run the risk of not being lost in it. That’s why I hope you can understand why you can’t stay with us.

Don’t ask me what this ‘hive mind’ is exactly. I don’t know much except that it has a mind of its own. At first, we thought it was the herd instinct projected by our collective hunger. And by hunger, I don’t mean just the physical cravings for food. It’s every single wants and desires rolled into one. But as time passes, we realized it wants to colonize all our bodily functions. It made its intent loud and clear to us through the awakened ones (that’s what we call the super-blackies).

Okay, you are probably scratching your head at this point. Let me explain to you slowly.

The others you saw are ‘vacant’. The hive mind has colonized them completely. Somehow, whatever that invaded our bodies didn’t manage to wipe out our brains. I can feel my body fighting against the hive mind constantly. Some part of our bodies changed. We throw up when we try to eat normal food. Maybe we don’t have the enzymes to digest them anymore. But yet, our bodies can ingest highly toxic stuff in large quantities. But unfortunately, those things don’t give us energy.

Thanks to you, we had been lucid for days. The medical-grade morphine you got us is really potent stuff. It made the voice almost completely dormant. Where did you get such stuff? This morning, we even tried to open a door using the door knob instead of simply breaking it down. I hope I can get my coordination back some day, there are so many things I want to do but I can’t.

We are now staying at the Cathedral orphanage. It’s a good thing that you taught me how to understand Morse code. Signaling with flash lights and lowering down the supplies and my Walkman with a rope is the brightest idea you had ever came up with.

Okay, Mark and I are going to find out what’s going on with the infected tomorrow. For that, we would need quite a bit of that morphine you got for the army. Wait for our news, brother. And stay safe.

***

Day 292

There are so many things you want to do but you can’t… Hmm, let me guess – all of them involves Mark. You know, like some pumping action or something (Ha)?

And you said you have other means to sustain yourself? Now you really got me curious. How did you do it? You eat corpses? You steal organs from hospitals? But that would still make you a cannibal. Come on, you can tell me. I promise I won’t make any smart comments.

All right, so here’s my day.

This afternoon, I went to the militia training with Felicia. We were helping to train the civilians who don’t have much fighting experience. Normally we teach them how to make spears from sharpened woods, give them some sparring lessons and Felicia would teach them some basic combat tactics against the infected. Normally, we would have only a handful of men from the red zones. But this time, our classes are packed to the max. We hardly have space to spar without having our spears poking into each other.

Some of them are like professional housewives - those who did nothing their whole lives but stayed home and looked after kids. I’m kind of surprised to see them. They are not from the black zones. You can almost see their flabby arms flap like a turkey when they make a thrust with a spear. If so many turned up, it means people are starting to be worried. My guess is that Payne has passed on the news to the other communes as well.

Anyway, Adam isn’t too happy when we told him about his new housing arrangement. He wants to stay with us. Having a night or two of sleepover with his friends at Grace’s place is fine. But we are talking about weeks, if not months of being apart from each other. So, Felicia and I decided to bribe him by making some pasta for dinner. That kid is only four years old so he doesn’t quite remember what pasta is. Both of us made it sound like it’s a big feast. It is one, by the way, considering that we have to make the pasta straight from the corn starch we bought from that crazy farmer.

We bought it from the black market at an exorbitant price. A bag of flour costs us four rabbits! Can you believe it? Normally the black market is pretty empty in the afternoon, but so many people are there trying to buy food. It’s like those days in Holborn when people get into panic buying when the news about the infected got pretty bad. We had some snares and garden to get us going so we aren’t too worried about food. Pete agreed to help us out whenever he’s off duty.

It took us the whole morning to turn the flour into dough, and then another few hours to shape them into pasta. Felicia did most of the work. I was busy keeping tabs on Adam. It was supposed to be tortellini, those ring shaped pasta with stuffing inside. But Adam thought that we are making ammunition because the other kids said we are low and the lumpy looking dough we made looks kind of deadly. Felicia almost cried when she heard that, she spent almost five hours making it. I almost cried too, but I was rolling over laughing.

We invited Grace and Pete over for dinner. Grey is on duty tonight so he can’t come. Grace thought we are serving Chinese dumplings and you should see the look on Felicia’s face – she is turning black like one of those super-blackies. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between the two. But that’s not the funniest part. Since tomatoes are too expensive, we made some cream sauce from Nancy’s milk (our goat, not the architect). You know how goat’s milk has a funny taste to it? Then Pete asked if I had accidentally spilled some of my spunk into the pasta. And Felicia swore she is never going to cook again.

In any case, our culinary adventure wasn’t a total failure. Despite its unfortunate appearances, Adam is totally digging it. We told him that he would get to eat all these nice stuff when he’s staying with Grace and we would visit whenever we take a break from the construction. Kids are so much easier to bribe these days.

After dinner, I offered to take Adam back to Grace’s place. I have an ulterior motive of course. Since Grace is also our resident doctor, all the medical supplies are kept in the sick bay near her home. Along the way, I asked her about the whole virus and parasite thing.

From what you described to me, it seems like you and Mark got the parasite but not the virus. Grace told me that the fungal parasite comes from a family of Cordycep Sinesis that normally invades insects. The fungus grows out from the insect’s body and changes the behavior of its host. The Mycelium, or the vegetative part slowly replaces the host cells with its own. It’s pretty much like what the infection does to you. They used it as medicinal herb in Asia for centuries, and they called it the ‘winter caterpillar’ or something. The human rabies virus on the other hand, destroys your mind. When you said that the others are ‘vacant’ but you and Mark are not, my guess is that somehow the virus didn’t get into you.

You should let Grace have a look at you and Mark. She might be able to do something about your condition. You won’t try to eat her will you? She probably won’t believe me unless she sees you for herself. Maybe she can find a way to knock you out before she examines you? You know, like how vets treat the tigers and lions in the zoo? Do you think it’s a good idea?

But anyway, I’m heading off to the medical center now. I got a heist to pull off. Wish me luck, bro. I don’t want to get hanged for stealing. They are totally medieval when it comes to pilfering army supplies.

Day 294

Hey Trist, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for us to meet Grace. It’s not that I don’t trust her, but there is no way we can get up the mountain and it’s too dangerous for her to get down right now. I don’t know how the four infected you saw at the barricade could climb over that rubble without falling off the cliff. Mark and I definitely can’t do that.

Another thing that is worrying us – the hive mind seems awfully quiet these days. When we tried to probe and find out what’s happening, we find that absolutely nothing is going on. This has never happened before. There is always a flash here and there when someone spotted fresh meat lurking around. It’s like someone puts the ‘blind’ on us. You know the thing we did the keep the infected away from you. They can’t sense your presence because we are clouding them. But if what you said it’s true, that the people saw the infected staring back at them, we would definitely know. Everything is like static to us. For now, I think it’s safer for you and Grace to stay put. This is a lot harder than I would have imagined.

I like the way you tried to coax Adam into staying with Grace. It really reminds me of Mom and Dad. I’m so proud of you, Tristan. You are really the big guy in the family right now. When I saw you, I almost couldn’t recognize you with all that white in your hair. You have aged a lot , and I am sorry if I had made you worry.

But having said that, I will have to kill you if I tell you how Mark and I sustain ourselves. Let’s just leave it that we don’t eat humans, dead or alive, as long as we have a will to fight it.

All right, I have to keep this short. The morphine is running out and it’s hard to stay lucid. Hope to hear from you soon.

Day 297

Hey Tristan, you didn’t show up yesterday. Is everything okay up there? We don’t see an attack going on from here. The hive mind isn’t showing up any images either. Are you busy with the whole construction thing? Normally you will come by the cliff in the morning, but I don’t even see you or your flash light signals.

Mark and I will be heading off to the town hospital a few miles away tomorrow. The moonshine you sent is running low already. Talk to you soon.

Day 298

All right Trist, it’s not funny. You completely disappeared for almost a week. I’m starting to get worried. Flash a light or something at least.