I knew I was going to need some guys who know about biology and I knew I was going to need a stable place for them to work. A few fellow survivors and I had walled up a few blocks of the city and I knew there was an old science-lab a few blocks away. My plan would be to rally all the downtrodden, scared stragglers to my banner and fight back against the zombie hordes.
As our struggling fort started to grow a trader stopped by. He was an itinerant gambler and wanted to gamble for food. I couldn't help myself, I was blinded by hunger and played with what little we had. Fortunately I was lucky with the dice and nearly doubled our meagre supply of rations and won a kitten to boot! I taught the kitten to ride on my shoulder and Mooch became very useful for recruiting survivors to my cause.
We were growing fast. We had a person in every bed and were eagerly cordoning off more and more of the city for our benefit. I may have been overeager in my efforts to bring new people into the fort. We began having serious problems. For one, we were still incredibly dependent on scavenging to feed ourselves and the surrounding grocers and 8-12 marts were starting to thin out pretty seriously. There was also a problem of morale. I may have set expectations too high but people were getting pretty grumbly about the situation. They claiming I was more interested in my dream of curing zombiism than making life better for the fort but could you blame me? It was in this climate that one of the original founders wrote a book called "The Zombie Condition". It was a horrible polemic suggesting zombiism was some kind of evolutionary step for mankind. I banned it outright. I have to keep these people focused.
Finally, we managed to reclaim the science-lab. I had met an honest to god researcher named Rob earlier and he was keen to get to work. We had no-one else with science training so I set him on more prosaic work of rigging up a radio to find more science minded people.
Hunger was starting to take a serious toll. We were more and more desperate to find food and I sent more and more people to scavenge the ruined city for sustenance. Too many of us were gone one day and the zombies got into the science-lab. Rob managed to get out but the zombies nearly got loose into the fort. Jimbob Foster and "Faraway" Boyle were first to the scene. They acted bravely but Jimbob was overcome and eaten alive. "Faraway" was injured trying to fend them off with a Bunsen burner. He recuperated in an old hospital we got running again. He's one of our best builders and couldn't work for days. At least we had the hospital up. It would have taken forever for him to recuperate in some dingy cot.
It took nearly a week to bring the lab back under control. In the mean time though we liberated a school and I set Rob the task of training up some of the green recruits to help him in the lab. When we got that thing back we were going to start firing on all cylinders!
The fort continued to expand faster than we could really feed people but heroic efforts to gather food farther and farther from the fort were keeping us alive. We were also bringing back some pretty interesting stuff from those missions. Julia Jenkins, one of the original four, brought back a sub-machine gun from an old pawn shop. She gave it to Campbell, another of the founders, and later found herself a shotgun.
Just as the lab was made safe again an old man with a thick Russian accent came to the doors of the fort. Dr. Bryukhonenko said he could do more damage to the zombies with science than we could with bats and rifles. He wanted our lab to himself though... I decided to give it to him. Honestly, Rob wasn't exactly a specialist before the world fell and I somehow had more hope in this confident stranger. I gave him the lab. Soon after that he demanded an assistant. I agreed and he chose Nurse Betty. She wasn't the most adept of Rob's trainees, but she was definitely the best looking.
Since Rob and the other egg-heads were now out of a workplace I put them on the walls on guard duty. The zombies were massing around the place. They were drawn to our fort. The noise and lights of civilization drew them. I knew they wanted to tear down our small bastion of humanity. Sometimes a horde would burst out of some building downtown and slowly lurch its way to the fort. Our scavengers would usually see it coming and we'd have a few days to prepair. Everyone but Dr. Bryukhonenko would get their hands dirty on those days. More often then not a few new people would fuck up and spend a few days in the hospital.
As we drew more and more space into our fort I would immediately fill it with people. I had scouting parties scouring the city for supplies and potential recruits. When they found someone I'd take Mooch out there and talk them into my vision of the future. I may have played up the safety and comfort of the fort more than was realistic but if we were going to win back our city it was necessary. I was obsessed with drawing in new people. I filled every bed as soon as it was reclaimed from the shambles of old Vancouver. The scavengers could never keep up with my recruiting and one day Zed got through the walls and sprawled over our most productive farm. We immediately ran out of food. Morale had been bad before. I drove the fort pretty hard and every square meter was used for purpose. There was no lolly gagging in my new civilization and with the zombies always pulling down bits of wall hard work was an easy sell.
Hunger was a different enemy however. Hunger drew down the morale of the fort and people's trust in me. Soon they started refusing my orders. One work crew at first, then the whole city would rebel. They demanded bars and hope and food. I sent more of the fort scavenging farther than I was comfortable and I had "Faraway" convert some housing into a rudimentary bar. I wish I could have built more bars but no other builders had the skill to do it. I also ordered that a few churches on our borders be cleaned out and walled off.
When the first church was walled off I set myself the job of preaching. I preached not of hell; it was evident for all that hell was real. Instead I preached of new cars and bad TV on a Sunday afternoon, of eating lunch on Granville Island and the functioning ski-lifts on Grouse Mountain. I made them yearn for what we had lost and slowly they came back to me.
While this going on I was getting odder and odder reports from Rob about what Dr. Bryukhonenko was up to. Rob said his methods weren't safe or necessarily moral. I told Rob to leave him alone. I didn't care what methods the doctor used. As the zombies massed outside the walls I feared he was our only real hope.
When Dr. Bryukhonenko asked me to send a scientist out in front of one of the hordes of zombies to gather a sample I sent our second brightest man. I'd have gone myself if I thought I could have done it but sometimes sending others into harms way is the harder choice. At any rate he pulled it off and Dr. Bryukhonenko got really excited. Further, Rob and the crew had been pulling all-nighters over a possible vaccine for zombiism. Their efforts apparently dovetailed nicely with Dr. Bryukhonenko's and soon he was very pleased.
Oddly the happier he got the less the fort liked him. There were often strange noises coming from his lab but strange turned to disturbing then to terrifying. It was enough that people had to daily confront hunger and the zombies outside. That's why when the lab exploded I was the only one who was devastated.
A few of the Doctor's research subjects survived the explosion and I had to send Campbell and a few other soldiers in there to clean up. They found Dr. Bryukhonenko and Betty's bodies in the wreckage but also the doctor's notes. Devastated, I sent the notes to Rob in the vain hope he could make sense of the Russian scribbles.
I had no idea what to do now. There might be other options out of this. I could could try to start a government and make a propper city work despite the constant threat of zombies. I might be able to overpower some of the raiders and free us from some of the constant danger. There was an airfield in the city. I might have been able to wing myself and a few close survivors away to find... help... or a little tropical island somewhere. Someone might as well end up well from this escapade.
I didn't know what to do when Rob came to me in the night. He said he'd cracked it! Bryukhonenko had found a cure. He said I didn't want to know the lengths the doctor had gone to finding it. I'm amazed at what someone with no moral compunction can accomplish. Rob said the team needed ten days and three labs to prepare the cure. "Faraway" was reclaiming the exploded lab but no one else had the skills to build a new one from scratch so I pulled him off that job and set him to converting one of the reclaimed churches to a chem-lab.
I was on top of the world when Rob and his crew stated their work. We were 34 survivors now well fed, well trained, and well housed. We had the zombies at bay and soon this nightmare would be over. I wasn't prepared for the zombie's response. It was like they knew their time was near and they started massing into huge hordes and hurling themselves against the walls every couple of days. Almost immediately our best farm fell again. Starvation loomed while they took the police station we used as a rallying point for defenses. they were eating their way towards the labs. We were out of food and the wounded overwhelmed the hospital. At this closest of moments, when I saw my impossible dream finally falling into place the hordes of Zed were set to tear down everything we had accomplished.
Which brings me to today: May fourth, 2014. 103 days after I decided we were going to start anew. Today's the day Rob said he'd be done. I can hear Zed moaning their request for our living flesh. I don't have many healthy fighters to answer their request. I hope to god Rob has found a better answer for them...