Free Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land by Joshua Guess Page B

weird phone calls have apparently been coming from her. She's got a satellite phone, and has been trying to use it to reach me for a long while now. Her journey here is one that deserves a full post of its own, so I'm saving that for tomorrow. For now, let me tell you who she is.

Becky and I have been friends for a long time. She was in Iraq serving as a combat medic during The Fall. I remember her as an incredibly geeky science nerd who was bubbly and positive with her friends, a witty conversationalist and creative thinker, while also being a snarky asshole to people that annoyed her. In short, she's a smaller, blonde version of me with boobs.

You can see why I love her.

She's been trying to get back to the states all this time. She heard about the blog, and she made her way here. Jess and I have invited her to live with us for as long as she wants. It's almost a half day after she got here right now, and I'm still so blown away by it that I can barely write. Sorry if this is disjointed and scattered, my words are just reflections of my state of mind.

It's not all butterflies and bunny rabbits, though. She's more grim, now. She's darker. The childlike joy that used to dance in her eyes only comes in flashes. The rest of the time, she broods. Might just be the trip here, still shaking off the stress and pressure. I don't know. I'm just worried.

But my Becky is here, and Jess and I couldn't be happier.
     
    Saturday, March 26, 2011
    Journey To The West
    Posted by Josh Guess
     
    Before The Fall scoured the earth with a plague of undead, the purpose of my life was stories. Rather, my goal was to unite my dream, my desire, to be a storyteller with the practical needs of survival--paying the bills, getting ahead, that sort of thing. In short, I wanted to be a full-time writer. 
     
    Though I didn't read it until I reached adulthood, one of the most important stories that I've ever read is "Journey To The West", the greatest classical novel to ever come from China. Probably the greatest work of fiction written, period, until the modern age. This post isn't about that book, but the idea of such epic, detailed characters resonates with the true story I want to tell you. This is about Becky, and how she made her own journey west. 
     
    When The Fall hit, Becky was in Iraq, as I mentioned yesterday. It took a few days from the outbreak in Cincinnati for the military to order a mass recall of all of their troops, and when it came Becky was far away from her base, tending to members of her unit. Just a few minutes after the order came down, you see, Becky and her unit were victims of an IED. Several of them died, and Becky was left to tend to the wounded. 
     
    Chaos was everywhere. At the time, there wasn't anywhere in the world that hadn't started to see the zombie plague for what it was--a game changer for the entire human race. In the middle east, the chaos was more due to a sudden uprising in response to the news that all US troops would immediately be withdrawn. 
     
    Stranded in the middle of a riot, far away from any of her countrymen, all she could do was tend to her wounded and hope for the best. Becky ended up being stuck in Iraq for more than a month, the rest of her fellow soldiers dead by that time, either from the injuries they'd sustained from the homemade bomb, violence at the hands of those Iraqis that wanted them dead, or from the growing number of zombies roaming the dusty streets. 
     
    It was a desperate time for her, trying to move her injured friends to safe places, stealing what food she could to keep them alive. By the end of those four weeks, the baby fat that I remembered filling out her cheeks was gone. She looked as she does now--whipcord thin, darkly tanned (after weeks of nursing sunburns. Becky is fair skinned, like me) and well toned. Hauling around three injured men will make you strong or kill you. It was after the last of them died that she decided to move on, get as far away from Iraq as