Life Before the QZ

Pastor Dan
Eastern Wisconsin
Fox River Valley QZ

Wow. I am starting to become tentatively convinced that you all are actually seeing this which is... well... it's just great. Even though I am sad to hear about the QZ's falling in Florida (I had some friends who might have made it to the Saint Petersburg QZ) Just knowing that anyone at all is still going strong out there makes me feel better.

The Commandant of the QZ has been giving me some odd looks, lately, and has been seen watching the Computer Schedule. I told him the Internet was back up, and he didn't believe me. He says that it CAN'T be, that we shouldn't be able to get a signal. And yet, it's being tested, and any device with WIFI has a signal. It wasn't there before. It's strange and that has him nervous, but I made him nervous anyway.

Hopefully he doesn't try to cut off my access. And I do mean try... because I am NOT going to just give this up.

Anyway, back to the story I was telling.

Myself, my wife, my church, and a few hundred others had set up a compound not far from Weyauwega, the little town I lived in when everything collapsed. It wasn't a perfect physical protection but it was close... with only a few weak points that my people knew and guarded. We had night watchpeople, an embarrassment of ammunition and it seemed like we were ok.

Our problems were mental. We didn't dare shoot all the groaners... that much gunfire only attracted more. If we saw a screamer or a drooler we dropped them fast, or if a groaner got near a weak point, but otherwise we knew we couldn't handle them all, and our best info said that most of Milwaukee was still shambling south, and we wanted to keep it that way.

Also, from time to time, there would be newcomers. That was a bit tricky, but we would often try to lure the groaners away from a segment of wall to let newcomers in, if we could. Sometimes we couldn't. Sometimes, we saw them get pulled down as they tried to reach us. That still keeps me up, some nights.

My sermons and services kept going. They were not, at all, mandatory, but people tended to show up just for something to do. I give a good sermon, and I was the only show going, so even though they weren't technically a captive audience, they might as well have been. I tried to honor that, recognize that we had diverse beliefs, and I focused on supporting each other and the like. That might have saved my life, later.

Then we got the word over the radio from a guy who'd fortified his hunting lodge a ways south of us. Government spooks were operating around Milwaukee to try to pull the hordes north. And it was working. His groaner count had gone from the teens to near ninety a day nearly overnight, and they were heading our way.

We couldn't hold off those kind of numbers forever. And that was when the Helicopter arrived. It carried a man in a black suit. No insignia. He explained the QZ project. He explained that if we could make the thirty mile journey we'd be safe, and to bring all the supplies we had.

More than a few of our people were nervous about it. Anti-government types, you know? But he also had images of the horde that was heading our way, and we knew our little compound couldn't take it, and that nothing we could do in the time we had would change that. When we reported our decision, one of the Elders called me "reverend," and the agent gave me a LOOK.

We had a journey to make, though, and I set about organizing folks to make sure we made it. As he took off, he was still watching me, though.

Of course, I had no way of knowing what was happening elsewhere in the country.

(Hey, you're in the Twin Cities QZ? Keep your eye out for James and Jess. They have a little girl named Lily.)