667

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 123 - Outside Temp 235F

Lets see, where do I start this week? News Weather Sports? Gossip? The Cooking Channel?

Here's tonites Sports Report: no sports. Unless you count card playing. And people arent playing cards much anymore either. I just noticed that today. One of the weird things I've been noticing lately.

Weather - Todays Forecast - Hot as Hell, no wind, mostly foggy and humid. Tomorrow - same same. I'm just glad it still gets dark at night. I wish it cooled off. Makes it hard to look forward to morning when its just exactly like midnite. We'll have to rename the different times of day. Morning, noon, sunset, evening, twilight, none of em have any meaning anymore. Now we have Black and Pink. I rather prefer Black for some reason.

News - International relations continue to be strained. Still no word out of China, N Korea, Iran, ot half a dozen other places I didnt want to visit anyway. Russia still not talking officially, but we can get any information we want thru back channels, and we seem to be telling them a lot too. Hopefully we'll be buddies once they admit we've been pals all along. South American countries are bickering among themselves, the Europeans too, over the so-called Plans they intend to implement after this is over. Best part is that they really dont have much in the way of realistic plans at all. What they're really bickering over is who will be on the Planning Committee once there is one.

Domestic News - The Government continues to ask for statistics. We ask what they need them for and they say its to help some other group. If you ask the other group, they say they dont need the information. I think they just need to look busy to justify their air.

Local - tension continues to build over the status of the Strikers and their legal limbo. I expect a fistfight to break out just any day now. Frankly I'm ready for it. I keep a 3/4 inch steel bolt in my pocket. Almost as good as brass knuckles.

Domestic - I dont know if this is worth mentioning, but its starting to feel really odd. Allison ALWAYS knows what Im going to say. We've always been really good at knowing what the other person was thinking, in that married way you get after a few years. But now its creepy. She's starting to get closed up about it, but for a while there she even knew weird stuff like who I'd just been talking too. I think its just from being cooped up this much, there arent that many people to talk to here. Maybe its the look on my face. There was Woody Allen movie about how people start acting like each other, I bet we have a bad case of that here.

Anyway, Im sleepy. Gonna go get a cookie and sack out.
I bet you knew I was going to say that.
Good Nite Log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 130 - Outside Temp 235F

Been busy busy following the rumor mill and keeping up with News from outside. I'm staying in the Comm Room too much lately. Using the internet as an escape from all the BS in our Shelter.

Only teaching the Nerds in class now. Spend most of my increasing free time with them too. Going to try to organize some outside work for them as a group, since we really have too much time to waste worrying about everyone else is doing or not doing lately.

The Jocks have become a political force to be reckoned with. Everything the Captain says or does now is with their approval in mind. Five or six of them, together with 3 of their girlfriends, seem to be running the show. Ridiculous in my opinion, but the Captain doesnt want trouble.

Outside news - the Big Shelter #1 in Hutchison had a failure a few days ago, one of the fans broke, but all the backups worked and there was hardly any problem at all. Its nice when things work.

On the other hand, its easy for things to go wrong. One of the big Mine shelters in Wyoming had an explosion. There are four huge mines around Green River Wyo, where they dig up the stuff they make baking soda out of, among other useful things. Miles long and almost 50 foot wide. They could have held millions of people if they put em in as dense as we have here, but there isnt enough food to feed that many for any reasonable amount of time. They were used to put zoo animals and herds of farm animals into, just like the big salt mine in Hutchinson here in Kansas. Problem is, they had methane buildup problems even before they put hundreds of cattle in there. They had to monitor their air quality very closely. The tunneling made the place look like a huge grid. Big canvas screens were put up at many of the grids intersections to route the air efficiently thru all the galleries.

Seems they had some sort of party planned, and in order for all the people in that particular shelter to be able to see the stage, they took down some of the screens without notifying their ventilation people. A lot of methane built up in one area and it just took one little spark to set it off. Fortunately not many people were hurt or killed, but a lot of turkeys, chickens and cows died. Less food fo everyone once this thing is over.

I sure hope things settle down here. I really feel like trouble is heading our way.
Hopefully next week I can just talk about food. Or good news.
Goodnite Log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 150 - Outside Temp 235F

It even hurts to type.
Allison says I'm lucky to be alive so stop my complain. ow
more 2moro when not hurt

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 152 - Outside Temp 235F

Still sore. Can type with one hand and just do some caps and the comma period keys right handed.
Got myself bushwacked. Same thing happened to John Wayne, cant remember which movie tho.
Stabbed in the back literally. Bastards. Once I get out of this bed Im gonna kick someones ass.

Was right in middle of long entry, lots of bad news from other tunnels. More on that later. Someone calls out theres a fight outside in the hallway. I go out to break it up. 2 jocks. Something didnt strike me as right, they werent really fighting, more like play wrestling and waiting for me to come out. I should have known something weird was going on I guess, but I just waded in. I suppose a cop would have better instincts but I dont.

Next thing Im on the ground with fire coming out of my back. Asshole put a steak knife 4 inches into me and twisted it coming out. Punctured a lung. I remember someone standing over me calling me Ketchup Man. I guess Im lucky I passed out.

So I've been out for two weeks solid, and in and out a few days since. Just now able to lift arms up to my chin. Burns like fire when I move my right arm at all. Doc says move it and it'll come back faster.

It was the Jocks, the Mutineers from the Dig Murders, Im sure of it. They conned me out and got behind me. Doc said Allison was there and it scared hell out of her. Said they'd have finished me off if Tiny and 667 hadnt been there and stepped in. Said 667 broke a 2 x 4 over the stabbers head and knocked him clean out. He got out of the infirmary after a week. No punishment from the Captain. Something is really broken down here.

long break

Back. I get real tired quick. Wanna type tho. Good therapy and makes day go faster. Later some dinner and then a long nap.

News from before the stabbing.
Will and Stan and a Canadian computer whiz got together and hacked into China. Unbelievable complicated hack but they did it. The signal they get is so weak it takes a seperate program on a mainframe in Tennessee to read the information, but they have some kid in a coal mine in Laoyang who thinks he's chatting up his female cousin in Taiwan. His Uncle is a Local Party bigwig so he has lots of info. Seems they have lost almost a third of their people to bad shelter equipment already. There are a lot of mines in China, and their safety record stinks on a good day. Sounds like they put twice as many people in every tunnel as we do. And not as much food. If this is over in a year, they'll be way ahead of us in numbers, but longer than that and they will have big trouble. Its all a gamble I guess. Will and Stan are celebrities now. I guess their hack was the sort of thing you'd see the guys on Star Trek pull off. Pretty good for kids. Hope the Chinese dont get word of it or they'll pull the plug.

Got get well wishes from Bill and Brad.
Bill says the Science Gurus think the temperature is starting to drop, from higher altitudes and working its way down to ground level. Thank God. Brad says they are going to launch another sub-missile satellite and check it out once they get the payload tweaked to take the readings they need. Glad they put some super genius engineers on those subs.

It just occured to me that if the Jocks were willing to go to the effort to bushwack me like they did, that Tiny and 667 are probably on their attack list too. Gotta make sure they get warned. Pooped anyway. Time for that nap.

Goodnite Log

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 160 - Outside Temp 235F

Lotsa news to catch up on, now that I can almost type 2 handed.

Back still very sore. Hurts bad to walk. Learning to do everything left handed, which is weird. Once I got good at using the mouse on my computer lefty, I started having really vivid dreams about strange weather and exotic places. And when I woke up, I'd know exactly what Allison was doing, wherever she was at the time. Usually in the cafeteria cooking. So that was likely just me getting really good at guessing her routine, but it creeped me out a few times. The rumor that all the girls were becoming psychic is turning out to be bunk. Its crazy what people will believe when they are in a stressful situation.

Brads people in California have launched the satellite to check the temperature of the atmosphere. The results are a mixed bag. Bad news - the temperature is only a little bit lower, and only above 20,000 ft altitude.
Good news - the satellite worked perfectly, and they are a lot better at getting the readings thru the interference now, and faster at turning the raw data into useful info. Brad says they will now routinely launch a bird every month til the event is over. Or until we all starve, whichever comes first I suppose.

Not a lot of bad news from other tunnels to report, except from China. Thats all recently arrived info, thanks to Stan and Will. With some help from the NASA guys in Arkansas and some satellite engineers from the Northwest they figured out how to boost the signal from the Chinese gal, then they found out that they were chatting to her in the wrong dialect of Chinese. They were speaking Mandarin and she is from a city called Chongqing. Her name is Gu and she speaks something called Southwest Mandarin. Appearantly she figured out they werent her cousin pretty quickly but played along for the fun of talking to someone outside China. Now she's got a crush on Willy and they are pen pals or whatever kids call it these days.

Gu says that the Party picked everyone who was allowed into the Chinese shelters, so besides having a lot of soldiers and mechanics and engineers, they have a lot of politicians and their families in their coal mine. She says she's very lucky to be in the shelter she's in. Seems the Chinese have 4 levels of safety in their system. The top Party Officials are in the best shelters, the bomb shelters that every Communist Country is crawling with. They have plenty of food and spare parts and redundant systems and personell to maintain everything. The next level is similar to our larger cave and salt mine shelters, where they put fewer people inside than they could have, and included more animals and plants. Gu and her fathers family are in a shelter like this, along with most of the politicians from the region and their families. Their 3rd level is like this shelter only more crowded, stuffed with people and food and not much room to move around at all. They also have a 4th level, smaller mines and caves with just the bare minimum of machinery to maintain the air temperature. Very few of these shelters have any safety equipment at all, no redundant systems, some cant even support the number of people they took in initially. Most only have enough food to last a few months anyway, a year at most. They were filled to capacity with the forlorn hope that the situation wouldnt be as bad as predicted, or last as long as its turning out to be. Since there were so many of these inadaquate shelters, and they were filled to bursting with people, the death toll will be staggering once we learn the whole story. Not that anyone would place blame on whoever signed off on such optimism. Frankly I thought we should have done the same thing here.

Had a long chat with 667 and learned a lot about the problems we have here. Seems like the hazing of the nerds by the jocks just spiralled up and up, probably due to the stress everyone wasnt dealing with. Now its practically like 2 street gangs with turf that the other gang isnt allowed on. The Nerds stay close to the classrooms, so they are near the cafeteria and command center in the SE corner of the complex. The Jocks are pretty much self isolated in the far NW corner of the shelter, which is mostly bunks and food storage. The worst of the bunch are the ringleaders, three football stars named Josh, Paul and Jake. They send their girlfriends to fetch meals for them. Even the Jock Girls cause problems now. One named Emily is as mean as any guy I've ever heard of, and waves a knife at anyone she thinks she can intimidate.

As long as the Nerds can stay near the command center they should be safe. The adult staff still seems to be able to just barely control the Jocks, for now. When they attacked me right in the hallway it seemed to cause a lot of people to realize they might not be backing the Good Guys when they were bitching about the Captain and the way things were run. Trouble is, as it stands right now, not many of the kids want to be associated with the Nerds, so if real fighting of any kind happens, the Jocks will have numbers on their side, if nothing else. The Captain has locked up all the weapons anyway, just to be on the safe side, and confiscated as many of the knifes from the cafeteria as they could locate. Allison says there are still probably a hundred or more missing. That doesnt make me very happy.

Gonna try to sleep now. Hope nothing happens, at least until Im up and around. If theres a scuffle, I want to be able to get a little payback.

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 165 - Outside Temp 235F

Ouch ouch. Tried to walk, and it doesnt work yet. Allison says to be patient, but thats hard to do when there are people in the tunnel who dont want me alive.

First the news:
We arent the first tunnel to have mutiny problems, so I suppose we shouldnt feel so bad. Found out one of the Big Bomb Shelters in Russia has what amounts to a Civil War going on for quite long time now. It called Yamantav, near Ufa in the Ural Mts and its huge, like 400 square miles of tunnel area. I guess its like Cheyenne Mt only way bigger, and equipped to handle the largest part of the Russian Govt. They take their bomb shelters pretty serious over there so I suppose its pretty nice.

Seems they have leadership squabbles there and its blown up into full out fighting. From what we can tell, one faction controls 1/3 of the complex and the other side the rest. Early fighting nearly overloaded their air systems with toxic fumes from the gunfire and explosives. Now they have to plan their attacks and defense with strict limitations on the amount and types of ammo used. Its even gone topside, with thermal suited commandos attacking each others vents and inlets.

There is a lot of concern among the Military folks over the outcome of the Russian Tunnel War. The Yamantav complex probably connects with the Kosvinsky Complex which is just a few miles away, and thats where they placed their Strategic Rocket Command. Whoever controls that controls the Russian ICBMs. One more thing to lose sleep over.

There was also a big fight in one of the Australian shelters, but it seems to be over already. Lots of casualties in that one. In New South Wales there are two huge copper mines, the old one is called E26 and was shutting down when the comet hit. The newer one is E48. They're both very large, over 13 kilometers of tunnel each, and there were about 3000 people sheltered in each one. E48 had a lot of the Provincial Govt in it, E26 was a lot of expert types and miners made up a fair portion.

I guess a squabble between the miners and the scholarly types erupted and turned vicious pretty quickly. They used anything handy so people were killed with shovels and clubs and rocks and silverware. I suppose the rage burned itself out fairly quickly, but that sort of thing always leaves plenty of ill will among the survivors.

The disturbing parallel here is that we've heard rumors that the Jocks are arming themselves with clubs made out of the bracing lumber from the basement digs. I'm not too keen on the idea of being dragged out of my bed and beaten with homemade baseball bats. I've been running the numbers, and the bad news is out of the 325 or so non-staff males left in the tunnel, roughly 2/3 are siding with the Jocks. The Good News is that Tiny is with the Nerds. Dont know why, but his size is a comfort whenever I think about a fight breaking out. Out of the whole bunch, Im happiest that he's on our side.

Time for my Jello. And then a nap. Starting to hate hospital food.

[Saxon Dog]

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 170 - Outside Temp 234F

Goddammit it is so frustrating not to be able to get up and fight, or help, or do anything.

I had some news, other tunnels having problems. Solving problems. Getting along, not getting along. None of that matters. Situation so bad here its eclipses everything.

Sides are all drawn up. Doc started a tally on the whiteboard near my bed, wrote down all the names of who was on which side, with a number indicating how serious each person was about becoming violent once push came to shove. Call it military intelligence. At least it gave us something to do.

Good guys tally - started out at 100 or so. Roughly split between kids and staff guys. Violence Index fairly low, lotsa 5s and way too many 3s. I'm on the list but since I cant get out of bed Im a 1. Worst news happened yesterday, the Jocks "arrested" a large group of staff members, and are holding them in the digs up on the NW corner. Over 50 of em before we stopped people from going into their territory. Including the Captain. Not that he was much help anyway. Had to take a lot of staff guys off the tally, they're either captured or someone close to em is held hostage. Hardly any of the staff want to fight. Really only 3 or 4 ex-military that can really be counted on. New total - less than 40 Nerds that would show up, and I cant say how useful any of them would be in a scuffle. Hopefully a handful of em wont panic and run as soon as people start getting hurt.

Bad Guy Tally - Maybe as many as 200. Mostly Jocks, some jock-wanna-bees, lots of 7s, 8s and 9s. Theres a lotta smack talk and even some of their girls have 9s for Violence Index. Emily got the only 10. That bitch is truly psycho. Its scary. The Nerds dont want the girls to fight. Officially they are trying to sound chivalrous, but actually, numbers arent going to decide this battle anyway. Its going to depend on dedication and motivation. I'm hoping the Nerds will fight harder to save themselves than the Jocks will fight to kill them.

Jocks are pretty much based in the NW corner, and we wont let anyone go to the North or West Tunnels. Much farther than halfway down the East or South tunnels means you're asking to get beat up or captured. Nerd territory is just the SE corner. We have everything we need to get by, but its just a matter of time before the Jocks get their nerve up and sweep thru here on a rampage. I guess this is pretty typical gang-fight preliminary activity.

Weaponry - we've gotten some informal intel on the Jocks from a few folks who are able to go freely between the sides, mostly because they are seen to favor the Jocks, but not so strongly as to want to be involved. Sounds like anyone on their side serious about participating has some sort of ball bat, or a knife, sometimes both. I've been having nightmares about being chased by people with baseball bats. Allison and the Doc say that Im worrying so much that its slowing my recovery. Its gonna take awhile then, because I am truly worried sick about whats gonna happen if they come thru here.

I tried to get the Nerds to cut themselves some clubs too, use the table legs or whatever they can find. Tiny was here for a bit and told me they have something more elaborate in mind. He says 667 and Stan had an idea from a History book and it could solve everything. But he didnt tell me what it was. God help us if it doesnt work. Probably just make em madder.

I can hear some sort of yelling from out in the corridor. It could be starting.
If I dont write again, you'll know why. Glad Allison is here.

[Saxon Dog]

Subject: Re: 667 Day 172


Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 172 - Outside Temp - havent looked - probably 234F

Well, there was something you dont see every day !



will return this post after I finish it on other forum haha sorry

Here Ya Go! Restored ****************************************

Personal Log - Tunnel 3 - Day 172 - Outside Temp - haven’t looked - probably 234F

Well, there was something you don’t see every day !

Battles over. Where to start?

History needs a name, I suggest Battle of South Corridor, or Battle of Tunnel 3. Hope there aren’t anymore. Like 2nd Manassas, or 3rd Ypres. And I got to see the whole thing, I’m proud to say. Well, most of it. The important part anyway. The bloody part.

Commotion I mentioned in last post was a false alarm. Just some guys coming this way trying to get to the cafeteria. Our guys wouldn’t let em. Nothing happened.

Next morning the rumor mill was running full speed. Someone said the Jocks were coming. Someone said they were going to turn off the air (we can control the fans in this corner so that wouldn’t matter). They said the Jocks were pumping exhaust thru our end (our detectors didn’t go off so that was BS). They said the Jocks were building walls just around the corners ( the air was flowing so that was a load of crap too). Then it got real quiet. Too quiet, as they say in the movies. Everyone got real serious. That lasted til dinnertime.

About 6:30 Will the computer geek came in wearing the stupidest looking hat I ever saw. It was made from the tube shaped gray foam that gets put around pipes to insulate them. It looked like a bicycle helmet inflated, and had a shoestring tied to it for a chinstrap. He told the doctors to get ready for battle casualties, and to make sure they were ready with all the blood they had. I stopped him and asked him what they were planning. He went outside and came back in with the damnedest thing I ever saw. It gave me the chills when I first realized what it was.

He said they had a brainstorming session to figure out how to defend themselves. They had some seriously weird ideas but it settled on an idea they came up with. They reasoned that if they went back thru their History Lessons and figured out what the most dangerous weapons were before the invention of rifles and pistols, they'd be able to work out some sort of strategy that had been tried and proved before. No need to reinvent the wheel they said.

They considered bows and arrows, which was a good idea, but impractical since they really didn’t have time to make them, and even less to practice with them.

Then they had a stroke of genius, in my opinion. Back before gunpowder, the best armies had huge masses of pikemen, and fought in a tight box formation, like the old Greek phalanx. In the 1400s and 1500s those armies tore the hell out of the old Medieval heavy cavalry, and knights with swords. Until muskets were really common, pike armies ruled the battlefield.

So Will brings in this damn evil looking piece of aluminum tube. Inch and a half diameter bare aluminum, 20 feet long, and cut off at one end at a 60 degree angle. He had me touch the end, it was as sharp as a goddam razorblade. If you don’t deburr the metal, a bandsaw cut leaves a nasty sharp edge on metal.

He said they'd been practicing just around the corner out of sight. Staying in a tight formation, holding those pikes out, moving forward in unison one step at a time. Just the thing for a corridor fight, where the bad guys cant get around to your flanks.

About that time we started hearing a lot of yelling. The Jocks were coming towards us in a large mob, and they had bats. I doubt they even had a plan, except for the "lets go get em" mob mentality.

The Nerds lined up right outside the Infirmary. They were in 3 rows, 5 abreast, even though it is the widest part of the shelter, they had to stand sideways to fit in 5. The rows behind had their pikes between the guys in the rows in front. So they had 15 of those damn razor sharp pipes sticking out in a little space about 4 feet wide and a foot tall, right about eye level of the mass of Jocks coming towards em. There were a dozen or so Nerds hanging back, since there wasn’t enough room in the corridor for all of them at once. They had a pile of extra pikes in a pile behind them. There were a dozen or so staff and Nerds down the hall at the intersection, to make sure another bunch didn’t sneak up behind us.

The Jock Mob came forward til they were about 5 feet from the spear points, and that’s when they really realized there was something sharp pointing at them. They yelled a lot, insults and taunts. The ones in the back pressed the ones in front forward a bit, but no one really wanted to find out how sharp the pipes were. I could see the 3rd row of the Nerds formation. The shorter ones like Will were in front, Tiny took up a big part of the 3rd row. 667 and Stan were in the middle. I wish you could have seen their faces. They were scared as hell, but they had a scary hard look in their eyes. But those stupid looking foam helmets were so ridiculous looking.

The groups stayed a few yards apart for a good minute. I was worried their arms would get tired from holding the pikes out. Then one of the Jocks threw his bat. It missed the front row, hit the ceiling a bit, and struck Stan on the shoulder. I bet it hurt like hell but he didnt flinch. Right then 667 yelled "STEP". And the whole group took one big step forward in unison. You could hear the sound from the Jocks change completely, from razzing and low taunts, to a much higher warning pitch.

667 yelled "STEP" again, and they moved mostly out of my line of sight. The pitch from the Jocks mob became higher still. I jumped out of bed and tried to get thru the crowd at the door, my back felt like a poker of fire where I'd gotten stabbed. But I had to see. I got around by the wall and could see over the tops of peoples head just enough to see the fight from the shoulder up.

He yelled "STEP" one more time, and then "THRUST". People started screaming. 2 ballbats bounced past our door, the doctors who were leaning out too far shoved themselves back inside the doorway. "STEP" ... "THRUST" ... STEP ... THRUST.
They got into a quick rhythm. Someone was screaming a lot louder than the rest. And then another.

667 yelled "THRUST" three times in a row. They must have reached the mass of targets. It was easy to imagine to people in front frantically trying to push back away from the pikes, but stopped by the mob pushing forward. Classic tactics. The Jocks were already beaten but didn’t know it. My blood was up, I wanted to rush outside, but Allison had me by the belt and wouldn’t let go.

They started moving forward again, one step at a time, and obviously someone went down almost every time they thrust. The screams were like something from a nightmare. In about a minute a few of the doctors rushed out and started dragging people into the infirmary. I finally got to push my head out the door to see the fight heading away from me towards the west. The floor was covered in blood, and I mean covered from wall to wall, and plenty on the walls and ceiling in places too. The dozen reinforcement kids had to step over piles of rags on the floor to keep up with the main phalanx. Then I realized the piles were dead and wounded. They didn’t look real.

In just over a minute it was mostly over. The crowd behind the battle was yelling encouragement so much that I could barely make out 667 keeping cadence. He started yelling STEP 3 or 4 times for every THRUST. And then they just walked forward, spearing anyone who was too slow. It was a rout. A bloody rout. They chased the Jocks all the way to the SW intersection, slowly turned the corner, and then chased em some more up the West Corridor. The fight was clear out of them by then. A few of the ringleaders and hard core followers holed up in the NW heat exchanger, among the cooling pipes. I'll save that for last.

The doctors started dragging in the wounded. There was blood everywhere in the infirmary in less than a minute. Severed arteries have much higher pressure than anyone imagines, and just about all of them had spurting wounds. The infirmary filled up quickly, and the overflow went into the cafeteria. Allison set me onto an office chair and pushed my into the Communications Room where I'd be out of the way. The little wheels on the chair left 4 parallel tracks of blood into the Comm Room. I was covered in other peoples blood.

The Jocks that got speared cleanly in the torso, facing forward, mostly died where they fell. A hole that big lets a lot of blood out very rapidly. Most of the wounded had vicious gashes on their arms, backs, and thighs. One guy had a cut from just below his nose, tore thru his cheek and ear, that ended on the back of his scalp. Head wounds bleed a lot. A lucky few had neat round holes in their buttock muscles, they were able to crawl themselves to the doctors. They must have been trying to crawl away. Just as Allison got me to the Comm Room, I saw that fukker that stabbed me, first time since he did it. He had a pike run clear thru his stomach and 3 feet out his back. They had a helluva time getting him thru the crowd and onto bed. The Doctors had to cut off the long end of the pike and pull the rest thru from the pointy end.
I wanted so badly to stand over him and ask him how it felt.

They got about 50 of the survivors rounded up and put under guard, down in the SW dig. We're going to go thru the video logs and see who was involved. Stupid bastards were so cocky they didn’t even think to shut off the cameras. A lot of the guilty ones are probably just laying low.

We got our people down into their dig, where they had the Staff members held captive. Bastards killed half of em and beat the others half to death. The Captain was the first one killed, and they just all went berserk on em. I want in the worst way to take a pike to whoever was in on the massacre. Probably better that I’m dinged up. I doubt I would be able to control my rage if I had a weapon. Best that I stay out of the infirmary for awhile.

Total Casualties - Our Side - 3 injured. Stan had a nasty shoulder bruise but the bone didn’t break. The kid next to Will got a broken knee cap, which hurts like hell. And one staff guy got a bad knife cut to his arm when they were turning the SW Corner and some girl rushed out at em. Their Side - 8 dead, 2 more not likely to make it thru the week, 23 severely wounded, 16 lightly wounded. 2 of the dead were trampled by their own people in the panic to escape. 3 more dead when you count the Ringleaders that tried to hide in the Cooling Pipe Array.

Of the 3 main ringleaders, Josh is under arrest, Paul was among the first to be killed outright, and Jake was one of the ones hiding in the pipes. Will came back just after the battle and had the air flow re-routed so it exhausted out the array they were taking cover in. Then the guys set fire to a bunch of cardboard and tried to smoke em out. I suppose you might say they used too much cardboard, because the air flow really got that fire hot, and they cooked those three. Good riddance I say.

Last but not least, that psycho bitch Emily. Word is that she grabbed one of the pikes and tried to pull it away. Not sure who’s pike she grabbed, but everyone says it was 667 that ran his spearpoint right into her eye. She'll live, dammit. She got my old bed in the infirmary. Doc says the eye socket shattered, if the spear had gone a centimeter deeper it would have pushed the bone splinters into the brain and killed her instantly.

Tomorrow we get to figure out what to do with the guilty, and how to dispose of the 30 or so bodies. The doctors will be working all night. I have to change my attitude about the Jocks now, from kill em all, back to keep as many alive as possible. That wont be easy.

All the adrenaline is worn off now. There’s a familiar sound of girls screaming from all corners of the shelter again. I think I saw Tiny throwing up. Lots of wailing from the wounded. Kinda hard to bask in this victory.

You just would not believe how much blood there was.

[Saxon Dog]

My Personal Journal
2nd Day of 2nd Year in Tunnel 3 Kansas

On advice from Mrs Martin the Shrink, Doc Wilson who says Im "tired from overdoing it" and Mr Cramer our Physics Instructor who's been bugging me for a year to do this... Im going to start keeping a diary too. I have to admit, this is the first time in a month I've been given any privacy. I doubt they'll leave me alone very long tho.

Mr Cramer says the best things to write about are the things that are annoying, since its hard to find anyone willing to listen to bitching. I think my list will be very long.

I want to bitch about the food, the lighting, the crowding, the assholes that tried to kill us, the assholes that didnt try to kill us, my classes, work, and my bunk. But I cant bitch about my bunk right now since thank gawd for once Im the only one in it.

Classes suck because theres either too much homework or they're boring or both. Physics is easy, and math. Lit is crappy, why do I have to take a class to read? I liked reading til they forced us to do it.

I'd almost rather work than take classes, but work sucks too. I hate digging most of all. Going outside is my favorite. I screwed up and got put in charge of Inventory after Mr Addimann got killed. If I wasnt good at it, I'd be going outside more and counting boxes less. Its nice to know how much of everything we have tho, I'd probably be bugging someone else for the numbers if it wasnt my job anyway.

Cant bitch about the lighting but I hate flourescent light now. Again, its better outside, even when its dark, and we use regular floodlights. Regular bulbs would make it too hot and the fans would have to work that much harder. We are lucky we have extra fans and cooling and plenty of cool groundwater. Shelters that dont are dying off every week and that makes bitching sort of irrelevant. Getting pretty used to hearing about people dying.

I guess what I really want to bitch about is people. Why did those bastards have to do that? Its been 6 months and I still have nightmares about it. Mrs Martin asks me about every week but if I talk to her they'll give me a pill and they can forget that. Theres no pill that can make things not have happened. It doesnt help that I still see all those people almost every day. Especially Emily. Every damn night I dream some variation of watching that spear go into her eye. Sometimes its in the fight, sometimes its outside and before the Heat. Sometimes its other people but really its her. Then I see her at breakfast wearing her black eye patch and I know she'd kill me if she could.

Screw it, I wasnt gonna write about that. I hate digging most of all, but we have most of the basement done anyway, cept for the Punishment Gangs have to keep digging til we come out of the shelter. Their life sucks more than ours, but they're lucky Mr Cramer didnt get put in charge after the Rebellion, or he'd have just shoved em outside. I wonder sometimes if we wouldnt have had a Rebellion if we hadnt dug all those tunnels. And we dont use em for that much anyway now cept for gardening and storage and keeping the Jock Ringleaders out of sight. We still did all the work of moving 1/2 the boxes down there just to get some extra space above. And I aint sure anything we can eat will grow down there anyway. All this dirts been under an aircraft factory since World War 2 anyway. Probably loaded with pollution and they wont tell us til the crops turn out rotten. Or even worse we'll have to eat it anyway.

I want to bitch about my name.

Everyone down here has a nickname now anyway so I shouldnt be so shitty about it but 667 isnt one I would have picked. Tiny has a cool name, everyone calls Stan "Red" and somehow Will got called "Castro" and it stuck. 667 doesnt flow off the tongue.

I want to bitch about being the last person into the shelter. I know I was lucky but it sucks. Its like everyone else was here before me and knows something I dont. I never met the person who left the shelter and made the opening for me. I guess they wanted to be with their family more than they wanted to live. Makes me think a lot about why they decided that, and I didnt even think of it til the Heat had already killed everyone outside. I dont think about my folks much.

AND ... I want to bitch about not getting enough sleep. If someone would have told me a year ago before we got put down here that my Biggest Gripe was going to be having too much sex I would never have believed them. And its my own damn fault.

5 months ago, right after the Trial but right before the Election (Mr Cramer was pissed that he lost but Mrs Ellyn is doing a good job) I figured out that we were going to run out of KETCHUP sometime in the middle of this year. So I told Mrs Cramer about it and I thought maybe they'd just cut us back or something. If I'd have just shut the hell up right then I might have been doing the smart thing. But I told the Morrison twins that I'd talked to Mrs Cramer about it, and Molly Morrison says "you're pretty smart, what should we do about it?" and I just blurted out the first stupid thing I thought of naturally. I said why dont you girls turn your upper bunks into little tomato gardens? They're right under the lights and the bunks are strong enough to hold them up.

Next thing you know, all the girls are sleeping two to a bed so they can grow stuff on the top bunk. They all put a heavy blanket up like a curtain around the bottom bunk for a little privacy but you can hear em giggling in there all the time so ya know they're fooling around. And it wasnt just a few of em it was ALL OF EM. After the stress of the Battle and the Trial and with the Election coming up nobody said anything about all our females (except the staff) all shacking up together but looking back it was like someone flipped a switch.

Nobody really said much about it, which I suppose sounds weird. A lot of the girls just paired up with their best friends or whoever was bunking above and some started hopping from bed to bed every week or even every night. And some of em didnt much care if they drew their curtain real tight. They'd give you quite an eyeful.

After about a month, I heard this weird giggling coming from the Morrison twins bunk ( they have the best looking tomatoes growing above their bunk by the way, they must have a green thumb). I dont know why but I just looked in without asking. They were in there going at it with Will. All I could think of right then was Oh Good they still want to do guys.

Now its been 4 months since the Girls Went Wild and they should be growing tomatoes in all the girls bunks cause they never use em anymore anyway. As soon as dinner is over 2 of em practically drag ya into the sack. And anymore you dont wake up with the same two you started with. I told Will that at this rate we'd go thru all the girls in about 6 months and it'd start to get boring. SO you know what he did? He wrote a program and calculated out how many THOUSANDS of different combinations of girls there are if they change girl-partners. I said it'd be a shame to split up the Morrison twins. They make it into my bunk about once a week now, which I hafta admit I really do look forward too.

The girls should be done eating any minute now. I really should be writing down who Im with every day. Make a spreadsheet or something to keep track.
Oops..duty calls its Janet S and Kathhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh