Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land Read Online Free Page A

second best for most people is to wake up to the smell of delicious food.

That's how my morning started. At first I thought Jess had gotten up early to make something for us to eat--not a common occurrence around our house, given that both of us are always busy and working on projects. No, when the smell of eggs and the sound of sizzling bacon hit me, the first thing I did was flop an arm over to the side, expecting to hit empty bed.

I said I was sorry like a dozen times, but wives tend to get miffed when you drop your arm across their sleeping faces, even if it's an accident.

Curious, I got out of bed and threw on some pajama bottoms to go see who was in my house. No, I wasn't worried that the zombies had somehow breached our defenses and come inside to make breakfast. I WISH that were the case--any zombie that would cook for me would be one I'd think hard about keeping around. Nor was I worried that someone had broken in--there were about a dozen people that had free reign to come and go in my house at all hours. Lots of us have that policy.

What did I discover when I made my way into the kitchen? Patrick and his three girls, making breakfast for all of us. The fact that there was fresh bread, eggs, and bacon made me wonder just what was going on. Eggs weren't that uncommon, but I hadn't had bacon in a while.

As it turns out, Pat was giving the girls a lesson. He and I have talked a lot the last few days about the ideas behind yesterday's post, that being the sharing of all skills and knowledge among as many people as possible. While I ate breakfast this morning, he explained to me what his plan was.

The girls had all managed to cultivate good skills with firearms during the time they and Pat were on the run, especially while they were locked up in that abandoned militia fortress. He's proud as hell that the girls have been able to build a decent sense of judgment about danger and how to respond to it, but he's discouraged by their lack of pretty much any other skills. Add to that the deep emotional trauma they've been dealt and you have a recipe for shut-ins who won't socialize with anyone.

So he's having them do chores and duties wherever he can find them. The eggs were collected by the girls early this morning out at the farm, during a lesson on how to care for chickens, which included a lot of details about the species. I can see Aaron's touch there--he and a trusted group of people are trying to talk to everyone who can teach skills, explaining his view of the learning process. He calls is holistic education. As I've said in posts about Aaron before, he (and I) believe that the best way to teach people about a subject is to give them every possible angle on it.

So while they were collecting eggs and feeding the chickens, Pat's girls learned about the history of the domesticated chicken. They learned about chicken physiology. Common illnesses and how to spot them. What foods work best to make the best tasting chicken. If there's a thing that a farmer knows about those little cluckers, the girls had to hear at least a bit of it.

The crazy thing? The girls seemed to like it. Sure, Pat had to go with them to keep them calm, but it was more social interaction than I've seen them have since they've been here. Pat says they seemed like kids again, talking about how cute the chickens were, yet they didn't bat an eye when the farmer that was teaching them took one to demonstrate the best way to kill it. That's a reality everyone who learns out on the farms is going to have to deal with--once in a while, you'll have to kill an animal. For little girls, I really thought that would be a sticking point, knowing they would have to do it to keep the population down to a manageable number, but nope. No problem.

It didn't bother them to watch one of the hogs get slaughtered, either. In fact, they were such good students that their teacher gave them a small package of bacon to bring home along with the eggs, and a loaf of