Dead Cities: Adrian's March. Part Four (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 12)

by Chris Philbrook

  Rachel-thing put its thin, dainty feet on the cool wooden floor of the flat in the dark of the silent summer night. The wood creaked as it tested the functionality of the feet it had never used before. They seemed sturdy, and it stood her body up with a forced grace no different than how the elderly must move as their bodies fail. That wouldn’t do either. It would need practice.

  The demon inside Rachel feared nothing beyond being revealed too soon. Too soon and it would have a much harder time infiltrating, manipulating, and corrupting. It could not wither the grapes on the vine at a distance; it had to be within the vines themselves.

  The Rachel-thing walked on the balls of her feet out of the silent bedroom, padding down the now black hall, and into the living room of the expansive city flat. While useless for the world, the two humans had found a good place to hide, and the Rachel-thing expressed some emotional appreciation for the nicer furniture, pleasant décor, and the views of the city below.

  The Rachel creature went to the same large window that Michael had watched the streets below through, and came to a stop at the second-story frame. It rested her hands on the sill and stood. On the other side of the glass, as still as the statues of long-dead murderers that littered the courtyards and plazas of human governments sat a spotted cat. White, with black patches uniformly arranged on its face, neck and paws, the tiny beast perked up when the Rachel-creature arrived. Delighted at the opportunity to touch the animal, the Rachel-demon undid the window lock, and lifted the old lower pane with deliberate motions.

  The cat stood and its tail perked straight up to a vertical flagstaff. It swished back and forth, and a calming, sonorous humming started to vibrate from its throat. It seemed unafraid of the height it dared to fall.

  “This sound is called purring,” the Rachel-demon said to it before reaching out with a slow hand. “It’s such a pleasant noise.”

  The cat leaned its head into her hand, and pressed into the borrowed palm. The fur felt magnificent to the monster; natural, and soft beyond any words it had ever had to use in its short lifetime. The thing curled Rachel’s fingers and began to scratch at the cat’s eager head. Both animals—all three, counting the distant, hidden Rachel—felt a release of pleasure from the interaction. The monster kept at it, scratching and stroking the black and white cat over and over, over and over in all different ways, trying to find the best stroke to please the happy feline.

  “What’s your name?”

  The cat didn’t reply; couldn’t reply, even though physiologically it was one of the closest animals to speech on the planet. Maybe they would be chosen for ascension when the humans and all they wrought was no more than sand. The monster nodded, accepting the silence.

  “That’s okay. Not all creatures have a name. I don’t have one, really,” it mused. “I am not born of this meat. I live within it, and feed off its guilt, and self-hate. I am now a piece of her, but we are now two; fractured pieces of what was once whole. We are Rachel, or… were Rachel,” the thing said, using different aspects of Rachel’s throat and mouth to alter the sound of her voice, to experiment in finding its own, should it need to speak and be heard as what it was, not what it had to pretend it was. “I should name myself. She has an identity to others. I should also.” The monster went back to petting the cat, thinking about who it wanted to be, and how it wanted to be known.

  This went on for some time. Long enough that the sun’s approach threatened the edge of the world that hid behind the nearby buildings, turning the sky in the east a deep blue hue.

  “Little cat,” the demon said with Rachel’s face, “it has been very nice patting you, but I must return to bed. There are appearances to keep. Ruses to maintain.”

  The cat sat on the high sill as if in defeat.

  “Yes. It is disappointing, I know. You should leave now. Maybe you can follow me? I am heading south to the family of this meat. I’m going to end them. We could do it together. Cats have a history of being near death.”

  The cat meowed in distress, but bonked its head into the hand of the Rachel creature.

  “You’re safe,” it assured the cat. “I am not here to kill the animals; you’re quite pure. Operating as intended. It’s these humans that have to go, you see. And as long as I have control over little Rachel, there’s so little that they can do to stop what must be done.”

  The cat meowed once more.

  The monster leaned out the window, past the sitting cat to look down into the streets below.

  Arranged as thick as cornstalks in a field were a thousand undead. Warriors conscripted into the ranks of the damned. They stood still; swaying in the dead breeze as their master and commander preened on a cat in a window above. They were emotionless; unaware of the situation, yet compelled and transfixed like the moths that gather to the lights they cannot touch, or consume.

  “Be gone,” it whispered to the Dead city’s inhabitants. “Ride in my wake, and as my crest. Keep this meat safe from those who would not listen, and those still alive who would seek to take advantage of my vehicle. Be unseen. Be gone.”

  They turned, and shuffled north and south to do the thing’s bidding.

  “Wait…” the monster said, and the damned below froze. Some turned to look at Rachel’s body as it spoke. “I am two entwined, one to be followed, and one to be carried. I am, and this voice shall be known as… Mara.”

  The monsters standing in the streets of south London did nothing with this revelation, and after waiting several seconds for… nothing, they shifted back into the directions they had been heading.

  Mara patted the cat one more time on the head, and relished the sensation before shutting the window.

  Now, in firm control of the body she had usurped from the diminished and dominated Rachel, Mara would sleep next to Michael, and then lead him south to Croydon, where Rachel’s parents hopefully lived in hiding. It would torture them, spill their souls into endless oblivion and then find new ways to corrupt humanity so as to turn them against one another. All while wearing the face of their precious, beloved Rachel; their precious little lamb.

  You see, it wasn’t enough to murder them all; given time the soft-skinned, two-legged herd of sheep would all die out if things were left to simmer, and then catch fire to burn. It—Mara—had to corrupt, and ruin them, forever proving that humanity was as lost at sea as their creator suspected.

  The monster had to ruin their slim chance at redemption by making them irredeemable.

  Mara sighed in the meat’s voice, then laughed softly in the meat’s voice, and made her way back to the dark hall that led to the less dark room the bed lay in.

  Mara sighed, before hissing a soft laugh in the meat’s voice as it made its way back to the darkened room. It cast a glance over the sleeping form of the man, unaware of the darkness lurking within the meat it loved so dearly.

  “So trusting. So blind.“

  Mara crawled into bed, and shut her body down to sleep a moment after she shut Rachel’s eyes.

  Tomorrow would be tiring. They had a lot of walking to do.

  Mara had tragedy to orchestrate.

  September 17th

  I’m not sure where to begin on this, so I’m just gonna start at what I think is the beginning, and we’ll take it from there. Forgive my description of geography. After-action reports are not my strong suit unless I have a map to draw on with a crayon. Several crayons, preferably. I muscle down on those sumbitches with my mitts when I draw, and break ‘em.

  Need a whole box just to write my damn name.

  Two roads come down our peninsular from where it connects to the mainland. The road on the left (inland near the harbor) goes to the traffic circle inside our gate, where it splits into two and goes deep into our territory. The right hand side road outside our gate (shore side) is a dead end that terminates right at our newly-built wall of shipping containers. On the shore, right at the sand heading down to the water’s edge there is a long straight row of connected businesses. Storefront, a night
club, etc. No alleys between buildings, just one long wall of shops. Street sign calls it the western Esplanade.

  Left side road (our main entrance road), has a sign on it naming it Basin Road. That’s our main street. We went to the end of Basin Road, where it makes an abrupt left hand turn to head inland. That means we have two roads, with businesses to the right, businesses in the middle between the two, then businesses on the left. Both outer perimeter edges are water. Sand on the southern right approach, wharf/pier on the left. That’s our hard, safe edge. The zombies can’t climb up and out of the water.

  Basin Road has warehouses on the right; metal and brick structures with lots of garage doors for loading and unloading freight. Ground level doors. Lots of them, most shut. The right side buildings are RIGHT UP ON THE STREET. Like, no sidewalk to speak of.

  Left hand side warehouse is behind a thick iron fence that’s been painted blue. Runs the whole length of the street all the way to the end, which cuts our clearing area outside our gate into two parts. Everything on one side of that fence (left, inland, north, near harbor), and everything NOT on the other side of that fence (right, south, shore-side).

  We discovered all of that after our first half hour of hoofing it around and getting the lay of the land. Remember, Mr. Journal; there’s no Google Earth kicking around, and we have shit for local maps. William and his flight nerds drew some maps, and made some pretty detailed notes from their time in the air, which have been helpful with letting us know where accidents, or road damage are. But, it’s an incomplete picture, and we gotta do things on foot, half-blind at best, until we can get some local roadmaps from gas stations, or glove boxes, or office desks, or whatever they call those things here. Fanny. Boot. Whatever.

  We had six shooters up on the top of our shipping container stacks at the gate. I had them under Joel, who was our spotter, and primary eye in the sky. Should something go south on us, he would also be nearby to drop down two levels and provide us medical care inside the gate. Our guys did struggle with the sun all morning, as the only positions they could get looked straight into the sunrise, but it passed quickly, and we had no threats early anyway.

  Inside the gate, as a QRF force I had six more marines. As luck would have it, the guy named Antonio was available, who I have subsequently identified as Sgt. Antonio Botelho, and after his time with me when we took the port in the rain, I had a good feeling about making sure he was in charge.

  Kevin, Hal, Abby, Fagan and myself departed stage right out the steel gates after we poked three or four undead in the face with the steel spears we’re keeping there. It’s an easy bottleneck, as long as our gate security team removes the bodies to burn them. They’ll stack up big time if we don’t. Luckily, when it’s quiet, they’re retrieving bodies, and disposing of them.

  Fires haven’t stopped burning until yesterday.

  We ran as fast as we could around the parked trucks and cars, most with flat tires, some crashed into the walls or fences with dead folks behind the wheel. One or two undead folks, still strapped in with their seatbelts. We stopped and did them in as we passed them. No sense leaving a known threat behind you, even if it’s tied up.

  We also shut every garage door we found open. Took a few minutes to find the release cords or switches, but we dropped them down to about knee height, and then propped them open with shit we found lying around. Tires, broken off bumpers, and in one case, Abby’s halligan.

  It was smart of us to do that, but more on that later.

  We ran to the end of the street, stopping only to do those things. No gunfire, melee weapons only to finish off the undead in the cars, or disabled ones we hadn’t been able to shoot days before on the street. At the end of the street were more businesses, all still surrounded by either one big continuous steel fence, or separate iron fences that abutted, creating a single solid wall.

  I’m not talking about chain link, Mr. Journal. These fences are strong enough to stop a car hitting them. Iron vertical bars as thick as my fucking middle finger, bonded top and bottom and cemented into the ground. Best fences we could’ve hoped for, even if they’re only six to eight feet tall.

  The inland water area I saw? It was on the other side of a giant hedge wall, which I hacked a window through using Hal’s machete. Big manmade pool, and on the shore of it, I saw several small, model sized boats. I think it was a place people sailed model boats. I also saw a sign that labeled that area beyond as the Western Lawns, so there’s that if you needed to know it.

  Okay, so the road opens up left to the mainland (taller buildings and apartments visible at the end of that road, running parallel to our peninsula) and to the right is the road that leads to the Western Esplanade, and to a road that heads along the shoreline, which we don’t care about right yet.

  Businesses there had fences as well, and the coast was clear (literally, you see; we are like, a hundred feet from the coast, lol) so we rushed to the side and swung the gate on the corner shut. There was a chain to tie off, but that left the entrance pretty wide open to a barely clever zombie. Hal and Kevin went into the parking lot of the business (fishmonger, I think) and found a car they could put into neutral and push over to block the entrance.

  They pushed a small cargo van over. A weird, non-American Ford model as I recall. No markings on the side. They got it lengthwise, blocking off the gate and leaving no space to get around, and we were able to secure the fence to the side of that van using zip ties initially, then a pair of handcuffs, which we’ve decided to carry a few pairs that we liberated from Reuben James’ brig, just in case.

  Handcuffs make for great padlocks, and the keys are universal, so anyone with a key can undo one, and they’re fucking handcuffs. We can secure someone’s hands if we run into a sketchball, or we can cuff ‘em and have kinky sex with them, whichever happens first. Then second.

  So that gate sealed from the inside using brute force and dedicated ignorance, we now had the inner track against the wharf/pier side isolated from the mainland, building interiors included. That could now be cleared at our leisure with snipers in over watch, and that became our plan. I had our squad backtrack on foot all the way back to the building closest to our gate so we could clear it.

  Lobster crates. Blue metal warehouse building filled to the fucking brim with lobster crates. Well, I think lobster. I’m no fisherman, or crabber, or whatever the fuck uses the crates they had there, but the traps were used to catch shit that crawls on the seafloor. Bet these fuckers could scoop up a few chicks I dated way back when. That, I deduce. Two buildings, both still open on the side opposite the street, and both open floor plans with a few offices, snack rooms, and shitters. Nothing complex or even remotely challenging to clear. Fagan watched our ass as the other four of us did the clearing, and he called out a few stragglers coming out of either trucks parked in the back, or open doors down the wharf where zombies had wandered into, or where people had died inside.

  It’s not as simple pulling guard like that as it used to. These fuckers MOVE. They see a person to kill, and they take off at a jog at you. If you’re gonna take ‘em down, you gotta make a decision fast, and act on it. He did great. Called out the threat over the radio correctly, (usually with a ‘homie,’ or ‘bro’ added in, but that’s his way) and got a shooter’s eyes on it fast. In one case, when we couldn’t respond fast enough, he brained a dude with his halligan, and called out clear.

  Hardcore Fagan Style. No jelly dongs, but the bidness was conducted, if you know what I mean.

  Our six shooters stationed above and quite nearby took out I think eight zombies while we were searching and looting the first few warehouses, Fagan did one himself, and both Abby and Hal popped a skull with suppressed weapons.

  We did good work, did it quieter than I thought we would be able to manage, and we did get our hands on some maps, and generic office/warehouse furniture and equipment. There was no food, some fuel we left in place, small amounts of medicine, but not much that we felt the immediate need to take. There
just wasn’t much stuff.

  Few dead bodies, few undead bodies, etc.

  I elected to have our security cordon push outward to defend the inner section we cleared over the course of the day. We had strong fences, and the only soft spot was the gate we swung shut and parked a van in front of, but let’s be real here: my line of defense for a real long time at ALPA was two vans parked diagonally on a bridge with no guards, or even a fucking flashlight nearby.

  I asked for three shooters, one on a nearby rooftop and two on the ground to guard that access point, and two more guards to walk the fence/wharf perimeter (which was overkill) with orders to fall back immediately if any sizeable population of undead moved close. It’s been about six hours since I came into the cabin here (Otis less sketchy than recently, of late) and there have been no calls for help or even signs of trouble.

  Huge chunk of territory captured today, and done so safely. Damn near boring, I’d say.

  No haul of goodies, but if anything, it was a great practice run for us as we extend our perimeter deeper into the city, creating a safer zone for us to move about, and perhaps meet locals, and find the members of the Trinity we came here to find.

  Shit. Traffic at the far van gate. Living.

  Later.

  -Adrian

  September 19th

  Today would’ve been Cassie’s birthday.

  Just throwing that out there like a brick at a birthday cake.

  I’m so fucking tired. Sleep remains fleeting, and no matter how tired I am when I put head to pillow, getting any kind of meaningful rest after that is dicey at best. Visions of the dead do me wrong, Mr. Journal.

  Sigh.

  The plot thickened, as I’m sure you’ve surmised by this point in the entry. I’m still writing, which should lead you to believe that our encounter at the gate wasn’t fatal for me, though dying hasn’t stopped a lot of people from doing a lot shit lately, so maybe that’s not the conclusion most apparent.