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

by Chris Philbrook

  They scouted that trip, ensured there were no blockages in the river, then scouted the roadways back to see what issues might be encountered if they called for help while they were landed at the airport. William and his crew found a few hotspots where the road was blocked by car wrecks or debris, but after we looked at the digital pictures they took, none of us thought it would be a problem to push the trash out of the way with the ladder truck to get there.

  They also reported something in the number approaching a hundred undead on the grounds of the airport, fenced in, and presumably unable to leave or be led away easily. That’s pretty good, actually. They said the fence was in very good shape, which means clearing the area around the fuel locations should be easier. They made note of one small engine plane crash at the end of a runway to the north. Shattered Cessna, or something to that effect. Likely a dead body or two in it, or roaming around from it.

  The plan is to go up with tier one shooters, clear the area they’re gonna land at, then put down. Rotors spinning, the bird empties of shooters, and they spend the first hour or so, as needed, defending their perimeter. If they get bum-rushed, they lift off, and we do some crowd control in the air, and reassess. Once (read: if) they get a big enough clearing, and feel adequately safe to move forward with the extraction, they’ll check the fuel source, and fill the bird as it sits. They’re mounting twin external fuel tanks on the side of William’s chopper, but leaving them empty. They’ve got a setup here that they can hop back and forth, filling there, emptying here on Reuben James and over on the chopper-less Crommelin until their ship-stores are full up. In an ideal situation they get the boat real close to the fuel, and they can do it all with hosing without ever landing. They’ve transferred thousands of gallons of fuel this way before, and they plan on doing it again tomorrow.

  All day today we scoured the peninsula for fuel canisters to fill. Not only for chopper fuel, but for diesel when we start heading north. I’m looking at you, fuel place across the bay. We found a grand total of thirty man-held canisters. Those were about five gallons each, and there are enough clean fifty-five gallon drums here to clear out whatever fuel they find at the airport. We strapped up ten of the barrels on the ladder truck in anticipation of making the refueling run on the ground. The roads are clear enough. I’m on the ladder truck/ambulance ground crew.

  So it’s secure the site, make fuel runs in the air for as long as we can, and if the fuel resources at the airport are big enough, call for the ground QRF to help move larger quantities faster. Two zodiacs with marines and sailors will be in the water, near the end of the bay for a very fast CSAR if need be.

  Fingers crossed that the airport’s stores of go-juice are still there, and still potent enough to keep Williams’ bird in the sky. The brainiacs aboard seem to think the fuel will be good to go, or treatable to be worth using. I keep thinking about Blake’s fuel cleaning contraption he built. Smart kid.

  William, Kate and crew take off at dawn, with all of us ready to go.

  Nothing else too weird has happened. Zombies being weirder than normal, but not many, and not too weird. Manageable weird by the fucked up standards we keep. Count those blessings on crossed fingers.

  Gonna crash. Otis is being cuddly but not obnoxious. I will continue to be his human for the time being, I pray he feels the same about me. I brought him to the planning sessions the last couple days, and he was the cat’s meow, pun intended. It’s fun to see people interact with my little Maine coon fuzzball.. He’s such a nice cat, unless you’re an asshole, then he’s the justice you deserve. Twenty pounds of claws and fury.

  My boy.

  Okay, I gotta sleep We’re up early, and if the day goes well, it’ll be a long one, and a physically exhausting one.

  We’re gonna pump gas, Mr. Journal, helicopter and fire truck style.

  -Adrian

  November 12th

  Man yesterday was something else. Working with a chopper just changes the scope of anything we do, Mr. Journal. They’re big, and loud, and project SUCH FORCE. It’s hard not to feel bulletproof when my brother is in the skies above me, or in a holding pattern, providing cover.

  Crazy day. I’m still tired, and it’s been hours and hours since, most of it filled with rest.

  William and Kate took off with a chopper filled with shooters plus crew that know how to pump fuel and test it for potency from Reuben James. He took Marines with him, and I requested that he bring up Kate as part of his flight crew, plus at least one of my good shooters so we could use the encrypted comms easier. William and Kate selected Kevin, and Mr. Whitten was happy to oblige. Felt weird to do all the other stuff yesterday without Kevin, but we managed.

  The bird went up, up and away with the rest of us sitting and watching, waiting for their word to do something. Worst case, they’d ask for help. Best case, they’d say all clear, and come get the gas. In the end, it was a mix of the two.

  They went up and away about a mile, heading north, and west to the airport’s location next to the River Adur. They flew pretty slow, scanning the ground level and the roads near the airport for clearance issues. Over the radio Kate let us know that the roads around the airport were clear of anything notable, and the land surrounding was also reasonably safe from large groups of the undead. They circled the airport several times, making noise and drawing out the monsters, which as I understand it, went well. After pulling the zombies to the far northern side of the runway, they shot back south, and landed about twenty yards from the helipad/refueling area for choppers.

  The shooters dismounted immediately, and took up firing positions to provide a perimeter, and to take down the fifty-odd zombies they’d roused. Long gun shooters with scopes went prone on their bellies and fired in rapid succession, popping skulls as fast as they could to thin the herd before it got close. Kevin wasn’t one of those guys, but Kevin with an M4A1 and an ACOG scope might as well be the fucking Grim Reaper if his targets are within 300 yards.

  He pulled side security, looking west I think he said, and when the undead got halfway across the grass of the airport field, he pivoted, and started sending rounds downrange. That made four shooters going a the herd, and with his help, they were able to get it down to about six or seven to deal with at close range. We had made the decision to eschew melee weapons. Situations like this were why we had ammo. No sense risking life and limb when the element of surprise has already been lost.

  The hearty mass of undead dealt with, they sat still, and kept their perimeter solid for thirty full minutes, doing nothing but waiting to see if more undead would come out from the woodwork.

  More did. Not a ton. I think the final estimate was fifty in the main body, plus another twenty squirters over the course of the next period.

  The whole time we could hear the gunshots, and the echoing, booming thunder of the rotors still spinning. Sound carries a real long ways when no one else in a city is making noise. It’s crazy. Every gunshot was anxiety made real. Every time we heard two shots in rapid succession, it got worse. Three shots was a crisis and four… well four was a prescription for Xanax.

  I need to reconnect with that Fish woman, the pharmacist. I bet she’s got the good stuff stashed away.

  So I’m just repeating what I was told by Kevin here, but once they were free and clear of obvious threats inside the airport fence, they jettisoned their refueling/chemistry sailor, and he went to the giant fuel tank set right near the helipads of the airport. He fiddle-farted with the controls, and after thirty minutes of colorful swearing, managed to pump about a gallon into a clear bucket. Had some light debris in it, but said it could be fixed for use within a few days. That was the good news. The bad news, was that the tank could originally hold around 12,000 gallons, but had a mere 2,000 gallons remaining.

  Buuuuut… that’s still 2,000 gallons of chopper fuel, and that’ll do us real nice for awhile. The bad news, is that it meant the chopper’s fuel tanks shouldn’t be used to transport the fuel, as cleaning out those tanks is
a real bitch, and we didn’t want any debris to get inside the fuel lines. It’s a switched-on tank system I think, but still. Why risk it when we’ve got a fire truck that has ten barrels taped to the side of it just a mile away.

  The bell rang, and the Chuck Wagon left the ranch. Fagan, myself, Crystal the mechanic and Hal were in the ladder truck, leading. Fagan drove. Great driver, and I am not kidding when I say that. He handled the Fat Boy like it was a pickup truck, and that’s no mean feat. Little Man, the ambulance (those names are now permanent, thank you wandering mind) was driven by Abby, with Joel, Sgt. Maple, and Sgt. Oak. Talk about a dream team. Two Army Rangers, an Air Force parajumper, and Abby.

  My money is on Abby. You can get real elite in this life, but you’ll never be like Abby.

  Fagan expertly drove us through our manufactured gate and into the wilds once more, turning inland north, then west on the other side of the port. We drove by the fuel center on the water’s edge, and having never driven this exact route before, we got a good look at the place. Heavily fenced off, and two of the smaller fuel tanks were very clearly ruptured by our shelling of the city before coming to the port. Fuel seemed to have spilled to the ground but didn’t caught fire, seemingly proving the idea that diesel doesn’t burn easily. That being said, it does add a whole new layer to the retrieval of vehicle fuel. Might be a toxic environment to move around in.

  Different problem for a different day.

  Fagan used the ladder truck as gingerly as he could, but there were clear spots where the road narrowed, or where a car accident caused a barrier. We got to use the steel armor and brush guard (read: RAM) on Fat Man. He’d call out, “Hold on to your ass!” And we’d grab the JC bars in the cab.

  I gotta say, I was impressed by how little the truck was affected by smashing into multi-ton vehicles. I expected to have to hold on solidly, but it felt more like we were running over zombies than smashing cars out of the way. We did that too. We ran over a fair share of undead on the way there. Even more on the way back.

  So yeah, west then north, through some suburban neighborhoods, around a big rotary, or roundabout, whatever you wanna call it. We knew the approximate route to get into the airport grounds, but when you pull onto the street and then have to figure it out, it gets a little complicated.

  We knew there were a lot of cars in the street and parking lot. I chalk it up to people trying to flee, and heading to the airport to get on planes, or fleeing helicopters. All manner of vehicles were crashed into the area near the airport’s entry, and along the road nearby. Getting past all that was pointless, and when William flew over the airport, he saw a clear path to the far west, heading around a distant hangar. We’d have to smash a fence to get to the secured area of the airfield, but once through, it should be clean living.

  The fence was a sturdy one, and tall. Ten foot chain link with concertina wire at the top. We rammed the bitch down, and stopped on the other side of it to drag it out of the way. Didn’t want our freshly repaired ambulance blowing tires. Once that was finished, Little Boy and crew posted up in the hole in the broken fence to plug it, and we drove all the way into the airport, pulling right up beside the chopper and the crew surrounding the fuel storage area.

  It was like a Drowning Pool song in there. Corpses spread out over two hundred yards, but they weren’t moving corpses, and that was a win. We got right to it.

  Fuel guy (I didn’t get his name) dragged the fuel hose over to the ladder truck and climbed right up like he’d done a hundred times. He unscrewed the caps and coordinated with one of the Marines who clearly knew what he was doing. I pulled security and checked in with everyone as they searched bodies for weapons or useful shit. Nothing good came of it.

  Fuel Guy climbed around like a fucking ninja, running the pipe to all ten barrels one after another, capping them as he finished. I asked him to fill the small containers too, but he said it wasn’t worth the time. Take him twenty minutes to do it, and we could be back and unloading and wind up coming out ahead. So that was about 550 gallons pumped in about thirty minutes.

  Fat Man reloaded, and we exited the airport grounds the same way we entered, but this time with the ambulance in the lead. When our two-vehicle convoy departed, the Marines shifted over to provide security at the hole in the gate. The airfield was safe enough, after all. Just had to watch the very distant fences for large mobs gathering.

  You remember that scene in the classic Dawn of the Dead flick, where Roger and Stephen are getting the box trucks from a nearby shipping company to block off the mall entrances? It turns into this montage of them hitting zombies with the trucks, and getting in, and getting out? This felt exactly like that, but with fire trucks and helicopter fuel. We drove back to the port, and saddled right up to the side of the pier where Reuben James was. Sailors there drained the barrels on the side of the truck into containers for immediate and future treatment in about thirty minutes, and we were back on the road to refill at the airport.

  Four trips went like this before we ran the place dry. The early estimate of 2,000 gallons was high. The end amount was closer to 1,800 gallons, which is still a massive improvement from what we had. Gives us the ability to fly a few support sorties without losing endless sleep over it.

  Speaking of endless sleep, with each trip we made back and forth, the streets became progressively more filled with the undead. Filled isn’t the right word, but the quantity of undead grew with each run. The first run out we hit or passed let’s say… ten undead total. Of that number half lost their game of Frogger with our truck. Second run we saw fifteen, taking out half again, third run thirty, taking out half again, and the final run back we dealt with at least fifty, if not sixty or seventy.

  Rather than leave any amount of undead roaming, on the last trip we slowed it down, and took care of business. Fagan used the truck to run over as many as possible, and the rest of us leaned out of the windows to take our shots. Hal, hero of the day and general badass, sat up top on the actual folded ladder, legs locked into the rungs so he could have an elevated shooting position. Calm as a cucumber, he scanned left and right, taking slow, well-aimed shots every minute or so. I hung my whole upper body out the doors on more than one occasion to brain a zombie that got caught on the armored barricades that are welded to the side of the rig. Satisfying Mad Max moment. Felt good. Just need face paint and leather now to really kick the fantasy into second gear.

  By the time William’s chopper landed on the ground near the pier, down in a warehouse parking lot we’d turned into our off-ship helipad, the fuel nerds had filtered half of what we’d brought. Rosario stood on the pier, watching it all go down, helping where she could. She was elated. Just over the moon that our first mission as a collective went without any incidents. Well, not entirely, One of our boys picked up a sprained ankle on the airfield when he tried to move some of the fencing we knocked down. He was brought back to the chopper and sat in the open door, still working on watching a zone to protect his buddies.

  We traded one sprained ankle, maybe a thousand rounds of ammo and a full gas tank on both of the vehicles for almost 2,000 gallons of chopper fuel. I’ll take that trade ten more times, thank you. I don’t think there are ten more airports for us to hit though, and the fuel nerds are pretty sure that any fuel we’re salvaging moving forward is going to require filtering at a minimum to remove sediment and impurities. Further chemical treatment will be needed more than likely too. We have a lot of those treatment chemicals, or the ability to process, whatever that means, but the point remains. Refilling the chopper without cleaning the fuel first is a certain guarantee to down the bird with a clogged fuel line.

  But, we’ll handle that soon enough.

  When we left the airport, we barricaded the hole in the fence with whatever we could find to block it off. We tied ropes in ten lines across the gap, and stacked pallets amongst other shit. Empty drums, you name it. If that simple barricade holds, and it should if no dumbass wanders onto the airfield to draw in the und
ead, making the rest of the entire airport complex safe to occupy, and then turning the airport in a usable space will be fairly simple work. Clearing buildings, mostly. It’ll also give us the chance to fix and/or repair the planes there, the helicopters there, and supply us with many spare parts and machinery to make this whole mission that much easier. Two for one on value. It’s a lot of real estate to clear, but it’s well protected, and we can house a lot of people in there, and turn all that grass into secure, proper fields to grow food.

  And you best believe we brought seeds.

  Our next task ensuring all the fuel we got is good to go, then as a team is hitting that fuel company across the bay. It’s close, it’s got a ton of ground-level storage tanks for us to check on, and potentially thousands and thousands of gallons of fuels usable for one purpose or another.

  Need a few days before we spin up and check on that. We can do that recon and secure mission in a different way, I think. The fuel yard is on the water’s edge, with plenty of space to anchor large ass boats to. Part of the benefit of this to us, is that we can refill the boats in our fleet as well.

  I’ll sweat those logistics in a few days. Getting way ahead of myself here. I’m so excited about this. We got a bucket load of chopper fuel easily, are in the clear for pressing forward on ground fuel, have a great base of operations, and as long as I stop talking now, the Jinx Fairy ain’t got shit on us.

  I’ll check in soon. Gonna ride this high after I shoot a message over the radio to Mata. I’m sure all the shooting was unnerving for them. The airport isn’t that far from their farm, really.

  -Adrian