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

by Chris Philbrook

  Inland, the fuel tanks are on a lower level, at the water’s edge. The closest street is about thirty feet higher up on a sloped hill with a guardrail at the top, plus a sturdy steel fence at the bottom. We’re gonna park at the higher level to have eyes on the suburbs above, and can look down the hill to respond if the undead or living attackers somehow get past us, or if Jaws appears in the fucking water.

  This will be a VERY lengthy operation. Hours and hours and hours.

  I know I don’t talk about them much at all, but our fleet is actually five boats. Two frigates, two destroyers, and a Navy supply ship. I NEVER talk about anything beyond Reuben James and Crommelin. Not sure why. I see dudes from those boats daily on the port, and they’re critical. Maybe it’s because they’re skeleton crews, and used mostly for storage. The two destroyers have their own Seahawks, but only one bird is operational. The rest are being used for spare parts, and the one that can fly, never does unless absolutely necessary. We won’t fire it up until we head deep inland, which we’ll start planning if the fuel run is a success. The thing is like the crazy uncle no one talks about until he’s needed to move furniture.

  Anyway, the mission will take a real long time because our first priority is to refuel the ships. They are home no matter what happens, and if we keep them operational, we have safety, water, and mobility. Top off the supply ship, which refuels the whole fleet, then refuel the entire fleet independently at the shore. That means moving the boats one by one in a careful aquatic ballet across the bay. That process should be safe, but slow. Minimal exposure to ground threats, and as far as I know, there are no kraken to worry about. The harder part will be transferring the diesel we find to the barrels on the ladder truck, and the fuel storage containers we have. That will require us dropping a vehicle in the guard and going down to the lower level at the bottom of the berm, basically.

  We’ll sort it out. It’s a solid spot to get it all done, and the sailors are pretty sure the damage to the fuel containers won’t be too dangerous, and can be worked around, especially with the safety gear they have.

  I’m nervous, but confident. Any operation of this scope is scary, even without zombies, and this obviously has a lot going on, making it quite a bit more treacherous. Lock and load, as the kids say.

  We’re going out tomorrow morning, on the 19th.

  Wish us luck.

  -Adrian

  Sanctuary

  Brixton, south of London, October 2011

  Rachel and Mike remained in the apartment longer than they anticipated. Rachel had a sudden eruption of confidence around searching the other flats in the building, and the general amount of undead in the neighborhood did seem to be sparse in the following days and weeks. They had a good, safe spot, and decided to relax a bit.

  Michael was elated for the opportunity to be safe, and spend time with the younger lady he’d fallen in love with. He was doubly-elated when she returned his affection tenfold.

  At the beginning of their terrifying journey, they were a burgeoning thing; their relationship a bit of a lark, just another May-December thing driven together out of desperation, and a nagging, hungry need to feel some kind of connection to another human being that didn’t revolve around what they needed to do together to find their next meal.

  Mike felt they both knew it wouldn’t last, but it was pretty fun for the time being. Rachel was a stunning catch: average in height, but with dark, lush hair that betrayed any attempts at keeping away from her brow, deep, equally dark eyes, and porcelain skin that even when dirty, looked a painting. Her smile was infectious in the extreme, and behind all of that superficial wealth of her appearance… she was smart. Far smarter than she let anyone believe, and funnier than most stand-up performers.

  To think that she would chose him, over the macho, cover of Fitness Magazine military types at their former sanctuary of Buckingham Palace was as electrifying a thought as any he’d had. Surviving the end of the country, and likely the world was a potent rush(if you could ignore the crushing guilt of the same), but to hold the hand of a woman so powerful, and bold… now that was something that made a man.

  That intoxication was enough to drown out the reality that their precious time together was fleeting.

  So they stayed in the flat, and watched a black and white cat bounce around from window to window and balcony to balcony outside. When they offered to let it in, the furry creature declined, staying inside on the window sill, observing them with soft, almond eyes. They named the cat Jafo.

  Just Another Fucking Observer.

  They checked on a different apartment each morning, and they’d been five for five finding flats without zeds in them. Rachel had a sixth sense for it. As a result, they ate and drank with relative excess, and found several changes of clothing and boots for the cold months that were ahead.

  That they were even thinking of the cold weather was a shining example of the optimism they had.

  Eventually, after long days of reading books, and nights of looting, and fun sex, they both realized they had to move on. So, on a chilly November evening, they packed up appropriate supplies, simple melee weapons, and the two pistols plus the rifle that they grabbed as they fled the palace.

  They would head south to Croydon, where Rachel’s family lived, in the hopes they could reunite.

  “You are an observer,” the thing inside Rachel that called itself Mara whispered to the spotted cat as it lay in her lap. The creature and animal sat on the couch, relaxing in the blackest hours of the autumn night. The flat had grown chilly in the days prior, but they were able to keep a small fire going in the fireplace using the wood they’d salvaged after wrecking some unfinished furniture in an apartment down the hall. The small fire was obscured from the window by a blanket over a table. Michael feared the light would draw in the dead, as did Rachel.

  Mara didn’t share that worry.

  The demon and cat enjoyed several minutes together, the silence only bothered by the rumbling purr of the tiny, happy creature.

  “Will you follow us? All of us?”

  The cat purred.

  “Keep your secrets then,” Mara said with a smile. “But we’re going to head south to Croydon to the meat’s home, so I can pollute the living that are flesh kin to the meat. We shouldn’t be hard to follow. We will make plenty of mess as we go.”

  Mara returned to patting the head of the serene kitty for several minutes before speaking again.

  “Mess is an important word, isn’t it? We should make a mess as we go, to stir the nightmare, and bring more ruin to the humans. It should be child’s play to spend a few hours here, and there to cause strife. The greater good, after all. It seems selfish to focus so narrow-mindedly on family in a time like this.”

  Mara chuckled with Rachel’s face, and went back to showering the cat with affection. She enjoyed their time together for the better part of an hour before retiring to the bedroom where Michael snored away, entirely unaware that his girlfriend had been taken over by an evil entity within to go spend time with a cat.

  Mara slipped into the sheets and blanket beside Michael, and sank down into the recesses of Rachel, wrapping itself around her guilt, shame, and weakness. She stroked that place as she did the cat, and kept the woman she had control over in check for another day.

  In the cold morning after they got ready to leave, the two exited the rear of the apartment building through a window that deposited them behind a dumpster. From there it was cat’s work to slink down the side of the building to the rear alleyways and gardens.

  The going was equal parts heist movie (silent tip-toeing, eyes darting to and fro, spotting zombies and their movement as they moved from corner to corner, cover to cover) and equal parts rugged Crossfit workout (leaping, climbing, dropping to the ground to slide under obstacles, or under bushes that gave them a safe passage). The treacherous journey was painfully slow, and draining in the extreme, even for the two healthy, light-traveling survivors.

  Three hours in, they
’d only traveled perhaps two thirds of a mile south in the London suburb of Brixton. They took shelter in the back of an abandoned limousine, and ate candy bars as they watched oblivious undead shuffle by, their blank eyes staring at the too-dark glass. It seemed as if the undead might suspect the limo had a secret within, but they knew not how to divine its solution. It would’ve been funny, were it not for the gripping terror that one of them might figure out how to pick up a rock and smash the glass. If the monsters could get inside the Palace, they had every ability to get inside the parked car.

  But they didn’t. Each walked by, strange, sad—gory without a doubt—but ultimately of no threat beyod leaving streaks of thick, old blood on the windows. When the last of them seemed to have left their vicinity, Rachel and Michael returned to their slow, arduous journey through the abandoned ruins of suburban southern Brixton.

  Two hours later a spent Rachel stopped and leaned up against a fence in the back parking area of a brick business. The chain link fence creaked and bowed as she put her weight against it. Only a few cars dotted the ten-car lot, spread out and covered with the debris of time.

  “We have to keep going,” Michael said, shifting the weight of the rifle hanging on its sling to the other shoulder. “We’ve got to find shelter and there are some open spaces ahead. Maybe we should backtrack? We saw that basement shop with the back entrance back there, yeah? Slip down in with some torches and pull the door shut. Can’t be much danger down there. What’s your sixth sense say?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said, wiping sweat from her brow. “Why am I sweating so much? It’s cool today.”

  “You’re exhausted,” Michael said, putting a hand on her arm and searching their vicinity for encroaching undead. “Hell I am too. Let’s go back, and get some food and water into us.”

  Rachel lifted her eyes and looked at the back of the business they were behind. She looked at the loading dock, the dumpster, the dead body at the corner, exploded from rot and bloat, no more than dried meat and bones that used to carry someone’s dreams around. She stared at the body, and then the doors, and as she did a sudden thought intruded.

  “That’s a convenience store. And that car there is sideways at the back door. I think someone parked the car there expressly to block that exit. Look at the doorframe near the handle. It’s been pried open. That’s an exit that someone used to get in. If we go around and look at the front, I bet we’ll find the front door barricaded. People are inside there.”

  “Still? After all this time?”

  “I think so. Call me daft, but yeah. Someone is in there.”

  “Um… okay,” Michael said back to her. “Is this a gut feel you’ve got? Because I’m a bit tetchy about trying to into a damned business that might have paranoid survivors running low on food inside it.”

  “We’ll move the car, and knock on that steel door polite-like. There’s no way they’ll mistake us for zeds.”

  “I’m more worried they’ll think we are trying to steal what’s left of their food, or take over their safe place.”

  She blinked several times, almost as if Michael’s message to her had to buffer before loading in her brain. He felt a slow rise of concern for her, but she snapped out of it.

  “Trust me,” she said, more confidently than usual. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. Help me move this car out of the way, and we’ll knock on the door. Might be a little tense for a bit, but I think they’ll come around.”

  “I trust your gut. Not sure why I do, but I’m game to try a knock. We can always run, and if I tell them I’m a doctor, they’re bound to let us in. I’ve enough medicines to treat a fair bit to help good people out.”

  She smiled that smile. “Let’s do it then.”

  “Let me hide the rifle out here,” Michael said first. “No need to show it to them, and we’ll still have a pistol each.”

  Michael hid the rifle in the boot of an unlocked Fiat in the parking lot. He stashed their three remaining magazines in the glove box of the same car. No sense risking the loss of both if someone were to pass by and somehow realize something had been put in the trunk.

  They got the small sedan blocking the door into neutral, and after some exasperated grunts and groans, they cut the stiff-turning wheel and managed to push it out of the way of the back door. Rachel braked the car and yanked the emergency brake up to park it.

  “Are you knocking, or am I?”

  “I will,” Rachel said with confidence.

  She trotted up to the back door on the long brick building that ran parallel to the main artery on the other side. Where they were, behind the lengthy row of buildings with flats above it they could easily forget that a major city roadway spanned miles and miles just a few dozen yards away. They had shadowed the artery the whole trip, and only laid eyes on it sparingly. The storefronts they had passed by might’ve offered them a treasure trove of loot, but the risk in entering the business, and exposing themselves to an open street was too much.

  Rachel climbed the three wobbly concrete steps to the employee entrance of the store, and rapped her knuckles on the metal. Michael waited nearby, out of the line the door might see if they cracked it open to confront her.

  “Who’s there?” an American woman asked from inside.

  “Oh, I’m Rachel. Pleasure to meet you. My boyfriend and I guessed that people were inside this store, and we need shelter for the night. Could we come in?”

  “We don’t know you, and we don’t have spare food or water to offer. Try the next door, those stores are empty. It’ll be safer if we just keep space.”

  “I understand you’re scared, we are too. What can we offer you to share space? It’s safer—you know—to be together now. We can protect each other, share information.”

  “I’m sorry, we just can’t trust you,” the woman said. “We’ve tried to help people before, and they always get greedy. No one can afford to fight each other. These damn monsters are enough.”

  “What’s your name? I didn’t hear it.”

  “Pardon my manners, but I didn’t say it. You can call me Jennie. I don’t care for Jennifer.”

  “Thanks, Jennie. Look, my boyfriend Michael is a physician. We’ve been on the run for a couple weeks since our shelter at the Palace was attacked and overrun, and we’re headed south to my family in Croydon. I hope they’re still there, though to be fucking honest, my mom is probably going to be a royal pain in my ass when we get there, if she’s still alive. We need a safe place to stay, a little socialization, and for your trouble, Michael can check on any ailments that worry you. We also have a small amount of medication we can share. We are good people,” she lied, “and we just want to spend the night.”

  “Let me ask my family. Don’t get too optimistic,” Jennie said from the safe sanctuary on the other side of the door.

  Rachel looked to Michael, who returned her eye contact. She flashed him a thumbs-up and confident nod. The disbelieving doctor returned to his protective vigil, and they both waited in the cold November air.

  “Hello, Rachel?” a new voice asked. An American as well, this speaker was a man.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Benjamin, I’m Jennie’s husband. I hope you’ll forgive our fear of letting anyone in. We’re strangers in a somewhat strange land here, and the past year has been a struggle to say the least. We’ve had to do some terrible things to stay safe in here, and we’d like to avoid any kind of conflict.”

  “Benjamin? Does this mean you’re Bennie and Jennie, because that would be super cute.”

  “Five years of Christmas cards just like that,” Benjamin said. “Then the kids came.”

  “That’s adorable beyond measure. Look, we agree on the conflict issue, Ben. Michael and I are just interested in resting for the night. We have no nefarious intentions. It’s just the two of us, we are armed, but we come in peace and intend on going in peace. Set us up in a place where we can’t hurt you. I know trust is hard to extend, but please. We’re tired, and
it will be dark soon.”

  “Um… okay. One night. And the rules are concrete. No negotiation, no nonsense.”

  “Your house, your rules,” Rachel agreed.

  “Give us half an hour to get things ready. Lay low,” Benjamin said. “Please don’t prove me wrong.”

  “I won’t. You have my word.”

  But he didn’t have Mara’s word.

  The steel door cracked an inch, creating a band of blackness. It then crept more open, issuing a low, mournful growl of a creak as it went. The sound echoed out, carrying past the cars and out into the infested city. A large man held the inner crash bar depressed, his mitts grabbing the steel so he could yank it shut in a second’s notice. His wide, heavy brows hung over bright eyes that swept the parking lot in the decaying light of the autumn day.

  “Step inside five feet and put your backs to the wall,” he said.

  Rachel noticed the man held a carving knife in his other hand. Perspective mattered: in his hands it looked like a vegetable knife. In hers, it would look like a machete. She slid around him with Michael right behind her. Eyes adjusting the darkness within, she felt her way along the smooth wall, pressing her back to it as instructed. When she went in far enough to leave room for Michael, she stopped, and put both palms against the wall, keeping aside as Ben had requested.

  The door closed, and they both heard a heavy bolt slide shut. They were inside with no easy exit now, for better or for worse.

  “We busted the locking mechanism when we first got here,” Ben explained as their eyes transitioned to the lower light. He moved to stand in front of them. “But there’s a heavy deadbolt. That piece of steel is the size of a Cohiba. It’d keep out zombie cattle.”

  “That’s a wretched scenario,” Michael said, blinking the stars in his vision away. “All that wasted beef. Getting gnawed to death by your own meal.”