Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8)

by Chris Philbrook

  They aren’t alone anymore.

  Yesterday while we were moving here a second team of our people moved into the western edge of the city to the parking garages to scout them. Contact was very heavy, and they were forced to stop and engage over a hundred targets on the way in and out. Fortunately they brought a SAW in the turret, and that was the ultimate equalizer. I’m not too happy about the timing on the noise, but I can’t complain. A hundred dead bodies is the idea here.

  Mike and Patty (who were in charge of that run with Blake and Quan) said the garage is perfect for the idea we have. It’s only four floors, which means easy in and out for us, but also enough floors to cause some serious fucking damage when that Semtex goes boom. Quan said it’d take him maybe six hours to get the loads in, and he might be able to shave that time down with some assistance on drilling, and some really specialized prep ahead of time.

  We return home tomorrow.

  -Adrian

  February 22nd

  Is this a fucking leap year?

  Hm.

  I’m sitting here looking at my ghetto style homemade calendar, and I’m pretty sure it might be a leap year this year. Not that it’ll be the end of the world if I fuck it up, but I want to be a proper scribe, or Scribe, if you prefer. I think in the admissions office I can check and see. I don’t trust the calendar on the laptop here. I’m not sure if it updates without the internet properly. I’ll let you know what I find out.

  Where was I? Where were we?

  Scatter brained tonight something fierce. Otis has been up in my ass like a bike seat all damn evening since I settled in my room. He’s smashing his face into me, and rubbing his little wet nose all over the place. Plus he’s been tossing around this little catnip mouse one of the kids got for him like he’s sky high on Walter White's blue meth or something. Miss my buddy. Seems like he misses me too.

  Here’s the good news for the day: Nothing bad is happening here at Bastion. Nothing. Like, nada. Becca, Ollie and Ryan are making serious headway into our food situation on two separate fronts. Ollie has managed to get one of the cows pregnant, which is HUGE. Not sure exactly how pregnant the cow is, but if he can get two more knocked up in a jiffy, we’re going to be buried in milk and meat. Gotta increase our livestock!

  Ryan and Becca have managed to get four hydroponics stations fully built with Blake's undivided attention and assistance. He’s fully rehabilitated finally from the sickness that nearly killed a dozen of us (and led to the deaths of more), and he’s being super productive. Each hydro station is about the size of a large freezer, and a half. You know the kind you’d find in a basement? The hydro stations don’t require electricity, operating solely on gravity feed, and they seem awesome. They are quadruple tiered, with tubing linked from level to level in places so they only need to be hydrated in a few different ways, and it's efficient enough that a single person can do it in half the time. He’s got them seeded already, and he’s already working on building more. My sister Becca has split off and is tending the hydro units already up and running, and there’s been no drop off in food production. She’s also organizing planting cycles on this crazy spreadsheet so we’ll have stuff coming into season year round. She’s so organized. Proof that a college education is good for something. I don't think she had this in mind when she started out, but if you're given lemons, squeeze them in the eyes of your enemies, and run as fast as you can away.

  School is going well. Syl is really starting to come out of her shell. She’s managed to join the school two days a week, and is working with Blake’s wife Kim one on one. She’s also talking, and is now able to converse more or less as normal, as long as we don’t bring up her past, or her parents. She shuts right the fuck down if we do. If we keep the conversation in the moment, or focused on an acceptable subject, she's fine. Michelle couldn’t be happier. The other kids and the adults surrounding her have taken her in and made her feel welcomed and wanted, and that’s done a lot for her. The amount of compassion that child is receiving is stellar. It’s important that we all learn to be nice to everyone. If anything, she’s teaching us that.

  Here’s the bad news of the day: Both the Factory as well as Spring Meadows have been receiving what they classify as “above average” contact from the undead. I think this has very mundane reasons behind it. Both areas have seen additional foot and vehicle traffic the past few days, and we have been making quite a racket as well. We went into the city from the Factory the other day, and we spent several days making noise at Meadows as well. Perfectly legit reasons for increased contact. Both areas are reporting that the contact is manageable with melee weapons, but the higher presence was alarming enough to report to us.

  All things considered, I believe we are in the calm before the storm. I think because we are heading into the city tomorrow to set up the first parking garage as our major lure site, we are getting a basic reprieve here. It’s my firm belief that we’re going to be absolutely, positively SMASHING shit down the drain tomorrow, and this is the powers-that-be giving us a few days of easy street to get us rested, or to let us get all nerved up so we fuck up royally.

  As I just said, we’re leaving bright and early, crack of dawn style tomorrow to roll into the city edge to the parking garage that was scouted the other day. We have an insertion plan and everything. Should be pretty slick if we don’t encounter a mountain of undead there, or living folks with guns that want us gone. If we do, that’s not even the worst thing that could happen. I mean that’d be a distraction, and we’re all about distractions right now.

  We had a bunch of our younger kids work on splitting wood and loading the deuce up today. We’re setting up multiple large piles of wood on the top level of the garage in a manner so when one is about to burn out, the second pile next to it should be just getting going. We've also got some left over pallets to burn. If it goes well, the fires will burn visibly on the top levels for about six to eight hours. We’re not sure how long the car alarms will go off for, but we’re betting it’ll be long enough to draw in a fucking absurd amount of undead. Either way, we’re going to do our best tomorrow to get that garage ready.

  Large team of experienced shooters, multiple vehicles, a good plan… Should be horrible. I am not giving that bitch Fairy anything to work with right now. She can suck my fat cock.

  Headed to bed. Early morning, and I still need to clean some of my weapons for tomorrow. Again. Can’t deal with a dirty weapon…

  -Adrian

  February 24th

  I’m glad I’ve got a big toe. Big feet. Large size, complete with large toes at the end. Large piles of shit require large toes to stomp them down the drain when necessary.

  How large a pile of shit? Allow me to go into some detail.

  Our team left Bastion fairly early yesterday, in force. We left with pretty much every gun we could muster and headed straight to the Factory. The roads between here and the Factory were largely clear of undead. I think we might’ve had to steer to and fro ten times at most to hit and kill a zombie. It was a pleasant change of pace, and very much unlike some other driving moments later in the day.

  As we rolled into the area surrounding the Factory we encountered a rather large amount of the dead. They weren’t ranked up tightly per se, but everywhere you looked in the surrounding streets there were walkers. I’d guess and say no more than ten to fifteen feet of space was between any given undead and another. That’s a lot of targets. You could say it was a rich environment for shooting opportunities. To clear us some space to work Caleb punched the HRT and literally plowed us a straight line into the area right in front of the old nightclub. Once we were close to the building, Abby and myself got onto the roof of the ambulance and we sat down crosslegged and started plinking away with .22 rifles in one direction. At the same time, our two humvee crews dismounted and began to lay down heavy clearing fire in the other direction, emptying that space of threats at a fast pace. After perhaps ten minutes of steady fire, we were able to move on with the
plan, and pick up three more Factory shooters who volunteered to help.

  Two younger men, both around 18, and then Barry. You remember Barry? The poor kid from the car dealership way back when? Good kid. Apparently he's been a fine upstanding citizen according to Lulu.

  We checked on them for about thirty minutes, getting a face to face update with them, and then we headed out to the apartment building's parking garage that was our actual target. The garage was several city miles away from the Factory, so we got going without taking too long. On approach we knew we were in for a rough trip. Tough enough that we almost called it off. The undead were packed in fairly tight around the garage, and just driving into the garage was going to be a challenge. However once we talked over the radio we decided it was worth a shot, and at worse, we could drive to the top, drop the wood we brought for the lure fires, and then take off before things got any worse.

  Caleb behind the wheel of the HRT yet again meant we were making zombie pate. He loves hitting those things as they walk along. Sometimes he calls out his score when he hits them. The entrance to the parking garage barely fit the HRT. And by barely, I mean we lost the horn off the roof as we drove up the concrete slope into the first level. I nearly shit a brick when it ripped free with a rending screech, but Kevin in the humvee two vehicles behind us called out what had happened. I elected to move forward, and Caleb drove on.

  Inside the parking garage there were perhaps a third of the vehicles it could hold on a busy day. Many of the vehicles still had their doors open, and the concrete floors right below them covered in dark stains of old blood. These stains are nearly two years old now. I’m sure many folks running from their places of employment met their demise fumbling with keys, or trying to start their car back in June of two years ago. Imagine building the nerve to run out of your office building alone, run through the crowd of undead, into the garage, and reach your car, only to butter finger your keys onto the floor mat long enough to have a zombie yank you out and then forcibly and eat you? What a shit way to go. How do you play that? Do you wait in the office for it all to blow over? Hm.

  To help buy us some time the third and fourth vehicle in the group started ramming parked cars across the entrance to the garage. The fourth vehicle was a humvee, and with the powerful motor it was able to push a few small cars into the way, forming an impromptu roadblock for us. Security on the first floor was obviously our greatest priority and the roadblock was step one.

  The HRT and the Deuce went all the way to the top floor, stopping as needed to take down any and all undead we saw. Frankly Mr. Journal, I’m surprised at how many there were just wandering around the damn garage. I’m not sure if they were lost, or that they hadn’t been lured out by any other noises the entire time. I mean shit, who knows at this point?

  Anyhoo, I found the overall amount of targets inside the actual garage to be higher than I would’ve liked. We had no difficulty on the upper levels clearing as we went up. Staying in constant radio contact with Kevin and the first floor crew meant we were only a minute away from supporting them, and vice versa. We were worried that at any point more of the assholes who shot at us the other day would return, opening fire, but in reality the only threat we faced was undead. Lots of them too.

  On the top floor we emptied the entire back end of the Deuce onto and underneath a pair of parked cars. The two cars were in adjacent spaces, and we arranged the wood to burn on top, inside, and on the bottom. As three of us did that, two more went vehicle to vehicle with hoses and gas cans, draining car gas tanks.

  Amazingly enough, most of the gas tanks on that level still had fuel. So much fuel in fact, we started prying trunks open to try and find more fuel tanks to get the fuel. I forget the exact amount of gas we pulled out of there, but we brought every single one of our fuel cans, including the fat ass tanks in the humvees, and we filled every single one. I’d comfortable say we left with 200 gallons. Now if we had brought our 55 gallon drums…

  Makes me want to postpone this trip into the city just to get the damn fuel. By now though we’re pot committed. We made far too much noise shooting, drilling, yelling, screaming, and farting yesterday. The garage should be crawling with undead, and we need that population to get smooshed by the decks when they collapse.

  There will be more vehicles with gas tanks, and the gas inside those cars will be useful to literally add fuel to the fires. Plus Blake has little to no time to filter the fuel right now. He’s far too busy working with Martin and Quan, learning explosives. Does that sentence scare the shit out of you like it just did me? Damn.

  Speaking of which, while my crew was upstairs on the top level, Martin, Blake and Quan plus a handful more were downstairs using the concrete drills to make holes to sink the plastic explosive into. Quan was paranoid as balls about the Semtex due to its age. I guess it was old, and old explosives are… fickle. He insisted no one touch them but him, and he simply linked all the charges and hooked them up as needed. Martin and Blake simply drilled holes where he marked them while the rest of the team provided security.

  I guess they had multiple very close encounters with zombies crawling out from underneath vehicles. On the second occasion of one of them dragging themselves out from under a fucking parked car, Kevin radioed up to us, freshly shat brick in hand, yelling for us to watch out for more where we were. We got really lucky up top, not gonna lie. Several of us spent many a minute on bended knee at a gas cap getting fuel. We easily could’ve lost someone to a surprise bite out of nowhere.

  I listened carefully to the radios the entire morning and into the afternoon until we’d finished with our fire piles. We didn’t light them yet, we just got them ready. Lighting them will be for when we’re about to go, which will be another couple of days. Four days maybe, not positive just yet.

  We relocated to the third deck and called for Blake to join us. He grabbed one of the humvees, drove up to us on the third level, and one of my crew switched out with him so they had full staffing and vehicles on the bottom floor. Fortunately while we were doing the swap, we had a brief lull, and no one was in extra danger.

  Blake grabbed the spare car battery we brought along and popped the hood on a car that we knew had a car alarm. It took us two or three tries to find a car that didn’t simply have a starter kill feature, and an actual car alarm. In case you were wondering Mr. Journal, car alarms are useless. I can’t even tell you how many times I heard a car alarm going off in the distance and did nothing about it. Now starter kill on the other hand was far more effective. Anyway, Blake got the battery into the car, jury rigged it, and after playing around with a few wires, the car alarm went off, loud as shit and right on cue.

  Noise maker now effective, we packed up and went downstairs to back up Kevin’s team as Quan and Martin finished working on the explosives. Quan was wrapping up the final wiring on the radio controlled detonator when we arrived. We were pushing the two cars blocking the garage out of the way less than twenty minutes later, and after smashing through a few dozen undead milling about beyond the car-roadblock, we were back on the road, all in one piece.

  I know I drew the lucky straw upstairs with my group setting up the fires. I also know that was entirely intentional on Kevin’s part. He’s trying desperately to keep my safe, yet also putting me near enough the action so that if something really bad DOES happen, I can be there to help. It’s a fine balance. On two fronts really. He’s trying to keep me safe while still using me as an asset, as well as keep me in the loop, but not offend me all at the same time.

  I am also sure a huge portion of this is Michelle’s handiwork. I doubt this is happening without those two colluding on the matter.

  We ditched the Factory guys back at their base of operations with a heartfelt thank you, and took the long drive home in shitty weather. While we were inside the garage the weather turned south on us. Sleet and freezing rain were the order of the later day, and the roads were treacherous. We had one gut buster moment just as the sun was done being useful.
A zombie was coming down a side road right near Gilbert’s old warehouse. It must’ve heard us coming from a bit away, and just as we were crossing the road it was on, the damn thing slipped in some freezing rain and went down hard on its back. I think it cracked its skull too, because it was still very still when the fourth vehicle passed it.

  I guess it’s good to be lucky every now and then. I take that as a good sign. Zombies are now killing themselves when we roll through.

  Things here at Bastion are quiet. We’re prepping for our next trip to the other parking garage near the hospital. Not sure exactly what day that’ll be, but I’ll let you know as soon as we iron it out.

  Ollie and Melissa are well, as is their baby girl. Kim is well, as is little Adrian Gilbert. Sylvia is behaving better than ever, and the school kids are learning. Our hydroponics facility is running well, our walls are built, our gate is built, and our camera system is running flawlessly. We are eating better than we anticipated we would (And I hate to say its because we lost Fitz, but that did help. Fitz if you ever see this, wherever you are, understand I mean you no disrespect brother. I'd skip a meal a day to have you back.) and things are stable. More stable than ever possibly.

  Getting nervous Mr. Journal. That went fairly well yesterday, and I’m sure that despite how crappy it actually was, that was still just the calm before the storm.

  I'm going to kill the lights here, and try to stay focused on relaxed. Maybe I'll do some deep breathing, and think positive thoughts to unwind. My adrenaline is still lingering. I may or may not think about Michelle when I turn out the lights. Otis wants some company, so I’m gonna turn this laptop off, and give my homeboy what he’s jonesing for.